The Crew of Spaceship Earth

"I turn my back to the wind

To catch my breath

Before I start off again

Driven on without a moment to spend

To pass an evening with a drink and a friend"

-Rush, "Time Stands Still"

"I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands

the ones I love"

-Pearl Jam, "Just Breathe"

"I'll love whatever you become

And forget the reckless things we've done

I think our lives have just begun"

-Muse, "Falling Away with You"

(Yes, I realize that this is an excessive amount of song lyrics. I couldn't decide which one to quote, so I quoted all of them.)

To all of my friends, the people whom I love, the people who have helped me over the years, who care about me, and whom I care about, you are the crew of Spaceship Earth.

Everyone is having fun and I can't join them. I would love for my circadian rhythms to be offset in a way that made everything so damn convenient, but I have a mission, unfortunately. I get to see these people for about two weeks, three at the most, and I can't even capitalize on it because of some stupid dream.

I rang in the new year with some of my friends from back home at a friend's cabin. I was up there for about thirty-six hours. Almost everyone else is still up there, crackin open a box of fun. We were joking that fun is actually an anagram for "Fuck You Nate!" That was thirty-six hours out of the total number of hours that the universe has alloted me to spend with them, and I wonder how few of those hours actually remain. I will always be a degree removed from the people I love by, space, time, sleep, dreams, hours in a day, degrees of perception, convictions, the speed of light, the loss of a spaceship, fears, insecurities, doubts, and my own damn fallibility. I'm back here in my room which is not my room, thinking about a dream which is not yet reality. Making hard decisions has never come easy to me, and again I have to decide it everything I am doing (or not doing) is worth it.

I am no Quentin, I am no Mizner, and I am certainly no Denton. As everyone else needs sleep to stay sane, I need my stupid dream in order to stay sane. I'm scared of being normal, human, I'm scared of going further down the rabbit hole, and I certainly can't afford to straddle the middle. Then I remember that I am human, and I will bring Spaceship Earth, and all her crew, all of you, along with me, because what was once a spaceship of metal is now a spaceship of the mind, and unlike metal, the mind is not bound by the laws of physics.

I will carry the crew of Spaceship Earth wherever my adventures take me, because you, my crew, are what has shaped me, accepted who I am, will be manning a Spaceship that transcends these limitations.

On the way up to my friend's cabin, while taking a side road to avoid traffic, I drove by the mechanic's shop where I last saw Spaceship Earth before it was just a brain in a jar. I'm still carless, so I was borrowing my mom's car. The engine temperature gauge seemed to smile at me and say "hey, well, I still work!" Yes, but I don't like you, you are not a spaceship, just a car, and a non-sentient one at that. Everything I love falls apart.

This last year was the year I stopped being a robot. I knew something had changed, but I couldn't tell exactly. It wasn't that I learned to not care about things, because I didn't. It wasn't that I learned to balance things, because I didn't. It wasn't that I learned to take risks, break the routine, live like an organic system rather than some fleshy clockwork device.

It only recently occurred to me that before this last year, I couldn't really emotionally invest myself in people. Yes, I cared about people, and yes, I was capable of normal relationships, but I was never willing to put myself out there. Now that I have, my life may be a lot more complicated and sometimes less enjoyable, but I'm living now. And this was all set into motion because inside a spaceship disguised as a car, everything resonated just right and molecules vibrated just right that everything started to make sense.

In my moments of despair I want to wake up. There is a specific date, (Wednesday, December 13, 2006) after which I sometimes hope everything has been a very lucid dream. The chances of this happening are slim to nil. But I still want to. It used to be for stupid reasons, so I could avoid breaking my foot or not be depressed or maybe cut my hair two years before I actually did. Now I want to wake up because I realize that if this is a dream, then I have learned a lesson. Since I learned to invest in people then I can be a person, and I really wish that I didn't have to be so damn late in rehumanizing.

But dream or not, this reality shows no sign of stopping at any point. In my reality, having a car-shaped spaceship's brain in a jar sitting on your bookshelf is not out of the realm of possibility. You eat microwavable chicken treats for breakfast, martinis for lunch, and garlic bread ice cream for dinner. We need to be prepared for zombies, robots, and mole people. It is entirely possible that Elvis is alive, Paul is dead, and Tupac is coming back. The future may not be the brightest it's ever been, but we will never get bored as we resist the robotocracy, evacuate coastal areas due to the rising, sludgy ocean, and maybe, some day, cruise around the galaxy in a real spaceship.

Until then, I will be chipping away at my task, a task that I have learned is in no way absurd. It's everything else that's absurd.

Say Hello to the 2010's!

"It's a far cry from the world we thought we'd inherit

It's a far cry from the way we thought we'd share it

You can almost feel the current flowing

You can almost see the circuits blowing"

-Rush, "Far Cry"

Supposedly because I fit into the demographic of their readership, Paste Magazine sent me a free copy of their December issue. This is apparently a magazine for sheeplike hipsters who do not have access to The Box, or any real friends, for that matter. From what I can tell, this is a magazine that teaches hipsters what culture to like so that they can befriend other hipsters with their favorable opinions towards Grizzly Bear and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Anyway, the feature article of this issue was "The Best of a Decade." For some reason, it wasn't until I read this magazine cover that I realized that a decade has just come to an end.

And that makes me realize that there will inevitably be some nostalgia associated with this decade.

I wonder what will be remembered for nostalgia and what will be forgotten. I also wonder what will be remembered as its defining attribute. The 20's had speakeasies and flappers, the 30's had lots of poor, unemployed people, the 40's had victory gardens and racist propaganda, the 50's had housewives, the 60's had hippies, the 70's had big hair, prog, and Watergate, the 80's had one hit wonders and neon everything, and the 90's had grunge. Nothing else from these decades is of any consequence in the eyes of nostalgia. The 00's (aughts, naughts, aughties?) don't have a whole lot of good points for nostalgia. It will probably be remembered for stupid internet memes, the proliferation of cellphones, and shitty mainstream hip-hop. Green Day could also sneak in, potentially.

But I won't try to summarize the decade, I won't try to pick out "best of's." That is pointless for me to undertake because I was only really old enough to be fully aware of the last half, and because I am no voice of the masses, seeing as my favorite band is Weather Report and I was the only person who didn't seem to like "My Humps." (Although, I will say that The Mars Volta's "De-Loused in the Comatorium" would probably get my vote for best album of the decade, and Donnie Darko for best film. I'm probably wrong though.) Instead, I'm going to speculate on what could (but probably won't) happen in the next decade, the 2010's. (The 10's? the twenty-teens? The awkward to pronounce decade?)

Palin in 2012. It's a possibility. Her book, Going Rogue has only three syllables in its title, compared to Obama's The Audacity of Hope, which has seven syllables. In fact, contains a three syllable word, meaning that one word in his book title has as many syllables as Palin's entire title. If you want to win over America, you want to use as few syllables as possible. The words in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address were 76.2% monosyllabic, and America loved it. Well, at least the part that wasn't busy seceding.

Could she win? It's possible. She's folksy, she's ambitious, and America thinks she's hot! After 44 doughy men in the Oval Office, we need some eye candy. What about issues? America hasn't cared about issues since at least the election of William Henry Harrison, who ran a campaign that completely ignored issues, mostly to hide the fact that his policies included dying 30 days into his first term.

And speaking of 2012, this is also when the world is scheduled to end, according to the Mayans. But not actually. The world is actually supposed to start a new cycle, or a new age is supposed to dawn. This will probably be something like Y2k except even less based on facts, and will likely fuel some rioting. When the world doesn't end we will all feel a little silly, then go back to... stealing music!

The music industry is due for either a collapse or a major overhaul in the way it operates. With the increase in file sharing and free digital music downloads, record companies will have to change in order to stay financially solvent. The Album, the sacred cow of the music industry, will likely be killed and the trend will shift towards sales of individual songs in digital format. Artists will produce a lower volume of material, as everything will essentially become a single. There will still be people telling us that vinyl still has the best sound, and we will respond by telling them to make vinyl we can play on our iPods.

Which brings us to robots. Robots are another possibility. Now they do pretty mundane things, like our taxes and giving us directions in a soothing female voice. But soon they will be doing surgery, cooking us breakfast, flying our airplanes, and eventually, taking over our government. If they are merciful, they will kill all humans. If not, they will enslave us for demeaning tasks and amusement. Our children will grow up speaking binary. Kind of makes you wish Y2k had happened when it had the chance, doesn't it? But don't worry, robotocracies can be avoided. Just keep a brick handy at all times, and remember that they can read lips.

On the more organic side of things, there is the potential for a zombie apocalypse. While preparing for the world to end in 2012 is silly, it is never silly to be prepared for a zombie invasion. Remember, keep a shotgun handy at all times, stick together, and when in doubt, stay away from hospitals, churches, and law enforcement buildings. Have long and short term survival plans, and be prepared to fend off both scufflers and ragers. See you for the rebuilding of society!

Then there's toxic sludge. The ocean will certainly not turn into toxic sludge in the next decade, but it will definitely keep sliding in that direction. Jellyfish populations are thriving, which is an indicator that ocean ecosystems are getting harsher, and our ocean's chemistry is changing as the pH drops. There is a trash vortex twice the size of Texas in the middle of the pacific. Sludge, radioactive waste, bio-waste, industrial fallout, and excess carbon are all accumulating in the ocean, and it will have disastrous effects. Enjoy the ocean while you can, so we'll be able to tell our grandchildren "when I was your age, we could swim in the ocean without it melting our skin off." Won't the future be fun!

China could also potentially buy us. We will work in sweatshops, and China will be flooded with cheap, inferior goods that have "Made in the West" stamped on them.

We will also not be going much farther into space. A couple more shuttles may go up, but otherwise, we will be sitting on terra firma, being sad that we can't float around eating airborne globs of pudding as the Blue Danube Waltz plays.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what might happen. Enjoy it.

Fist-to-Face-itis

"I'd rather take the punch
Than not give you a shot
I'd rather find out who you are
Than who you're not"

-Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, "Fight Outta You"

Nothing puts life in perspective like getting punched in the face.

It was a Sexy Saturday night when I decided to partake in some good old fashion, freedom-loving, wholesome(-ish) streaking. At least thirty people ran a naked or half-naked mile down the main street in the St. Collegeberg party scene. I was wearing shoes, and for some reason, gloves, I think my logic being that if I was going to be losing body heat through my junk, I might as well conserve some by covering up my hands.

We assembled in a driveway and removed most of our clothing, except for underwear. We ran a few blocks, and then as we turned a corner, it all came off. I was holding my boxers in my hand, so I could have theoretically upgraded (or downgraded, depending on how you see it) to being only half-naked.

As we ran, I became more and more comfortable, and eventually I started weaving through groups of people, whipping people with my boxers, etc. When we got to the end of the street, some of us decided to run back, still naked, and I of course decided to come along, as I was beginning to realize that nakedness equals happiness.

On the way back, I became even more brazen, charging at groups of people and having them disperse before me. But then one guy didn't get out of my way, so I decided to move him manually. Bad idea.

He goes down and actually skids on the pavement. A few seconds later I see him in my peripheral vision, and he is running. In retrospect, it probably would have been a better idea to outrun him, because I know that I could have easily done it. But at the time, I felt safety in the group, and if I were to get in a fight with this guy, I wanted to have my friends around me. So I turned around and tried to juke him. The instant I turned around, I saw a fist, then a lot of stars, and then pavement.

I broke my fall with my arm and was up as quickly as possible. The last thing I wanted was to be lying naked in the gutter with a guy kicking the shit out of me. Before I'm even up, one of my fellow streakers throws my assailant against a car, gets a few hits on him, and he goes down. We kept running, we kept singing, I didn't really even feel a thing. (I would later learn that this was because my Infraorbital nerve had been rendered temporarily inactive from the blow.) We ran back to the house where our clothes were. A few blocks away, I turned to the guy next to me and said "you know, I think this is kind of what the first Olympics was like, back in the day, what with them competing naked and all."

I had a bloody nose that lasted fourteen hours. I had one hell of a shiner. I have a good story to tell. It was all worth it.

Random Acts of Magic

This not exactly fiction, and not exactly true. It is not me speaking, but it is echoing my sentiments. I wrote this a few months ago and decided that posting it would be easier than posting some new material. Enjoy.

I find myself frequently an observer of random acts of magic. For example, sometimes events happen so as to make me believe that my dad is a sorcerer. He makes things appear that are not and should not be, but not for the fact that they are something that only he would imagine. He once summoned a delivery van for a completely fictional company, which sold a completely fictional product. He even went so far as to manifest an entry in the encyclopedia for that product, so as to convince me that the product, and then by association the company, was real. He likes to be right.

I once found a staff that a careless wizard had left in the back seat of a taxi. I tried to summon familiars and cast enchantments that would make trees dance around, but all I could really do was make a very sickly looking bat appear and caused a sunflower to become belligerent for about an hour. I still actually have the scar from that one. I probably need some instruction on how to use it. I would like to ask my dad, but the last thing he taught me to do was how to ride a bike, and that ended a bit disastrously. I still haven’t tracked down the owner of that staff. It sits in my closet and occasionally emits a few sparks. One of them hit a polo shirt and made it sentient for a few hours, but then it went back to normal.

There is a genie that rides with me on the bus sometimes. Once when he had forgotten his bus pass, I paid for him. In return, he gave me a stone that lets me hear peoples’ thoughts. But there is a catch. I can only read the thoughts of people who are currently or have recently been under the influence of cocaine or methamphetamine. This means that I usually can only read the thoughts of homeless men, and there are some crazy things that go through those minds. The stone he gave me is both small and unremarkable, and a little ugly in fact. I imagine that the stone would have been more powerful if I had done him a greater favor. Perhaps if instead of paying for his bus fare I had pulled him out of the way of said bus as it was traveling 60 miles an hour, he would give me a stone that could not only let me read peoples’ thoughts, but also control them. And these wouldn’t just be coked-out hobos I would be able to control. These would be your doctors and lawyers and corporate CEO’s. And let me tell you another thing about this stone: I can’t control when I hear the thoughts. When it is in my pocket and I walk by a homeless man, sometimes I will hear ramblings about the government’s program for using robots to take over local small businesses.

Sometimes, on foggy mornings, ghosts come riding out of the fog. They ride fog horses. I know that the horses themselves are not ghost horses because they look and behave like fog, they swirl like fog, I can see the individual drops of moisture in them. But the ghosts, they have this blue tint about them. I never understood why it was called the blues until I saw these ghosts. This particular shade of pigment is the most melancholy thing I have ever seen. And that is just the color. You should see these ghosts. They’re wearing dilapidating wedding gowns and old confederate uniforms. But still, they look like they are having the time of their lives, or they would be, if only they were alive, howling and whooping as they graze by me while I fumble with my keys before the caffeine kicks in.

There is one other instance in which I have seen a bona-fide ghost. I was walking in this park near my house, in a dense thicket of evergreen trees. I came round a corner and there is this cowboy sitting there, in the exact same transparent blue that the fog riding ghosts appear in. He was eating a blue tin of beans over a blue fire. When I saw him, it looked sad, it looked pathetic, I temporarily lost all hope and was at the same time mystified and absorbed by this solitary and inexplicable figure. He motioned for me to sit down across from him. He tried to explain something to me, something about his crimes and how he was so sad and so cursed as a result, but his explanation made no sense and went in circles. Then quit unexpectedly, he went on a rant about the romanticizing of the Old West, and the vapidity of it all, and then told me to shove my damn Levis and my damn dude ranches up my ass. Then he got up and walked off into the trees sobbing.

But ghosts are a bit of a downer subjects, and there are so many more magical things that are much lighter subjects. I see all kinds of crazy, wondrous type things all the time. My dad works for a company that is run by an even more powerful sorcerer, who once summoned an entire third world county, so that his company could have some place to outsource jobs. He also made the inhabitants of neighboring countries very hostile towards the people of this newly summoned country, so that when the company came under investigation for unethical practices in that country, it was simply invaded by its neighbors, and the company collected a fat insurance from the lost infrastructure that cost them nothing to create in the first place.

This sorcerer CEO apparently lives in a mansion inside a glacier, of which he is constantly rearranging the insides according to his whims. He also reportedly rides a hydra to work. But I have not seen any of this, so I do not know whether or not this particular magical happening is true. But I see many things that I know are true, because I see them with my own eyes. I see happy spirits flying out of instruments and speakers that work their way into peoples’ ears and help their brains vibrate at the optimal frequency. Sometimes, spirits jump out of the TV and beat people over the head with 2x4’s. I watch the spirits at the DMV poke people to make them agitated. These spirits also live wild on the street in New York and Boston. There are spirits that live inside onions that get angry when their homes are destroyed, and retaliate by trying to destroy the eyes of the destroyers. These are related to the spirits in chili peppers, who assault the tongues of those who try to eat them. I see them swimming around in bottles of Tabasco sauce and in bowls of salsa. There are also malicious confusion spirits which swim around inside bottles of alcohol.

But there are more spirits out there than the ones that directly affect our senses. I know that cars have spirits. Whenever there are two or more cars left vacant in a parking lot, the car spirits jump out from under the hoods and dance around. Buildings have spirits, sometimes even individual rooms do. They like some people, and dislike others. You can talk to them sometimes by putting your hand on the wall, but you can’t use words; you can only show them memories and hopes. I once got the fire sprinklers in a parking garage to turn on that way on a very hot day.

Most technology operates on some sort of supernatural principle. I know that this sounds like a bit of an oxymoron: how can it be technology, the application of a scientific theory, if it relies on the supernatural? Science is all just an orderly form of magic anyway. Most analog technology relies somehow on the presence of a little man with a crank, in accordance with the conventional wisdom of small children. With digital technology, things get a little more complicated. These are operated by teams of very small and very tempermental gremlins. Sometimes the gremlins cooperate, and sometimes they don’t. That’s just the way it works. When they break, you have to send them back to the manufacturer. The electronics are not actually being fixed. What is actually happening is that a gremlin soothsayer is trying to negotiate with the team, oftentimes ot no avail.

But there are more agreeable teams of gremlins, which live in pacemakers and satellites, things that have to work. The best behave gremlins we sent out into the far reaches of space on the Voyager probes, where they ambassadors for our discretely magical world.

You don’t believe me? Then why don’t you ask the merfolk that live in the tank of my toilet! Why don’t you ask the Jersey Devils and Phantom Kangaroos that live in the park down the street! Why don’t you ask the elves that meet in my basement as they plan their coup to overthrow the Leprechauns! Why don’t you ask my mailman, who is a troll in disguise, and now has to pay the rent on an apartment after he got evicted out from under the highway overpass! Ask the dragon that lives in the bathroom in that gas station by the Mondo-Mart! Ask the family of griffins that have nested in the bell tower of St. Luke’s! Ask the crazy neighborhood cat lady who actually can control her cats and make them do her bidding! Ask my friend who got herpes after being seduced by a succubus. Ask the centaur who landscaped my back yard! Ask the barista at the Starbucks near my house who shoots milk out of her fingertips! Ask the mole people who sued the city for putting a subway tunnel through their colony! Go to the storage room in the public library where gravity has been shifted by about fifteen degrees! Go to the thrift store where the pants dance around once the shop closes! Go anywhere, look hard enough, and it will pop out at you! There are so many things, so many random acts of magic, happening all the time and you just have to look for them, that’s all it takes!

I wish I could show you these things. I wish I could show you some of these random acts of magic, or maybe even commit one or two myself. Would that change things? Would I somehow be able to show you that the world is beautiful or that everything is alright and that you shouldn’t have to be sad about what doesn’t happen? Would I be a better person for that? Am I just some asshole who doesn’t even really know what’s going on, so he makes things up in his head to compensate? I want to show these things to you.

I could get that staff out of my closet and make sparks fly around. I could get out my little genie rock and tell you what bums on the street are thinking. I could wake you up early one foggy morning and show you the ghosts. I could crack open my DVD player and show you the gremlins inside. Would that reconcile everything in this crazy universe?

I guess I’m wondering if telling you about these magical happenings would make any difference at all, make you ok with your role in the world, show you that it’s something we’re all a part of. But even though you don’t think so, even though you were never smacked over the head with a formal notification, I know for certain that you are capable of random acts of magic.

History/Mystery

History is a mystery because we are always sifting through the stories to find out whodunnit. Did the Indian really use every part of the buffalo? Or did they throw out some of the more awkward parts? Did the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock really befriend them like we are told in kindergarten when we learn about the first Thanksgiving? Or was it by coercion that the Pilgrims learned to plant fishcorn? All this sleuthing for artifacts and interrogations for primary source are all going to lead us to some spectacular, elementary-my-dear-Watson, it all makes sense now kind of denouement where we have figured everything out exactly as it happened and thereafter anyone who has a different interpretation is a revisionist asshole with an agenda and everything is absolute and there are never any unsettling questions to be asked, right? Unfortunately for those who want one version of the past that suits their station, the answers are fluid and slip thorugh our minds as time goes by, and we need to come crawling back to Baker Street, or maybe this time go to a more seedy, trench coat-clad private eye who will rough guys up for answers and sleep with some dame in the process. History is not simple. That doesn't suit you? Too bad. You're living it.

Let's all go to Rockland

Sorry for the slew of short posts. I'm just trying to crank out material so that I have relatively frequent updates. Longer, better thought out out posts will come soon.

This is a fact: I am not Allen Ginsberg. I do not want to be Allen Ginsberg, but in some ways I am disappointed that I am not Allen Ginsberg. No one is Allen Ginsberg anymore. Now, I'm sure that this is painfully obvious, because as of 1997 he is permanently in a state that could be described as "dead." Now, death didn't stop Paul McCartney, as he is still performing and receiving media attention to this date, but from most people, Allen Ginsberg included, being dead makes you no longer existent.

Not being Allen Ginsberg means that I will not be tried for obscenity. In the last sixty years, we have pushed the boundaries of obscenity to the point where "Birthday Sex" is completely radio friendly. Had it been released in 1956, the same year as "Howl," Jeremih's court date would be right after Ginsberg's. Today, "Howl" wouldn't shock anyone. I could write a poem about smoking the sperm of endangered species of owls while caressing my masturbatory broomstick while fondling an eight year old boy in a back alley of Kuala Lumpur, read it on the streets, and people would hear it and say "that's been done before." Today, everything is obscene, meaning that nothing is obscene. Getting high on peyote in your Nob Hill apartment and seeing the face of Moloch in a hotel facade is, well, if not commonplace, at least not too out of the ordinary. I'm with you in Rockland, but so is everyone else. All the limits have been pushed; Dada has happened, 4'33" has happened, the Beat Generation has happened, flower power has happened, punk has happened, free jazz has happened. They have all happened. It is time to move on. We can't keep trying to write beat poetry. We can't keep trying to be Ornette Coleman. We can't keep smelling bad and driving colorful VW buses. We can't keep not being able to play bass but still be the bass player in a band.

If we're going to keep asking "what is art?" then we need to do things that haven't been done instead of imitating what was once pushing the limits.

And is a blog by an aspiring science fiction writer who thinks that his dead car was a spaceship pushing the limits? No. Like I said, I am not Allen Ginsberg. None of us are. So let's forge our own paths, and if they lead into obscenity, then more power to us.

Halloweenomics

It's important to find your niche. I have found my niche, and as a result, have a virtually unlimited supply of candy, albeit one with not very much variety.

I am the one person on earth who actually likes Almond Joys. Every other person on God's Spaceship Earth hates Almond Joy. Growing up, about one in fifteen houses would give out Almond Joy, apparently because they hated children and wanted to ruin their Halloweens by giving them inedible candy. Somehow, all this excess Almond Joy would find its way in my direction. I would get free candy by eating other peoples' unwanted junk. I had found my own economic niche.

But there must be something more to this holiday than excessive consumption of empty calories, acts of vandalism and hijinks, excessive drinking and low budget zombie movies, right? Of course not, and that's why Halloween is the best holiday of the year.

Have a good one.

Digital Anthems

"All this machinery making modern music

Can still be open hearted,

Not so coldly charted, it's really just a question

Of your honesty, yeah your honesty."

-Rush, "Spirit of Radio"

I do not own any vinyl. I will not deny this.

Anyone who owns vinyl will tell you that it is something you need to have, the benefits being the sound quality and, I suppose, being able to look down on people who don't have vinyl. When people tell me "you need to get your hands on some vinyl," they say it as if not owning vinyl is something that I'm supposed to feel bad about. Not that I'm just missing something, but that I'm depriving myself of something essential and doing an injustice to the artist. I have no interest in purchasing or owning any vinyl. Maybe I'm missing something by not hearing the sound so crisply that I feel like I'm front row at the Blue Note, getting a facefull of Chet Baker's spittle, but as a child of a post-industrial America I'm willing to say that vinyl is useless to me.

This goes beyond the fact that I do not own a record player. The way we consume music now is radically different; the entire equation has been changed. Each song is now a packet of digital information that is portable, duplicable, and easily accessed. You can do some of that with vinyl, you can get good at using a turntable and seamlessly switching between songs, but there is nothing that come close to the versatility of digitized music. The way I perceive it, I don't "own" the song unless it is in the same digital library as the rest of the music that I "own." So vinyl, unless I were to convert it into an mp3 file, rendering the vinyl aspect irrelevant, has no value. Yes, we are losing something in sound quality, no one will pretend otherwise. Music is consumed and perceived differently now, ever so slightly. This is not better or worse because it is new. Vinyl is not better or worse because it is old. This is just different.

This is Progress. Progress happens and you might as well make it work for you.