for
1/20/2001
It's morning in America. And as I sit tapping www.hotmail.com, waiting for the "eert!" sound effect that tells me no, take out the www, wait for the next "eert!" and repeat, I wonder why each one of Hotmail's login servers seems to be out, as they have been since sometime during the drafting of a really mediocre email to my girlfriend last night. I think about California, and rolling blackouts, and picture a herd of techies in sporty little Jettas gathering their latés and their numbers to go into work and heap swear words upon the problem. While it may be the very crack of dawn here, it's only 8:15AM in this country's technological backbone, where they live.
Take out the three W's. Try it. "Eert!" Fuck it.
There is technology in this country. When we falsely bemoan the California millionaires who'll have to do with an unheated Jacuzzi this morning, we may forget that their power crunch also affects things we like, like AskJeeves.com, Altavista's Babel Fish, and, well, maybe not Hotmail exactly.
Well, now it can't even find www.hotmail.com--"eert!"
At the risk of cobbling something completely unrelated onto this, I must point out again that internet technology gives us some wonderful things. Case in point is the newly available iTunes jukebox program from Apple Computer....
It features most of the toys that other high-end jukeboxes have, but for free, and lets you rip and burn CDs, and so on and so forth. Notable is its lack of support for "skins," because all parlayers of incomprehensible pseudo-customization can roast in hell, along with their pets. Also notable is its categorized browser of streaming mp3 stations.
There's a category for Alt/Modern Rock, with way too many stations to review. They apparently feature everything from the "90's Radio Show--Memories of the last decade" (are we so old?), to ska, no format, endless remixes, and something called "Vampire Radio," which warns its listeners that there's nothing really gothic about it--much like the "vampires" themselves.
Quick, what do you get when you play New Age Music backwards? New Age Music.
Of course there is New Age Music, as a category, as well as Electronica (just as big and scary a category as Alt/Modern Rock), Reggae/Island, Top 40/Pop, Smooth Jazz, and News/Talk to name a few. News/Talk is a slim category, which seems to be lodged evenly between Christian talk and something called "Studio X--Born in the Heat of the WTO Millennium Round of Talks..." which features three identical streams, none of which work. I also tried listening to a Christian station; it featured a guy proposing that every law go off the books after 20 years, and basically managing to convey the fact that he was bored and didn't want to be there that day.
Okay, what do you get when you play Smooth Jazz backwards? Smooth Jazz.
There was plenty more to be found, including an intriguing "Eclectic" category. "Eclectic" featured stations like "Musical [James] Bond" (which doesn't work), "Prime Time Polkas" (which mercifully doesn't), a bluegrass station that held my interest for 2 or 3 minutes, and "Modern Acappella." It's good to learn things about yourself. For instance, I've now learned that Polka, Bluegrass and Acappella are three kinds of music that I can only stand live and on "A Prairie Home Companion"--and I'm not really sure about Polka.
I'm actually listening to an acappella song about "Spider Man" at this very moment. Stop. Stop more. This can't stop enough for me!
But perfection can be found. Under "Jazz" is something called "Radio Clambake." Frankly, I'd listen to this if it were a Grrrrl Rock station. "Radio Clambake." Just roll it around on your tongue. Ahh! Bliss.
If only it didn't have to rebuffer every 30 seconds or so.
But that's cool. It's okay. It's "fly," and its "bus." Click. "Eert!" Because at least it comes up at all.
Touch the Toast