It’s good for your brain to Learn Things, and when you are learning a Thing, you generally do not know jack-squat about that thing, so it’s possible, self-esteem-wise, you might feel a li’l bit dumb, or at least Ignorant, and a lot of softies out there don’t ever want anybody to feel bad about anything, ever, but I contend feeling like a dum-dum is another good motivator for Learning, so when people are Learning Things, they should also be taught that feeling bad that they don’t know the first fucking thing about the thing they are Learning about is supposed to be a temporary deal, and when you learn, it makes your outcome seem even more triumphant, you know?
Just nine days ago, evidence of a new album from Scottish chill-out producers Boards Of Canada, who have been silent for the seven years since 2006’s Trans Canada Highway EP…
Adding fuel to the BoC conspiracy theories: every time Daft Punk releases a full-length studio album, Boards follows suit within a year, and Emily is a very happy girl. I knew my ambient cult music senses were tingling once the RAM stuff started rolling out.
When was the last time you watched the music video for “Blue”? I think you should watch the music video for “Blue.”
Why I Was Angry On Twitter Today
After I decided that I was going to make a career out of being on the Internet, I spent the next three years being on the Internet really hard. The Internet would be where I would find the things that I could look back on and call a day. The Internet would be where I would send occasional feedback to assure others that I had indeed had a day. And so on and so forth. You have read enough circa 2010 concernpieces about Internet usage to fill in the blanks, this story is not unique, etc.
Then sometime late last year I decided to take a stand for my personal time and/or eyesight. This has of course resulted in me not being on the Internet quite so much - I’d say maybe I’m on looking at feeds and checking tweets about 75% as much as I used to in a non-work-related capacity. My core social links in Los Angeles had left town, and rather than retreat into insular Internettiness, which history had taught me would be all too easy for me to do, I decided to put a priority on being outside, trying to meet new people, generally having more real world experiences. (That I can also kind of afford to do more of those things than I could two years ago is no small factor in this shift!) It was kind of like that Jim Carrey movie Yes Man (I even decided that I liked Zooey Deschanel!) I will always be kind of a glooper but at least I know I’m being proactive about being as non-gloopy as possible. This seemed like a more than fair trade for sometimes not being on top of the latest meme or song release or whatever.
I guess it says more about me and my defensiveness of this choice that I get so prickly when someone points out to me that I’m late to the party on something, because being on time to the party isn’t something I’m necessarily always trying to do anymore, but I still have that vestigial part of me that is guilty or anxious about it. But most of the time I’m just sharing something so that we can have a laugh. I started the “Overplayed Songs of the Week” column on Grantland partially out of a desire to bake-in my excuse for taking more time to think about why a song is stupid or excellent, without having to have my thoughts up about it the day it’s released.
(This is not a post about “Accidental Racism,” I was on that shit within an hour of waking up today, so bully for me.)
I’ve always had a slower metabolism for content than most of my peers, which I’ve been pushing against for the last few years but which I am kind of settling back into now. I still consume a probably impractical amount of information for a human every day, such is the life of a person on the Internet, and if I’m being completely honest, I kind of love the pressure of it sometimes. My thesis film was about a girl who wore a full body computer so she could be on the Internet all the time, for Christ’s sake.
I guess all I’m saying is that I dropped out of the race, so if I send you a trending piece of content, it’s just so we can giggle over it. That’s all. Have a nice day.
