The Null Device
2002/10/10
How to be bitter and broke by 30: a musician's guide;
7. Embrace the hype 1 Do every single bit of media that you can. You need to be everywhere. Then people will buy your record. How about some car ads? They're good. Go on Burke's Backyard. Burke is sex. Real life example: Motorace
8. Rush back into the studio to record your second album Sure, you're tired from all that touring, media and all those video shoots. Yeah, you're only human and you need a break. And you haven't had a chance to write any new songs. But you've got to strike while the iron is hot - get back into the studio and deliver that follow-up album pronto. You can always write in the studio - that's a great idea. And if there are any problems we'll just get Tom Lord-Alge to mix it. Or maybe the Neptunes could produce the single? Real life example: Frente again
An article looking at the social impact of mobile phones. From workers being "on call" 24 hours a day, and the increased vagueness of distracted conversations, to users tuning out their environment and sharing their private conversations with strangers, to the phones' double-edged effect on social connection and isolation, an interesting study in unintended consequences: (via Techdirt)
The portable phones, depending on their usage, can by turns be a shield against loneliness or create isolation. At one end of a restaurant, a patron dining alone places his or her order, then dials a friend - alone but not alone. At the other end of the restaurant, a cell phone conversation interrupts a face-to-face dinner conversation - leaving one party dining alone.
I wonder what effect PXE phones with built-in digital cameras capable of taking and sending instant photographs will be; the immediate will be teenagers zapping pictures of themselves and friends gurning bozotically to their friends and the like, but chances are that a synergistic combination of two features, and the human tendency towards all sorts of social interactions, will go in directions nobody has anticipated. As Gibson said, the street finds its own uses for things.
A few local news items: a new study claims that public transport use will only decline in Melbourne; the government's plans to double public transport use won't happen without massive intervention in the form of massive upgrades and restrictions/charges on automobile use; in other words, not at all, as the marginal seats which decide elections are in the Los Angelised outer suburbs where public transport is nonexistent and not missed. (Hey, maybe we can import some of those American golf carts for teenagers.)
In good news, however, something will soon be done about the public liability insurance crisis, which has crippled things from street parties to children's pony rides. (All the more reason to stay in your nice, safe sports-utility vehicle, insulated from the dangerous world outside.)
And finally, the government is set to ban the eating of dogs and cats, after a lost puppy was rescued from a man who intended to eat it. (I'll leave the moral difference between a dog or cat and a pig or chicken as an exercise to the reader.
Computer-generated warblogging; just enter the name of a liberal figure, hit the button and watch it go and tear them to shreds with machine-like thoroughness, exposing their vile, Chomsky-like treachery, dishonesty and pathological detachment from reality and using lots of lofty words in the process. God Bless America!
"Maybe we could compare this to another war besides World War II for a change," says that most pro-Saddam of the multiculturalists, Albert Gore, jr. This is why I could no longer write for Z Magazine, not with a clear conscience. The hot-tubbers of the contemptuously political Left are not capable of rational thought. So they accuse tough people like Condie Rice of whatever pops into their heads. There you have it: the ad-hominem irrelevance, the hollow self-immolation of the anti-war Left. Amiri Baraka's appeasement was appeasing. It was dishonest. It was child-molesting. But I understate. "This whole thing is bullshit," said Al Gore in an interview with Connie Chung, refusing to disclose his own position, which is shockingly Chomsky-like and anti-movement.
(via Charlie's Diary)