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February 28, 2005

Jezebel

Iron & Wine has a new EP out, Woman King. It's worth it just for the song "Jezebel". It is, of course, on iTunes.

I had a rather interesting morning, chatting with Matt Allison in Uganda via Skype. I sure miss that guy. He's got his first "podcast" up on his blog, so go check it out.

When I first got into blogging more than 2 years ago, the idea of doing an audio-blog/podcast was something of an enigma to me. I mean, I always viewed a large part of text-blogging's appeal being the fact one could leave comments and provide visual media and links to other information. The idea of an audio blog/podcast seemed to lack all those things.

Yet it still had a strange appeal. Perhaps it was just megalomania talking, and Lord knows I've got those bad inclinations, but I wanted to try it out. But fearing new levels of wanker I avoided the whole thing. This morning after hearing Matt's podcast, its incredible immediate presence, as if he was right there in the room with me, a voice I haven't heard in ages, I've been thinking bout the whole issue again.

I always wanted to do a radio show with my good friend Dave Hancock with special guest appearances of Aaron Mesh the straight man and Ben Crist on weather. I suppose if there was a way for both of us to podcast, I might give it a shot. What a bizarre medium this "internet" is. Who comes up with this stuff? Who vettes it? Where are the instruction manuals?

It's a strange thing: my father didn't grow up to join a profession that didn't previously exist (of course, being a pastor, that's a no-brainer). But my job in my industry wasn't even around when I was 10, and was barely in its nascent form at 13. I remember mp3's hitting around age 18 and what a mindjob they were. Now I've got 5151 songs on an iPod with me wherever I go.

How far away is the uber-gadget? The cellphone-iPod-camera-videoplayer-email-webbrowser wifi equipped. How far away is it? How many years to complete information mobility? Its not an "if" anymore, just a "when".

My kids are going to go to school carrying something roughly the size of cell-phone that will fold open to reveal a fully functional computer, pda, mp3 player, video player, etc. I'll instant message him in the middle of class, and he'll ask me to stick 3 more bucks in his lunch account so he can get desert. Which I'll do with a few clicks of a button.

Blaugh. It's a strange and sick world we're rolling into. I'm looking forward to building a stone wall in the yard of whatever house April and I decide to buy. Moss covered stones. Maybe a hedge.