the far corner

OK, so I am not hip or with it.  I am occasionally groovy, but have never been far out.  So, more often than not, I am not up on what the kids are down with.  In truth, I am overtly and spectacularly skeptical of any new media, social or otherwise.  I didn’t get an iPod until they’d been out for five years.  Facebook is a huge fail for me and I have not been swept up by the Twitter zeitgeist.  This skepticism, coupled with my squirrel-like attention span when it comes to finding the intrinsic value of new media, offers up a pretty huge barrier to entry.  My back door into these technologies is often adoption by my closest friends.  Case in point: last.fm.  Perusing my BFF’s site, I noted a casual reference to “check out [his] listening habits at Last.fm”.  That reference means this sucker passed QA testing.  So I’m doing tax prep in my office today and, though I’ve tooled around the last.fm site a bit previously, I’m really giving it a go today.  I just enter a few bands I like and boom: the site constructs my own personal radio-like music feed.  Most of the bands I’ve never heard before, but I magically like everything I’m hearing.

So here’s my ringing endorsement: Last.fm will improve your life.  Thanks for the passive recommendation, Jake.

Since I already invoked the insidious shitmonster’s name, I thought I would draw your attention to today’s Urban Word of the Day.  It directly (albeit passive-aggressively) addresses one of my prime complaints about the service.  Knowing that there are scattered pinpoints of accord on this gives me hope, like a conspiratorial tip of the hat from a fellow member of the resistance as we slip past one another in the slavering throng.