Letters to the Editor
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Enough, mixedcontent
Some respondents--all of them named "Anonymous"--have stated repeatedly that the device called TV-B-Gone is detrimental to civility because it allows one person surreptitiously to impose his or her will on others. (Who, besides you, said anything about it "destroying" televisions?) What is called for is not unilateral action, but agreement--in other words, the human interaction that you and so many other LWers seem to favor.
I no more want you to control my environment than I want some 22-year-old bartender with a stack of Journey and Matchbox 20 CDs to control it.
Interestingly, Users' Comments at Amazon, a sign of real world usage, describe the device as a "toy" that is "fun" to use for "pranks."
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Yo, I got yer human interaction right here.
@Anonymous, posing as a schoolmarm:
TV-B-Gone is detrimental to civility because it allows one person surreptitiously to impose his or her will on others. (Who, besides you, said anything about it "destroying" televisions?)
Omigod, here come the immensely powerful tv-b-gone shock troops, surreptitiously imposing their will!!! Oh noooooo!! How shall civil society survive???
What is called for is not unilateral action, but agreement--in other words, the human interaction that you and so many other LWers seem to favor.
Paging Phil Hartman, Anal Retentive Anonymous on line 3...
As for the use of the word, "Enough" in your subject line: you clearly understand the feeling many of us have about derelict mediaspew. The big difference is, you are participating in the comments thread by your own choice and if you decide it has become tiresome (exceeding the SNL reference limit, I know), your options are numerous and obvious.
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Making It In Music
As a seasoned music industry-er, deep listener, and overall music fan, i would absoilutely support a day of silence.
However, the author's reasoning shows a profound lack of understanding of the current state of the music industry.
I wish it were the case that musicians could rely on their records bringing in the lion's share of their income. I wish musicians didn't have to rely on ancillary revenue to prop up what might otherwise have been a sustainable career.
In short, I wish artists could rely on record labels as partners, as supporters, as music fans. (Columbia's hiring of Rick Rubin is a misguided attempt to correct this.) But, labels today are worried about numbers, as partly they should be, but not at the expense of the medium that delivered their excess in the first place.
And, please don't put me in the camp of crotchety bemoaners of file-sharing or as harboring aintiquated views of technology and its due blame in this mess. It's a combination of things, but mostly the labels fault.
So, it's a sad state of affairs that musicians have to rely on licensing income to subsidize their careers in ways never before seen. But, in fact, they do. Or, they have to kill themselves on the road with an inhuman touring schedule.
I won't get into the particulars of recording contracts, recoupment, etc., but the author would do well to learn a bit more. If he cared about music as much as seems to suggest, he might care to dig a little deeper.
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If only I could outlaw music and dancing
We could bring back the good old god fearing days of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. If only I could shove my piety and taste down your damn throats and force you to bow to my will.
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mixed
You repeatedly use hyperbole to counter others' arguments. You may want to rethink that strategy before you get to college.
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A corollary subject: ubiquitous CNN in airports
As a corollary issue I'm getting rather fed up with the ubiquitous presence of tvs in airport gate waiting areas blaring CNN. On top of all the other air travel annoyances I really don't need my eardrums assaulted with news I can't use about today's terrorist suicide bombing. If they really wanted to make waiting passengers more comfy they could start by putting some headrests on those awful chairs.
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silence is golden
Brilliant.
Muzak refrains piped endlessly into the brainpan are bad enough. Repeated playing of the same pop songs by radio stations successfully killed my love of radio and of pop songs. I refuse to frequent businesses that fill the air with canned noise and hit mute through nearly every commercial. Moving through life at the mercy of a business motivated soundtrack is another Orwellian nightmare to be woken from.
Thanks for your article.
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You overgeneralize, "Anonymous"
You repeatedly use hyperbole to counter others' arguments.
Others'? Pffffppt. You flatter yourself that your emissions are worth engaging directly and that you're tall enough to look down your nose at me. Give it up.
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Oh, yeah, mixed
Besides eliminating hyperbole from your rhetorical arsenal, you might want to work on ad hominem also. Readers usually dismiss the ideas of writers who consistently fly off the handle with little provocation.
One thing about the Search function is that it is easy to see how others (sorry--there's that word again) argue. So I am only generalizing about your tendency to dramatize from the evidence readily at hand. That could be, of course, "anally retentive," as you oddly put it (since you are the one arguing for the elimination [so to speak] of that which offends you). Still, I will be "Analymous," and you will be Touchy.
Analymous
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Natural sounds
I'm a nature sound recordist. It's getting harder and harder to find places where I can record clean bird, frog, and insect songs. A good microphone picks up truck sounds from a highway five miles away. Motorboat sounds carry even farther on large lakes. Furnaces, dogs barking, chain saws, airplanes, buzzing power lines...even far away from a city, our human-generated sounds fill the air. I think we play music in part to block out all the noise. And then the music itself becomes part of the noise.
When I get a clean natural recording, I'm filled with pleasure. But it comes at a high cost in frustration borne of newly-awakened awareness of just how noisy a species we have become.
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We could kill rap and adult contemporary for starts
the problem is not that music is too pervasive it's that music is crap straight up and down 100% machine mass produced bullshit. Hey Rap stars, when they start using your shit to sling gummy worms and breakfast cereal you should take the checks and shut up about slingin rock and bein shot 9 times an shit. Hey fake overprocessed 'country' adult contemporary divas? Yeah your garbage is even unlistenable on a femine hygiene products commercial during a chick movie. Making it Muzak makes it better. And for what it's worth, I was in the grocery store - granted it was a regular one and not a macrochaotic whole foods faux hippie place - and there was a Muzak version of Nirvana's Lithium on. The humor value alone made me feel well enough to not punch Sequoia the brain damaged cashier in the head.