Three years have passed since I last had to bicycle to work. My old Summer habit of biking to work an hour ahead of time just so I could stop by the University library to read the latest weekly issue of Barrons seems like so long ago. A distant memory.
I still remember getting caught in the rain about halfway to work on my mountain bike. Not a pleasant feeling, considering I was also paying a mortgage and a car payment and had just made a huge life change in order to pursue a line of work I enjoyed over raw monetary compensation. Through the looking glass, it all seems so pleasant and romantic, but the reality was more pain and worry than I care to endure ever again.
In any case, I read tonight where print media is finally giving up the ghost - possibly a direct result of the incessant ubiquitiousness of the Internet. Cheap and available. It would appear even that some periodic print media (like newspapers) are actually RAISING their subscription pricing to counter this trend. God knows why, but talk about the Brachiosaurus burying its head in the sand. While I won't be so apocalyptic as to say it is completely over for this apparently failed business model, I must say they are not helping things by increasing subscription rates.
Case in point: One of my favorite reads around town is a local FREE rag that highlights political views as well as the local Arts and Music scene. The name of the publication is The Current, and I am more aquainted with their publishers than the casual reader of this blog might thing. But it has all been through chance over the years, beginning with the first hesitant pass at lifting the pulpy thing from a wire bracket while waiting for my lunch in a popular greasy spoon near downtown. To be absolutely truthful, I thought it was some kind of Gay Mag or maybe a discount classified ad publication. Surprised to find out it was actually a little bit of both, and more.
As the days claw viciously by in the midst of economic turmoil, it is nice to know you can still hit up the local library or even cheap eateriers and get some professional literary commentary on local events without having to cough up a portion of your wages just to read a gathering of printed opinions.
But I still wouldn't ride my bike 3 miles to read the musings of a random author unless I was flat broke.
