More here.

When you are with your kids, you spend a lot of time joking, singing, and making up words, anything to stop you from completely losing your mind.  You find yourself saying and remembering things you really don’t need to remember.  For instance, the Frito Bandido Song, which was eventually removed from the air for being so racially insensitive.  (Which, in retrospect, it totally is, and makes you wonder how on earth it ever got on TV in the first place. )  I must sing this thing a few times a week in the car on the way to Day Care, the hardware store, or my Cultural Insensitivity Workshops.   But it certainly it was one awesome and memorable jingle.  Now, all together!

Call me Mr. Early Adopter.  When people started having web pages, I figured out how to make my own web page.   That was fun, and I learned some stuff.  Then people started making blogs, so you’ve got what you see here.  Then there was instant messaging (you can reach me on AIM at “fastandbad”).  And text messaging on my phone (probably the most I have kept in touch with my daughter since she was borned).  Then someone sent me a Facebook link and that seemed interesting, so you can find me there.  And now there’s a lot of media attention on Twitter (have an account, don’t use it).

And all this stuff is cool and great and the wave of the future blah blah, but (and here’s the part that hopefully goes without saying) one has to ask–going from pages of text, to Blog posts, to a pithy 140 characters on Twitter–what are we really gaining here?  I’ve been doing this stuff for years and years, and I enjoy writing about what interests me and attempting to share what’s interesting about those interests (hopefully) to the world.  And I make no great claims for producing profound insights into the human condition as we know it, and I agree with people who would say there is a (varying) level of narcissism in all these kinds of activities (look at me!  Look at my insightful comments on contempirary culture!).

But (and here’s the cranky old people stuff), the constant move towards more and more active (and more and more limited) “communication” - what are people really communicating?  ”Gonna pick up the kids–What a weekend!”, “Love those Tigers!”, etc.  I mean, I’m as capable as anyone of making some short, pithy, funny statement that can give a friend or acquaitance a laugh or a glimmer of what’s going on with me (not that they should even care what’s going on with me–they’ve got their own lives, and their own short, pithy statements to make).  But where is this going, exactly?

If you asked me what’s wrong the world (and many, many people do), I would say one of our biggest problems is the shallowness of our thought and our arguments, our unwillingness to dig a little deeper and confront and deal with the bigger picture of what’s really going on.  And these supposed new “tools” for communication, be they cell phones, Facebook, Twitter, text messages blah blah–they are actually hurting more than they help.  I don’t want to hear what my Congressman tweets when watching President Obama’s State of the Union address–I want him to make the country a better place for me, my family and my friends.  I don’t need 500 Facebook friends-I need a couple of good friends I can depend on to watch my back.

Sorry to go on for 467 words.  Next I’ll talk about the latest book I’m reading, OLIVER TWIST.  It’s by a guy named Dickens.  Look for him on Facebook.

Lux Interior, lead singer of the Cramps, passed away last week.  The Cramps were the first punk/new wave/alternative/psychobilly/whatever-the-heck-phrase-you-want-to-use that I ever saw.  I saw a note they were appearing at the University of Hartford in 1978, dragged my friend Dan along, and there we saw the original line-up, including now-also-dead guitarist Bryan Gregory.  It was quite something.  Their first three records, esp. the first two produced by Alex Chilton, were awesome, and the third, PSYCHEDELIC JUNGLE, was on my turntable (you see, they had these things called records, and you’d lay them on this spinning circle and, and…ah, forget it…) through most of college.  When I moved to Michigan, my co-workers at Favor-Ruhl Art Supplies took me to see them at the now-extinct Bookies Club 870.  So really man, they were pretty great, and they made some great memories.  I never really followed them much after that (though I was a big fan of the video “Bikini Girls With Machine Guns“), but was always surprised and happy they did so well for so long.

I’ll miss ya, big guy.