The internet is a surveillance state.

One thing I feel goony about is all the times when I get into a jag of listening to one song over and over. Before the internet(!), I could escape from sharing the fact that I'd listened to one song ten times in a row because that was my own private life, goddamnit, and no one was looking over my shoulder as I set up my discman to repeat one song over and over again. But now, since I have the last.fm music logger thing (which I have actually had for four years now, dear god), I feel sort of extra nerdy about my occasional song obsessions, as well as any time I listen to something particularly cheesy. No one needs to know about that week in 2007 when I thought "Last Dance With Mary Jane" was a really good song. And yet!

And yet, I would feel pretty upset if one day the last.fm website were to disappear, and those years of my internet listening habits were no longer recorded. Especially as now it can even process the stuff I listen to on my beat-up ol' iPod, which I think is still a new-ish development. There I am in all that strange data, revealing to the world that the last 6 years or so of searching for music off the beaten track has done nothing to sever my dependence on listening to the Beatles.

It also makes me feel strange, and not so great in the end, that most everything I listen to exists only in the computerized world. Of course, if I had to rely on only being able to listen to music I had bought in a physical store, I would be royally fucked, since my dumb overeducated white poor person lifestyle doesn't leave a lot of extra monies for media purchases. Last weekend I bought a used novel for $5, and as of current writing I have $40 in my bank account for the rest of the month, so I feel pretty stupid about spending that $5 on words instead of food. Of course, the less money I have, the more I am drifting towards the truly idealized life of the scholar, which generally seems to require that one own clothes with holes in them (done) and be somewhat skeletal. Mind over body, and so forth!

In related news: I am pretty hungry. Luckily I have a lot of unliked clothing to try to sell to Buffalo Exchange, and I also can make an okay meal out of a can of beans and a can of tomatoes?

I have also noticed lately that when I run into a particularly pretty, well-dressed female acquaintance of mine on campus (I teach in the building her department is housed in, so I run into her about once a week or so), I find myself getting really cranky about the fact that she somehow manages to finance an ever-changing wardrobe on a TA's salary. And, you know, is all pretty and shit. This crankiness makes me feel bad of course, because what did she ever do besides suck less at life than I do?, but there it remains! Go away, overwhelming consumerist impulses, get the fuck outta here.