not falling down

Why is Apple trying to sell a “shuffle” feature as a huge megagenius innovation? It’s been available on most mp3 players since there started being mp3 players, and on CD players for about two decades. Maybe they they’re just trying to extend the model of “you don’t know what’s playing now,” since it has no LCD screen, to “you don’t know what’s playing now–or later!”

But I can’t help it. I still want this, if mostly because of the second footnote on that page.

There’s not actually a Carver Street in Louisville, but I think this McDonald’s is on my block.

I don’t know why I don’t immediately subscribe to everything Sumana mentions, because her taste in blogs is pretty impeccable. Case in point: Real Live Preacher, whose journal I started reading only because she belted out its praises day and night. His entry today about lemons, among other things, is touching and real and sublime.

It’s so hard to make things that are quirky in real life interesting in writing. Real quirks tend to seem forced when written down, and people who lift quirks from fiction are just annoying. Gordon Atkinson’s ability to write about the facts of his life as he does is extraordinary; he illustrates the beautiful potential that public journals have, and almost always fail to fulfill.