no media

On individual media I think. TV and radio I've long since jacked in but everything else I'm rather too fond of to disdain. But breaks from them are kinda urgent and key.

yeah, i got no disdain. i just have lots of books that go unread cuz i feel like i need to read 50 magazines a week and the new york times every day. when i travel somewhere - which isn't often - i always really enjoy the break from all my electronic tethers.

i still get that irrational feeling that i will somehow MISS something if i don't keep up. but really there are only three stories, right? birth-death-sex? or something like that. or maybe it's pie-boobage-zombies. i forget. same thing, in any case.

this just in: Zombified Britney Seen Covering Breasts With Two Pies

the longest i've been without... i can't even calculate that shit, or think when it's been more than a couple of hours :((

I like having no interweb option when travelling, for sure. And I haven't had TV in four years due to not being able to afford cable.

Like Scott my huge queue of books I wanna/needta read torments me without cease. I guess teh web is the culprit as I have no TV/magazine/sports/video game habits to speak of.

Working in a library means my queue of books is more than slightly neverending. But I like that -- it means there's always something.

hmmm.... a friend of mine lives in the middle of nowhere in pennsylvania, the only 'media' they have access to that's readily available is TV and radio... and i have no problem avoiding those as it is here...

so, id have to say 7 days

although i mightve played a boardgame in that span

going more than a day without the interthing nowdays is hard

i highly recommend EVERYONE try this, by the way

its like a mental sauna

I used to be this way whenever I went home for a break, however my folks now have a computer, so. (That said I intentionally limit myself to a couple of quick checks online a day there, mostly for mail.)

Scott: cut back on the magazines! I set aside an hour or so every night before bed for reading books now: re-united and it feels so goood. For instance, I've had this tendency which developed into New York On Two Books A Month. Started last winter with Luc Sante's Low Life, then Joseph Mitchell's Up In The Old Hotel, which is quietly, madly epic; Jimmy Breslin's I Want To Thank My Brain For Remembering Me; Maureen Corrigan's Don't Bother Me I'm Reading (way beyond the earnestly over-enuciated NPR reviews, well-written as those are: she's from 50s-60s bluecollar Queens yo, Catholic girl before and after Vatican II) Now if I could just find one all about Staten, Coney, Rikers' even (though Mitchell covers the waterfront, but I'd like something more recent too) Lots of others, that;s just one reading thread! No matter what's going on otherwise, books make me feel better.

Oh yeah, and Random Family: 11 years of family life in the Bronx (and behind bars) By Adrian (blanking on her last name, used to write for Voice, like Maureen Corrigan)And Here At The New Yorker, by Brendan Gill, which starts out as tweedy and charming and disgusting as you might think, but just goes on and on through decades with scary crazies like Wolcott Gibbs and John O'Hara and James Thurber (by Gill's account, anyway)

Oh boy, I've done this...I couldn't afford a stereo until I was 17 (although I'd been buying cassettes & CDs I knew I'd like, but didn't get to hear them for three years). My parents didn't allow us to watch anything but PBS..at some point (15) I got so IRRITATED with TV that I pretty much locked myself in my room with my clock radio so I'd never have to hear it in the other room. I read lots of books from the library of course, but I spent a lot of my time just drawing because half the time, I'd just want silence and they played the same songs every day on the two radio stations I liked. A lot of times I just stared at the wall. That affected my personality for a long time: I couldn't talk about most music or TV, no one knew the books I'd read, when I tried to subscribe to magazines my mom would throw them away because they were "evil," and they only let me use the internet if they looked over my shoulder the whole time. That was a weird time in my life...too old to play with toys anymore but nothing else to do but draw and make collages.

I also wasn't allowed to talk on the phone with friends, so that wasn't an entertainment option either.

"Scott: cut back on the magazines!"

for real. and i have been. and i've read some good books this summer as a result. books inspire me. and they make me want to write more which is a good thing too.

i do not read enough books. well, i read books, but for research/work/school, which is kind of different

i am on the internet too much, reading things - it is not good for the attention span, that much i know
so much scattered energy everywhere

what i love is getting out of town for a few days to somewhere without a phone or tv or internet and how at first it feels like you're suspended in time but then you realize that you're much more deeply in it - like my heartbeat matches the world better and my brain reaches out in a wider way
this does not happen often enough though. parks and yoga and music can only do so much. i still think i am on the internet too much, reading things.

Yeah, you. Stop reading me! Oh wait.

books are media.

yes they are - but obv they have different properties than so-called "new media" - a different kind of immersion?

ned u r internet
i will never really quit reading the internet

Oddly enough immersion has come up as a term of discussion elsewhere -- I think it's actually a much more enabling term than addiction, which I've heard used more than once, and have doubtless used a lot myself.

examples of what i mean by 'new media' theories -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Manovich
http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=493

books are kinda just a part of me and my life. like music. i can't imagine doing without. i used to feel that way about movies and t.v., but not so much anymore. i never go to the movies anymore. it's just something that doesn't thrill me like it used to. i watch dvd/vhs stuff every once in a while. but not that often. the internet has kinda replaced that for me in a way. though i don't know how. i'm looking at a screen. maybe that's enough! magazines - and i read good magazines and good journalism - and newspapers though, eh, it's more of an addiction or something. like porn. i rarely get inspired by what i read and it's sorta the same thing over and over again. i just read them because i've always read them. i did read the paper today. and an old issue of the paris review. but the paris review is kinda like a book! and i read part of a novel today too.

now i'm reading you guys. i'm on yer internet reading yer words!

it's funny, i just started reading this novel by frederick barthelme called painted desert and it's all about media and news and information and it's pretty funny. and it was written in 1995 so one of the main characters is always dialing up on her computer to get on compuserve and ned raggett bulletin board listservs to post stuff! oh how time flies. it's all about o.j. simpson. i'll have to dig up old o.j. discussion groups from the 90's. probably good stuff on there. (i'm not actually going to do this.)

i recently got two classic, supremely out of print rick barthelme books for far less than they're worth. so stoked.

it's not the same thing, but a four hour blackout happened yesterday. The first thing was...sitting on the porch, reading. but then it got dark.
it was so quiet! Those big lights on the street make a lot of noise!
Lots of people (including us) just walked out and around.
The weird thing, before we left the apartment, was that I kept thinking that there was a room where the electricity would work. I kept thinking of things that involve electricity.
Walking around was great. Lots of people were walking around, or on their porches with a candle.
The bar down the street was open, and it was fun to have a beer in a candlelit atmosphere.
It was also very stunning when the lights came on!
we were walking home, and suddenly it was 2007 again.
I liked my time in the olden days.

oh yes, blackouts are great! unless you are in the middle of doing some important deadline-oriented electronic-powered thing

my power has goes out at least 5 times a year for btwn 30 min to 6 hrs. it doesn't bother me anymore though :/

WHat is "no media?" = I can't remember the last time I went without any form of media. I was probably underage. And still lying in my crib.