Thursday, December 04, 2008
My megabank provided a real service. I write very few checks, I'm about out, & it's taken so long to go through them that they have my old address, which I have to cross out & write in my current, I couldn't be bothered replacing them. When I tried ordering more online, the bank website order new checks link sent me to another website, a company that sells checks, where I'd have to give all my account information. I didn't want two whole boxes of 300 checks even with the Lighthouses of America design (or frogs, or 4 views of Betty Boop, tempting as she is). Just get me through a few months with the plain old until I make it in person to my branch bank inconveniently located in another town & then maybe I'll order pretty pictures from the catalogue they have there. So I called the 800 number hoping this was something they did, immediately got a live human, gave my info, passed the test questions, & they send 50 free checks.
Busy compiling a "2008 "favorites" list for WFMU blog. Music & books. This is not my strength. I hear an enormous amount of new music (any music I haven't heard before) during a given year, but the number of complete, new albums I listen to at home & that stay on my shortlist of music I keep wanting to hear is never large. Although I trust the tastes of many WFMU DJs, & their ability to know something is really good, I also know they have little time to live with the same music. I'm often tempted to ask how many times they actually listened to the albums on their "best of" lists, a troll-like question. I'm up to seven albums on my list, no pop, no rock.
As for books; I rarely a read book of prose twice. The New York Times tells me the "important" new books, I've read exactly one of this year's 100 "best" & there's two I might read, all nonfiction. I'm more likely to pull one of these books off the library 14 day shelf, read the dust jacket, note the length & the tiny print, & put it back on the shelf. I admit most of what I read is insignificant. My local library doesn't buy the new books that are important to me, & at $25 or more each I can't afford them. Few are from major publishers, & I visit some of them at Amazon hoping they'll show up used or remaindered.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Busy compiling a "2008 "favorites" list for WFMU blog. Music & books. This is not my strength. I hear an enormous amount of new music (any music I haven't heard before) during a given year, but the number of complete, new albums I listen to at home & that stay on my shortlist of music I keep wanting to hear is never large. Although I trust the tastes of many WFMU DJs, & their ability to know something is really good, I also know they have little time to live with the same music. I'm often tempted to ask how many times they actually listened to the albums on their "best of" lists, a troll-like question. I'm up to seven albums on my list, no pop, no rock.
As for books; I rarely a read book of prose twice. The New York Times tells me the "important" new books, I've read exactly one of this year's 100 "best" & there's two I might read, all nonfiction. I'm more likely to pull one of these books off the library 14 day shelf, read the dust jacket, note the length & the tiny print, & put it back on the shelf. I admit most of what I read is insignificant. My local library doesn't buy the new books that are important to me, & at $25 or more each I can't afford them. Few are from major publishers, & I visit some of them at Amazon hoping they'll show up used or remaindered.
