new music
Are you one of those people who’s always buying new music? Always into the local music scene? Always mentioning the names of bands no one’s heard of but you and your friends? Or are you like me?
If you’re like me — one of those people who’s always buying old, stale music, always listening to the same 13 CDs in your car over and over again, always living in the past through song — then I know a good way for you to force yourself to try something new.
You should go back in a time machine to almost two years ago and join one of those music clubs. You know — buy one CD, get 8,346 CDs free, as long as you pay $32 for the one CD and $4 shipping on the others. So you do that, and you swear on their CD Bible that you’ll buy 3.9 CDs at regular price over the next 2 years. And then you just don’t buy any, because every time you turn on the radio and say, “Dang, I really like this here Foo Fighter song. I wonder do Columbia Warehouse have their CD?” and go look at the web site, they don’t have the CDs you want.
So you live in limbo for a while, drifting around amongst the used CD stores and the Best Buy, never letting yourself buy anything because you have to finish your music club obligation… surrounded by downloading services but never really downloading anything because, first of all, it’s immoral, and second, it takes so damned long and your hard-won download of “Feel Good Time” has some guy’s voice on it going “A…O…L…. NEW… MUSIC… PREVIEW!” every thirty seconds.
So, the 900th time you get a BMC House mailing in your PO box or in your Junk Mail folder, you will finally say, “Jesus, for once and for all, let me just go to their web site and FIND four CDs to buy and thus release myself of the albatross I wound around my neck two years ago when I signed up for this shit because the Canadian teenager on the phone swore to God they’d have the new Foo Fighters CD when it came out.”
And you go and they have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, but you’re determined, so you just start clicking on the links that say stuff like “If you like Stereolab, you’ll like these people here.” And you say, “Hmm, this Ivy woman sounds sort of familiar and I like the background color of her CD, so let me add it to my cart.”
Then you say, “Well, my boyfriend likes BT, but I don’t know if this 1996 BT album featuring spiritual references and Tori Amos is any good. But my boyfriend’s out at Red Star right now, so if I call him to ask him, he’ll just be like ‘What? You wanna go see the BeeGees?’ So I’ll just buy it and then give it to him for xmas if it’s no good, and if he already has it, I’ll say ‘Oh, I didn’t know.'”
Then you say, “Hey, I sort of liked this one Tito Puente song I heard at the grocery store one time — what was the name of it again? Oh, yeah — ‘Que Sera Mi China’. And, look, it’s on his Diamante Collection CD. Hmm… I’ll try that and see if it’s good. Oh, okay. I’ll admit it. I didn’t hear it at the grocery store. I downloaded it. Okay? Are you happy now? Damn it. Leave me alone.”
Then you pick King’s X Greatest Hits because they had a decent song on the radio a long time ago, and the blurb describes them as a “critics’ darling”, and that usually means they’re noisily conventional, and you can handle that. Then you pick the Missy Elliot CD you already had someone burn you a copy of. Then you close your eyes and click on a random CD link and pick that. And now you’re up to six, but it only counts as two towards your obligation because this month is Buy One Get Two Free. So you’re still not out of your contract, and you still don’t have any of the CDs you really wanted, which were Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Coldplay, and whatever the hell else. But you’ve got six CDs for $52, which is around what you would have paid at the used CD store for stuff you really wanted. But who knows? Try something new. Maybe you’ll like it.
domestic weekend
Yesterday we went to Sam’s Club on Tad’s card and got a bunch of wholesale groceries. (“We” usually = me + my three kids. During the school year they are my extra limbs, or they ride in my kangaroo pocket of an Altima.) Today we’re going to a big outlet mall with my cousin Randy, then to Walmart to get some groceries so I can cook a real meal tonight with the shrimp Tad brought me from his dad’s restaurant, instead of the appetizer-buffet-looking meals I’ve been cooking lately since I’m a single mom who hasn’t yet re-bought all the pots, pans, and condiments she used to own as a housewife. Josh, my oldest kid, spent the night at his friend’s last night, so Dallas and the Baby have been binging on video games in his absence. I did some laundry. We went to IKEA and got things to help us organize our crap better. I burned two new CDs for the car — mellow ones, since I’m getting old and need to quit driving so fast all the time now.
the secret to happiness = spending money
Even though I haven’t played The Sims in years, I still sometimes benchmark my progress using that game. All you want to do is make your Sim happy (unless you’re bored and torturing him, instead,) and to do that, you generally have to spend money. My Sim (me) has just gone from the beat-up-ass car to the nice sedan, and is now shopping for things to bring up her Room score. As you video game people know, plants are cheaper than artwork. So I’ve been buying plants, and I see our living room’s Room points rising.
Last year I desperately wanted bunk beds and couldn’t find anything I could afford. Friday we went to IKEA and saw a bunk bed that looked cute AND sturdy, and I said, “I’m going to buy that.” Randy said, “Right now?” with his biceps flexing, just in case. I said, “No… let’s wait til next week, when the kids are at their dad’s. That way we can get it all done without them whining and they’ll come back to nice new beds that Monday.” The two younger ones are currently sharing the same full-size one they were conceived in. Now there’ll be more room in their room until next year, when, God willing, we’ll move to a bigger apartment.
And that’s that. Damn, it’s nice to have more money, even if I do have to live as a vaguely dissatisfied corporate peon from 8 to 5 in order to do it.
