manunderstress.com

Retro is the new netbook.

Note to self: anger goes much further in virtual worlds. The next time I feel like self-immolating, I’ll be sure to do it in Some Other Life.

Last week I watched Battlestar Galactica on my computer, full screen, 10 hours before it aired on the sci-fi channel. There were 3 or 4 Intel commercials that were really short. I think networks are starting to get the picture. TV is going away, like CDs are, and like radio is, like all traditional media is.. But then again nothing is going away, fools, it’s resurfacing in new environments, with updated, perhaps tighter business models. If a band like Vampire Weekend can get big overnight because some pretentious website says they are the new “IT” band, well, you can hardly blame the internet pirates for ruining the world. The media is the message, the message is free, but the resulting buzz is what people will make money off.

Going but not gone. Tonight I thought I’d kick back and watch BSG on Hulu, which has been putting up the episodes, but someone at corporate sci-fi gave millions of sci-fi nerds blue balls and decided not to let them post it. The Gods giveth, the Gods taketh away.

Mesmerized with Animal Planetesque curiosity I watched and listened to two very young hipsters have a conversation amid a flurry of electronic interruptions in a coffee shop and for the first time really noted the difference between the generation that has grown up inundated with technology and my own, which didn’t even really have a useful internet in college. I cannot speak for their internal conscious states, but this was no commercial for ADHD. On the contrary, they navigated the changes like expert gymnasts, or finely tuned computer processors, picking up exactly where they left off without missing a single beat. It flowed, noticeably different then most adults I see attempt this. We all think we can multitask these days, but the truth of the matter is that most people still can’t talk on the phone and drive at the same time (this is a fucking epidemic, actually.) I was beginning to think that these two were examples of The New Human, efficient in inhuman ways due to our co-evolution with technology. But then I saw another dude adjusting his slacker mop with the aid of his own webcam. iNarcissist?

Holy Jesus, I think I have found my calling as corporate guerrilla ironist.

In a typical event, a few brave people volunteer to “present” a random deck of slides pulled off the Web, or borrowed from friends or employers. (I first heard about PowerPoint Karaoke when an organizer asked if she could use a deck I had presented on word meanings.) The audience laughs, cheers, and yells out suggestions as the presenters gamely struggle to link one slide to the next, transforming something that probably started life as a tedious corporate monologue into a five-minute flight of creative irony.

Although for long I’ve been envisioning something riffing on the absurdity of the conference call…

For the first time in my life, I own a car that has real wheels and not plastic hubcaps. And while I did not get everything I wanted, like a parachute eject or turbo serenity overdrive with all-wheel noetic suspension, as I needed to quickly bail out of the ailing Honda, my 2005 Mazda3 hatchback did come with a sweet tint job. Laugh if you must. I figured I could endure the tint for a while, ironically of course, my mock So Cal gangster ride, but then something unexpected happened: I fell in love with it. Tint absolutely rules, especially when you have light squeamish vampire allergy eyes like mine. So the tint stays, and unironically so. But I might grow a mustache.

Update: Do to popular request, here is a picture of “el cholo.”

It’s kinda cool that dudes with weird facial hair are going to be the first ones to bring us into space. “WhiteKnight” though? Hmm, sounds a little KKK if you ask me. I’d go with something gentler, like “UnicornOne” maybe. Also, I’m still patiently awaiting a consumer release of the jetpack, marketed perhaps similarly to the segway, but way cooler. Come on people, give me some options to the dreaded new car I am going to have to purchase soon! Ethanol Jetpack Utopians, unite!

Who the fuck is Liv Greene? Oh, just another AIM bot. Ditto these sentiments.

It is with great sadness that I report that my George Foreman (aka. “grilla”) has finally passed away. It has served me well over these past 5 or so years that I have owned it, doling out the salmon or occasional burgs with quickness and ease. Oh, and the sandwiches. I always would forget to make sandwiches with it, and they were so good, panini pressed style. It worked like a champ, well into it’s golden years, even after it lost bun warmer functionality.

And honestly, now that my once sleek, sexy and stylish Honda Civic, has paid it’s historical dues (oh the stories it could tell…), becoming a dingy, clunky, transmission-challenged husk of a former supermodel in the process, I feel as if I need to commemorate this aging, passing and renewing of technologies. For there is no denying our own technological mortality. Like these gadgets, will will reach a physical end, sooner, or later. The doctor said I have high cholesterol. I looked at him like you look at someone that tells you your shoes suck. I was oddly, insulted. What did he mean high cholesterol? Is he saying I’m old? But there’s no denying the entropy of physiology. And in a strange way, the death of “grilla” is a mini-death to help me prepare for my own. Thanks, little buddy.

Now as I contemplate purchasing a new George Foreman, perhaps the one with built-in burger chef intelligence, and a new ride, something with clairvoyant brakes and noetic suspension, I usher in a new mini-era of immortality, the second coming of me.