Signal in the Sky

A couple decades ago, I remember watching an episode of "Star Trek" when one of the characters made the casual remark that television, as a form of entertainment, would/did not last beyond the mid-21st century. At the time when I heard that prediction, I thought it was absurd. What could replace television? Growing up, my parents had a TV in virtually every room of our house--even some of the bathrooms, and there was always a television on. Sure, there were, and have always been, other forms of entertainment, but it seemed like nothing could usurp television completely.

Flash forward to 2006, where the television set in my apartment sits gathering dust. I watch maybe an hour a week at the most. You might expect this to be the part where I snobbily say that I'm not one of those philistines who waste their lives in front of a television set. Actually, though, I watch as much video content as ever before, only I watch it via the internet, not on my television set.

It's not just the YouTube (and other amateur) content that I watch, but the broadcast and cable networks are putting more and more video content online. There is such a wide variety of content online now, which I can watch when I want, that recently, I have mused that if my TV were to die, I probably wouldn't bother to buy another one. Video may be here to stay, but the "television set" and its place in the American home, I think, is moving towards obsolescence. It won't happen right away, since high speed internet access isn't universal in this country, but I think the day will come--perhaps by the middle of this century--when the television set will be a relic of the past.

My Song at Night

Last night a really bad storm hit St. Louis and knocked down some trees and power lines. I was at work when the storm hit, and the place where I work has its own electric generator, so we were able to carry on in comfort. At the end of the shift, as I drove home through patches of darkness and light, I had to be careful to avoid debris in the street.

When I got home I found the power was out in my neighborhood. Worse than the lack of light, though, was the lack of air conditioning, because that day had been one of the hottest of the year so far. My apartment, even after I opened the windows, was still about 10 degrees warmer than it was outside. I tried to spend a couple of hours outside on the steps of my building--until about 1:30 a.m. Since it was night, the temperature wasn't too bad--not really cool, but not uncomfortably warm either. But, of course, the mosquitos and other bugs were out in force, so eventually I had to go back inside. I tried to sleep, but the heat made it very difficult. At last, at around 4 in the morning, when it seemed like I could hardly take it any more, the power was restored and I could hear every air conditioner in the complex turn on.

This morning, I can see all of the debris outside, twigs and small branches everywhere. A very large branch was snapped off of the tree behind my building.

Dirty Mind

The Pipettes released their first full-length album the other day. I've been watching this band with some interest ever since I discovered them via Pandora two or three months ago. They're sort of a cross between the Supremes and the Sex Pistols. Indeed, despite their outwardly family-friendly, rated-G appearance, they really have more in common with the spirit of punk rock than with the girl groups of the 50s and 60s.

When I first discovered them, I wasn't sure if I should jump on their bandwagon or not. I didn't want to get caught up in some Spice Girls or early Britney Spears rehash. A visit to their website, however, set me at ease. There, I found that they had a manifesto, of sorts, and I decided that any band that describes their objectives in this way:

Let us continue to expand our temporal and spatial borders in this fashion and let us do so using the tools at hand. Like a bricoleur we shall construct our histories from what we already have around us, what is available to us immediately and what we already know . . . . But we will never be limited by our own boundaries, never hypostatized into a bind from which we cannot move. We must grow and at all times be reaching out, through the personal relations we already have and that we constantly create and develop on a daily basis. Art, according to John Cage, is not a thing made by someone but a process through which everyone involved learns and experiences new things.

is certainly a band that I can support.

Jolene

In the course of my morning web browsing today I somehow found myself at the website for the Family Research Council. I visited their section on television because I often hear how they are always complaining about indecent content on network television. I expected a bitchfest, but I found they don't complain about very much. One article, though, mentioned "a model riding a mechanical bull in an unnatural manner" which led me to wonder, "Just how would one ride a mechanical bull in a natural manner?" When Early Man first encountered mechanical bulls in the wilderness and got up enough nerve to ride one, was there a manner in which one naturally rode.

But then, of course, I remembered Leviticus 13:26, which reads: "And yea, I say verily unto you that thou shalt not ride the mechanical bull in a way that is an abomination to Him, the Lord thy God." So I guess that settles that.

I suppose the model that the FRC got upset about was riding her bull sort of like how Katie Jane Garside rides hers in her video for "Jolene":