Strange new computer world

Political ideals aside, I feel a new kinship with Obama's staffers after reading this article from the Washington Post.

As someone who can't live without her iBook, used an eMac during my stint as an Art Buyer, and is fairly anal-retentive (and really, that's putting it nicely) about the organization and flow of her information, I know first hand how having to make the switch over to PC and still maintain productivity can be rather daunting.

I also noticed that the article mentions that the Microsoft software on said PCs is roughly six years old, and yet they're using it for security reasons. Yikes! If there's one things I remember from the dark ages before my Apple days and even before my Linux days, it's that Microsoft programs weren't exactly the most secure applications in the world. Now, I suppose that the government has some handy dandy high tech firewalls and its own secure software, but the fact that they may be using an early version of Windows XP is still slightly unnerving.

Some of us actually do have vision problems

Earlier today, this article made it's proverbial way across my metaphorical desk. I'm still processing my reaction.

If the point of the article was to expose young people who by and large are hedonistic jerks, then kudos to the journalists. Something that really bothers me is that the writer never says where these kids are that he's interviewing or gives much insight into their backgrounds. Not that it should matter persay, but these things could very telling as to why they act they way they do. Are these rich kids from te Upper East Side or LA, or are they middle class kids from the Midwest?

I also wish that the author had spent time with the "hipsters" outside of parties and nightlife activities. I don't care what sort scene you're exploring, people act very differently at a party (especially when there's alcohol around) than they would in daily life.

I'm certainly not trying to defend the subjects of the story or totally blast the article with righteous indignation since the title of this blog does have 'hispter' int it. I just feel that perhaps there's more to this story than the author is leading us to believe.

The only righteously indignant statement I will make is that the multiple mentions of fake glasses really bothered me. I found myself wondering if the author would look at me and say I was just wearing glasses to be trendy. This an accusation I've gotten before, and being pretty much blind as a bat and unable to wear contact lenses, it's quite annoying. But in the grand scheme, that's neither here nor there now is it?

It's a Bad Movie Where There's No Climax

For my best movies of 2008, visit Exploitation Nation. This is a blog by my friend and independent filmmaker, Andy Copp. In addition to making movies, Andy's an expert in underground and grind house cinema spanning the decades so check out some of his older posts if you're looking for an education in films you may not have ever heard of. This year, he invited several friends to put together our best of 2008 in film lists for his blog, and my list happens to be the latest one posted.

Check back here for my best of 2008 in music and more later this week.

So This Is the New Year...

I bet you all were wondering if I had given up blogging for the new year. Well the answer to that is no, I'm just a bit behind. However, I think I have a valid excuse. In the last days of 2008 and early days of 2009 I lost my job, rang in 2009, got a new job, got sick, lost my voice, and started my new radio show.

Whew! So needless to say, I'm a bit behind on things. So in the coming days, look for my best of 2008 lists, as well as some new posts about music, radio, and all kinds of other points of interest.