accessory of the year

You may have heard of Segatoy Japan's iDog, a speaker for you iPod or other audio device. Now there is iFish.



iFish is capable of changing its feelings from happy to angry by waving its body side to side and by changing the color of the LED lights.

Watch iFish's Little Video. It's mesmerizing. And it makes you have to pee.

iFish is the source of all things good and beautiful.

attack of the estrogen

I blame the warm whether last week. It has kicked my hormones into hypermode and caused me to act like a cat in heat, except instead of wanting to hump everything in site, I have the overwhelming desire to act out my stereotypical gender role. And I don't mean the missionary position. I mean shopping.

Symptom #1: Obsessive reading of girlie blogs like Dress a Day and You Knit What?? The latter is pretty hilarious, especially since I started to knit a few months ago and finally feel like there is a wise, cranky voice to explain the preponderance of horrible knitting patterns in the world. In searching the archives I also happened to find a nasty critque of a pattern I had been planning to make, and now I'm thanking the gods of snarkiness for showing me the True Way.

Symptom #2: Relapse into fashion obsession. YES, I ADMIT IT, I CAN'T FUCKING HELP BEING BOURGIE. Sometimes I feel like acquiring a wardrobe that consists entirely of amazingly utilitarian clothing like the classic work jumpsuit, and then I start reading something like Dress a Day and my love for things like clean lines and pants with lining is rekindled. And then I visit the Ann Taylor Loft website and want to spend all my money on a tweed front slit skirt and I just feel dirty.

leave me alone!

What is it with people interrupting me when I'm trying to read at lunchtime? To me, burying my nose in a book sends a clear message: "I am a rude, antisocial bastard and have procured this reading material to avoid having to talk to you, because you are boring and tedious." Apparently the people who work at Gentrified Tobacco Warehouse think of reading as the sort of activity that doesn't even require an "Excuse me, can I talk to you now?" kind of courtesy. They launch into the small talk with no warning.

"That a good book?"
"Yes, it's quite a happy coincidence when my social interaction avoidance device also provides entertainment and/or intellectual stimulation. Unlike this conversation."

Today I was sitting outside on some large brick steps leading down to a fake stream running through the complex, reading. A woman I've never even met before walked right up to me, stood there for a second, and asked, "Aren't you afraid you'll fall in?" WTF? You interrupted a complete stranger's private reading moments to ask this? I'm sitting on a FLAT, SOLID SURFACE.

In retrospect, her question might have been some kind of threat, or maybe the concerns of a person who, like prime time TV show characters who see dead people, has visions of unsuspecting readers tumbling head first from their seemingly stable seating into bodies of water, moving traffic, or cabinets of expensive crystal.

But you know, maybe I don't want to be saved. I just want to be left alone.

i want to spenddddddd

Recently at College Radio Station we received the Galaxie 500 Peel Sessions CD, and upon playing the excellent first track, "Submissions" (which turns out to be a Sex Pistols cover) on a radio show, I downloaded the CD to my iTunes. Now I'm obsessed with the band, odd because I usually can't stand shoegazer stuff, but this has just the right amount of psych to make it good. I'm so obsessed that I've developed a jones for the Galaxie 500 box set, which can be procured on half.com used for around $60. It's still out of my music=buying budget, and far down the list of things I should be spending my money on. Alas.

In the meantime, I've had my eyes on even more expensive luxury items. I've lusted after my own a Pentax 67 medium format camera since I used one as a photography student in college, but the $2,000 I could easily shell out on one has never entered into the realm of financial reality for me. Since experiencing the joys of casual photography with a digital camera, and pondering the inevitability of learning digital photography on a more serious level, I've started thinking about investing in a digital camera.

I know a little about film cameras, but digital cameras are a mystery to me. I'm afraid of making the mistake I made when I bought my first 35mm film camera: buying a "nice" new camera from a mall camera store that cost about $350, a Canon Rebel EOS. When I started to learn about photography, I realized that these cameras are a total ripoff. Once you learn how to adjust the aperature and shutter speed to get a good exposure (which is really freaking easy), you dont need all of the annoying presets that come with this kind of camera. You can get a great used Nikon 35mm at a decent camera store for around $150 and spend the extra $200 on a nice tripod and cable release - enough to take photos as nice as you'll see in a museum.

I'm trying to avoid a similar experience with the purchase of a digital camera, but internet recommendations are usually made by professional photographers, i.e. assholes who take dull pictures of sunsets and are really into useless bells and whistles. I think a high-end consumer digital SLR like this might be good, but what I really want is something with around 6 megapixels that allows me basic manual controls without those useless "portrait" and "close-up" modes or the (also useless) ability to take a 5-second digital video. Does such a thing even exist?

Oh, right, it doesn't matter, because I don't have the money to pay for it anyway. Whew.