Heh heh heh...Bruins get a good win over Leafs last night, setting the tone, I hope, for the rest of the season.
Blog suggestion: http://www.whiskyfun.com/
for those who like spirts, good music and even silly comics. Remember-if it's not Scottish, it's crap.

I'm with you on the counter culture, but if I'm going to be temping in the new year I'm going to have to break down and get an mp3 player. I promise it won't be an iPod.

It is not the iPod. It is the false promise that accompanies it that destroys from within.

I hope Ray returns with guest-posting at other blogs.

As far as hockey goes... man, the Penguins were down 4-0 halfway through the first period last night, and by the end of the second they were leading 6-4! This "new" NHL is insane! The scores are like that nearly every night!

If nothing else, I suggest you live vicariously through my hockey pool. Whaddya say I update you daily on how my players have done?

I was invited into a Yahoo hockey pool which I find inordinately taxing as I have to make daily decisions - something I avoid at all costs in most aspects of my life. I wallow in the mid range between the keeners and those who have already given up.

What is your pool's structure, Mr. T?

<i>It is the false promise that accompanies it</i>

Couldn't the same be said for any consumer product?

Indeed - this counter culture cuts a broad swath but it is also focused on the real agenda...[Ed.: ...<i>man</i>]. <p>The point is that these IT toys are only consumer products and the idea that there is a cultural revolutions is a load of rubbish, just more products to be sold without any real change in the nature of community or human existence. If you see that then you see the interests backing "the revolution" are not really any different than the interests of 19th century industialists except they wear sneakers and t-shirts.

Re: ipod

Yeah, ditto what you said.

Twelve years after my first CD player, I'm still happy with that (now archaic) technology. Although I admit that I love the ease with which I can transfer mp3's from the computer to the CD for the mp3 player in the car, and vice versa.

Still, what we think we need is often dictated by large corporations, media... and our peers. Even peers who have blogs. "Bandwagon approach," "everyone's doing it," and so on.

I bought my stereo in 1994 for then about 1/4th the cost of a PC. I have not bought anything since for home music and it is more than I need. I have my car audio set on that random play setting called AM/FM.

I'm thinking of quitting my blog soon too. For me, writing a blog is entertainment. I wouldn't do it at all if it weren't compelling or fun. My problem is I don't really have any spare time. The time I use up blogging is stolen from other more important tasks. Anyway, if any of you feel like it, you can drop me a line and let me know in the comments section what you've thought of my blog over the year or so that I've been writing, so that if I start it up again, I can improve it.

Rove?

I would only buy the mp3 player because my Walkman (only my second such at that, vintage '95) is too bulky to carry all day and the radio reception is poor. It would mainly be a means to shut out the noises around me, though I suppose I could just take my headphones with me and pray for internet access.

The "counter culture" died in about 1991 in Seattle. I blame two things: Nirvana making it big, and the WTO riots.

Don't get hockey here. Sucks. Damn ESPN. The Outdoor Network? Geez. I'd have to go door to door til the end of the season to get enough signatures to get the local cable provider here to put it on.

The IT gadget craze is the rebirth of 'yuppie', without the Izod shirts. Nothing more. Nothing less. It's built mostly on status seeking.

Counter culture died when Nirvana went big? Then it died when the Clash went big in the 80's too? Did it also die, for the third time, when Green Day signed with a big label? 'Counter Culture' died because there's no substance behind it. All that really typified counter culture of the 90's was angst. That's not a culture. That's pouting en mass.
The punks stood for something. Punk ain't dead. It's just small, but it's still around. Make a culture about something while not being elitist about it(oh, everybody now knows about this cool music now. Damn it, this was my band! This is what allowed me to say I was different and hipper than you! No, you can't like them too because then I'm a Conformist like you, you lick spittle consumerite! Noooooooo!), and you'll have a real counter culture. Movements are about something more than just setting yourself apart.
Counter Culture has largely died out because it became a status game. Get rid of that, and you'll have something cool like Two-Tone again.

Cocaine is to money, as is blogging is to time. Discuss.

Indeed, ry. 'Nee is post-Clash. This is a dawning of a new counter culture in which ska shall have its own fourth wave and we will all again wear thin black ties.

Here is a twisted aspect of the IT-borg that will be definitely part of the "Hey-Hoo" rhyming chants and plastered on placards when we the future fill the streets: Phillipino workers answering inane questions</i> from bored cell phone users by doing a quick Google and texting back. Wonder what the pay and benefits of that job are?

After having been a blogger for over 4 years, I see no reason to quit. I don't feel owned by my blog. I don't have time. I blog what I can when I can. I think my often lack of convenient internet access contributes to my general apathy... but I have a job, a wife and a son who demand the vast majority of my time. Correction: I <i>choose</i> to give them the vast majority of my time.

Still, I manage to post once in a while. I've gone months at a time without posting. Sure, readership drops off, but I mostly write for myself anyway.

I think a symptom or indication of someone whose blog "owns" them is when they blog just for the sake of blogging. ["<i>Oh no, I've gone three hours without posting! Let's see what's going on in the news... I need something to write about!</i>"]

That is it. It is a hobby or a habit but not a burden. What I largely do is wake up and give myself 45 minutes to write 3 posts and then I let you guys react through the day. I do it as a discipline of getting my brain working before I get to work and can get sued for being thick.

Heh, technically I also came along after the Clash split up and we were given the rather interest B.A.D. as a replacement.
Even though I'm an upstart I do have some idea of what came afore.
I still don't have my thin black tie, but I think they'll let me slide. ;) I was never Mod.

I think Brian and JoA and Mr. McLeod have it about right. Post about what interests you only and the blog won't own you.

"I was never Mod"...<p>Though I was only a second wave Jam mod in my eastern Canadian way, that is about as sad a thing as ever I heard. I was a wee 1980 one and I still have my buttons though not my anorak. I'd never fit in it now anyway.