Filed by Bil at 9:39 pm under Politics, Pop Culture, Social Issues, The Arts

Recently, Devon and I acquired a new vehicle. It was a tough choice between a Scion xD and a Honda Fit; ultimately, the xD won the prize. The choice was unusually hard – a car is not something you want to buy now and regret later. And it’s not like you can just get another car if the first one doesn’t work out. We’re very happy with our little Scion, especially considering that we drove the shopping carpool this afternoon making trips to PetSmart, CostCo, and Trader Joe’s (three people and three cats will be fed for many weeks to come) and we were able to cram all our groceries into the car with no problems.

The timing could have been better – the day we drove it off the lot was the start of a week of snowfall. But aside from that, it’s really the ideal car for us – it’s a hatchback, meaning it’s bigger on the inside than the outside would let on. This is good if you have a ton of groceries or a ton of theatre props. I can’t imagine we’ll ever get a plain old sedan ever again. Also, it gets great gas mileage. It’s not a hybrid, unfortunately, but we’ll still be able to stay away from gas stations more than we were able to before. So, again – we’re both really, really pleased with the car we got.

The decision to get the car was easy enough; without it, Devon would be taking a series of busses to get to Skokie for work. But the decision on which car to get did not come lightly. It was the result of roughly one week of intensive online research (conducted by Devon) into what cars had the best mileage, safety, interior space, warranty, MSRP, etc., etc., etc., followed by about two weeks of searching the ad websites like cars.com, Vehix, and AutoTrader, test driving cars, phone calls to dealerships (conducted by me), and – finally – about a week and a half of waiting for the dealer to search a five-state radius and find us a Scion xD that wasn’t silver or white.

This is about the same length of time it took me to decide on which albums to purchase with an iTunes gift card I had received for Christmas.

I would like to turn you all on to two very, very cool bands:

Band of Horses – “Is There a Ghost”

Iron and Wine – “Boy With A Coin”

(In keeping with the Chinese Zodiac, 2008 will be the Year of the Beard.)

These bands have both been around for quite some time, but I only recently discovered them. The inspiration to use my iTunes gift card was drawn from the sweet, sweet stereo system in our new car. I mean, those little white earphones are good enough, but earphones can’t compare to some good speakers far enough away from your head that you can actually hear all the sounds. It makes me want to focus more on how I spend my money, because I used to buy lots of music, but now it’s very rare for me. I need to buy more music.

Anyway, following the purchase of music, I made more decisions about other things in my life – what to do about an open position within the company I work for during the day, what to do about certain aspects of the theatre company that I’m trying to form, what to eat for lunch, and so on. I’m feeling somehow very empowered by all this decision-making. And it feels especially nice to be making informed choices – oh yes, the research has been done.

So here’s what I’m looking at so far for 2008: new car, new music, new career paths (both daytime and nighttime), and, oh yeah, the election of a new president. These are all things that require informed decisions. But they are also things that I don’t mind researching and talking about with other people. And I’ll tell you what else – it fills me with a real sense of optimism to see so many people of my generation and younger – yes, a younger generation than mine will be voting in this election – it’s good to see us all taking an early interest and voting in the primaries. That’s pretty awesome. It makes me think that there are more of us out there who are part of the apathetic generations who maybe aren’t quite so apathetic anymore.

I do kind of feel like there is a new cultural wave forming, and I feel like a significant part of it will take place right here in Chicago. And these younger generations are primed to make something of it. And I sure as hell am not going to miss out on it.

Of course, I do still love my apathetic generation music.

Nice beard, Mr. Cobain.