Super Pop-tastic

"Albert Einstein," my father-in-law is fond of saying, "Would have given his left nut for a pocket calculator that could add, subtract, multiply, divide, and take square roots." Forced into using pencil, paper, and a slide rule, the technologically penurious fellow could only manage to, you know, utterly revolutionize physics. On the other side of the coin, I have a pocket calculator that possesses somewhat more computing power than the guidance system that landed the lunar module in the Sea of Tranquility, and yet it hasn't enabled me to revolutionize physics. As you might guess, I miss a lot of the points that my father-in-law tries to make.

In this case, though, I believe that the point he's trying to make is something like, "Technology, dude. Holy. Living. Crap." This struck me a couple of days back while using a piece of software that the Apple Computer Corporation gives away for free when you buy one of their computers, merely the raw editing capabilities of which Phil Spector would have given his left nut for in 1965 (insert current-events-related Phil Spector joke here. Myself, I've nothing). In spite of the fact that my profession and my main hobby are pretty heavily tied up in it, I'm not usually one to get moony over technology. But I never stop being amazed at the fact that I live in a time in which there exists a common household appliance into which one can plug ones guitar and, some time later, a finished album pops out.

Garageband won't make me the Beatles, but then the Beatles couldn't create a symphony orchestra and an "ahh" singing choir, mix them together under a song they'd already recorded, have a drifting pan from left to right and then flange the whole thing...okay, fine, they could and did do that. But they couldn't do it in their basement. My point is this: fuck the fucking Beatles. Also that there's a new song up. As you were.

Next: Technology: Do you own enough?