Ideapad

Hot on the heels of my unwanted catalog abundance, I received in the mail today the premiere issue of Refresh Recharge Renew, a new magazine from Rodale Custom Publishing.

Funny thing, that. Because I didn't subscribe first. Actually, I'm not a subscriber to any Rodale magazine at all. Never have been, although I did work for them for three weeks in 2004, and I pick up Men's Health on occasion at the airport. Nothing in that suggests that I should be on any of their mailing lists.

Yet lo and behold, here it is, a magazine that looks a lot like the healthy-living-past-age-50 magazines that show up (also unsolicited) at my parents' house. "Smart ideas for healthy, balanced living," promises the tagline on the cover. How's this for healthy: don't pad your subs list with unwitting recipients, and save us all a tree or two.

Perhaps, dear reader, you think my tone is a bit uppity and huffy for something of this nature. In response, let me point you to this magazine's website, which has on its homepage a rather easy-to-find Unsubscribe link. The page states it boldly: "Want to cancel your reFresh | reCharge | reNew magazine subscription? Just fill out this form and we will remove your home mailing address from our subscription list." But I didn't want to be on your subscription list in the first place! Why is it my responsibility to say so?

I thought email spam was frustrating. But the loads of unwanted printed mail I'm getting lately is in some ways much worse.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been married for four years and cohabitating for five. My wife and I have bought and raised a puppy together, traveled around the world and integrated with each other's families. We share a home, a computer, chores, jokes and our deepest, most emotional thoughts.

Through it all, we have had separate CD collections.

This afternoon we had two 9' tall bookcases installed in our living room. The one on the left has the express purpose of holding music, for despite my embrace of technology--including a first-generation iPod and an extensive MP3 collection--I still maintain a library of 1200 CDs, the majority of which are in our apartment. Amy, to her credit, has a few hundred discs of her own (and also to her credit, she tolerates the sheer bulk of mine).

So it was sensible enough when, as I began carrying music from my old racks to the new bookcase, my wife said, "Let's keep all our CDs together."

You'd think we'd have tackled this years ago. After all, we share a common iTunes library, Amy having given up on a her-only subset on her side of the Mac.

But even today, I paused. My collection is going to cheerfully swallow hers. The crazy category system I created, to avoid alphabetizing a thousand CDs, will turn my wife's Cheryl Crow discs into "female vocal" and her Melissa Etheridge into "rock/alternative." I suspect Amy will never even attempt to find her music in the sea of CD spines, much less succeed in locating her albums.

And her tastes create confusion in areas I had reconciled on my own. Peter Gabriel? For me: classic rock. To her: "Classic rock? Really?" Where does her Maroon 5 disc go? Seal? Barry Manilow? (Seriously, Amy--Barry Manilow?)

So far I've managed to integrate her classic rock with mine (though not, it should be noted, her Peter Gabriel discs), which has already thrown my organization out of whack, as the category has doubled in size. It's kind of fun. And terrifically nerve-wracking.

My wife and I are deeply connected in our values and desires. We do not share much in the way of musical taste. But somehow, in some way, her Deep Forest and my Kiss CDs are going to find a way to coexist.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The paper felt light this morning, as it often does on a Monday in August, only more so. The columns on the right-hand side of the front page looked a little narrower than usual, and I didn't know why.

Then I looked to the left and saw the note: today the New York Times switched to its smaller sheet size.

Unsurprisingly, I hate it. It lacks the impact, the heft, the ability to convey significant information on a single page. The accordion fold on the subway creates a meek, finished-too-fast column of text. It makes the paper feel less significant, less worth the cover price, less important.

Of course, the Times's news coverage hasn't dropped; some of it has simply gotten shorter or moved online. But--and I say this fully aware of the irony--I don't really want to go to a website for continuations of content I'm reading offline. Despite my thorough online lifestyle, I am resolutely committed to reading the printed newspaper every day. I look forward to it. I have nothing to gain by reading most of the paper, I want to read all of it, and to use nytimes.com for its blogs and for sharing items with friends, not to get extra scoops or a handful of letters to the editor that I used to be able to read in print. I also find it mildly hypocritical that the Times cites rising costs in its resizing decision, when it raised the newsstand price a full 25 percent just weeks earlier.

I know that newsprint is increasingly expensive, and that readership of the print edition is down, and that my desire for the old-fashioned edition makes me something of a fuddy-duddy and a nimbyist. At some point I'm sure I'll get used to it, just as people always adapt to change. But the new style of the New York Times, by being 11% smaller, is, for the time being, making the Times itself feel 11% lesser.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko, aims for the gut. Like the old adage, it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you want to bring the entire family, not to mention every public office, medical, health care and insurance professional you know. It will make you applaud at the end. And it will thoroughly embarrass you for being complicit in a system that has failed the people it is supposed to help.

See this movie.

Posted by David Wertheimer at 07:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)