My Media Consuming Habits

About a month ago, Kristen Havens, a delightful person who writes one of my desert island blogs, went and tagged me with one of those web contagions commonly referred to as The Meme. I’ve been meaning to set aside the time to attack the bugger and now I have.

The meme in question is concerned with consumption, specifically your, or mine in this case, media consuming habits. Being a wholly unoriginal sort I will copy Kristen’s presentation of her answers. Drum roll please…

Web

It might be more apt to say the Internet consumes me or that’s how it feels at times. I spend far too much time doing nothing particular on the Web. This wanton procrastination is fueled by the 150+ RSS feeds that Newsfire so lusciously serves up to me. I categorize all the feeds into cute little folders with arbitrary names. I say they’re arbitrary because they’ve all formed incestuous relationships and breed weird sub-folder babies. I can’t stop them at this point. They’re like that globulous creature from the early Steve McQueen movie, The Blob. My folders are The Blog and they’re ravenous, horny little monsters.

By far the largest of these Blog Babies is the “queue” folder. This folder gobbles up new blogs or sites I happen upon. I’m supposed to weed out the contents every three months or so. I hardly ever do. I hardly ever do self-imposed “shoulds.” At this point in time some of my favorite reads are in the queue getting jiggy with the fresh arrivals. Organization has never been my forte. I try, but deep down inside don’t care if everything is a mess and shatters into a million sharp pieces.

Typically I don’t leave Newsfire once it is opened. I’m shy that way and the application encourages this behavior, a bit of a codependent relationship. I’ll skip through new posts, which are updated every hour, reading them inside the application. If a title catches my eye or I want to respond or I’ve forgotten what the particular site looks like I click the header, sending the content in question to my browser.

What browser I use depends on my highly refined sense of fickleness. More often than not I am driving OmniWeb around the web. Camino is used a close second. Then Flock and on a rare occasion Firefox and Safari. Opera’s in the garage but it’s rare if I turn the key on that baby.

Ma.gnolia is my bookmarking site of choice. One, because it’s the prettiest girl in school and everyone wants to make it with the prettiest girl in school. Two, because the people that created and maintain Ma.gnolia are some of the more generous and down to earth people on the web. Three, because it’s the prettiest girl in school and she’s highly effective to boot. Smart and pretty is a lethal combination. You can rule the world with pretty and smart. Finally, I use Ma.gnolia because it’s the place I started bookmarking and I’m loyal to the core. I seem to go in spurts with my bookmarking activities, ten one day, then none for three and so forth. Nature of interest and habit.

Communication

I try not to. That’s a rotten answer but it’s true. At home we use AT&T’s CallVantage service. If the phone rings I don’t answer it. Ever. I’ve answered the phone a total of five times in the past year. That’s not a figurative number to illustrate a point either. I’ve literally answered the phone five times in the last year.

I know this figure is correct because of the five times I answered it each time I told myself, right before picking up the phone, “I probably shouldn’t be doing this.” On three occasions it was either a tele-marketer or someone who wanted to talk to me about a bill. Gas, electric, I’m frequently late. On the other two occasions it was a member of my extended family and I ended up in a conversation for an hour or more. This is fine but I don’t want to be in a conversation for an hour or more when I am doing something important like picking my toes or preparing to procrastinate. Simply put, I’m not a telephone talker.

Email is easier and I use Gmail for this purpose which I re-direct to my Apple Mail application. I also have a Skype account but I never use it. I’d actually like to use it more. I’d be open to talking while I’m sitting at my computer so if you have an account drop me a line. My Skype id is griffin. (Notice the period at the end of griffin, periods are very important in web identity world). I don’t Instant Message all that often either but you can harass and heckle me as mosgriff on both Yahoo and AIM.

I’m a hermit. Helps to put my communication consumption into context if you realize and accept this fact.

Social Networks

In light of my last two sentences it should come as no surprise that I am not a dedicated member of any social network. No MySpace page, no Facebook, no Virbe or Bebo or the [insert the latest and greatest-network-here]. I have no qualms with them. They can be great fun I’m sure and being active in them is probably a smart thing to do professionally. The sad truth is I am not smart and the type of fun I like to have doesn’t seem to translate well to these networks. With all that said, I do enjoy the 9rules Notes and community and drop into there from time to time. Other than that though I have not gotten into social networks.

Television

Since the move to our new home I have not watched as much TV as I once did. House is no longer being followed. I stopped obsessing over Battlestar Galatica. At this point it’s sports, 24 and Lost. That’s it really. I used to have a Sunday morning routine where I’d watch the Sports Reporters on ESPN, the last half hour of Meet the Press and top it off with the Chris Matthew’s show. I was a bit addicted to the triumvirate. Even that routine has slipped away from me though. I haven’t watched that trifecta since we’ve moved. Can’t say I really miss any of it. Occasionally I’ll get a Battlestar itch to scratch.

Books

Shortly after graduating from college I stopped reading books. I think I burned myself out. I was reading books and researching so much my head felt like it was filled with helium and a quick whip of wind would suck me into the stratosphere. I was drowning in books. They were everywhere, in my car, the bathroom, the bed, my dreams. They haunted me in my dreams.

Big, burly books with sharp rabbit teeth would chomp on my legs turning into slimy leeches which would start pumping me full of information and I’d grow exponentially like that Blueberry girl in Willie Wonka, and words would start pouring out all orifices of my body. Horrible, horrible dream, true too. So after college I stopped touching books.

I’ve been trying to ease back into the habit recently. I’m currently read Ken Wilber’s One Taste and plan on tackling 1984 afterwards.

Newspapers and Magazines

I read the USAToday frequently. Simply because it has the best Sports page. That’s where I go first - sports, then Money, then the Front Section full of misery and greed, and finally the Life section, which is oddly named because it’s really about Celebrity. USAToday should rename that section to Celebrity or at least “Life: The One You Want. The One You’ll Never Have.” It’d be more appropriate.

My grandfather gives me a subscription to The Week each year. It comes, wouldn’t you know it, once a week. I’ll skim through that. Besides The Week the family has subscriptions to MacWorld, Utne Reader, and Runners World. We used to get Mother Jones as well and now that I think about it I’m not sure why we don’t any more. Must have let that one lapse.

Movies

I used to be a movie hog. I’d watch around 130+ a year. I’ve slacked on consuming movies the past two years and since the move to our new home haven’t watch a single one. Netflix delivers. I haven’t stepped into a box in years.

I stopped going to Blockbuster because they’d always attack me when I went in with a loud “Welcome to Blockbuster.” This disturbed me on a few levels. One, pseudo social connection causes my attention to fracture. It’s fake so I recoil but at the same time it alerts my sympathy so I get the desire to help them out by chatting with them, which I don’t really want to do, but the desire is there, but I just want a movie, and thus the fracturing. Two, and on a cynical note, I found it insulting on a certain level. Like I’m some retard escaped from the short bus who obviously doesn’t know where they are. I always wanted to responded to their chippy “Welcome to Blockbuster” by saying “Oh, thanks. I thought this was a Movie Gallery” and walk right back out the door. I would never but I thought it.

Music

I like it as background so often I’ll be playing classical or jazz but I don’t really sit and listen to music much. Don’t think I ever really did. I tend to run the gamut. Used to have a large collection of Grateful Dead, I was one of those, but it’s dwindled over the years. If I was trapped in a small room for three years I’d want Bob Marley and Willie Nelson and Mozart.

The only genre I tend to dislike is Pop though I don’t even know what that is to be honest. Basically turn on any major America radio station - it won’t matter which one cause they are all the same these days and are broadcast from one of two locations: (1) Rupert Murdoch’s basement and (2) the thirteenth floor of the CIA, in case you didn’t know - and I don’t like that stuff.

So there’s some of my media consuming habits. I could have made this short by saying I’m on the Internet a lot and everything I know these days is because of the Web but that wouldn’t have been in the spirit of The Meme.

In order to avoid the wrath of The Meme God I will pass this one along to Wendy, Jessica and, to prove to myself (or torment myself) that Big Boy blogs don’t notice little fish like me, Docce (who I visit once every four months and always leave telling myself I should read more often) and Seth Godin (whose blog I visit once a year and always leave telling myself I should read more often.)

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