Too little time, too many choices, most of them wrong.
Am I the only one who is incredibly disturbed by the fact that Google’s new “Web Clips” feature in Gmail is enabled while I’m browsing my spam folder? As tasty as “Spam Fajitas” and “Spam Primavera” sound, I don’t think that there is much logic in publicizing these recipes next to unwanted emails peddling Viagra and penis enlargement pills. Just an observation.
I’m afraid to say that my iPod might be trudging down the same dark path that sealed the fate of my XM Satellite Radio. No, not being stolen from my glove box through the smashed window of my car in San Francisco on Thanksgiving. I fear that the overwhelming amount of content on my iPod (8,793 songs and counting) could eventually spell doom for the device in the same way that I was compelled me to stop paying for my XM subscription several months ago (prior to the above mentioned robbery).
When I purchased my XM tuner, the draw was that I would have a massive selection of commercial-free music channels so that I would never get bored with what I was listening to. The iPod successfully eliminated my interest in satellite radio music, because I could have thousands of songs in my car or in my pocket, and my programming choices were far more tailored to me, because I became the program director of my own commercial-free radio station. In fact, while I can’t prove it for sure, I would imagine that my libary, which could get me from New York to Los Angeles by car and then back again without ever repeating a single song, is probably more complete than the one they’re using at any given Top 40 radio station in America.
So it’s easy to see why XM music is useless to me. However, I kept paying my $10 per month for the sake of listening to Air America Radio and XM’s “extreme talk” station in my car and at work. Talk radio became an addiction, and for that reason I decided to keep paying the bill.
Now, I have 4 or 5 podcasts that I listen to every day, over the span of several hours. The Rachel Maddow Show and the Al Franken Show in the morning, This Week in Tech on Mondays, Democracy Now in the afternoon, and the hilarious Feast of Fools in the evening.
That’s a pretty full schedule!
So when am I listening to these 8,793 songs? Rarely. Maybe when I’m running on the treadmill, or walking around at the mall trying to be standoffish and avoiding making eye contact with people. In fact, I’ve only listened to 7,813 of the tracks currently on my iPod. The rest remain untouched. You do the math.
The cause behind this is MOAD, or Media Overload Anxiety Disorder. While not officially recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental illness, its effects can be incredibly crippling. Symptoms may include the endless need to rate and categorize songs, micromanagement of playlists, the impulsive fast-forwarding of a song to the end prior to skipping it merely for the sake of ensuring that the play count is properly incremented, along with various other classic anxiety symptoms.
I propose that the mind’s way of dealing with this painful and life-altering syndrome is to regress into a more simple way of life. Much in the way that the Amish renounce technology, or the Republicans renounce ethics, a MOAD sufferer will eventually renounce the need to categorize and organize thousands of songs by sustaining him or herself almost solely on volatile content that needs no rating, remains fresh on a daily basis, and is fully disposable after it has been consumed.
In a nutshell: the podcast.
Each day, the podcasts I have listened to are deleted automatically from my iPod, and new ones are automatically synchronized. I don’t have to rate episodes, or put them into special genres, or distinguish between 18 different remixes, because they’re just daily shows. That’s it. End of story. I remain entertained and happy, barely even paying notice to the Chumbawumba and Vengaboys tracks lurking deep in the cavernous pit of unplayed songs on my iPod.
While there is no cure for MOAD, it’s definitely possible to treat it through education and prevention. I would imagine that this involves only carrying around music that I actually intend to listen to, and letting the useless crap clutter my hard drive at home where it belongs.
Please remember this new acronym, because like all good acronyms it certainly deserves to be the subject of numerous conferences, websites, books, and media events. Please contact me in person to schedule speaking engagements.
Tags: iPod, media, mental health, MOAD, music, podcasting, podcasts, radio, satellite radio, satire, talk radio, XM
One of my favorite bar trends is the ever-so-tasty Internet jukebox, which allows bar patrons to choose songs from pre-selected tracks, or download tracks from a library of 140,000 songs. This obviously can be a blessing or a curse because it makes the musical experience at the bar completely hit or miss. There are certain expectations that gay men have when it comes to nightlife and its accompanying soundtrack. Classics like Vogue and It’s Raining Men fall into the acceptable category, but the freedom that the Internet jukebox introduces to the evening means that at some point the evening is likely to be interrupted with Enya or Barry Manilow.
On Saturday evening, my friend Andy and I took a trip to a local San Francisco bar, where I dropped $10 in the jukebox (with my debit card, naturally) and proceeded to manipulate the evening’s music. I’m used to having to wait for over an hour for my songs to come up, but that particular evening I was incredibly lucky, since I was barely through one cocktail when my first song came up.
The highlight of the evening was when Private Dancer played (Andy’s choice) and a lovely overweight drag queen straight out of a John Waters film, with bushels of chest hair overflowing from her natural cleavage, proceeded to perform a stunning lip sync routine to the song. A gaggle of queens sauntered into the bar mouthing the words and quietly singing to themselves and Andy looked at them with a sparkle of self-satisfaction in his eyes, feeling personally responsible for creating this moment of magic.
Because I’m a control freak, the opportunity to force everyone else to endure my selections of Cyndi Lauper, Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys almost guaranteed that I would stay at the bar long enough to hear all 14 songs that my $10 bought. The only thing more intoxicating than my vodka and lime on the rocks was the thrill of controlling the bar’s playlist. It’s obvious that in the wrong hands, the jukebox could easily send an evening into chaos. One moment we could be dancing to Madonna, and the next moment we could be deafened by the shrill, banshee-like moans of Yoko Ono.
This, however, is the risk we take for having the opportunity to play DJ, if only for a night. How else can you get that special feeling that can only come from seeing an overweight middle-aged man in a blonde wig tapping his hairy, happy feet to your song of choice? Who says the American dream is dead?
Tags: andy, drag queens, gay, music, nightlife, san francisco
I’ve had a lot of crappy jobs in the past. Moving to California at the end of last July to come to work for Yahoo! was a dream come true for me because I always thought that a job at one of the “big names” in Silicon Valley would be the “holy grail” of web development positions. I ended up getting a lot more than I bargained for.
This company really takes special care of its employees, and the industry is taking notice. Yahoo! has, for the first time, made Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list, coming in at #73.
In honor of the special recognition Yahoo! received as being a great place to work, I thought I might, as an insider, share some of my favorite things about working here.
So, you may be asking, how can I work at Yahoo!? The answer is simple! Just check out careers.yahoo.com!
Link: 100 Best Companies to Work For: Yahoo!
Wow. Mark just published what I hope will be the first of many amusing blog posts. When I read his first entry it had a familiar feel to me, but not because it was written by Mark. Instead, it made me recall a time when I was a bit more insane and prone to ranting:
“…I am constantly trying to make my way past people pushing their grocery carts at negative speeds down aisles and around corners, the same people stopping all over the place at pure random to read their coupons or examine the chewing gum stuck to their wheel or decide which brand of mix-it-yourself fiber drink will best help them to reestablish their pooping habits.”
Wow. Things like that were one of the reasons that I started this blog to begin with. Some of my co-workers at Tommy Hilfiger in New York City thought that my rants were amusing, and that I should write or podcast them down. The reality is that I fear I may have lost my edge. I’m not as easily irritated anymore, and while that’s obviously better for the people around me, it might very well be the death of one of my more “interesting” qualities.
There was a time when I thought that everybody in line at the grocery store was placed in my way by an act of God (or “Jebus”, as Mark so eloquently describes our Lord and Savior) solely for the purpose of annoying the hell out of me and making me late for work. Now, those things just don’t seem to get under my skin nearly as much. I go into the grocery store with my iPod earbuds in my ears, and while people are knocking down all the Lean Cuisine flavors and mixing them up, or blocking the aisles with their carts, I’m in my own little world enjoying the soothing sounds of the Theivery Corporation.
Maybe it’s true what they say. Maybe Northern California really does soften a person. Coming from the wild madhouse that is the New York / New Jersey area, the pace of life here is a lot different. For someone like me who is a bit crazy (and thus medicated) this may be a good bubble to live in. The question is, can I continue to produce gems like my rant about attending a concert in New York if I’m simply not affected by life’s petty annoyances anymore?
Keep reading and find out. 
Link: Newsflash (Mark Paretti’s blog)
Note: I do not present Mark’s rant here for the purpose of making him seem insane. I attribute it to the East Coast way of life. Mark also drew a very important distinction between him and myself in an IM conversation earlier (as we discussed the annoying woman he encountered in the parking lot who couldn’t back her vehicle out properly):
(1:09:15 PM) Mark: well, the difference is, you’d tend to freak out a bit more. It all annoyed me…but I sat there patiently waiting for her to back out, etc…in my head I was just thinking how incredibly annoying her existence was to me
Tags: blogs, california, eastcoast, groceryshopping, life, mark, mentalhealth, newjersey, newyork, petpeeves, rants, westcoast
“Steve Pavlina is a blue-eyed, colorblind, left-handed, well educated, vegan, lucid dreaming, purpose driven, happily jobless, reality manipulating, meditation practicing…”
The list goes on and on. This guy, at first glance, reminds me of a Tony Robbins motivational speaker combined with one of those late-night infomercial moguls — you know the ones: “Makes $10,000 per month by simply placing small classified ads in your local newspaper! The checks will pour in on a daily basis! Call now!”
All kidding aside, his Million Dollar Experiment actually sounds quite fascinating. The whole purpose of this experiment is to test his idea of the intention-manifestation model of reality. I know it sounds complicated, but the idea is that the road to success is paved with good intentions, since intentions translate into actions.
The purpose of this experiment is to see what happens when a large group of people all focus on the same intention - to have $1,000,000 come into their lives and the lives of all others participating - for one minute daily, and to observe and record the result. So far, the “manifested” total across 719 participants is $164,530.72. This includes the value of things that people might find on the street, loose change found in the couch, or unexpected windfalls.
One of the more odd aspects of this experiment is the superconscious component — trying to determine if having each participant focus on the intention can strengthen the success of the group as a whole. Mind you, this isn’t a true experiment since there is no control group, and no scientific method is being followed. However, I think it’s pretty likely that the subconscious act of focusing on attracting wealth might open a person’s eyes to previously unrecognized opportunities.
It’s understandable that some people might be skeptical of this mind-over-matter approach to gaining wealth, but I intend to try focusing on this intention on a daily basis, and to see what the effect on my life is. There’s no risk to me, and a little extra positive thinking wouldn’t hurt, especially since I’m a chronic cynic! The worst thing I can possibly learn from the experiment is the same thing I tell myself every time I come home from Las Vegas — that I really do have to work to make a living!
Tags: money, psychology, selfhelp, success
I’m in the process of moving my old Moveable Type blog over to WordPress!!
Tags: announcements, blog