Nothing to add. I feel better already.
Phonomancy
So if you care you probably already know that Kieron Gillen is killing Phonogram. Despite strong rec’s, I haven’t gotten around to reading any of it. That’s about to change, though, because I decided to read the linked farewell, and Gillen says:
We’ve — and these are ones I really treasure — made some people get what’s going on inside music obsessive’s heads, when they’ve previously never really got pop.
and I thought, “Wait, maybe I can remember how to be a pop obsessive.”
Because I used to be really pop-obsessive. I mean, if I like a song I can tell what elements of it are being underserved by a sound system, and the first thing I put on after reading this (not immediately, but definitely because of) was Circus Maximus, a record that is really, truly by and for obsessives (also: hilarious coincidence city, right?) Of course, it’s also really old. So old that it probably doesn’t even qualify as pop at all. Leaving aside questions about what’s the Momusian analogue to classic-rock status aside, I’m trying to figure out how I can become pop-obsessive again, because I think that I liked that about myself.
I think the MP3 revolution killed my obsession with pop music. I bought the very first iPod about a week after it came out, but by the time that one died they had become too ubiquitous for me to not turn up my nose about acquiring another. Nevertheless, I had moved to NYC and was a student at that point, and I succumbed to the urge to just put everything on my computer and have done with it. Maybe the thing to do now is to become some kind of beardy format-maniac. Obsession rewards masochism.
Review
So except for that dig at Intel’s docs in the previous post, I’m not positive that I got a whole lot out of this semester. I think there were a lot of reasons for this, but to summarize: lack of focus. I just ended up shifting gears too often, so a complete reading of the systems text, for example, is going to have to wait a bit.
Still, considering its density I think I got through an admirable amount of it. What wasn’t admirable was the whole tinkering project thing, which was the best idea I’ve had in a while and totally fell by the wayside. Consequently, I’m going back to that. Hopefully with a vengeance.
I’ve also been continuing to make reasonable if not great headway with The Fugitive. There are only slightly more than 200 pages left, which seems pretty negligible until you start slogging through it. The reverie has been getting a little more whimsical lately, which is enjoyable, but so far nothing to really transport like the reader like the old days.
I started reading Ulysses when I was 16 and didn’t finish it until about 19, but this Proust business is another level. It’s sort of crazy, because I know that people take courses where they read every single fucking volume over the course of the semester. It makes me feel kind of stupid, but I imagine that there are a lot of people who could manage that, but wouldn’t be able to, say, read all of Specters of Marx in a night, so I guess it’s a matter of taste (and the fact that my taste is better.)