amazon kindle

I understand why this might seem like an extravagance but I bought an amazon kindle from officeworks last week and they (got someone to) deliver(ed) it yesterday. I should have done this a year ago tbh but resisted because fuck amazon then de-resisted because who gives a fuck what I think about amazon and my $ are a drop in their ocean, less than. Essentially it's from my frustration with new books, particularly library books, being available as ebooks and the necessity to download them onto the computer and then if I want to refer to them while writing, having to click back and forth between screens or do that ridiculous balancing act of having two screens - a necessarily full-size pdf screen and a ridiculously narrow word document screen - open at once to take notes. That, or take notes manually from a pdf on the screen and then type them back in (yes, also one can copy and paste from a pdf but it's difficult to negotiate and also the formatting is fucked up). So: having a kindle means I can refer to an e-book just as I would if it were a book at my elbow, and I have to say it's also surprisingly readable too, surprisingly, actually, surprisingly readable. It's also very light and compact. Yes, there is a constant urging to buy stuff off amazon as though this were the only possible way anyone could ever buy/read a book but also the kindle has its own email address so I can send it pdfs of things I have scanned, or downloaded, which is my main interest. 

I am not sure what the size is because I have no sense of dimensions or scale but I do know that it is entirely possible to read an A4 document at this reduction. I was surprised by the people who reviewed this thing who said they could slip it into their back pocket, because I know of no back pocket big enough to fit something like this but maybe I just don't look around enough at the backs of people's pants, but it could at a pinch fit into a coat pocket I suspect. It is also, weirdly, ostensibly waterproof presumably unless you actively pump water into its unprotected 'mini usb' hole, but all the stuff about 'you can read it in the bath' I mean who the hell... yeah, I know people take baths and read in the bath, but it just seems like reading an e-reader in the bath is a little too much of a niche requirement.* 

However, all things considered, I am going to say that this falls into the category of my purchases which is Not a Stupid Purchase, compared to many other purchases I have made which were definitely stupid (most of them). For instance, I bought the first Dexy's Midnight Runners album from a greek discogs man and it was so scratched to shit the way I don't like it, that I basically paid for it, and for it to be shipped to me in Australia, to just throw it away immediately (or put it in a brotherhood bin, but that's actually a poxy thing to do isn't it because it's just passing the buck; anyone who bought it would surely feel ripped off to the max and they would be). (I guess there's always that 1% of me thinking - is it unplayable because of my tone arm? Whatever that is). But just playing one side of that album from beginning to end reminds me how much I like it and want to hear it again, so I guess I will purchase a proper copy. And that will be it. No records after that, it is the last record I need. 

That reminds me, I can't rem (did I tell you about the facebook group for my old high school where one of the girls from my year wrote a few recollections where instead of 'remember' she wrote 'rem' not once but many times, it was really interesting, I have never seen it before or since but I often want to do it myself) I can't rem if I told you, but about um three years ago (!!!) I recorded an album with Dani Marich and Philip Clifford of their songs, instrumentals, and we decided on the band name More, which is named after a Pink Floyd album on the basis that I (I don't know really what they think) hate Pink Floyd.** It was actually great to play music with them. I don't know if we'll ever do anything else but I promised long ago to put this record out so it's happening. 120 copies of a transparent vinyl LP in the minimal packaging of No Sleeve At All. It will be out before the end of the year, I am going to give no free copies to anyone but will sell it for I guess around $25, have to do the maths. I will still end up with a hundred copies under my bed. Speaking of throwing money away... makes an amazon kindle look like a bare necessity. Middle aged boutique self-indulgence lol. I've earned the right, don't judge me.  

* Though if they wanted to make something great of this amazon should have paid someone to update the Death of Marat so he's holding his kindle, perhaps with Frank Heath's 1940 Report (on his office's plan for Swan Hill) in his hand. 

** We did our due diligence by borrowing, and watching, Barbet Schroeder's 1969 film for which PF wrote the soundtrack. We watched it all the way through. I remember absolutely none of it.