New Wave makes me sad.

Thanks to internet radio stations like Pandora and Yahoo I can enjoy a trip down memory lane by tuning into my favorite music from the '80s. Neon accessories, rubber bracelets and spikey hair may be a thing of the past, but thanks to internet radio, I can hear Boy George asking "Do You Really Want to Hold Me?" or Devo exhorting us to "Whip It" at any given hour of the day. This is a good thing. Music fans anywhere can choose from a virtually unlimited list of genres and create their own playlists and stations. Thanks to the all-encompassing, cross-media capabilities of the internet, these stations link to band biographies, similar artists for fans to check out, and, most importantly, links through which customers can purchase their favorite music. No matter how bizarre, old, or obscure, if it's included on an internet radio station, it's been made available to purchase. This is also a good thing! For years I have been searching for the original 7"single version of an obscure new wave song "Nowhere Girl" by an equally obscure British new wave band called B-Movie. Long out of print, my only option was to scour used record stores and Ebay in hopes of scoring a less-than-pristine vinyl copy, or to buy an entire compilation album that may or may not contain other songs I like. The soundtrack to the film 200 Cigarettes has the original version, and is not a bad album altogether, but the film I relied on to relive the glory days of new wave so disappointed me that I refuse to buy its soundtrack! Any movie in which Casey Affleck and Courtney Love are the couple you're supposed to be rooting for can't be good. But I digress.

I was in high school during new wave's heyday of 1980-1984. When my high school glory days came to an end, so, did new wave's. The terms "Alternative" and "Modern Rock" sprang up to describe the slightly left-of-center rock music. Thanks to the internet, I have created my own New Wave station, chock full of the music of my youth, with its gloriously off-kilter aesthetic. My station includes "Nowhere Girl" in its original synth-heavy glory, as well as a host of other songs that meant a lot to me when I was growing up. When Pandora.com played this song, it was a good twenty years or so since I'd heard the original version in its entirety.As soon as I hear the synthesized opening bars of "Nowhere Girl" I'm immediately transported to the bedroom in the house in which I grew up. I spent a lot of evenings sitting in my beanbag chair listening to the only new wave station in the NYC tri-state area. It was great to hear this long-lost musical gem again, but I had a rather unanticipated reaction when I heard it: I teared up! Yup, I got all verklempt as soon as I heard it. The point of my story? Thanks to internet radio, I've discovered just how much the nostalgia I feel for my teenage years can get to me. These days I find myself older, slightly wiser, and still trying to decide what I want to do when I grow up. New wave transports me back to a time in which I had very few worries, a time in which I was certain things would be different when I was older. Hearing my favorite songs these days reminds me of the hope and certainty I felt as a 14-year-old looking to the future.

It's not the up-tempo songs that make me sad, though it's great to hear them as well. Among the dozens of fly-by-night, one-hit-wonders the new wave era spawned, a lot of good music made its way over here from across the pond, even if the American audiences generally didn't appreciate it. "Oblivion," "The Bugle Sounds Again," anything from Aztec Camera's High Land Hard Rain album still makes me somewhat emotional. This album was a Christmas gift from my mom in 1984. I listened to it for two months straight through Christmas break and into the second semester of my freshman year of college before It hit the fan, so to speak. My parents' divorce and various related issues clouded the rest of my college years and changed my life irrevocably. This album reminds me of the last carefree days before things got ugly. "Wishful Thinking" by China Crisis, with its gentle orchestral qualities does the same thing. The Bongos, vintage Elvis Costello, Squeeze, all these bands take me back to my high school and early college days, and that makes me a little sad becasue as adults, we all, to varying degrees, wish we could see things the way we did when we were younger.

E-mail: How Much Is Too Much?

In the November 14, 2007 issue of Slate Chad Lorenz announced the death of e-mail. He has obviously never shopped at Bath and Body Works. I gave this store my e-mail address when they told me they would occasionally email coupons throughout the year. That was two weeks ago. I've received an e-mail from them literally every other day since August 28. They e-mailed me twice in one day on September 3rd. If e-mail is truly on its way out as Lorenz suggests, no one told the promotion and sales department at Bath and Body Works. Lorenz's position on e-mail, along with this week's other articles and discussions really made me stop and think about a form of communication that we all take for granted by now. Our study of e-mail made me stop and think, for the first time, about how much e-mail I receive from places where I've shopped, both in-store and online. It finally dawned on me: if Igive someone else permission to e-mail me, just how far does that permission extend? How much is too much?

Here is a sample of some of the e-mail titles in my Inbox this week:

Bath and Body Works new Black Amythest Fragrance is here!
Find the car you've been looking for!
Bath and Body Works Free Aromatherapy Offer Inside!
Best suprise are in bedroom (sic)
and finally,
Four Goats and a hank of cashmere

The last title isn't as distressing as it sounds, by the way, since it comes from a knitting website I subcribe to. The third title presumably is somewhat distressing. I obviously didn't open it...

Bath and Body Works is really beginning to annoy me, and that has me postulating on the abuses of e-mail. Maybe their e-mailing privileges should be revoked. As I mentioned above, I've received e-mail from them every other day advertising limited-time discounts and special offers, most of which are available through online purchases only. If this company seriously thinks I have the money and inclination to buy bath products every other day, maybe they should stick their heads out the window and take a look at how much gas and groceries cost lately.

The knitting website I subscribe to is even worse than Bath and Body Works. Knitting Daily is an online knitting forum run by Interweave Knits in order to supplement its quarterly magazine. Knitting Daily posts articles and surveys on knitting trends, new fibers and pattern and technical help. The editors update it on a daily basis. They also e-mail me on a daily basis to let me know that the daily update has been posted to their site. Daily. I implicitely gave them permission to contact me when I voluntarily submitted my e-mail in order to register for this free site. But again, just because I gave them my e-mail, does that give a company license to bombard me with electronic communication? In Knitting Daily's case, I can't see what purpose is served by such frequent contact. I as a subscriber am fully aware that they update the website every day. I already pay this company good money through my subscriptions to two of their publications. What good does e-mailing me so often do?

It's the same with every shop I've ever purchased from. Old Navy, Eddie Bauer, and Lands End have been offering me special deals for weeks, if only I'll buy any pair of pants or spend $100 on outerwear. So once again I'll ask: When I give someone permission to e-mail me, are there limits on how far that permission extends? Apparently, the assumption out there is that there are no limits. Of course I can always unsubscribe to the worst offenders, but occasionally there are times in which I genuinely wish to be notified on sales or other promotions. So it seems that I have no choice but to put up with all the superfluous e-mails, or to get cut out of the loop altogether. As luck would have it, I could use some new pants, so I'll put up with all the e-mail for now.

Strawberry Whine (Continued)

For today's post I'll continue my ruminations on the need to keep up with the internet's technological advances. In the post below I whined extensively about my 8-year-old iMac's obsolescence. I don't mind the slow operating system on my iMac as much as I mind the fact that the damned thing requires more RAM and updated operating software just to be able to surf the internet. Eventually the hardware could no longer keep up with the software. I have 1 gig. of RAM in this computer, and I use it for everything. Internet surfing, paper writing, graphic design and my creative writing projects. Right now I have all of my projects safely saved onto Zip disks, but I'm not sure when I'll be able to access them.

I brought my iMac to the Apple store two nights ago. The technician took one look at it and said, "I don't know what I can do for this model because we stopped making it . I'll check it out for you but technically we're not even allowed to look at these anymore." Thank you, Apple customer service. I'll save the rant about deserving appropriate technical support no matter which Apple I own for another time. To my surprise the computer started up without any problems, but when he plugged the Zip drive in, everything froze and disappeared. I was a little confused, but at least the technician didn't charge me for looking at it, and he got my zip drive out of my zip disk as well. The drive worked on his newer iMac without any problems, so obviously, I'm facing the inevitable task of having to replace my computer sooner or later. No one actually laughed at my iMac, but a few techies shook their heads in a mixture of pity and disgust, and one young salesgirl went "AWWWW!" and patted my iMac in the same way one pats a dog's head.

So this is my dilemma: Do I continue to buy new equipment every 5-8 years? It looks like I don't have a choice, which means most internet-savvy consumers don't, either. Part of the iMac's problem is OS10.4, which is running on a G3 processor. The technician told me that 10.1 would be better to use with such an old processor, but I bought the upgrade because I could no longer access the internet using 10.1. As I said in my earlier post, living without internet access is not an option. 24-7 on-demand access to news, entertainment and shopping is taken for granted these days. I refuse to live without the ability to check my course materials, shop online, and communicate with friends and family from the comfort of my own home. The internet has brought the entire world to everyone's doorstep, and once we've become accustomed to that, there's no turning back.

I attended Parsons School of Design (of Project Runway fame!) in the nineties. Every single computer lab on campus was wall-to-wall blueberry iMacs, which means, of course, that many major learning institutions invested huge amounts of cash on Apple technology. I wonder how much Parsons had to spend to replace all those Blueberries. It doesn't seem very customer-friendly to me.

I'm fast approaching middle-age and already I can feel the crank letter-writer coming out in me. I'm almost tempted to write a letter--well, by letter I mean e-mail--to Apple letting them know how I feel. In the meantime, I'm not sure what to do. This sounds stupid, but I haven't plugged in my iMac since I brought it home from the Apple store. I'll get around to it this weekend. If I can still use it for everything except accessing what's on my zip disks, I'll take that for now. But if that' the case, what will I do about my novel-in-progress??

Online Rhetoric, but first, please stand by...

Just in time for ENG830: I have somehow offended the computer gods.  I'm experiencing technical difficulties.  It's just my luck that my computer conks out one week before starting a completely online course.  My 8-year-old Strawberry iMac gave out last week.  The problem? None of the icons shows up on the desktop.  Not the hard drive, not the zip drive, not the folder full of downloaded knitting patterns and, especially horrifying, not the folder full of my papers for the summer class on American Lit I just completed.  My Doctor Who wallpaper still displays, however, so I'm hopeful that my hard drive is all right, just playing hard-to-get (to).   I lugged my computer down a flight of stairs and out to my car and drove to Best Buy to seek help from the Geek Squad.   The security personnel tagged my iMac as soon as i went through the automatic doors so it wouldn't look like I was stealing it.  Seriously? Does anyone even sell these things anymore? Remember these iMacs? They came in those weird round shapes and fun fruit "flavors?" The "geeks" at the Geek Squad told me they couldn't do anything for such an old Mac, so I had to make an appointment with the "geniuses" at Apple's "Genius Bar." Don't get me started.   Keep in mind, this is the same store at which a salesman once asked me if I knew whether or not my computer had a CD slot. Don't get me started on that either, or I'll go on and on about the CompUSA salesman who called me "baby" and made fun of the Mac "dinosaur" CompUSA fell all over themselves to sell me nine months earlier... . I fully expect to be laughed at when I walk in with my old-school iMac.  Pre-internal CD burner.  As a die-hard Mac fan, this is a problem I've continually had to face: Apple's annoying habit of rendering their own technology obsolete 6-9 months after it was introduced.  My iMac is old, but perfectly serviceable.  In the meantime I've had to resort to my backup computer: an equally obsolete iBook.  I'm already having problems.  I can't sign up with AIM or Facebook through Safari, and, after spending an hour writing this post, Safari quit (unexpectedly mind you) and I had to seek out my sister's newer iBook to finish. For some reason, Blogger's autosave didn't work on my computer.

What's the point of my anecdote? I share it to ask this question with my ENG830 class: how important is it to keep up with online technology, and what happens to those who can't or won't keep up?  I'm hoping the loss of my computer is only temporary, yet already I'm scrambling to work online.  Buying a new computer is not an option at this point, so I would have to use communal computer labs in order to do my work.   Internet access is not only increasingly convenient, it is increasingly unavoidable.  The Department of Education has made its financial aid application available only online, along with the paperwork for federal student loans. Entertainment, news and media are available 24/7, and updated at all hours of the day or night.  Internet enhancement is becoming more and more integral to modern life.  My technical difficulties transcend inconvenience; they are affecting my ability to participate in a prescribed component of my graduate degree.   

I realize my problem stems from my personal computing platform of choice.  Apple is notorious for relentlessly updating its technology, but on the other hand, I've avoided major software bugs and steered clear of Vista-like debacles.   The fact is, it is extremely necessary to keep up with online technology.  As we move toward a more technological society, the internet is at the forefront of information dissemination.   Breaking news and video are available online almost instantaneously.  Students can complete courses or even entire degrees online.  The lack of internet access is not an option.

What about those who are wary of the internet?  I work with students and parents, and there is a great deal of resistance to the internet among parents and older, non-traditional students.  The people i speak with who can't or won't keep up with the internet are frustrated at the lack of options when taking care of their academic paperwork.  I have heard anger, frustration, fear and even sheer panic in their voices.  I can understand their frustration, but to me it's equally frustrating as I try to help them.  The truth is, the speed and universal accessibility of the internet is changing information and administration.  Whether it's a university or a government office, once the decision to go completely online has been made, it's up to everyone to learn how to keep up, or be left behind.

I'm hoping my iMac is repairable.  Instant access to entertainment and news is a necessity, not a luxury, and I have become accustomed to having it available in the comfort of my own home.  I'll spend as much time at the computer labs as I need to, but in the end, I'll probably do what I have to--and spend what I have to--to surf from the comfort of home once again.

Reading is Fundamental

I'm sorta cranky today. I'm back at work after a nice, relaxing mini-vacation I planned around yesterdays Federal "holiday," I slept so deeply that I was overtired when I woke up this morning, and I'm now harboring a slightly irrational fear that some of that massively recalled beef has ended up in the meatballs of my Italian Wedding soup from the office cafeteria. Not to worry, though, says the FDA. We all consumed most of that meat long ago!

My birthday fell during my mini-vacation; it was, in fact, the point of my taking a few days off in the first place. Thanks to my sister, I picked out three books for my birthday presents: One I have been dying to buy for months, one I knew of and recently decided I wanted to read, and one spur-of-the-moment choice that looked pretty interesting. Thanks to my school work I haven't had much time to read purely for fun. I finished two of the books during my time off. I'll give you a mini-review of them, shall I?

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Philips. Gotta support a fellow (now not-so, in her case) struggling author. I'd been waiting for months for this to be released in the US and almost ordered it from http://www.foyles.co.uk/ in London in the meantime. It's modern-day London, and the classic Greek gods are forced to share a dingy house, where they've been driving each other crazy for centuries. Artemis, goddess of hunting, is a dog-walker; her twin Apollo is a TV psychic. Bored to tears and coping with ever-weakening powers, they indulge in their favorite pastime: revenge. When two sweet but nerdy mortals stumble into their path, gods and nerds must join forces to save the world. I couldn't put this book down. It's entertaining, funny, and if nothing else, a very basic lesson in Greek mythology! The New York Times criticized this book, which, the author admits, is a lighthearted story. Amazingly, their review actually criticized the author for blogging repeatedly about Strictly Come Dancing, the Brits' original version of Dancing With The Stars! Dear NY Times: buy a sense of humor already.

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. I admit I wouldn't have wanted to read this if it didn't involve knitting. That said, I enjoyed this book, but I read it with a lot of eye-rolling, if you know what I mean. Weepy chick lit is not something I usually enjoy. This plot was too formulaic: men are jerks, women should stick together. The back cover guarantees right from the start that the unthinkable will happen...Add equal doses of getting royally screwed over with saintlike proportions of forgiveness, and you've basically got this book. It's an emotional roller-coaster, with a knitting pattern and a recipe in the back.

It's the story of single mom Georgia and her daughter Dakota (it's a states thing, get it?!) and the yarn shop Georgia owns. Women of different backgrounds congregate on Friday nights. Life and all its problems ensues. I found it too sugary-sweet in several places, in particular the spunky 90-year-old Scottish granny who dispensed the obligatory accumulated wisdom; too unbelievable in others--New Yorkers just do not get that involved in the lives of other New Yorkers. Hell, most of them don't even know who their neighbors are. OK, I don't know who any of my neighbors are, either, but you get my point. Having said all this, I'll go see it when the movie version starring Julia Roberts hits the theaters this summer.

The third book is The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar. Set in New York City by its Scottish author. Neil Gaiman loves this book, and that's enough to pique my interest. In between school work, maybe I'll get to read it before summer comes.

No new tv shows? Read a book!

So the Writers Guild has gone on strike and television networks are scrambling to fill the void with what I'll call "classic episodes of a recent vintage," a.k.a. repeats. I'm all for writers getting fair pay for their work in an age where it can be accessed via several forms of media. But what to do in the meantime? Tuning in to BBC America comes to mind. Sure, you have to interpret the unintelligible accents of people speaking (mostly) the same language as us, and the shows are at least two years old, but there's a lot of great entertainment coming out of the U.K. BBC America's new "disclaimer" at the start of every show cracks me up (thanks for the Boston shout-out!). We can use close captioning! Of course!

Another suggestion: read a book. Read several. I have a pile of books designated for "fun reading" I haven't been able to get to since I started grad school this fall. The "hard/boring/perplexing reading" comes first. If anyone out there can wrap their head around Tristram Shandy please drop me a line!

In no particular order, here's a sampling of some of the books I'm dying to read. Perhaps you should be dying to read them too:

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
A murder mystery set in Salem, MA in the 1990s--before Salem's "renaissance." When the matriarch of a family of fortune tellers disappears, her niece and an ex-NY cop must find out what happened.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Fairies really exist. Human boy falls in love with fairy. Movie is made before I can read book but I don't have chance to see it.

The Strange Case of Hellish Nell by Nina Shandler
Bizarre true story of a fortune teller in WWII Britain who accurately predicted the British Navy's movements so often she was arrested as a spy, but tried as a witch under Britain's Witchcraft Act of 1745.

Since there's an otherwordly theme going on here, I'll round out the list with the master of other worlds:

Making Money by Terry Pratchett
The newest in his Discworld series sees the return of Moist Von Lipwig. The city of Ankh-Morpork's benevolent dictator puts Moist in charge of the new Ankh-Morpork mint. And you just don't say no to the benevolent dictator!

Finally, some of my random weirdness for your pleasure/amusement or annoyance. Possibly all of the above:

1) I dressed as a Hogwarts student for Halloween. At work. Technically I was Ginny Weasley because I'm a redhead, but as I was sitting outside on a bench during a break a schoolbus full of elementary school kids stopped at the traffic light. They all called out "Hi hermione!" It made my day.

2) Cops on Segways make me giggle. I'm sorry, they just do. It's all I can do to keep a straight face when I walk past one downtown, but when Salem's finest Personal Mobil Transport brigade showed up on TV I lost it! Every year on Halloween, thousands of people pack the downtown area to celebrate. Everyone comes in costume, and it's a blast. NECN, the local New England news channel aired a piece the morning after Halloween that they had filmed the night before. As the reporter was wrapping up his report, not one, but two Segway cops zoomed past behind him, right on cue, one after the other! It was awesome(ly funny)!

Hello Grad School, Goodbye Free Time.

But first, one episode of this season's Dr. Who to go! As the tv screen darkened, we saw Martha running frantically toward a burning London as millions of baby Death Stars rushed toward the city high over her head. Oblivious to the lone human/easy target directly underneath them. The Doctor is now a really old dude, while the Master is crazier/hotter than ever. He's crazy hot! And Jack? He's...just Jack (insert Will and Grace hand motion). Despite all the spoilers I've been reading on line all season, I don't know what's going to happen and I can't wait to find out. I do know Martha joins Torchwood and Donna Noble comes back to be the Doc's companion in season 4. Finally! A non-teenage, non-stick-thin redheaded sistah as companion!

Now, back to me. I've been accepted into a Masters of English program, which means I get to read lots and lots of books and write lots and lots of papers. This semester, I get to read Lottes of Bookes that look lyke this with no Chapters, Punctuation or Paragraph Breaks for Dyalogue. I'll also learn how to write fiction, which is the main reason I'm going to school. My full-time job workload and my part-time school workload mean that I can now kiss the following goodbye for the next 2-4 years:

1. Sleeping

2. Free Time

3. Sanity

4. Knitting, Sewing and Various Crafty Endeavors

5. Reading for Fun (no analytical thinking required)

Of course, it would all be worth it if I had the Doctor as a professor...