My Luddite Resolve Is Weakening

I may finally have to get an e-reader.

I've been lugging the heavy hardcover version of Mason & Dixon in my computer bag lately. Its rewards are worth the effort, but I'd love to be able to carry all of Thomas Pynchon's novels at once, and all the time, without a wagon.

The Quote of the Day from Patti Smith

“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”
-- Patti Smith (quoted in the New York Times, 17 Nov 2010)

Patti Smith won the National Book Award for non-fiction last night for Just Kids. I'll have to move it farther up on my reading list. Right now I'm finishing Lives Like Loaded Guns by Lyndall Gordon and I have Life by Keith Richards and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen in the on-deck positions. All, of course, are being read in their paper editions (remembering that "e-books" are not books) and all are either from libraries or independent bookstores.

Congratulations Patti!

Sometimes True Blue Liberal is a Counterrevolutionary

As the owner of a couple of Gibson guitars (which take up more of my limited leisure time than this blog or tweeting or any other recreational computing), I was tempted to skip a couple hours of work and run over to see an event at New York's Hard Rock Cafe yesterday that had been billed in emails from Gibson in dramatic terms "Gibson invites you to witness a revolution. Henry Juszkiewicz, Chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp, will address members of the press, artists and fans, with an announcement that will change music forever. This is more than a press conference. More than an event. This is an uprising!" I didn't go, and I'm glad.
Henry Juszkiewicz and the teabaggers are devaluing the word "revolution" in twenty ten, because Gibson's attempt to "change music forever" was the Firebird X seen in this video from yesterday's event.

It looks and sounds gimmicky and (not to offend the demonstrator, who obviously knows his way around a fretboard) the size of the guitarist makes the Firebird look like it's the size of a Guitar Hero controller. How many of these electronics will be outdated in 5 years? Or worn out and unfixable in 10? A Gibson guitar with a MSRP of more than five grand should be around for at least 40 or 50 years, as the next video shows.
This is a Firebird III from 1963, showing why True Blue Liberal will be wearing white rather than red in this particular "revolution". Here's what a guitar should sound like.

Now I'm going to shut off my computer and pick up my Flying V or my SG. I have some practicing to do.

For political bloggers who have considered e-suicide when the apathy is enough.

You have to admit that it's sort of cool (and a little clichéd) to see that the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is crashing from overuse today, in this festive week between Xmas and New Year's Day.
You might have to wait until after the holidays to off your Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn selves.