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I have been uploading the massive 170 CD box of everything Mozart
– thanks again, Record Surplus – to my mp3 collection one careful disc at a time over a period of weeks. Why do I believe 170 discs won't overwhelm the collection if I upload them s..l..o..w..l..y instead of all at once? I'm still planning to upload the whole box. It's so well thought out, and so not rational.I'm not sure what this has to do with writing, except as an example that otherwise intelligent people can believe silly things, even when they know the things are silly. Scientists can be superstitious. Insurance agents can play Internet poker. Doctors frequently smoke. It's also an example of what Michael Shurtleff (yes, him
again) calls "opposites" – the thorny way most of us fight desperately for the things we need, while also clinging to the things that make the things we need impossible. I love my balanced music collection; yet I can't resist the acquisitive urge to grab all that Mozart, even if that means my shuffle play now includes way too much harpsichord.I probably don't need a balanced music playlist or 170 CDs of Mozart; I just like the word better. Which reminds me of my cousin's two year old. She recently discovered the word "need" and decided it is always preferable to her previous favorite word, "want." Shurtleff would agree. Need is always a stronger choice. Go for it, kiddo!
I've been watching the 1995-6 series Space: Above and Beyond
a lot lately. I still love the show, but I've been reminded of a pet peeve I have with lots of future-set genre shows, this one included: the constant thematic use of 20th century popular music.I don't mind the suggestion that people will still enjoy music from other eras in the near future. I have very eclectic tastes myself, and I believe people's tastes are only going to get more eclectic as time goes by and Moore's Law makes the storage and easy portability of ridiculous amounts of pop ephemera the norm. But if space marines in 2063 head off to battle listening to 19th century classical, mid-20th century Patsy Cline, and late 20th century punk rock, shouldn't they occasionally also listen to mid-21st century mind-click-phono-folk-pop-weirdness? Or whatever is actually being written and performed in 2063? Surely not everyone on board the Saratoga is a vintage music junkie?I love the way Lost tweaked the use of pop music in genre shows, even though it's not (mostly) a futuristic show. They won my absolute devotion in an early episode that closed with a dreamy montage of beach life over a pop song, complete with lyrics. Then abruptly, the song cut out. Hurley reached for his disc player, shook it and said "oh well, I guess that's that." And that WAS that. No more unexplainable pop music -- at least not until they found all those records in the hatch...I've been trying to figure out how much "earth archive" materials my own future explorers will be able to access in Savages. Well, duh, Betsy -- they'll have EVERYTHING. Probably on an iPod the size of a finger nail inserted subcutaneously somewhere in their heads. They'll have the entire, searchable, Library of Congress and then some.Crap. Moore's Law is a bitch.But I promise, if I ever have them enjoying a thematic moment of popular music, some of it will date to 2258.
