you'll have to forgive me. i just received a large mail-order shipment of cds (well large for me, 8-10 depending how you count). i'm awash in new music, so i'm a little distracted from my sermonly duties. i'll be hard a-ponderin' my next word or sentence, then whoa! my eyes are closed, my head is rolling back, soaking in the new sounds. 2 songs later i'm back at the monitor trying to figure out what my opening clause could possibly mean...

i've had to resort to mail-order more & more recently, & i'm afraid it's a trend i can't reverse. i have to feed the addiction. yes, one of my more expensive vices is the drive to have & hear new music. but not just any music you can get at wal-mart (the rule is that if you can get it at wal-mart there's an 85% chance it sucks). these days i'm into a lot of rhytmic noise, hard experimental electronic stuff, noise, breakcore, whatever you like to call such things. i guess only a dozen or so people in this town are cool enough to like that stuff (& this is a liberal estimate) because there is literally no supply.

i used to get a weird & meticulous kind of joy from going into record stores. i never really knew what i'd find, but eventually i'd locate something interesting & take it home. there was great unpredictability, but i didn't get let down too much. these days at best i get i feeling of compromise. well, i'm kind of curious to hear this; it's not even close to on my list, but i guess i can buy it.

i think the internet was what screwed me. before i was stuck with what was commonly available to me. i didn't know any better, because i didn't have a way to find out about obscure german record labels. now that information is at my fingertips; in 30 seconds i can read 30 people's opinion of the latest cd by silk saw... but i still don't know anyplace i can go to pick it up. thus mail-order. thanks to all this damn knowledge, my tastes are too avant garde to shop at record stores anymore. it makes me want to move to a bigger city just for better record stores...

the downside to mail-order is obvious. waiting is involved, sometimes for months if you don't go to the right place or order a backordered item. there's that hassle of getting the money from you to them. i recently got an account with paypal, which is a free service that essentially lets you send money via email (it really sends someone a notice that money has been transferred into their account; the recipient must open an account if hse don't have one). i got it to order cds online. it might turn out to be a curse, though, & encourage me to overspend.

i'm sure you're all fascinated by my purchasing habits (especially all you market analysts... this is free profiling info!), but i need to be able to listen more closely. this sermon is holding me back. so before i start sounding like an e-commerce how-to, i'd better stop for now. hopefully next week i'll pay better attention.