You Can Have It All…..so why don’t you?

God I love this woman. This column would be worth it alone for the brief examination of the subtext of that famous slogan of western culture. Commercials often use variations of "you can have it all," yet subconsciously we start to ask ourselves why we don’t have it all. Then we feel bad that we don’t have it all, that we don’t have a life, that we’re not exceptional, that we’re not beautiful, or what have you. Which then leads to widespread dissatisfaction. Which then leads to further consumption in the pursuit of having it all. And the cycle begins anew.

Are you satisfied with your life? I know I’m not, but I’m not quite sure why. I’ve noticed, though, that when I’m bored or don’t want to do the stuff I should be doing, I go shopping. I usually buy DVDs that I probably don’t need, books I could easily get at the library, or CDs I don’t need. Jeanette says, "What power have we when our leaders lie to us…no wonder we pick up the credit card and go shopping – at least when we buy things we feel we are exercising choice and control."

The choice and control thing stuck in my mind because I’ve read many times that addictions are sustained by the desire for control – you know what you’re getting and it makes you feel good. Whether you’re shopping, drinking beer, or smoking anything, Process A leads to Reaction B, and who wouldn’t choose to feel good when the alternative is to feel empty and bored? Granted, some processes are healthier than others, but there’s a kinship between all of them in that they are processes that produce predictable (and therefore comforting) results. Add to that whatever amount of chemical pleasure the process produces (be it alcohol, nicotine or just natural endorphines), and you’ve got a formula for addiction.

Typing this, I also discovered "beings" and "begins" are anagrams of each other.

Service vs. Commodity

Not sure why, but I started reading a little basic economic theory and I think that if record companies and muscians read this stuff they’d discover how incredibly flawed the business model of today’s music industry is. The most basic model of economic theory is supply and demand. Given the advent of mp3’s and high speed internet connections, the supply of all music recordings automatically becomes near-infinite. With an infinite supply of something, the demand is going to be on pretty uncertain terms when it comes to cost. How do you determine the cost of something that can be replicated infinitely? Todd Rundgren says it’s time for music to be viewed as a service rather than a commodity. I’m inclined to agree.

Soup Clairvoyance

As I was walking to the microwave just now, a potential blog entry materialized in my mind:

"Every day at lunch when I go to the microwave to heat up my Campbell’s Chunky Soup® I take the Daily Cryptoquote with me to see if I can solve it in the 3 minutes and 30 seconds alotted for proper soup nuking. Most days I fail, today I didn’t."

3 minutes and 30 seconds later this prophecy came to pass. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt clairvoyant. I solved the cryptoquote with 7 seconds to spare.

Deep in the Heat of Texas

I spent the weekend in the scenic Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex, where the temperatures are already into three digits. I ventured south to attend my friend Sarah’s wedding, and to hang out with fellow Hendrix grad Allison D’Auteuil. Did I mention the heat?

I was rewarded for my struggle with 50 cent CDs! Wherehouse Music in Lewisville had a big used CD sale, so I merrily partook of these bargain-bin wonders:

Emmet Swimming – Wake
Josh Clayton-Felt – Inarticulate Nature Boy
The Apples in Stereo – The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone
John McLaughlin – The Promise
The Spent Poets – The Spent Poets (4 copies of this gem I bought)
World Party – Egyptology (2 copies)
Jungle Funk – Jungle Funk (featuring Living Colour rhythm section Doug Wimbish and Will Calhoun)
The Soup Dragons – Hotwired
Dan Reed Network – The Heat
Baby Animals – Shaved and Dangerous
Girl Bros. – Girl Bros. (Wendy and Lisa from Prince’s Revolution)
Tackhead – Strange Things
*at this point the entire stack just fell off my desk…fuck!*

Oh, but the joys don’t end there…shortly after that I found my way to Half Price Books, where I picked up the following:

The Crystal Method – Vegas (for $4, I’ll mail it to Tara since she said she wanted it)
Michael Hedges – Breakfast in the Field (For ONE DOLLAR – I mean, can you believe it??)
T-Ride – T-Ride (I already own it, but it’s so great and so tragically out of print)

Also got some fine books – a hardcover copy of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, in paperback, and a hardcover copy of Jeanette Winterson’s Gut Symmetries. I feel mixed about reading English Patient after having seen the movie – all the images will be pre-formed in my head, which I’m not so sure I like. However, I do love the movie, and I can imagine few things as enjoyable as being lost in the desert with Kristin Scott Thomas, or spongebaths with Juliette
Binoche
, so…

A fine haul indeed. I almost bought Conversations with Wilder in hardcover, but a tiny voice inside my wallet said, "just stop."