Do You Feel Loved?

Obama '08

I hope all my American readers who live in states holding primaries today are voting. I've been following this year's race very, very closely, but unlike the 2004 presidential race, I haven't been writing about it much. I will say that overall, it's been a pretty fantastic primary, all things considered, and that we've wound up with two fairly exceptional candidates. I do think Hillary Clinton would make a pretty good president at the end of the day, and up until a couple of months ago she was my preferred choice for the nomination. But today after work, I'm voting for Barack Obama, because he's got a shot at being not just a pretty good president, but a great one.

I don't really have the focus or the mental acuity needed to try to make my point today, but the simple fact is that a Clinton presidency represents an ironclad guarantee of at least four more years of the same kind of red-state / blue-state liberal / conservative infighting that's poisoning this country's culture down to its very soul, and I honestly don't think I'm being alarmist about the level of that threat. Americans are turning on each other with a ferocity and abandon that I find disgusting. Barack Obama is not an immediate cure for that problem, and honestly, there's a good chance that the sickness will defeat him and he won't transform our political culture. But there is half a chance that he will, because he really is an insightful, talented, and level-headed politician who's thoroughly prepared to take a new approach to the business of government. I do believe that he's every bit as capable and experienced as he needs to be to do this job, and I do believe that he has a better chance than any other candidate of commanding the cross-partisan respect that's needed to communicate with both his ideological opponents and the full breadth of the American people.

No matter which nominee we end up with, I'm confident that the Democrats can win the White House in November. But I'd like to win more than the White House: I'd like to win a lasting victory over the negative forces that are tearing our national culture apart, and it's plain to me that Obama is the only candidate running from any party with the ability to get us any closer to that goal. So: he's got my vote today, and with a little luck, he'll get my vote on November 4th as well.

For an excellent collection of Obama links (although frankly, I think he's taking the anti-Hillary position too far), don't miss Kevin's post today at Ghost In The Machine.

(And yes: You can count me among the pathetic fanfic millions who'd love to see an Obama/Clinton ticket, or even a Clinton/Obama ticket, at the end of the nomination process. The odds are terribly slim, but the Democrats have too much to lose from splitting the party at a time like this, and I worry that some of the more gung-ho supporters of each candidate will be unwilling to jump aboard with the other if things don't go their way.)

So, yeah. I really didn't mean to leave that as the top post for quite so long. But if you've been worried, thank you... it's been a long, sad few weeks, but I'm OK. Life, fortunately or unfortunately, goes on, at a remarkable pace.

The most important development is that I'm moving away from Greenpoint, which I'm very sad about, but it's to a larger new apartment in Astoria with new roommates. Hopefully it's all going to work out. I move on the 1st, so the odds of my doing any serious communication between now and then are slim.

But as far as non-serious communication goes... I've been playing with Tumblr for the last couple of days, and it seems to be holding my attention so far. (A tumblelog is basically super-short attention-span blogging, for those unfamiliar.) I started it up because Matthew told me he was gonna be playing with it, but he hasn't posted a damn thing yet. Meanwhile, eerily, apparently Stuart decided to start goofing around with his within ten minutes of my having the same idea across the ocean. Great minds, etc.

Anyway, little dribs and drabs will be appearing over there, so if you want to look in one more place for my inane scribblings, go right ahead. I'm off to reserve a cargo van for next weekend -- as soon as I'm moved in, I'm gonna go bonkers on the credit card at Ikea...

Alright, I know this is a weird thing to just be dumping out there, and if you hadn't heard it before now and this is how you hear about it, then I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to tell you personally, but, well, it's been a weird week.

What did you do as a child that you feel guilty about even to this day? 

I once stole twenty dollars from a friend who'd been mean to me that day, and then told my parents I found it on the street and used it to buy Ninja Turtles toys. I was probably nine or so.

Trevor Dienes, if you're out there, I'm sorry I was an asshole when I was nine. I owe you twenty bucks.

Show us something you need to get rid of, but just can't bring yourself to toss out.
Submitted by Felipe Anuel.

Weighing Me Down?

OK, you have got to be kidding me that this is today's Vox Hunt question, because I'd been planning for a while to write this up today. The answer is: my CD collection. It's immense (I haven't counted in a while, but I wouldn't be surprised if I've hit 800). As you no doubt know if you're reading this, I adore music, and I'm one of the last people alive to be buying CDs. But I'm finally getting to the point where I'm wondering if it's worth owning them anymore.

At this point, I buy CDs because I want to support artists; I buy them, I look through the packaging once, I rip them onto my computer, and I put them on the shelf. And that's where they stay. I don't even have a dedicated CD player anymore -- all my music-listening takes place on my computer or iPhone (note that I didn't say iPod -- I should probably sell my 60GB 4th gen iPod, and in fact I might bang it up on Craigslist today and flog it off for a quick $100). I'd love to have a nice stereo set with good speakers, an amplifier, a CD player and a turntable for vinyl records (which I don't own, but am crazy enough to want to collect -- more on that later), but that's pretty far down the list of purchases I need to make for myself, supplanted by a new TV, new furniture, new clothes, new laptop, etc.

So. My CD rack -- as gorgeous as it is -- is, essentially, a piece of furniture or home decor at this point. The rack itself is also structurally compromised; when rearranging my living room a couple months back, I was stupid enough to try to move it to another wall without emptying it completely, and the stress has really done a number on it -- it won't survive another move, be it to another apartment or just another spot in this one. And speaking of moving, God help me the next time I have to pack all of these things up; enough of the cases are cracked at this point already, and as you might expect, they fill a lot of fucking heavy boxes.

I've just embarked on a mission to re-rip everything I have, standardizing on 256kbps MP3 instead of the various bitrates and formats I've used over the years; it makes files a little too big for my iPhone's paltry 8GB of memory, but it matches the Amazon MP3 store, where I'll likely be making a lot more purchases in the future. And once everything's re-ripped, I intend to sell a good number of them -- I've culled out something like 200 discs, many of them singles or EPs I bought for bonus tracks but many of them full albums I've just grown away from (all of which are currently stacked in random places around my apartment, as I don't want to lug them all down to the record store at once but would rather bring them a list and have them let me know if they're interested). I've almost never sold CDs before, so this is a big step. But as you can see in the picture above, that cull only emptied out a small part of that previously chock-full rack. So I'm wondering if, at this point, it wouldn't just make more sense to take the total plunge and sell every single one of them. They have sentimental value, but they're a pain in the ass  to deal with when you live in NYC, and if I try to only keep the ones I care about I'll suddenly find myself justifying far, far too many of them.

But that leaves the question of where I'll get my music in the future. For full albums, I refuse to buy digital-only unless they're high-quality, DRM-free files, like iTunes Plus or Amazon MP3, but there aren't enough labels participating in either of those yet to completely supplant CD-buying, and I'm not principled enough to believe I can just refuse to buy records from labels who don't participate -- I'm going to want that music. I'm also not un-principled enough to just illegally download those records; true, the labels won't sell them to me in the format I prefer, but I don't want to punish artists for their labels' foolishness.

So I want advice on this. Most of you know me and my music-buying habits (and my need for a quick cash infusion) well enough to weigh in here. Should I go for it and liquidate them all? Or am I better off straddling the gap for another couple of years?

Please do the world, and me, and one of my friends, a favor.

Because suddenly, there are a lot of them. We are less than two weeks away from:

• The season premiere of Project Runway.
  
• A new volume of Scott Pilgrim.
  
• The release of Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii.
  

Are you a registered organ donor?  Why or why not? 
Submitted by jacolily.

I am. I hope they get every single useful bit that they can get off of me after I go. Believe me, I will not need it anymore, and it's more use saving lives than fertilizing grass.

And speaking of fertilizing grass -- I don't even want to do that, I think burial is absurd. I want to be cremated, and I want my ashes scattered across a warm ocean. Somewhere in the Bahamas might be nice.

What song do you wish would never show up on a karaoke list?

"Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Livin' On A Prayer." Don't get me wrong, they're great and fun and whatever, but I have never once in my life been to a karaoke session where they were not sung. PLAYED OUT. Pick some new standards, folks!