Three hours just blinked by, lost in the web when I should be doing something–anything–else. I can’t imagine and sometimes hope for a world without the internet.
It started with an artist spotlight edition of Rocketboom and the music video for “Work It Out” [On Rocketboom, Two Versions on Ghost Robot, YouTube with Informative “About the Video”]. I’m not a huge fan of dance, but the way Bill Shannon moves on his crutches is magical. He reminded me of Oscar Pistorius, the runner banned from competition because his designed prosthetics surpass our evolved appendages [IIAF Rules Pistorious Ineligible, Double-amputee “blade runner” barred from Olympics].
Their stories excite my inner geek because it shows the great potential humans have of incorporating technology into themselves and transcending what wetware alone can accomplish. I’m so ready for my direct neural interface and cyborg body! One common element to both stories is they were both children. Perhaps that augmented grace requires a clean slate so the kinesthetic mapping isn’t cluttered memories of how the body used to work. There’s hope though with recent stories about the surprising plasticity of the adult mind when dealing with brain damage, stroke, and cybernetic senses.
Back to “Work It Out” and the artist, RJD2. After googling around for information on Shannon, it was time to hunt down the music. I started out on iTunes and ended up on Amazon.com, my new music shopping pattern. There’s no debating the iTunes interface is slicker and provides better value-add with its exhaustive “related” info. Amazon wins out when it has the same music at a higher bit rate and without DRM.
Morgan Webb on WebbAlert today [14 January 2008] mentioned that Sony, the last DRM holdout, is throwing in the towel. The recordingindustrasaurus has been clever in punishing Apple for its dominance and anti-DRM stance by making Amazon DRM-free. Just goes to show a pea-sized brain in a behemoth’s body can still get a good idea once in a while and have the weight to throw around with destructive abandon. I’m sure Steve will have something up his sleeve tomorrow at MacWorld. EMI pulling out of RIAA might just be the asteroid with recordingindustrasaurus’s name on it though. Maybe they’re actually going to evolve? Hmmm, we’ll see.
Please oh please let there be a subnotebook or an ubertablet at MacWorld please please please please!
There is one good thing about Amazon’s music store; it lets you preview the entire album with a single click. So I went through five of RJD2’s albums and bought the following: Two songs from Since Last We Spoke, Magnificent City Instrumentals in its entirety, and five songs from The Third Hand. That ate up a few bucks and about 90 minutes. discovered the “Mad Men” title theme on .
That started the NYC tangent of course. I’ve been missing Manhattan lately, and “Work It Out” is set in NYC. Then I find the title theme to Mad Men on “Magnificent City Instrumentals”. “Mad Men” is an amazing period piece about 1960s Madison Avenue, well worth catching in reruns or renting. That and 30 Rock (one of the few network programs I’ve TiVo Season Pass-ed) are my post-Sex-in-the -City lifeline to the cosmopolitan archetype. I’m struggling once again with the idea of moving back, so a trip to NYT to browse the apartments and real estate classified ate up another thirty minutes. Don’t they know the bubble’s burst up there? The logistics and finances of the move leave my dreams Shattered. Shadoobie. Shattered, shattered…
So that plus blogging is how the first three hours of my Monday are going. The cold lingers and the sinus infection rages, so I’d say I’ve been pretty productively unproductive. Now perhaps a shower and some breakfast to pretend normality.
Oh no. The “Recently Added” playlist included “Still Alive”. Maybe a few levels of Portal before I get the day officially started…