dsandler.org/wp

I was tempted to seek out How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (it’s the U2 album coming out next week, gentle reader-under-a-rock) on the Internets this evening. (Before we go any further, let me explain that there is no chance in hell that I’m not buying the album when it comes out. This isn’t a question of long-run theft, but rather, uh, temporary ownership violation.)

I didn’t, in the end, download it. Not because I couldn’t—it’s definitely out there, if you’re patient enough to deal with that sort of thing—but because I’m really trying to curb my need for instant gratification.

For one thing: the album’s coming out in a week, for goodness’ sake—I ought to be able to wait. Normal people wait. Law-abiding people wait. Everyone waits, and I need to suck it up and take a number.

I have to admit, though, that that argument doesn’t hold nearly as much sway over me as does this one: You’ll spoil it. This is the first album in four years; I remember how excited I was in 2000, when All That You Can’t Leave Behind was released; I had been working at Be, Inc. for a few months, and things were already getting stressful and busy at the office. Chris and I decided to tear down our cubicles on the first floor of 800 El Camino and create a slightly more team-oriented space, and so I put the album on my tinny PC speakers and rocked out as we schlepped Hermann Miller module chunks across the office.

I don’t want my memory of Dismantle to be, “Oh, yeah, when that came out, I was hunched over my filesharing software, subverting law and order.” I’d prefer for it to be, at the very least, “… I was hunched over my final projects, despairing of finishing by the end of the semester.” You know, something glamorous like that.