I’ve been receiving lots of trackback spam the last several days (apparently this has happened to many Movable Type blogs), so I am turning off trackbacks for the time being. This means, unfortunately, that I will no longer be notified when people link to my blog, and there will no longer be records of such links on the blog. Even worse, sites like All Consuming and Technorati won’t be automatically notified about my new posts. But I really don’t want every entry on The Pinocchio Theory to link back to some online poker site. Hopefully a better method of stopping this spam will be worked out soon.
I’ve been receiving lots of trackback spam the last several days (apparently this has happened to many Movable Type blogs), so I am turning off trackbacks for the time being. This means, unfortunately, that I will no longer be notified when people link to my blog, and there will no longer be records of such links on the blog. Even worse, sites like All Consuming and Technorati won’t be automatically notified about my new posts. But I really don’t want every entry on The Pinocchio Theory to link back to some online poker site. Hopefully a better method of stopping this spam will be worked out soon.
For the first time in my life, I am not celebrating — more accurately, I am not participating in — Thanksgiving. This is because I am out of the country, breathing the air of freedom (or at least of freedom-from-Bush) in Montreal. Canadian Thanksgiving is a completely different holiday, and it happened over a month ago in any case.
On the whole, I’m happy to be here. Though I miss my daughter, I miss the food (cranberry sauce especially), and I miss the opportunity to perform my own yearly Thanksgiving counter-ritual, which is to play my recording of William Burroughs reciting his Thanksgiving Prayer.
For the first time in my life, I am not celebrating — more accurately, I am not participating in — Thanksgiving. This is because I am out of the country, breathing the air of freedom (or at least of freedom-from-Bush) in Montreal. Canadian Thanksgiving is a completely different holiday, and it happened over a month ago in any case.
On the whole, I’m happy to be here. Though I miss my daughter, I miss the food (cranberry sauce especially), and I miss the opportunity to perform my own yearly Thanksgiving counter-ritual, which is to play my recording of William Burroughs reciting his Thanksgiving Prayer.
I feel an “irrational exuberance” whenever I visit Los Angeles (which is something I only get the opportunity to do something like once every three or four years). Really, this happens whenever I visit California — but more strongly in LA than elsewhere. Maybe it’s the air, the palm trees, the sun. Or maybe it’s the traffic — I love it when somebody gives me a ride down the boulevards, past the strip malls and the mansions, through the neighborhoods (both residential ones unknown to me, and ones like Westwood, or Venice, or Hollywood, or wherever there is –atypically — lots of foot traffic, people shopping. Perhaps it’s something they put in the air, in the water? A friend who lives here told me that the happiness of southern California was simply this: people being fattened up, to be choice dishes at some sort of alien banquet (orchestrated, no doubt, by Governor Arnold). Today nobody gave me a ride; but, tired of all the bank skyscrapers downtown, I walked a few blocks east and enjoyed the funky vitality of Broadway. Maybe part of it was the nervous, slightly paranoid buzz I was feeling (I forgot to eat lunch, and instead drank way too much coffee — something that would never happen to me anyplace else).
When I’m here, I imagine an alternative life path for myself: if I knew how to drive; if I had gotten a job here. It would be like gliding, an endless exultant horizontal displacement, the sensuous enjoyment of surfaces (when in actuality I am not at all a sensuous person). California, the optical illusion at the end of the rainbow. Of course this alternate life path never happened, and never will (not even in all the plurality of worlds of quantum mechanics, or of David Lewis’ logic). And it’s no use mourning for the self you are not (not that this place puts me in the frame of mind in which I could mourn). But still…
I feel an “irrational exuberance” whenever I visit Los Angeles (which is something I only get the opportunity to do something like once every three or four years). Really, this happens whenever I visit California — but more strongly in LA than elsewhere. Maybe it’s the air, the palm trees, the sun. Or maybe it’s the traffic — I love it when somebody gives me a ride down the boulevards, past the strip malls and the mansions, through the neighborhoods (both residential ones unknown to me, and ones like Westwood, or Venice, or Hollywood, or wherever there is –atypically — lots of foot traffic, people shopping. Perhaps it’s something they put in the air, in the water? A friend who lives here told me that the happiness of southern California was simply this: people being fattened up, to be choice dishes at some sort of alien banquet (orchestrated, no doubt, by Governor Arnold). Today nobody gave me a ride; but, tired of all the bank skyscrapers downtown, I walked a few blocks east and enjoyed the funky vitality of Broadway. Maybe part of it was the nervous, slightly paranoid buzz I was feeling (I forgot to eat lunch, and instead drank way too much coffee — something that would never happen to me anyplace else).
When I’m here, I imagine an alternative life path for myself: if I knew how to drive; if I had gotten a job here. It would be like gliding, an endless exultant horizontal displacement, the sensuous enjoyment of surfaces (when in actuality I am not at all a sensuous person). California, the optical illusion at the end of the rainbow. Of course this alternate life path never happened, and never will (not even in all the plurality of worlds of quantum mechanics, or of David Lewis’ logic). And it’s no use mourning for the self you are not (not that this place puts me in the frame of mind in which I could mourn). But still…
Jacques Derrida’s death today at age 74 marks the end of an era. He’s the last of that generation of French thinkers who revolutionized thought in the 1960s.
Derrida doesn’t mean as much to me as Foucault does, or Deleuze (or Deleuze and Guattari), or even Lacan (despite my very serious reservations about the latter). (I wrote about my sense of Derrida’s achievements and limitations when I blogged the documentary about him). But he was a philosopher very much worth reading, and who had a certain (mostly good) influence on the world of ideas. I largely concur with Nightspore’s estimation of his significance.
To speak in more personal terms: Derrida was important to me because, when I first read his early writings, my understanding of the world changed. I was never able to see things the same way again. There are not too many writers, philosophical or literary, about whom I can really say something like that. Later on, I came to feel that Derrida was not as profound, or as deeply relevant, as many of the thinkers who influenced him (Nietzsche, Bataille, Blanchot), or as certain of his contemporaries and peers (the aforementioned Foucault and Deleuze especially). But Derrida provided me with a way in, which at the very least enabled my reception of those other thinkers. For one thing, he helped me to understand the radical contingency of meanings, and of all the constructions we erect upon the basis of those meanings. For another, his ideas about decentering, and the infinite process of relationality or reference, and the logic of difference, remain crucial elements in all the criticism I write (even if they are rarely at the forefront of my interests and intentions). I’d even say that there’s an odd synergy between what I learned from Derrida, and what I learned from LSD (which I first experienced around the same time that I first encountered and studied Derrida): they both gave me the same sense of how whatever is (intellectually or emotionally) significant also tends to be extremely fragile and fleeting (by which I mean both transient, and continually, mercurially moving from point to point).
Well, I don’t take psychedelic drugs any more, and I don’t often find myself impelled to read Derrida. But they’ve both left their traces in my psyche. I was never as interested in the later writings of Derrida as in his earlier ones: though their meditations on death and mortality, and on friendship and obligation, are undeniably moving, they didn’t have the same sort of revelatory effect on me as Of Grammatology or Writing and Difference did. (This is probably because, by the time I came to Derrida’s later books, I was already familiar with the writings on these themes by Blanchot and Levinas, and by their brilliant interpreter Joseph Libertson).
Finally, I think that Derrida’s philosophical importance is that he upheld the spirit of Kantian critique for the late 20th century. For Kant, one of the most important tasks of philosophy is to criticize and undo what he calls “transcendental illusions.” These are, Kant says, “sophistries not of human beings but of pure reason itself. Even the wisest among all human beings cannot detach himself from them; perhaps he can after much effort forestall the error, but he can never fully rid himself of the illusion that incessantly teases and mocks him.” Derrida followed Kant’s program, in that he ceaselessly interrogated these illusions that are built in to the very nature of rationality itself, and endeavored, patiently and carefully, to undo them, while remaining aware that such an undoing will never be definitive or final. I’m inclined to think that philosophers in general make too much of reason, and give it a more prominent place than it actually occupies in human life. Be that as it may, it’s clear to me that Derrida was a far better philosopher, and far more committed to rationality and truth, than those (and there were many) who ignorantly accused him of being an irrationalist, a nihilist, and an obscurantist.
Jacques Derrida’s death today at age 74 marks the end of an era. He’s the last of that generation of French thinkers who revolutionized thought in the 1960s.
Derrida doesn’t mean as much to me as Foucault does, or Deleuze (or Deleuze and Guattari), or even Lacan (despite my very serious reservations about the latter). (I wrote about my sense of Derrida’s achievements and limitations when I blogged the documentary about him). But he was a philosopher very much worth reading, and who had a certain (mostly good) influence on the world of ideas. I largely concur with Nightspore’s estimation of his significance.
To speak in more personal terms: Derrida was important to me because, when I first read his early writings, my understanding of the world changed. I was never able to see things the same way again. There are not too many writers, philosophical or literary, about whom I can really say something like that. Later on, I came to feel that Derrida was not as profound, or as deeply relevant, as many of the thinkers who influenced him (Nietzsche, Bataille, Blanchot), or as certain of his contemporaries and peers (the aforementioned Foucault and Deleuze especially). But Derrida provided me with a way in, which at the very least enabled my reception of those other thinkers. For one thing, he helped me to understand the radical contingency of meanings, and of all the constructions we erect upon the basis of those meanings. For another, his ideas about decentering, and the infinite process of relationality or reference, and the logic of difference, remain crucial elements in all the criticism I write (even if they are rarely at the forefront of my interests and intentions). I’d even say that there’s an odd synergy between what I learned from Derrida, and what I learned from LSD (which I first experienced around the same time that I first encountered and studied Derrida): they both gave me the same sense of how whatever is (intellectually or emotionally) significant also tends to be extremely fragile and fleeting (by which I mean both transient, and continually, mercurially moving from point to point).
Well, I don’t take psychedelic drugs any more, and I don’t often find myself impelled to read Derrida. But they’ve both left their traces in my psyche. I was never as interested in the later writings of Derrida as in his earlier ones: though their meditations on death and mortality, and on friendship and obligation, are undeniably moving, they didn’t have the same sort of revelatory effect on me as Of Grammatology or Writing and Difference did. (This is probably because, by the time I came to Derrida’s later books, I was already familiar with the writings on these themes by Blanchot and Levinas, and by their brilliant interpreter Joseph Libertson).
Finally, I think that Derrida’s philosophical importance is that he upheld the spirit of Kantian critique for the late 20th century. For Kant, one of the most important tasks of philosophy is to criticize and undo what he calls “transcendental illusions.” These are, Kant says, “sophistries not of human beings but of pure reason itself. Even the wisest among all human beings cannot detach himself from them; perhaps he can after much effort forestall the error, but he can never fully rid himself of the illusion that incessantly teases and mocks him.” Derrida followed Kant’s program, in that he ceaselessly interrogated these illusions that are built in to the very nature of rationality itself, and endeavored, patiently and carefully, to undo them, while remaining aware that such an undoing will never be definitive or final. I’m inclined to think that philosophers in general make too much of reason, and give it a more prominent place than it actually occupies in human life. Be that as it may, it’s clear to me that Derrida was a far better philosopher, and far more committed to rationality and truth, than those (and there were many) who ignorantly accused him of being an irrationalist, a nihilist, and an obscurantist.
Once a text has made its way into the world, there is absolutely no way the author can control its meaning, interpretation, or use. I can’t help it if certain irony-deprived citizens read my recent post about moving to Detroit as a dis on the city for not being as “hip,” or as white, as Seattle.
Once a text has made its way into the world, there is absolutely no way the author can control its meaning, interpretation, or use. I can’t help it if certain irony-deprived citizens read my recent post about moving to Detroit as a dis on the city for not being as “hip,” or as white, as Seattle.
I haven’t been writing much in this blog lately, because I am in the middle of a move from Seattle to Detroit, and I don’t have most of my stuff, and it will be a while before I get net access in my new home.
Detroit couldn’t be more different from Seattle. For one thing, there are all the black people here, in sharp contrast to Seattle, which is overwhelmingly white with a smattering of Asians.
For another thing, the gap between rich and poor, which is largely dissimulated in the Pacific Northwest, is glaringly evident here. Seattle has its homeless people, and (in surrounding areas) its poor neighborhoods (both working poor and desperately-no-prospects poor, people of all races) but for the most part these poor people are out of the way, and hence out of the view of your typical white middle-class liberal Seattleite. Whereas in Detroit, the poverty is evident, in plain view: blocks and blocks of devastation, masses of people on whom the government and mainstream society have turned their backs, and left to sink or swim on their own resources.
It’s quite grotesque, actually, the way the central city is devoid of resources, compared to the lily-white suburbs that have all the sorts of places I take for granted (Starbucks, Borders, etc) as well as the ones I turn up my nose at (Nordstrom and Nieman Marcus and Pottery Barn and “Pan-Asian” bistros).
I did go to a nouvelle cuisine sushi bar in downtown Detroit the other night, with hip all-black decor and an almost exclusively white clientele, but such places are few and far between, and seem almost hidden. There’s lots of construction in downtown Detroit these days, amidst the abandoned buildings, in preparation for the Super Bowl in January 2006, but they have no commercial prospects, really, and once the Super Bowl is over and has departed, they will quietly stay empty and go into bankruptcy: the builders will have pocketed their profits (including tax-abatement bonuses) and moved on elsewhere, too bad for those who are left holding the bill. The lives of the vast majority of impoverished Detroiters will not have been affected by these developments at all.
There’s been some effort to declare Detroit as a new center of hipness, the way Seattle was a decade ago. But it’s bullshit. Good lattes in Detroit are few and far between, and the White Stripes are certainly not Nirvana. The hookers in Seattle are kept out of the way, on ugly, distant parts of Aurora Avenue North and on the SeaTac strip. In Detroit, they ply their wares on the main avenues, on Woodward and on Michigan for instance.
What this means for me, as an old, white Seattle hipster (a designation I cannot escape, however much I despise it, and despise myself for conforming so fully and so easily to a stupid stereotype), is that the life of Detroit is something that is now utterly invisible to me, outside of my categories and expectations. It’s something that I am simply unable to see, it is so contrary to all my habits and comforts. I will have to search it out, slowly and patiently and with much difficulty — that is, if I am able to make contact with it at all. I have to accept the unpleasant possibility that I just may be too old and too inflexible and too narrow, too ensconced in my own comforts, too solitary, too bourgeois and too pleased with myself for the ways in which I am not bourgeois, to be able to see clearly (let alone interact with) what lies all about me. The only thing in my favor is that at least I know that I don’t know anything about Detroit.
I haven’t been writing much in this blog lately, because I am in the middle of a move from Seattle to Detroit, and I don’t have most of my stuff, and it will be a while before I get net access in my new home.
Detroit couldn’t be more different from Seattle. For one thing, there are all the black people here, in sharp contrast to Seattle, which is overwhelmingly white with a smattering of Asians.
For another thing, the gap between rich and poor, which is largely dissimulated in the Pacific Northwest, is glaringly evident here. Seattle has its homeless people, and (in surrounding areas) its poor neighborhoods (both working poor and desperately-no-prospects poor, people of all races) but for the most part these poor people are out of the way, and hence out of the view of your typical white middle-class liberal Seattleite. Whereas in Detroit, the poverty is evident, in plain view: blocks and blocks of devastation, masses of people on whom the government and mainstream society have turned their backs, and left to sink or swim on their own resources.
It’s quite grotesque, actually, the way the central city is devoid of resources, compared to the lily-white suburbs that have all the sorts of places I take for granted (Starbucks, Borders, etc) as well as the ones I turn up my nose at (Nordstrom and Nieman Marcus and Pottery Barn and “Pan-Asian” bistros).
I did go to a nouvelle cuisine sushi bar in downtown Detroit the other night, with hip all-black decor and an almost exclusively white clientele, but such places are few and far between, and seem almost hidden. There’s lots of construction in downtown Detroit these days, amidst the abandoned buildings, in preparation for the Super Bowl in January 2006, but they have no commercial prospects, really, and once the Super Bowl is over and has departed, they will quietly stay empty and go into bankruptcy: the builders will have pocketed their profits (including tax-abatement bonuses) and moved on elsewhere, too bad for those who are left holding the bill. The lives of the vast majority of impoverished Detroiters will not have been affected by these developments at all.
There’s been some effort to declare Detroit as a new center of hipness, the way Seattle was a decade ago. But it’s bullshit. Good lattes in Detroit are few and far between, and the White Stripes are certainly not Nirvana. The hookers in Seattle are kept out of the way, on ugly, distant parts of Aurora Avenue North and on the SeaTac strip. In Detroit, they ply their wares on the main avenues, on Woodward and on Michigan for instance.
What this means for me, as an old, white Seattle hipster (a designation I cannot escape, however much I despise it, and despise myself for conforming so fully and so easily to a stupid stereotype), is that the life of Detroit is something that is now utterly invisible to me, outside of my categories and expectations. It’s something that I am simply unable to see, it is so contrary to all my habits and comforts. I will have to search it out, slowly and patiently and with much difficulty — that is, if I am able to make contact with it at all. I have to accept the unpleasant possibility that I just may be too old and too inflexible and too narrow, too ensconced in my own comforts, too solitary, too bourgeois and too pleased with myself for the ways in which I am not bourgeois, to be able to see clearly (let alone interact with) what lies all about me. The only thing in my favor is that at least I know that I don’t know anything about Detroit.
I’m trying something new. I don’t know yet whether it will work, or how long I will be able to sustain it. Only two chapters now. More to come, if I can manage it.
I’m trying something new. I don’t know yet whether it will work, or how long I will be able to sustain it. Only two chapters now. More to come, if I can manage it.
The Seattle International Film Festival got underway last night. It’s an enormous event, with something like 250 feature films shown in the space of 3 1/2 weeks. There are lots of things I’m dying to see, from Guy Maddin’s two most recent films to a restored 70mm print of Jacques Tati’s Playtime and the director’s cut (with much restored footage) of Donnie Darko to new films, about which I’ve heard great things, by Pen-ek Rantanaruang, Tsai Ming-liang, and Wang Xiaoshuai.
Every year, I buy a Full Series Pass to the Festival. I used to see 40 or 45 films in the course of the Festival. But now, with a small child at home and being busy with preparations for moving across the continent, I won’t be able to manage anywhere near that number.
What especially caught my attention, though, was the following alert sent out by the Festival to all full series pass holders:
NO RECORDING DEVICES AT SIFF SCREENINGS
Due to piracy prevention efforts mandated by the motion picture industry and our film suppliers, recording devices of any kind (including camera phones) will not be allowed into festival venues. This policy will be strictly enforced. At certain screenings film studio representatives may require a physical search of your person or personal property upon entrance to festival venues. These searches are in no way intended for any materials other than possible recording devices–this includes cellular telephones equipped with cameras. We apologize for the inconvenience and will take every step to make these searches as quick, efficient and unintrusive as possible. We do not have facilities to hold or secure these items during film screenings. We strongly suggest that you leave any cameras and cell phones with cameras at home or in your car.
This says a lot about the insane levels of paranoia in Hollywood today, and the sickness of their crusade against piracy. Obviously SIFF can only show local premieres of all those hot new indie soon-to-be-releases by allowing the industry to send its goons to conduct “physical searches.” I’m assuming this is less likely to happen at screenings of the obscure Asian art films I’m most inclined to go to, than at screenings of American films that will be opening soon in the theaters anyway.
But I wonder how far they will carry this. Will they make filmgoers strip, just in case they are hiding illicit recording devices inside their underwear? Will they give refunds to banned filmgoers? Will they compensate us for the trouble they cause us?
I’ve said it many times, the current copyright code is so restrictive and so destructive of any possibility of free speech or creativity, that I believe that violating said code, by disseminating copies of music, movies, etc, for free, is a virtuous act of civil disobedience.
But cameraphones? The picture quality is so poor, and the amount of storage is so low, that I wouldn’t be able to capture images & sounds worth pirating even if I tried.
This draconian regulation puts me in a dilemma. My mobile phone is a cameraphone. It can take pictures, sort of. But it is basically a phone. If I leave it behind when I go to the movies in the evening, then when the movie’s over I won’t be able to call for a taxi, in order to get home. This is a problem, since I can’t drive. Buses in Seattle are fine during the day, but the schedule is much restricted at night, and the bus that goes near my house simply stops running after about 7pm. I don’t relish the thought of waiting half an hour for a bus, then taking a forty-minute ride, then having to walk almost half an hour in the dark in the middle of the night.
So I’m bringing my phone with me to every SIFF screening. What will happen? Will I be asked to submit to a physical search? Will I be ejected from films I very much want to see, and that I have paid for, because I refuse to surrender my device? Will I start frothing at the mouth and shouting obscenities, be blacklisted from SIFF forever, and show up on the nightly news?
Stay tuned.
The Seattle International Film Festival got underway last night. It’s an enormous event, with something like 250 feature films shown in the space of 3 1/2 weeks. There are lots of things I’m dying to see, from Guy Maddin’s two most recent films to a restored 70mm print of Jacques Tati’s Playtime and the director’s cut (with much restored footage) of Donnie Darko to new films, about which I’ve heard great things, by Pen-ek Rantanaruang, Tsai Ming-liang, and Wang Xiaoshuai.
Every year, I buy a Full Series Pass to the Festival. I used to see 40 or 45 films in the course of the Festival. But now, with a small child at home and being busy with preparations for moving across the continent, I won’t be able to manage anywhere near that number.
What especially caught my attention, though, was the following alert sent out by the Festival to all full series pass holders:
NO RECORDING DEVICES AT SIFF SCREENINGS
Due to piracy prevention efforts mandated by the motion picture industry and our film suppliers, recording devices of any kind (including camera phones) will not be allowed into festival venues. This policy will be strictly enforced. At certain screenings film studio representatives may require a physical search of your person or personal property upon entrance to festival venues. These searches are in no way intended for any materials other than possible recording devices–this includes cellular telephones equipped with cameras. We apologize for the inconvenience and will take every step to make these searches as quick, efficient and unintrusive as possible. We do not have facilities to hold or secure these items during film screenings. We strongly suggest that you leave any cameras and cell phones with cameras at home or in your car.
This says a lot about the insane levels of paranoia in Hollywood today, and the sickness of their crusade against piracy. Obviously SIFF can only show local premieres of all those hot new indie soon-to-be-releases by allowing the industry to send its goons to conduct “physical searches.” I’m assuming this is less likely to happen at screenings of the obscure Asian art films I’m most inclined to go to, than at screenings of American films that will be opening soon in the theaters anyway.
But I wonder how far they will carry this. Will they make filmgoers strip, just in case they are hiding illicit recording devices inside their underwear? Will they give refunds to banned filmgoers? Will they compensate us for the trouble they cause us?
I’ve said it many times, the current copyright code is so restrictive and so destructive of any possibility of free speech or creativity, that I believe that violating said code, by disseminating copies of music, movies, etc, for free, is a virtuous act of civil disobedience.
But cameraphones? The picture quality is so poor, and the amount of storage is so low, that I wouldn’t be able to capture images & sounds worth pirating even if I tried.
This draconian regulation puts me in a dilemma. My mobile phone is a cameraphone. It can take pictures, sort of. But it is basically a phone. If I leave it behind when I go to the movies in the evening, then when the movie’s over I won’t be able to call for a taxi, in order to get home. This is a problem, since I can’t drive. Buses in Seattle are fine during the day, but the schedule is much restricted at night, and the bus that goes near my house simply stops running after about 7pm. I don’t relish the thought of waiting half an hour for a bus, then taking a forty-minute ride, then having to walk almost half an hour in the dark in the middle of the night.
So I’m bringing my phone with me to every SIFF screening. What will happen? Will I be asked to submit to a physical search? Will I be ejected from films I very much want to see, and that I have paid for, because I refuse to surrender my device? Will I start frothing at the mouth and shouting obscenities, be blacklisted from SIFF forever, and show up on the nightly news?
Stay tuned.
Well, my new PowerBook arrived today, and this is the first post that I am making with it. (I’m using ecto as my blogging client).
I was a Mac user for a long time, from c. 1991 to 1998; I switched to Windows because I wanted to have a really small laptop, 3 lbs or less — which didn’t (still doesn’t) exist for the Mac. But I missed the elegance and simplicity of the Macintosh aesthetic. Especially as OS X was developed, I felt that I was missing out on something I really wanted (though arguably — or just say, obviously — I didn’t need it, given that Windows XP does just about everything you need, albeit much more clunkily).
So finally, after looking at the state of my finances, and convincing myself through specious arguments that I could afford the additional charge on my credit card, I took the plunge.
The 12″ PowerBook is still too heavy (4.6 lbs) but I’m determined to carry it around with me everywhere anyway.
Well, my new PowerBook arrived today, and this is the first post that I am making with it. (I’m using ecto as my blogging client).
I was a Mac user for a long time, from c. 1991 to 1998; I switched to Windows because I wanted to have a really small laptop, 3 lbs or less — which didn’t (still doesn’t) exist for the Mac. But I missed the elegance and simplicity of the Macintosh aesthetic. Especially as OS X was developed, I felt that I was missing out on something I really wanted (though arguably — or just say, obviously — I didn’t need it, given that Windows XP does just about everything you need, albeit much more clunkily).
So finally, after looking at the state of my finances, and convincing myself through specious arguments that I could afford the additional charge on my credit card, I took the plunge.
The 12″ PowerBook is still too heavy (4.6 lbs) but I’m determined to carry it around with me everywhere anyway.
I was interviewed about my new book on the Seattle municipal channel on local cable TV. For what it’s worth, you can find a Real Video feed of the interview here.
I was interviewed about my new book on the Seattle municipal channel on local cable TV. For what it’s worth, you can find a Real Video feed of the interview here.