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A tweet is just the amount of information people are willing to make public.

Money, Money, Money — Money!

If you’ve watched local news lately, you’ve probably seen a well-coiffed newscaster in a mall warning you that consumers — that is, you — aren’t spending enough this holiday season. Even before the Dow went down, these segments were holiday evergreens. Americans have never bought enough for their loved ones during Christmas, and without seasonal plasma TVs, the economy could implode!

And now that the economy is imploding, I’m going to blame the plasma TVs. Do you remember this article about McMansions in 2002? We shouldn’t be living with more toilets than we can remember, and I believe this foreclosure/stock/bond/everything crisis is an exaggerated reaction to the exaggerated lifestyle some people enjoyed during the mid-aughts.

Right now, I’m in Palm Desert, which is near Palm Springs. In the hotel, there’s a book of stuff to do in the area, with a section called “Shopping Nirvana.” I suppose that’s not exactly an oxymoron because in the shopping district, you are not for want of places where you can get things you want. The closest thing to mixed usage here is a Barnes & Noble across from a Macy’s.

Maybe it wasn’t by choice, but combined with the occasionally ridiculous green movement, we’re moving toward a more sustainable lifestyle. Maybe it’s not Nirvana, but at least it’s not Shopping Nirvana.

The Year of Magical Happenings

However you feel about 2008, it’s undeniable that a lot happened. There was the primary, the New Jersey high end hooker, Bear Sterns, the Olympics, the housing bubble, the election, Prop 8, the auto crisis and the senate seat up for auction. Even if you’re not a black, gay Olympian managing the New York or Illinois state governments’ portfolio, it’s still been a hell of a year. For the first time in my life, I’m aware that I’m living through history. I should start taking notes.

2008 was a crazy year for me in every way, even on an iPod level. This year, I bought a nano, gave away my dying one, was given a classic ipod as a joke, which I regifted to my roommate, lost my new nano and was given my friend’s old iTouch.

Along with all the current events, I will look back on 2008 as the year my life started being what I wanted it to be. I suppose I could have skipped college and started writing fulltime seven years ago, but it took me until 2008 to feel like I could.

I’ve been close with my best friend since 8th grade. Now she’s getting a PhD in anthropology. We’ve known each other since before we knew what our dreams would be. Today, another friend of mine is moving into an apartment he’ll own. The older we get and the more 2008s we experience, the less we grow up with our friends and the more we agree with their lifestyle choices. I don’t know how to feel about that fact other than it’s true.

The Future Will Be Tanned And Toned

At the last two jobs I’ve had, I was super busy. I barely had time to read the news, even though I was writing about it. Now that I’m on my own schedule and not under fluorescent lights, I still read the internet, but with less devotion than when I was waiting for my lunch break back in 2006.

The guy who ousted Lee Siegel as “sprezzatura,” the Lee Siegel enthusiast on TNR.com, was a commenter. Jhschwartz was really “reluctant lawyer” and “frustrated” writer Joseph H. Schwartz. The fact that this lawyer had enough time to destroy the career of Siegel speaks to the leisure of the computer age. The internet has made tasks easier to accomplish, but most companies hiring policies reflect the typewriter age. As the guy who did TMFTML once put it, “I’m actually curious as to what people did in offices before the Internet. My theory is that every job only requires about thirty minutes of hard work a day and the rest is bullshit.” The internet is full of information, information which is only interesting to people who are bored at work.

Right now, most office rats are living off the fat of the land and enjoying the internet in their spare work time. But media moguls and bloggers are engaged with their work, too engaged to relate to their audience. Most people reading their sites and inflating the value of other Web 2.0 creations are just killing time.

But now the economy sucks. Subprime mortages! Bear Sterns! More buzz words! So soon there will be layoffs, which is fair in an Adam Smith sense and unfair in a “Wild Pack Of Family Dogs” sense. (Come on, you know that Modest Mouse song.) Most people don’t do much at their job. At least that’s what my friends tell me over gchat as they keep themselves occupied.

But with layoffs, the remaining employees will have to do more, which shouldn’t be a problem with computers and the internet making everything faster. But these people will have less time to click on articles, watch YouTube clips or enjoy in depth blog posts about the weather. And that’s how Web 2.0 will crash.

I wouldn’t care except that the internet has become the last refuge for writers. And when that bubble bursts, our best option will be tanning salons, where we’ll be allowed to read all day and tan at a discount.

“Take Your Pen, Write It Down. I Love The Teenagers”

The Teenagers are a French Pop band with goofy and self-referential lyrics. Like “French Kiss,” about how the “no one puts baby in the corner moment” in Dirty Dancing is the perfect time for a French kiss. So true. Well, I assume it’s true. I wasn’t that popular in camp.

A line in their song “Wheel of Fortune” pretty much sums up my view on religion and is so featured in the most important spot on my Facebook page, my religious views. Yes, this spot is more significant than my relationship status, because a person’s relationship with God triumphs all others. Duh.

Anyway, the line is “If Shannon Doherty stayed on 90210/Maybe she would have never met Alyssa Milano”

Okay, silly. But I’m a huge 90210 fan. This is serious. Brenda, the character, left 90210 the zip code to go to London to pursue acting. Shannon Doherty, the actress, left 90210 the show and went on to star on the less popular and culturally insignificant Charmed, with Alyssa Milano.

The lyric doesn’t say that leaving 90210 was worth it for Shannon Doherty because she met Alyssa Milano; it doesn’t make any judgment on the value of the Doherty-Milano relationship. But the fact is that because Shannon Doherty did leave 90210, she was able to meet Alyssa Milano. The lyric isn’t ironically optimistic like Candide. It’s not even saying that things happen for a reason. It’s just saying that every decision has unforeseen outcomes.

Personally, I believe that meeting Alyssa Milano was worth Shannon Doherty leaving 90210. Life would be too depressing if we had to worry about what would have happened had she continued on at California University with the rest of the gang.

The Impossible Education

I can’t wait for Google Books. I just reread all of Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession to find this passage:

Another story tells of an analyst who decided to do some follow-up work. He telephoned two women patients who had been in analysis with him five years previously. There were comparable cases: both had had stormy, tempestuous analyses, with all kinds of Sturm und Drang and very emotional, intense transferences. Now, five years later, one woman said, “Doctor, every night before I go to bed I thank my lucky stars that I had you as my analyst. The analysis with you has changed my life. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about what I learned from you, and apply it. You are an ever-living presence in my daily life, and I think of you with something like reverence.” The other woman—who had had just as tempestuous and emotional and intense an analysis—said, “You know, every so often I think about you, and I think, Maybe my life wouldn’t be much different if I hadn’t been in analysis. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember much of the analysis. You seem to be a nice man. I guess the experience was O.K. But I can’t say what helped me and what wouldn’t have happened anyway.” Right away, he knew who had had the better analysis. When you’re though with the operation, you sew up the patient, you hope that the scar isn’t too conspicuous, and if everything afterward goes as it should—fine, that’s enough.

Despite having read a book about psychoanalysis twice, I’ve never been in psychoanalysis. The reason I read it at all is because it’s by Janet Malcolm, who also wrote The Journalist and the Murderer. I reread it because I’ve been thinking about that anecdote a lot lately.

Soon after I graduated college, I decided the whole thing was bunk. I was the kind of student who read all the assigned texts instead of just the parts that would be on the test. After four years, I got a degree that implied that I’m educated. But if I had failed Spanish IV, which I nearly did, I wouldn’t be a Bachelor of the Arts. But what does Spanish have to with the price of tea in China? In fact, what does the price of tea in China have to do with my life now? Plus, not to get all Good Will Hunting, but a lot of stuff I learned in college I could have just read on my own.

But like the second women in that story, my college education has become such a part of me that I don’t really notice it anymore. There’s a production of Othello happening in London right now that I should have no interest in, but I’ve read all about it. And it’s no coincidence that Othello was my favorite play from the two Shakespeare classes I took in college. (Also no coincidence: I saw O before reading the play.)

Incidentally, the other professions Freud described as impossible were education and government. I guess the operation was a success.

Take That, Take That

First of all, congratulations on making it through Take That’s 1995 hit “Back For Good.” Your trust in my video recommendations is appreciated, if misguided.

Second of all, I realized on Sunday that this song is on my iPod, and probably has been for upwards of two years. How Take That sandwiched itself between Sufjan Stevens and Taken By Trees, I have no idea. I blame Pop Up Video, which once featured them.

Third of all, she’s not coming back. Go back and listen.

Whatever I said, whatever I did I didn’t mean it
I just want you back for good
Whenever I’m wrong just tell me the song and I’ll sing it
You’ll be right and understood

He didn’t mean what he said, but I’m guessing he didn’t say anything appealingly hurtful like “you’re turning into your mother.” Whatever he said—i.e., whatever needs he expressed—he has invalidated; he “didn’t mean it.” Instead, “you” are right, “whenever” he’s wrong. Ultimately, he just wants “you” back for good, whatever the terms.

And we’ll be together, this time is forever
We’ll be fighting and forever we will be
So complete in our love
We will never be uncovered again

Note the use of “we” here. He thinks with this apology, “our” love will be complete. But does the “you” in this song even love him? There’s no reason to think that. He is completely projecting his feeling about this fight—which is likely him just being dumped—on “you” to create a love that will never “be uncovered again.”

I guess now it’s time, that you came back for good

The second half of this lyric is a command: “come back.” But ultimately, he’s not man enough for that; he just “guesses” “you” should. He mitigates his own feelings with that guess, and makes himself appear even more pathetic to “you,” and frankly, to me as well.

Conclusions: I hate VH1 and no one is coming back for good.

Quick Hits

Wiki-what: One thing I like about Wikipedia is the chance for error. If you read something on there you wish weren’t true, like that you can’t ride the Staten Island Ferry back and forth without getting off, you can hope it’s wrong. I’ve embraced the ambiguity.

Pedicabs: Either you didn’t notice, or you get off on people suffering for your benefit. Either way, you’re a jerk.

iPhone: Seems like a score for AT&T, but will it be? Most reviews praise the product and knock the service. As the iPhone’s gets a heap of attention, so will AT&T’s bad wireless network.

Suckers and Lazy Shoppers

Advertisers take note: I’m open to your pitch. Before college, I bought an Apple iBook for no other reason than its beautiful advertising campaign. I was completely aware that I had no reason to prefer Apples to PCs. Every time my iBook failed me, which was often, I had nothing to say for myself other than I had been a sap. After a few years of working on an iBook with a non-functioning mouse pad, I bought a Fujitsu laptop. Other than a brief problem with a virus that sent my Internet browser directly to a gay porn site upon login, I’ve been happy with my switch.

But after using an iMac for over a year at work, I’m thinking about switching back again when I need a new laptop. Along with their snazzy ads, I prefer their interface and search features. A new computer is the most expensive purchase I could make, my version of buying a home. Like perspective homebuyers, I would want to wait for a favorable market, except as Sean Cooper pointed out on Slate, Apple products don’t go on sale.

I think this has as much to do with Apple’s accessibility image as their bottom line. Do you know how much a 15-inch laptop with 1440 x 900 resolution and a 2GB memory should go for? Neither do I, and it’s not something I want to know. Apple says it should be $1,999.00, and that’s how much I would pay for a MacBook Pro anywhere. Since it’s hard to get good deals on Apple computers, buying one is as simple as using one, minus the whole credit card debt thing.

What Goes Around Comes Around

*nsync’s only MySpace friend is Tom. Just saying, I don’t think they’re getting back together.