Has technological advancement become arbitrary? When my friends show me iPhone apps that can identify their DNA and track the journey of their turd from toilet to ocean I think it’s cool and all, but pointless and sad too.
In kind of the same vein, so many people I know say the more music they have on their iPod the less they listen to – just around five albums over and over. A lot of people, myself included, upload albums to show off like a friends list on Facebook; but still just stick to the usual suspects.
So what’s the point of carrying around your record collection if it just sits there?
There was a time when the Walkman changed the world. Music became portable and personal – kids didn’t have to listen to their parents’ Abba tapes on family road trips anymore, they could plug the latest Pop Shop into their ears; and on the bus you could tune out the grannies’ gossip with equally depressing Cure tunes.
And you have to respect that while the iPod can store every album you own, the Walkman practically birthed our culture of public solitude. When we could personalise albums we began building soundtracks suited to our mood swings.
There’s something about making a mix tape (or Mixtape) that an iTunes playlist can’t match.
Back in the day, a ninety minute cassette compilation would take at least two hours to produce. When you gave it to your girlfriend she appreciated the effort you put in – not only having to listen to every song all the way through, but also obsessing over the flow of tracks.
You’d sometimes record six songs, then rewind back over the last four because you realised the third would be better a few tracks later. Sometimes one mix tape would take a whole day to make – you’d call it something like ‘OCD Hits’, and neatly write each song title and artist on the cassette-holder insert.
Nick Hornby believed that making a mix tape was an art, and outlined the rules in his novel High Fidelity: “To me, making a tape is like writing a letter — there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention… and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and...oh, there are loads of rules.”
The same way that sending an email just isn’t the same as posting a letter, a mix cd lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.
Maybe it’s because, embedded in even the smallest romantic act is an element of the personal touch.
Nowadays, when we fuck up, burning a cd of love songs is faster than popping down the corner café to buy flowers, and therefore just as meaningless.
[If you found this post thought-provoking or mildly amusing, drop a blank email at chickenpost.addiction@gmail.com and get future links sent right to your inbox!]
Showing posts with label old age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label old age. Show all posts
Would You Touch My Brand New Boobs?
Standing in a luggage shop and my mate turns to me and says, “Nice fake boobs over there.”
I have a look, but can’t see who he’s talking about.
“Over there,” he insists, “Can’t you tell.”
Actually, I can’t. But it did make me wonder aloud, “Do women with breast enhancements mind men gawking at their rack?”
“Like a new pair of shoes,” matey says, “it’s flattering if one notices.”
I suppose he could be right. I once met an elderly lady, not a granny but a woman in her late forties, who, after a breast enlargement, encouraged people to “touch them, feel how firm they are!”
Many men obliged, but I thought it would be a bit weird to feel up some guy’s wife in front of him. The husband didn’t mind, though. In fact, he was standing by grinning with some kind of idiotic pride as a group groped.
I’ve always felt sympathy for very beautiful people. A lot of the time their beauty defines them, and as they get older and it inevitably crumbles their sense of self-worth falls apart too.
It is interesting to note that most cosmetic surgery practices have an in-house psychologist. This is to evaluate whether the reason behind the punter's facelift or liposuction will help with their insecurity or if there is a deeper problem.
Those with body dysmorphic disorder see themselves as fat or ugly no matter what, and will return to a surgeon again and again. The resident head-shrink is there to spot such customers and hopefully make some cash on a sideline business.
Part of the patriarchal conspiracy behind Barbie is that Ken has no junk at all. This is so that women will accept men with little or no pleasure package – merely a neat haircut, a nice wardrobe, and a chiselled chin.
Men are still sometimes insecure, because He-Man’s furry boxers clearly hid a bit of a bulge… and Skeletor was all-boner. But I have yet to encounter a man straight off the operating table extending the offer of touching his artificially-engorged cock.
Maybe it’s just the circles I move in.
[If you found this post thought-provoking or mildly amusing, drop a blank email at chickenpost.addiction@gmail.com and get future links sent right to your inbox!]
I have a look, but can’t see who he’s talking about.
“Over there,” he insists, “Can’t you tell.”
Actually, I can’t. But it did make me wonder aloud, “Do women with breast enhancements mind men gawking at their rack?”
“Like a new pair of shoes,” matey says, “it’s flattering if one notices.”
I suppose he could be right. I once met an elderly lady, not a granny but a woman in her late forties, who, after a breast enlargement, encouraged people to “touch them, feel how firm they are!”
Many men obliged, but I thought it would be a bit weird to feel up some guy’s wife in front of him. The husband didn’t mind, though. In fact, he was standing by grinning with some kind of idiotic pride as a group groped.
I’ve always felt sympathy for very beautiful people. A lot of the time their beauty defines them, and as they get older and it inevitably crumbles their sense of self-worth falls apart too.
It is interesting to note that most cosmetic surgery practices have an in-house psychologist. This is to evaluate whether the reason behind the punter's facelift or liposuction will help with their insecurity or if there is a deeper problem.
Those with body dysmorphic disorder see themselves as fat or ugly no matter what, and will return to a surgeon again and again. The resident head-shrink is there to spot such customers and hopefully make some cash on a sideline business.
Part of the patriarchal conspiracy behind Barbie is that Ken has no junk at all. This is so that women will accept men with little or no pleasure package – merely a neat haircut, a nice wardrobe, and a chiselled chin.
Men are still sometimes insecure, because He-Man’s furry boxers clearly hid a bit of a bulge… and Skeletor was all-boner. But I have yet to encounter a man straight off the operating table extending the offer of touching his artificially-engorged cock.
Maybe it’s just the circles I move in.
[If you found this post thought-provoking or mildly amusing, drop a blank email at chickenpost.addiction@gmail.com and get future links sent right to your inbox!]
Does this Zimmer Frame come with Cup Holders?
Mike Gayle writes in his novel Turning Thirty that hitting your thirties means never going down the pub unless you know there’s somewhere to sit.
It’s the decade when you begin to rethink your ideas about Clint Eastwood being the icon to emulate, and start to browse the section in Clicks with male moisturiser and L’Oreal eye-wrinkle cream. You tell yourself the receding hair at your temples isn’t that bad, and hang on to the hope in that Nicolas Cage is still cool in spite of it.
Men drew the long end of the stick in this regard. We are often told that we get better looking or at least appear more distinguished as we get older. I can only thank the patriarchal, sexist Illuminati for organising this facet of our social psyche.
The thirties aren’t all bad, and I guess it’s got a lot to do with perspective.
Gone is the immature insecurity of one’s twenties. We’ve learned enough about the opposite sex to stop being such bumbling retards in their presence, replaced feigned confidence with acceptance or actual aplomb, and know enough about life to understand that wisdom is not measured by our successes but by the number of mistakes we’ve made.
You stop arguing with your parents about what you should be doing with your life, and realise that the only thing you should be doing is something that brings you some sense of purpose. As you edge closer to middle-age and eventually death, the fact that money and status are ridiculous endeavours is knowledge secreted from your soul.
But it’s not all shits and giggles. You start to make ‘that noise’ when you bend down to pick something off the floor, and it often takes more than one try to get off the couch. The years of beer culminate around your protesting belly, and the comfort of Crocs causes one to reconsider their trendiness.
Also, in the early stages of thirtyhood, a crushing despair of “what have I done with my life?” can set in.
All others fears are put on the back burner, and the terror of growing old alone starts to scratch at the door. It is the age when men discard the idea of being a player and strive to settle down.
As you hack your way through the years like a lost explorer in a confounding, ever-changing jungle, the direction of your life more often than not changes. This is scary and many will urge you to stay on course.
This biting, clawing feeling can be early onset mid-life crisis, or a reaction to a spiritual emptiness one might feel upon the realisation that so much of what they thought they knew turned out to be bollocks.
So just when you’ve thrown out so many childish insecurities, a set of nicely wrapped new ones is opened.
… now where’d I put that facial scrub.
It’s the decade when you begin to rethink your ideas about Clint Eastwood being the icon to emulate, and start to browse the section in Clicks with male moisturiser and L’Oreal eye-wrinkle cream. You tell yourself the receding hair at your temples isn’t that bad, and hang on to the hope in that Nicolas Cage is still cool in spite of it.
Men drew the long end of the stick in this regard. We are often told that we get better looking or at least appear more distinguished as we get older. I can only thank the patriarchal, sexist Illuminati for organising this facet of our social psyche.
The thirties aren’t all bad, and I guess it’s got a lot to do with perspective.
Gone is the immature insecurity of one’s twenties. We’ve learned enough about the opposite sex to stop being such bumbling retards in their presence, replaced feigned confidence with acceptance or actual aplomb, and know enough about life to understand that wisdom is not measured by our successes but by the number of mistakes we’ve made.
You stop arguing with your parents about what you should be doing with your life, and realise that the only thing you should be doing is something that brings you some sense of purpose. As you edge closer to middle-age and eventually death, the fact that money and status are ridiculous endeavours is knowledge secreted from your soul.
But it’s not all shits and giggles. You start to make ‘that noise’ when you bend down to pick something off the floor, and it often takes more than one try to get off the couch. The years of beer culminate around your protesting belly, and the comfort of Crocs causes one to reconsider their trendiness.
Also, in the early stages of thirtyhood, a crushing despair of “what have I done with my life?” can set in.
All others fears are put on the back burner, and the terror of growing old alone starts to scratch at the door. It is the age when men discard the idea of being a player and strive to settle down.
As you hack your way through the years like a lost explorer in a confounding, ever-changing jungle, the direction of your life more often than not changes. This is scary and many will urge you to stay on course.
This biting, clawing feeling can be early onset mid-life crisis, or a reaction to a spiritual emptiness one might feel upon the realisation that so much of what they thought they knew turned out to be bollocks.
So just when you’ve thrown out so many childish insecurities, a set of nicely wrapped new ones is opened.
… now where’d I put that facial scrub.
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