What about... now?

What have I been up to? Good question. Well, work has been a hassle, mainly due to someone who is completely batshit. And not in the cool HST way. More like the "Dear god, I can't function in society and therefore neither can you... Head explodies!" way. So I have been trying to keep my mind from jumping out of my head through my sinuses and strangling her. I've been reading books. I've been reading the news and I've made myself a little project.

I have decided to mail the internet. Not all of it. That would be crazy. No, just a lot. A handful of gigabytes. Well, more than that. Maybe 12-20 gig. I don't know. Yet. That's because part of this project is going to be measurement. A measure of the bandwidth of USPS! It won't be accurate but... Oh hell. Here's the low down:

I've amassed a great amount of data. I have seasons of TV shows, episodes of unaired pilots,movies pulled from global sales, giga-packs of comics and albums upon albums of fantastic music. Everyone out there knows that I am a bit of a pop-culture junkie. I am a collector. I am also a finder. I'm that guy that you go to to get something. And now it's time to give it all away.

I have blank DVDs and CDs lined up along with jewel cases and padded envelopes. I have found an OP pad of vintage art-deco letterhead. I have my 1950's smith-corona (well, one of a few, actually) all inked up and ready to fire. And I have been burning.

What better way to spread my fantastic crap then to actually give it to people. But this is not the casual file sharing that you are all used to. The files are too big to be easily share. Oh, I know how I could get them to you, but do you people each have 3 gig set up for me? No. And I wouldn't ask you to do that. So I will provide the content. I will provide the storage media. And I will provide the postage. And to stress that these are not simply "songs you should hear" or "something cool to read" I am also including a hand typed letter detailing what I have given you and why. Each letter is a little mini-essay from me, to you, about what you will be holding in your hands.

There are, I think, 7 people on the list. Some of them will be getting "birthday presents". Others, I've owed them these things for a while. A couple are simply names I picked out of the blue. I hope you like what you get. Expect them to go out sometime towards the end of this month.

P.S. Sorry if this sounds a bit pretentious, but it is... It's a hipster nostalgia project. It's a reset back to when mix tapes were on tapes and mixes on CDs were novelties. Not to make it sound like G.O.D. but I miss spending days putting a mix playlist together and then spending hours copying it onto a cassette. I miss the mix being difficult to produce and therefore special. And when you gave it to someone, most often you'd be there when they heard it. I know I'm not the only one who sat there and watched their friends faces change with each song, seeing how one track played off the next. Fuck yeah, it's pretentious. But it's the best kind. It's the kind that pulls you out of the mundane. It's not telling you to download a mix off ITunes from someone in Brussels because they listen to a few of the same bands. It's having fingerprints on each copy of something you made. It's organic.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to climb off my soapbox and get back to work.