Email Campaigns: For the Weak

This is hard for me to talk about.

I lived for 2 years in Brattleboro, Vermont. In the woods.

Now, before my East-ward adventure, I had prided myself on being sartorially authentic. My style was original, my apparel inimitable, my influences well-researched and varied. My vintage was actually vintage. I spent hours at the Goodwill Bins, and my look was inspired by cast-offs that charities could not even find it in their hearts to take. I confused a lot of people, but good art is like that: confusing. I got a lot of pleasure out of blurring the line in people’s minds between cutting edge and legally blind.

So, when I got to Vermont, I was somewhat perplexed. There was no…shopping. One could not simply go to the Bins and procure an ensemble for $1.29 per pound; in fact, one could not simply go anywhere. If one were in possession of a little extra money, one was expected to spend it on handmade crafts by local artisans, or maple syrup, or autumnal foliage, or whatever. Textbooks? I don’t know. I studied zines. Anyway. Point is, I was used to a full wardrobe rotation on a weekly basis, and about a month into the semester I’d completely tapped out the paltry offerings of the local thrift store.

I was desperate. The circumstances were foreign and bizarre. I did something that could never be undone.

I received, in my MacMail Inbox, a free shipping offer from Urban Outfitters. Yes, they had my email address. Yes, I had ordered clothing from them once or twice before. But this time, it went beyond the discounted underwear and quirky accessories that had tempted me in the past. I answered the call of Pre-Fabricated Hipsters everywhere, ordered several, pre-fabricated hipster outfits, and when I was asked where I had gotten them, I lied.

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start generating revenue soon, as promised by this video) that I’m afraid of buying something that is doomed to become outdated.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.)

Michael Munk’s Portland Red Guide

My parents are hippies.  My dad talks exactly like Richard Cheech and my mom doesn’t know how to wear make-up. They met at Reed College in The Sixties (heard of those?) and have lived here in Portland, Oregon ever since. It’s only been thirty-five years, but a lot has changed. Driving around the city with them is like getting a guided tour the past.  “Oh that’s where we lived next door to the Hare Krishnas,” my mom will say, pointing at a row of newly-developed condos.  

For sure, the neighborhoods have shifted, ethnically and economically; there are more people now, from more places. North Portland, which has had some serious rep issues in the past, as a place where people of color (gasp! in Portland?) live, and also one of the last to be bought out by Californians, has gentrified itself into the yuppie-friendly ”Historical Mississippi” in which I now reside. Southeast, the exclusive turf of radical Reedies in my parents’ day, is now inhabited only by young people who are too square to move to North Portland, though I believe it still holds the world title for Most Prayer Flags per capita.

But, frankly, this kind of petty history bores me. The NY Times may be obsessed with Portland’s shifting demographics (read this, or this, if you can stand it), but I’d rather read about Portland’s real past.  Which is why I was so pysched (and this was before I worked for Ooligan Press, mind you), when my dad handed me a copy of Michael Munk’s Portland Red Guide, a truly radical look at how Portland has changed, and grown.

The Red Guide appealed to me because I’d rather read about Marxists and Wobblies than editorials about the new light rail (but what does it mean?), and I’d rather get a comprehensive understanding of Portland’s place in the Civil Rights Movement than sit around patting myself on the back for making mundane observations about my role in gentrification. I may have grown up here, but Michael Munk digs up the kind of dirt that reminds all of us what Portland can be about — more than a small city with a low cost of living and a robust music scene, a place that has more to offer than perfect Americanos and eco-friendly toys that teach visual tracking. It’s a place with a history of social dissent, renegade radicals, and political visionaries. 

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.