Mike wrote: > No sooner was the war against station wagons won than > we get...this. Roadways clotted with bastardized _trucks_. Honestly, not in > my wildest imaginings thirty years ago (as I soaked up Patrick Bedard in > Study Hall), could I have even conceived of anything as tasteless and > misbegotten as a Lincoln Navigator.
But this is an US phenomenon. The small vehicle is alive and well living everywhere else. > --Music listening as a hobby. Not only has vinyl been relegated to the > margins (in my youth I was an enthusiastic record collector, and I still > consider turntables to be among the most satisfying of toys), but > two-channel recorded music is beginning to atomize, subsumed into a Babel of > competing "formats" and various subspecies of "home entertainment." The pure > form of the art is, of course, acoustic instruments on vinyl on a > two-channel stereo with a tube amp and pre-amp. I've only got one tube in my Audio Research preamp :-) - but my next amp may be fully tubed. There's no shortage of high quality audio gear. For record collectors, the market is better than ever. With the help of the net almost anything can be found within ten minutes. This week I've ordered four records. I just received Greatest Show on Earth "the goings easy" album which I ordered from Germany two days ago. In the mail are Clearlight Symphonys "Forever blowing bubbles" in a rare japanese pressing, Steve Hillage "Green" album on the rare first pressing on green vinyl and an original UK promo pressing of String Driven Thing's "The machine that cried". > The only thing I have left are books. Fortunately, books endure: one > lifetime is not long enough to see them eclipsed. However, if the situation > with books goes like cars, stereos, movies, and cameras, pretty soon all new > books will be paperbacks and most books with any literary merit will only be > "published" online. Yuuuuuuuck! The house is filling over with books.... Pål
