Family. Everyone has it. But no one has any real say in the matter, leastways not on the surface of things, and it’s this push-and-pull between responsibility and lack of choice that’s so compelling. Oh, sure, you may have picked your spouse, assuming neither one of you arrived on the doorstep with fifty heads of cattle, but there really ends the extent of your druthers. The art lies in how you play the hand you’re dealt to completion, good and bad and dysfunctional, because the house has you. We’re talking, like, Amityville House of Horrors Has You.
The high point of my long weekend was realizing the amount of gas conserved by having your tires properly inflated, then locking into cruise control. The D.T.E. meter jumped up by more than 70 miles. Serious savings, I know. Now, I can already hear your dire warnings about how cars optimally run at 60 mph and other such balderdash, which is purely preposterous. My baby sings at 85.
I think automotive integrity is one way to describe the feeling. It just seems right, miles-per-gallon maxed out, gliding effortlessly at fantastic velocities, where there’s this sense of honoring motion and the road itself, and something like traffic, or even a rest stop, would ruin this kind of internal consistency. And have you ever tried changing lanes without touching any reflectors? I don’t care what you thought you knew about biology–this is fine motor control.
Somewhere in the wending avenues of my fevered brain, secreted far away from the dominion of common sense, was this idea that forgoing a delicious dinner at Chipotle granted me the right to purchase a shiny new Xbox 360. How any semblance of parity can exist in this reality, I can’t say for sure, but it just made sense at the time–a desperate, urgent kind of logic I was only too happy to oblige.
Hundreds of dollars and numerous wasted hours later, I’m the bewildered new owner of the latest gaming technology. And you know what? It was everything I had hoped it would be. Not more than a minute gone, and it was all like, “Oh, shits. I think I’m controlling something damn near photorealistic.” I’ve refrained from such electronic entertainments for a good while now, opting instead for ol’ fashioned television shows, but this was the real deal, and like a sailor on shore leave I drank deeply. And once it hits your lips, it’s so good.
But not for long, you see. I plan on giving the little white box a few more days, and then it gets the boot. Why? It’s the same reason I still don’t own a teevee. Both devices are portals to a lifestyle that harbors a very real danger of becoming absolutely unhinged and all consuming. Once you get into a serious groove, it’s over, you know? Showers not taken. Parrot dead. People ignored. Website neglected. Bags of Cheetos ravaged.
I’m trying to paint a quick picture, so you’ll have to excuse the broad strokes. There’s another layer to this discussion, and it’s this idea of media self-consciousness, kinda like, “Alright, I’m consuming this piece of media. How would it appear to an outsider looking into all this?” I’m still craving that burrito, however, so let’s adjourn for the evening. We’ll talk next Wednesday.
Internet radio, the way I remember it, used to involve surfing through dozens of poorly spelled stations, all of them ending in “z,” to find the tunez my eardrumz craved so fervently. What I expected was a seamless aural experience, but what I got was a different story entirely, a perversion of a hallowed invention that’s been around for more than a hundred years.
Clicking on a station should’ve called forth a river of music everflowing, and it did. For, like, about five seconds. Each second thereafter would constantly cut out, in a shuddering carousel of sound that made you want to get all indignant and demand where, exactly, your connection went. Best guess? Somewhere just north of Canada and slightly east of wherever Britney Spears hides her underwear nowadays.
Things have changed, though, and I was recently introduced to this. It’s a fascinating way to expand your musical palate, with a pleasing interface that makes you want to get all up ins without the constant stop-and-go of yore. More interesting is the technology itself, which claims something or another about how every song has hundreds of musical genes, and how your tastes gravitate toward specific genetic sequences, whatever that means. All I know is there’s a lot of relevant music coming from a website with big, shiny buttons. And what if you were to pair this cutting edge genome with programs of ill repute designed to collect music permanently on your hard drive? Shame on you for even thinking that.