is it over?

Been taking a little blogging break while winding down from Christmas. Christmas is over, right? Can we stop playing Christmas music now?

I’ve still been writing music reviews, however.

Since Christmas: Def Leppard, Styx, Minor Threat, David Bowie and Eagles of Death Metal all at This is Not Pitchfork.

I shall return here tomorrow. In case you missed me.

Read Full Post »

Merry Christmas

May your day be merry and bright.

Read Full Post »

RIP Kitty

Kitty died yesterday. She was hit by a car while I was at work. By the time I got home, the neighbor’s son had already taken her away, which I’m grateful for.

We had her a little over three years. Her original name was Master Shake. Then we changed it to Yoshi. At some point, she just became Kitty, which she seemed to like.

She started out as an indoor cat. When she escaped one day, she got a taste for the outside world, and realized there were other kitties around. So we started letting her out and she quickly made friends with the slew of cats on our block. Sometimes her and the cat next door would just sit on the lawn together and people watch.

My favorite thing about her was the way she would walk the dog with me. One day I was walking Lili around the block and I noticed she was following us, lagging a little behind sometimes and then running to catch up to us. She began to walk with us every day and all the neighbors thought it was amazing that she would walk with us.

She was a good cat. She brought me dead birds and mice and as much as I was grossed out by it, I knew she meant well. She was a great friend to Lili; they’d spend a lot of time wrestling in the living room and when she got tired of the pouncing and swatting, she’d jump up on top of the couch and look down at Lili like “You can’t get me now!”

We’re going to miss her a lot. The dog is really going to miss her. Kitty was Lili’s playmate and kept her company while we were at work.

Natalie will miss snuggling with her.

I feel almost silly mourning so much over a cat. But she was part of our family, a presence in our house that will be missed. It’s going to be a long time before I stop thinking I hear her outside waiting to be let in, before I stop expecting her to see cuddled up on the couch in the morning on her favorite blanket, before I can get rid of the drawer filled with cat food.

Goodbye, Kitty. You were awesome.

[An album review in Kitty's honor: Stray Cats]

Read Full Post »

new home for album reviews

This is Not Pitchfork has it’s very own home now. No more Blogger.

Thank you to WordPress for making it so easy to import the posts AND the comments. And thanks again to Host Matters for awesome hosting and service.

Check it out, let me know what you think. The paint is still wet.

Read Full Post »

new home for album reviews

This is Not Pitchfork has it’s very own home now. No more Blogger.

Thank you to WordPress for making it so easy to import the posts AND the comments. And thanks again to Host Matters for awesome hosting and service.

Check it out, let me know what you think. The paint is still wet.

Read Full Post »

in which i admit that i don’t like christmas

Warning: It’s long, it’s rambling, it’s not proofread.

I came to terms with something today. It was not so much a self revelation as an admittance of something that’s been lingering deep inside for many years. I’ve been keeping it at bay, reluctant to tell anyone what I was feeling, hoping that it would pass and I would never have to utter these words out loud.

I hate Christmas.

There, I said it.

I didn’t always hate Christmas. When I was a kid it was all Santa and presents and 500 hundred cousins gathered in one place. It was snow and caroling and completely magical. Even after I learned there was no big, fat jolly man hopping down my chimney every year, I still found magic in the holiday. It was the feel of everything around me. I loved how the world seemed lit up and everyone was caught up in the joy of the season. I suppose this was before I became a cynical realist. When you’re a young idealist, you can put a Pollyana spin on anything.

As I got older, Christmas lost some of its charm, which is just the natural progression of things. It wasn’t until I had kids of my own when I started to drive myself crazy every year, starting in November. I had to make the perfect Christmas. I had to get the perfect presents and a perfect tree and the day had to be absolutely without flaw. It had to be the way my parents set it up for me; presents overflowing under the tree, a house full of decorations, a steady stream of relatives stopping by to say hello and there’s always desserts on the table and hot chocolate at the ready and everyone is full of Christmas cheer. And it had to be the way society set it up for me as well; my kids had to scream in glee at every present opened. My house had to look like something out of a fairy tale. My cookies had to be perfect, my company polite, my smile ever present and our entire Christmas season full of perfection.

I have based the entirety of my Christmas expectations upon hazy memories of Christmas past, coupled with the lie of Christmas Perfect that mass media has foisted upon us. Was Christmas ever perfect growing up? Probably not.

Every year as an adult I would wonder – what is this all for? Why do we shower people with gifts on this holiday? Why do we spend over a month getting ready for this one day? I’m not a religious person, in fact, I’m agnostic. My family are all Catholics, but no one ever stresses the religious aspect of the holiday. It’s about the presents, the food, the family. Which is all well and good. I love family gatherings, especially when there’s a veritable buffet of food involved. But the presents? Every year that I head out Christmas shopping I have that moment when I stop and think to myself, why am I doing this? Why am I stretching my budget and practically going into debt to give my children the most perfect gifts ever, to give everyone in my family presents when I gift them all year long? Birthdays, anniversaries, Mother’s and Father’s Day, plus the sheer amount of crap I bestow on my kids throughout their lives?

I do it because it’s expected. I do it because it’s what my parents did for me. I do it because I don’t have the balls to say to my family “this year, let’s just give each other the gift of love and family.” So I go about the business of making it all happen. I don’t want to disappoint. I don’t want to break with tradition or rock the Christmas boat. I have to buy and wrap and decorate and force this cheer upon myself and my family, when all I want to do is stop looking at my shopping list, stop stressing about the gifts I bought and the gifts I didn’t buy and the time.

Seven days til Christmas. The countdown is everywhere. On the tongues of kids, on the front page of the newspaper, on the television, in the windows of stores. That “ONE WEEK UNTIL CHRISTMAS!” is not a sign of excitement to me. It’s a reminder of all I haven’t done. We have yet to decorate the tree. We barely got any lights up on the house this year. I have presents left to buy, nothing is wrapped, and with each day comes the worry that I didn’t do enough. Will they be happy with what I am giving them? What the hell am I going to get my father, the most difficult man to shop for? Do my kids know how much I spent on those big presents they wanted? Can you put a monetary value on what is supposed to be a moment of giving from the heart?

The time crunch is getting to me. I lay awake at night thinking of all the things I haven’t done yet. And then, before you know it, the day will have come and gone. It will be Christmas night and all the presents are unwrapped and the food is devoured and while everyone is snug in their bed sleeping off a holiday drunk, I’ll be sitting on my couch, staring at the Christmas tree, wondering how it all came and went so fast, and for what? It seems almost senseless in retrospect.

I look at all the Christmas commercials and ads and think, where are all the crying kids? Where are all the too drunk adults? Where’s the kid who is locking himself in the bathroom crying because he got clothes when he wanted a video game? Where’s the cousin who stupidly reveals a family secret at the dinner table? Where’s the family with the mother who is crying as the kids head off to their father’s house for a separate Christmas Day? Instead we get the perfect husband who buys his presents his perfect wife with a shiny new Lexus. “I love you so much, I gave you a gift that’s going to add $300 a month to our bills, in honor of Jesus’s birthday!” We get the perfect mother who bakes with her kids and does Christmas crafts with them and never loses her patience or hits the bottle of gin when the money gets tight and she wonders how she’s going to afford that toy that “Santa” promised her little girl.

Maybe I come off as bitter. Maybe I am. My ghost of Christmas past could dredge up some awful memories if I let it, most of them as an adult. Those memories color a lot of my reactions and they force me to do two things: overcompensate with others, and berate myself. It’s my own fault that I let things in the past have rule over my present, I’m aware of that. But those things are just part of my Christmas stress, not the whole of it.

Christmas was probably never perfect in my life. I mix nostalgia up with memory and they combine to give me this glazed over version of what my childhood Christmases were really like. In my version, we are all Norman Rockwell, when in reality, we were more Griswald. Yet every year, I force myself to go for the Rockwell version, where life is lived in this static snow globe, where everything remains beautiful and wonderful and is never tainted by tears or arguments or mistakes. I am living in a past that never existed, and I’ve based my entire present upon that.

Yes, there are things I like about Christmas. I like the pretty lights. I love the absolute joy on a small child’s face when they spot Santa at the mall. I like spending time with my family. I love the way the Christmas tree looks all lit up in the living room. One of my favorite things to do is to just sit on the couch late at night when everyone is sleeping and stare peacefully at the blinking lights on my tree, so pretty with all the perfectly wrapped presents sitting underneath. It’s my moment of pure nostalgia, where I remember the parts of Christmas past that were almost perfect, where I forget I have holiday photos and home movies of crying children, where I forget all those Christmases I was so disappointed; in myself and in life. You’d think it would be easier to enjoy Christmas now that I’m happy. But I can’t. I’m too stressed out once again trying to create the perfect Christmas that will never happen.

I don’t like the pressure I put on myself, nor the pressure my own family unwittingly puts on me. I don’t like the shopping, I don’t like wrapping presents and I don’t like trying to come up with the perfect gift for each person I love. I don’t like spending all that money and time and energy for one day. I don’t like trying to live up to expectations that are too grand to ever accomplish and I don’t like that I still force myself to do it even though I know there’s no such thing as perfection.

I don’t like Christmas.

There, I said it.

Read Full Post »

the legend of milk, bread and snow

[today at this is not pitchfork: X, Iron Maiden, Korn]

There’s snow on the ground, which means it’s panic time on Long Island. I know, we live in the Northeast, you’d think we’d be used to it. But no, there are still plenty of people here who go into EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM mode when any snow is forecast.

I’m sure their panic went into full attack mode this afternoon, when it was announced that – hold onto your hats, now – we would get one to two inches of snow! Gather the children! Man your posts! DEFCON ONE! And, like a sea of panicky lemmings, they drive en masse to their local delis and supermarkets and Dairy Barns, stocking up on milk and bread. Yes, milk and bread. It’s an interesting phenomenon and I’m not sure if it’s indigenous to Long Island, but it’s been around for as long as I can remember. There must be some forgotten urban legend that wove its way around the Island decades ago. A suburban family wakes one morning to find that it has snowed. The patriarch of the family cautiously goes into the kitchen only to find that there is only a half quart of milk and two slices of bread left! The horror! The family screams in unison, the children start crying, the mother frantically tries to pump milk out of her breasts even though she weaned the youngest eight years ago. And oh, irony of ironies, the deli just two blocks away has one gallon of fresh, whole milk left and one loaf of white bread on the shelf. If only there were some way to get two blocks away with having to trudge through the monster snow storm that dumped two inches of the white stuff all over town!

That would explain the way people head out in droves to the store when a storm warning hits. Innate fear, left over from the telling and retelling of the fate of the poor Levittown family who had to eat each other’s flesh and drink each other’s blood to stay alive during the great snow dusting of 1945.

I’m not trying to disparage those who feel the need to prepare for a snow storm. If the weather channel says we’re going to get eight inches of the white stuff, it’s a good idea to have the things you need in the house. It’s just the whole milk and bread thing that’s perplexing. I worked at my uncle’s deli for about seven years and every winter, it was the same thing. Snow alert equals run on milk and bread. No one bought anything to go with the items. No cheese or ham for the bread. No boxes of hot chocolate or cereal to go with the milk. No one bought toilet paper or soda or cans of soup. Just milk and bread. It would get to the point where a line would snake around the deli and I’d be ringing the customers up as fast as I could, to get them in and out before a fight broke out over the last loaf of Wonder bread. He’s buying a gallon of milk and he lives by himself! Lynch him, that selfish pig! Flaming torches and pitchforks ensue.

As I look up and down my street, I notice that every house has at least one SUV parked in the driveway. Here are all these people with four wheel drive on their behemoth mountain vehicles , yet they are afraid to go out the door as soon as the first flake hits the street. And those who eventually do venture out fall into two categories; the overly safe driver, who clutches the steering wheel in a death grip and takes each turn as if she were navigating Mt. Washington, and the No Fear guy, who does 90 on an icy road just to prove he’s a man. Meanwhile, all the other people are ensconced in their homes, rationing out the milk and bread. They eye each other suspiciously and the oldest sibling, who has been designated family captain by the father, has to escort each family member to the bathroom, making sure that no one is trying to make a break for the kitchen try and steal someone else’s ration.

Never mind that there’s six pounds of chicken in the freezer, two dozen eggs in the fridge and a Poland Springs cooler that offers hot or cold water in the kitchen. We’re talking milk and bread here. No one wants to end up like that long ago family, turning into cannibals and then possibly zombies because they were unprepared for the storm at hand.

Two inches, baby. A little ice, a little snow, which will all disappear by morning. Still, I’ll stop at 7-11 on my way out to get a quart of milk, simply because I am out of milk. There will be no milk. And then I will have to inch my way to work tomorrow as a thousand drivers in their Navigators and Expeditions make the treacherous drive through some dirty slush, everyone riding their brakes and fighting off panic attacks as the sprinkling of leftover snow hits their windshields.

Go ahead and laugh at us, Buffalo and Syracuse. Smirk at us, Montana and Minnesota. We deserve it.

Read Full Post »

movie night, christmas style

I haven’t been much in the Christmas spirit and my 15 year old confided to me last night that he’s feeling bad that he’s not much in the spirit either. So I’m going to do what any good parent would do; force the spirit of Christmas down everyone’s throats.

 

Tonight we’ll go pick up our tree from the TEN MILLION TREES lot (I look at it as rescuing a doomed tree from it’s prison), then we will decorate that tree while we eat Christmas cookies (that I did NOT bake myself) and drink hot chocolate and play Christmas movies in the background. If I have to make everyone sing Jingle Bells and wear stupid Santa hats to get the mood going, I will. This includes the cat and dog.

 

My favorite Christmas movies are Die Hard and The Ref. Sure, they are not Christmas movies, per se, but they do have a Christmas feel to them and, as such, they qualify. But they will not work for tonight’s festivities. Nor will Bad Santa or Silent Night, Deadly Night, though that’s what will get played if everyone does not concede to my wishes to be in a good, holiday mood.

 

So, Christmas movies. Real Christmas movies that make you feel like a kid, bring joy to your heart and want to shower the world with good will. Ok, maybe not so much that. Maybe more like movies that are about Christmas.

My daughter will insist on Elf, but Todd and I are not Will Ferrell fans, so we’ll probably end up watching Christmas Vacation. Still works, after all these years. Then maybe a viewing of Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas before I declare the night’s festivities over and everyone can take their hats off and I go back to killing zombies.

 

Which, of course, leads to the question: What are your favorite Christmas movies.

And yes, Die Hard counts.

 

 

Read Full Post »

christmas cookies, martha stewart and a bottle of gin

[new at not pitchfork: huey lewis and sleater kinney]

I cannot bake. I can cook – I can whip up a gourmet meal at a moment’s notice. But baking leaves me frustrated and in a foul mood. So generally, I don’t do it. I leave the baking for the Martha Stewarts in my family.

So why did I find myself standing in my kitchen one December night in 2001, elbow deep in flour and frosting? I’ll tell you why. It’s my sister’s fault.

I work with my sister. My sister is the social butterfly to my anti-social maggot. And sometimes she drags me kicking and screaming into her little circle of work gathering hell. This particular year, it was the cookie trade-off lunch.

This is where a bunch of women get together for a holiday lunch, and bring a dozen home-baked cookies for each person attending. This was my fourth Christmas at the job, and I had avoided the cookie exchange every year thus far. My sister would have none of that this year. She enthusiastically signed me up without asking. Why? Because she is a sadist. She knew I would now have to combine my hatred of baking with my loathing of my co-workers all in one day. I suppose I could have e-mailed the head cookie cutter and offered my apologies, but I decided I would give in instead. Maybe if I did it one year, they will leave me alone for the next three.

But how the hell was I going to pull this off? Baking is a foreign concept to me. Well, not totally foreign. I’ve tried it. But never with any results that could be fed to actual, living human beings. And even when I did manage to bake something edible, it always came out looking decidedly unedible.

I had options in regards to the cookies. I could cheat. There are various ways one could cheat when it comes to cookie baking:

First degree cheating: Go to bakery, buy fresh made, gorgeous, incredibly delicious cookies. Put on throw-away Christmas plate, wrap in something festive and pretend like you slaved over a hot oven all night making them.

Second degree cheating: Buy a pre-made cookie mix, follow same method as above for wrapping and lying.

Third degree cheating: Buy the Pillsbury slice and bake cookie rolls. No fuss, no mess. Just chop the roll up, stick in oven and proceed with festive wrapping and lying about the recipe.

I opted for third degree cheating, sugar cookie style.

Have I mentioned I suck at baking? Even when the cookies are almost made for me?

First, I followed the directions carefully. One rounded teaspoon of dough per cookie. I only made six, to see how they would come out. I carefully rounded out that teaspoon size dough and dropped them on the baking sheet. The cookies came out the size of a baby’s toenail. Six cookies wasted.

So I made them a little bigger; somewhere between a tablespoon and a scoop. Apparently they weren’t rounded enough this time and turned out looking like lumps of brown coal. Which is great to stick in a kid’s stocking as a joke, but not great for actually eating. Six more cookies wasted.

Finally, I decided to throw some flour into the mix and roll out the dough. This was brilliant because it would feel more like really baking, and I wouldn’t feel as guilty. I had no cookie cutters, but I found the cover to one of my nephew’s bottles and used that to cut the dough into large circles. They came out the perfect size and shape. I was on my way to Marthaness.

But…..I couldn’t just give plain sugar cookies, could I? That would be lame. Even though I did not like these women and I did not want to be in their stupid little cookie club, as long as I was forced to participate, I was going to make sure no one was going to talk shit about me after the party was over. Plain old sugar cookies would certainly be talked about. They had to be decorated. They had to reek of Christmas. I was ready with green and red colored sugar and some Christmas tree shaped sprinkles. I was prepared to go all out for this.

When the cookies were a bit cooled, I sprinkled the colored sugar on them. It rolled off. A rainbow of Christmas was all over the tray, but not on the cookies. So I put more sugar on and pressed it down on the cookie to get it to stay. The cookie broke. I poured myself a glass of gin. No, not a martini. Just the gin. Not even an olive. This called for clearheadedness and olives just get in the way of that.

I put a fresh batch in the oven and a light bulb went off in my head. I’ll sprinkle the sugar on before they bake! That must be how Martha does it! Six more cookies in. I drink, I wait.

They came out looking like an elf puked on the cookie sheet. Six more cookies wasted. Good thing I planned ahead for failure and bought a few rolls.

I baked a fresh batch and came up with a new idea, which was partly hatched with the help of my second glass of gin. I needed to find something to put on top of the cookies when they are cooled that will make the sugar stick to them. Frosting! God, I am a genius.

I only had pink frosting. I mixed some red food coloring into the frosting until it looked a Christmas sort of red. I stirred and poured and stirred and poured and finally the frosting was red, but the consistency of water. Like thin blood. At this point I didn’t care. I reminded myself over and over that I don’t even like the people who will be eating these cookies.

I took each cookie, smeared it in blood red frosting and then poured the colored sugar over them. They ended up looking like a kindergarten craft project, if the kindergarten was for blind, stupid children. Six more cookies shot to hell. More gin.

I decided to give it one more try. What is wet enough yet not distasteful that I could put on top of the cookies to make the damn sugar stick? Because at this point, it wasn’t about the cookies. It wasn’t about the party or the women or my sister or even Christmas. It was about the sugar. I was going to make it stick to those damn cookies even if I died of alcohol poisoning while trying.

And then I saw it, right there in my cabinet. The answer to my sugar dilemma. Pam no-stick spray. Buttered flavor. Of course.

I sprayed each cookie with a little Pam, hysterically laughing to myself that I have reached so low a point. I take each non-stick coated cookie and drunkenly turn it upside down in a pile of red and green, yelling BOOYA! as I spiked those cookies like a football into their decorative sugar.

I have Christmas cookies. I have baked. I was also very drunk and almost wept with joy at the sight of those hideous cookies because, well, I made them. I persevered through some horrible moments and I never, ever gave up, I just kept climbing that mountain, I….I needed to go lie down.

I woke up the next morning and had a vague recollection of having baked the night before. When I walked into the kitchen it looked like Martha Stewart and Christmas got into a drunken brawl in my house. And the product of their make up sex were the ugliest, most revolting, hideous, worst tasting cookies this side of dog biscuits. I didn’t care. I made them. I made fucking cookies. I baked.

I went to work that morning despite my raging hangover. I went through hell for those cookies and I was going to make damn sure that I got some decent cookies in return. I popped about two dozen Excedrin and walked into that party with my head held high.

Oh, I saw the looks. I heard the gasps as my pitiful cookies were unwrapped. I knew that I would be office gossip fodder for the next week. But that was ok, because only I knew those women were eating cookies whose main ingredient was no-stick spray, and which may or may not have fallen on my kitchen floor.

Don’t ever ask me to bake.

Read Full Post »

blogging, social media and billy mays

I suppose this is a continuation of my “What is twitter for” posts.

I saw an ad for a book called The New Influencers. One of the books praisers (obviously influenced by author and new influencer Paul Gillen) says:

“If you haven’t immersed yourself in blogs or started one yourself, ‘The New Influencers’ can tell you what is popular, what type of blogs work, and what kind of impact they’re having across the consumer and corporate worlds.”

In other words, he will tell you how to start a blog simply for profit. He will tell you how to figure out what people are talking about and write a blog specifically about that and then promote it enough to get a company interested enough to advertise on your blog or maybe even pay you for writing it.

It seems so disingenuous to start a blog about a specific subject that you might not have any interest in, just to make money. It seems like, well, spam. It’s as bad as those “pay per post” bloggers who get cash to write single blog posts about specific products. If I go to a blog and see a few paragraphs where a link to the same exact website is provided five or six times, I know what I’m seeing. I know the whole damn thing is nothing more than an ad and the blogger is nothing more than Billy Mays selling a Bedazzler. He doesn’t care about the Bedazzler. He never uses one. He just wants you to buy one because that’s how he puts dinner on the table. He may try to sound passionate about his Magic Putty, but everyone knows, there’s no passion in putty. Billy Mays tries to convey passion by yelling. A pay per post blogger tries to convey interest in the product they are hawking by linking it ten times in one post. She tries to come off as if she really, really loves writing about time shares in Alabama, and damn it, those links to every page on the Alabama TimeShare Company website prove it.

I know, I don’t have to read it. So I don’t. But I wonder who does. I wonder who reads those advertisements disguised as blogs and I wonder who reads emails about Viagra and I wonder who is following the new Social Media Experts (capitalized, of course) on twitter. Mostly, I wonder who is reading books about Thought Leaders and New Influencers and thinking they have something wise to say about gathering enough virtual acquaintances to use your blog or your FaceBook or Twitter to sell yourself to them. These people are the new shysters, the new hucksters. They are standing in front of the three ring circus of the internet, bringing in the crowds who want to see the bearded lady who is no bearded lady at all, but Billy Mays in drag. They are this century’s get rich quick artists, and there are people who hang on their every word, seeing every new phrase and made up word dangled in front of them like some kind of sparkling pot of gold. Monetize!

I don’t know why I have such a visceral reaction to this newfangled social media. Maybe because I see everything I love about the internet being squeezed so hard to try to fit them into marketing niches and tightly defined spaces identified by how much money they can make that the heart and soul are being juiced right out of them.

I started my first blog in 2001. That was when you would say the word “blog” and people would think you had something caught in your throat. There was a certain joy in blogging and reading blogs then. No one had figured out a way to “monetize” them. No one was paying someone for throwing links into their posts. People were writing about what they loved, what they believed in and what amused them. What happened with blogs is going to happen with every new form of media. People will say “Flickr was more of a community before they made all those changes.” They will say “Twitter was so much fun before the social media experts took over.” “Facebook used to be about college kids hooking up.” “This used to be fun.”

Yes, people are still writing about what they believe in and twitter still has poop jokes and Facebook will still help you find that long lost high school friend. But the noise level has changed. As soon as people find a way to use something as a marketing tool, as a capitalist venture, they will swarm in and change the face of it all, and it will be ugly to everyone except the people who are in on the money making.

Makes you wonder, though. Who buys those get rich quick books? Who clicks on links that are obviously ads? Who robotically follows someone who calls themselves a thought leader and social media expert? Who calls a 1-800 number to buy Magic Putty? Is someone really sitting there reading a guide on how to make money in blogging or pouring over pages telling them how to turn their tweets into gold or their Facebook contacts into piles of cash?

Here’s what you do. I’ll tell you for free. You get as many contacts as possible. You add blogs to your links list whether you read them or not. You follow every possible person on twitter and friend everyone who has a Facebook and do whatever it is you do with LinkedIn and all those other places. You just gather hordes of people who have no idea who you are or what you are selling but you shove your links down their throats and scream over and over again about what you’re selling and eventually you’ll make a few dollars and you’ll feel like a social media expert yourself and then you’ll write a book about it and sell it to people just like yourself who are looking to become social media experts so they can sell their grand ideas to other people…..

Right. It’s like a circle jerk of late night tv commercials.

I know I’m never going to make money off this blog. I know I’m not going to make money by reviewing my entire music collection. I’m not even trying. People keep telling me to open an Amazon affiliate thing and put in Amazon links to all those records I’m reviewing. No. It’s just not worth it for me to spend the time putting those links in for a 45 cent check I’ll get at the end of the month because someone decided to give Steel Pole Bathtub a try. I’m writing about the records because I love writing about music. Because it’s fun. I don’t want to monetize. I don’t want to thought lead. I don’t want paradigms or synergy or whatever the hell it is the “new influencers” want me to shove up your ass every time you read my blog or click on my FaceBook (which I haven’t clicked on myself in months).

Yea, I know. There are people who want that stuff. There are more people who want to figure out how to make money off each new big thing than people who don’t. So of course, the rule of the internet goes here. Don’t follow them. Don’t read those blogs. Don’t buy those books. Don’t click those links. And I won’t.

But the best thing about the internet is that I can use my blog to bitch about things I hate. It doesn’t matter that only a few people will read it and there are no ads within and I’m not using this as a means to exchange my social resume with anyone or get someone to read my book on how to write a book telling people how to make money off of writing books about nothing. It doesn’t matter that this is one big, rambling rant that I haven’t even proofread because it is what it is, and it’s not anything else.

Beware the money makers who want to show you how to make money. They will, you won’t. Unless, of course, you learn how to be a new influencer. By buying a book written by one of the new influencers.

The internet: a circle jerk where only half the people get off.

Read Full Post »