Actually I Just Use MacMail for Everything

When I was a young lady, I left Portland to attend an outrageously expensive liberal arts college. It was very scenic, and I had some wonderful professors, and I smoked a lot of cigarettes and learned how to play BroomBall. But on Graduation Day, I walked away with more than a plastic cup of champagne and a dress made out of streamers. As a token of gratitude for my $60,000+ of tuition, the college informed me that I could keep my school email address for life. I was, needless to say, underwhelmed.

The weird thing is that almost two years have passed, and I still use the stupid thing. “At Marlboro.edu,” I tell people. “Like the cigarette.” I also use my Portland State account, and have TWO gmail accounts – one for business (school, this blog, harassing people about giving me internships), one for pleasure (porn. I mean, newsletters).

But more and more, I’ve been letting Google take over my life, and lately I’ve been using their GoogleDocs a lot (check them out, it’s so fun!). Eventually, I want to streamline everything into one technology which is then surgically implanted into my wrist, but for now, because I check all of my accounts between five and 100 times per day, I like to make the process as time-consuming and complicated as possible (This creates an illusion of being busy and productive. Try it!).

I Need a Tiny Computer to Get a Job to Buy More Tiny Computers

Clearly, I need an iPhone. Or an iTouch. Or a GooglePhone. Whichever. It’s important to my future career as a Young Professional* that I be able to access important information with one gentle flick of the index finger, that I can read important manuscripts on the train (I’ll be in New York at this point, duh), and that I can listen to current, ironic\socially conscious hip-hop while I burn stress (and calories!) away at the gym.

The problem is (aside from lack of funds, since I’m sure this blog will start generating revenue soon, as promised by this video) that I’m afraid of buying something that is doomed to become outdated. This happened with my MacBook. At first, I loved it, and my friends were all really jealous and we took about ten thousand PhotoBooth pictures, and it was so fun. But then it got dirty really fast and something weird happened with its hard drive and its battery died so now it has to be plugged in at all times and therefore is for all practical purposes not even a laptop, so much as a Totally Annoying Thing That I Hate. 

Still, when Bernadette Baker and Gretchen Stelter from Baker’s Mark came to talk to us about being rad literary agents (a very possible Future Career of mine), Gretchen had just gotten a Sony Reader and the general feeling seemed to be that soon important manuscripts will all be transported electronically, and you will be a total dud\fool if you don’t have some kind of device to read them on. But as cool as the Reader and the Kindle are, you can’t use them to watch your Pilates podcasts, and they don’t have apps. And Tom tells me that everybody’s going to be reading books on iPhones pretty soon, which reports from GBS about Google making its books available on iPhones and from the NY Times about Kindle books becoming accessible from “a wide range of phones,” both seem to confirm.

So, 

1. Will future employers take me seriously if I buy an iPhone and program my ringtone to this YM song? (and yes, I am one of the mesmerizing young ladies singing vocals at the end of the track)

2. What is the most professional\enviable SmartPhone for a young, would-be publisher? If I use it to read, could I consider it a “textbook” and pay for it with my student loans? 

3. Do I run risk, through this potential purchase, of becoming a GigaPet (my Number One Worst Fear), or, slightly worse, selling out the publishing industry by embracing new technology rather than continuing to champion actual, physical objects? Is it possible to appreciate old things and new things? Is it okay that sometimes I wish I had a TV\actual wireless internet that isn’t stolen from my neighbors, in order to watch House, MD in bed?

 

 

*(this is also an exciting career choice for me because I’ll finally be able to apply the fashion knowledge I’ve acquired from years of reading Lucky. Converting day-wear into evening-wear in 3 Easy Steps is kind of irrelevant when all of your clothes are actually pajamas.)

I would just read The Onion but sometimes I worry that it’s not real

This morning my roommates and I went to Muddy’s and dedicated a few hours to our favorite family pastime — pretending to read The New York Times.  Generally speaking I pretend to read the Book Review; my roommate Jeff, who also subscribes to Harpers, pretends to read Politics (occasionally reading headlines aloud to us, for added effect); and Sarah glances over the pictures in SundayStyles.

Our fourth roommate, Lena, stays in bed on Sundays until 4pm or later and sets a few sections next to her plate at dinner.  On weekdays we don’t even bother unfolding it; typically, I will shake it out of its blue plastic bags (two per issue, which are added to an ever-growing “bag of bags” in the basement) in the morning, dutifully display it on the table for the duration of the day, and then put in in the recycling bin at night.

It would never occur to use to get it canceled.  We like getting The Times.  We like referring to it, complaining about it, shuffling it around, and spending less time on the computer, scrolling through the Dos And Don’ts or pretending to read blogs.  Being Times subscribers helps us to define our personal brand:  We are smart, well-read, reasonable people who have embraced our inevitable future transformation into yuppies, at which point we will be too stressed out by our spoiled, attention-deficit-ed offspring to actually read up on issues.   For now, we’re old enough to comprehend the articles and young enough that we’re still forming our opinions on things.  We’d be the perfect newspaper readers, if any of us had the attention spans necessary to do more than skim.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the Death of the Newspaper.  Readership is down, subscriptions are way, way down, the Post Intelligence is getting bought by Scrooge McDuck.  I believe it, 100%.  I’m well aware that you can get all of the news, for free, on the internet; that classifieds have been replaced, rightly so, by Craigslist; and I also know that, in the same way that I am not unique, my roommates are not unique, and that therefore there must be other people out there, paying 5 bucks for a Sunday paper they’re only pretending to absorb.

In closing:

1.  Is The New York Times a fashion\lifestyle accessory?

2.  When the newspaper industry folds entirely, can we replace it with authentic radio?

3.  Does anybody have a great idea for creative newspaper recycling?  I found a few lists at The Craft Gossip Blog Network, which included these extraordinary newspaper slippers:I’m thinking these will be great gifts for my friends and family in the coming year.  Just let me know if you want a pair.