Paul Miller: Offline – The Verge

Offline: how to use the internet

2013-05-03T17:25:01-04:00

via assets.sbnation.com

Whew! What a week.

First came Monday, and then Tuesday, and then there was the internet. You know how in Star Trek when they engage the warp engines and the Enterprise kind of stalls for a moment while its projection blurs toward the future, toward the stars, and then it's gone? I'm in the blur phase.

I feel severely disoriented, totally overwhelmed, and kind of… happy about it?

At 12:00AM on Wednesday, May 1st, I rejoined the internet. I guess I thought I'd just start using the internet again, see some funny cat videos, and that would be that. Instead, I almost had a panic attack as I attempted to pull off basic 21st-century maneuvers li …

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Offline: boiling it down to the essentials

2013-03-26T14:00:06-04:00

paul bike

At the end of a Veggie Tales episode, from his perch on a kitchen counter, flanked by his faithful sidekick Larry the Cucumber, Bob the Tomato asks, "what have we learned today?" It's an important part of classic children's programming: after the entertainment comes the morals. Come for the hilarious veggie hijinks, stay for the turn-your-life-around-kid Bible verse.

Well, my veggie hijinks are about to come to a close, and now it's time for me to boil them down into digestible Life Lessons and, you know, write a bestselling book about my experiences.

Except I'm having problems with the distillation process. Virtually since day one of my t …

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Offline: making music and fighting my computer

2013-02-27T13:00:07-05:00

paul music

Computers are where music goes to die. Now, I frequently like to point out that my internet abstinence has nothing to do with a dislike of technology itself - gesturing toward the iPad I'm holding to illustrate the point - but with music, I find technology to be the very devil itself.

Perhaps it traces back to my folksy upbringing. My dad had his own bluegrass band while I was growing up, and many an evening the Millers would gather 'round and jam out classic gospel tunes. I was typically on the "drums," which is not a traditional bluegrass instrument (guitar, bass, mandolin, banjo, fiddle), and therefore I was often admonished for my volum …

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Offline: love, loss, and dating without Facebook

2013-02-06T10:15:06-05:00

paul love

There's only been one girl in this year without the internet. I liked her "that way," and she didn't like me "that way," and so that was that. But it was fun while it almost lasted.

Our original chance encounter was brought on by boredom. I was sitting alone in my apartment, and none of my friends were returning my calls. It was a holiday weekend, I have lame friends. So I called my parents, grabbed my skateboard, and puttered around Union Square while I confessed my problems with singleness to my folks. They were literally pitching me on a sort of embarrassing meat market conference meant to pair off Christian homeschoolers, when I saw a f …

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Offline: my quest to find a ‘StarCraft’ replacement in my life

2013-01-30T09:00:05-05:00

paul offline warhammer

I miss StarCraft, man. I just miss it.

StarCraft wasn't a game for me, it was a lifestyle. It was a "no, I can't go out tonight" sort of thing. A start-at-7PM-end-at-2AM thing. StarCraft bent me to its will. It made my brain operate in new ways, taught my fingers to click and type in a new rhythm, conditioned my ass to fight the burn of sustained sitting. It asked me to learn how to lose without rage, to learn from my mistakes, to iterate, to memorize stupid build orders. Most of all, StarCraft was a new way to be friends with people.

StarCraft was a start-at-7PM-end-at-2AM thing for me

On a typical StarCraft night, I'd hop on to see if any …

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Offline: how my creativity got killed

2013-01-17T13:00:02-05:00

Paul Miller Las Vegas CES 2013 stock

Last week I found myself slouched on a couch, ten feet away from a pair of $107,000 speakers. I was on the 35th floor of The Venetian hotel, which towers over the tail end of the Las Vegas strip. I was listening to an overwrought piano cover of Joni Mitchell's immortal "A Case of You." I was unhappy.

Moments before I'd listened to a pair of $75,000 speakers. Moments before that, I enjoyed my second demo of the best-of-show favorite Oculus Rift VR goggles. Maybe I was still nauseated from the Oculus demo, or maybe I was just a little tired, but I got to wondering, "Is this all the pleasure that a $107,000 pair of speakers can really provide? …

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Offline: why am I here?

2013-01-08T07:00:06-05:00

lead paul offline

When I was a kid I had a box of "electronics." Basically, it was cannibalized parts from various decrepit gadgets, like RC cars, walkie talkies, and cassette players. I always dreamed of mashing together a few circuit boards and making something new, but obviously had no knowledge of that process. But I kept the box. There was something intrinsic to that tangle of wires and transistors that felt like technology to me.

CES is televisions, and car stereos, and iPod nano armbands

I still have collections of useless electronics. I don't take them apart anymore, but I keep them around "just in case." My old GameBoy Advance that I don't have any g …

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Offline: listening to music

2012-12-18T11:30:04-05:00

paul offline

New York Magazine just recently listed its top 10 albums for the year. I only had heard one of them; in fact, I'd only heard of one of them.

The album is called good kid m.A.A.d city, a Short Film by Kendrick Lamar. It's by some fella named Kendrick Lamar. I bought it on a recommend from my good friend and editor Thomas Houston, the unofficial tastemaker / GIF-tracker around the Verge office. I asked innocently what he was jamming out to at the moment, he told me, and so I went to Best Buy and paid Real Deal Paper American Dollars for the album on Compact Disc. When Thomas recommends something, I listen. When he Tumbles a GIF, I lol. At lea …

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Offline: into the woods

2012-12-10T11:10:45-05:00

Snapseed photo

I have a friend named Cash Lawless. First name Cash, last name Lawless. He's a hair dresser, naturally. But outside of his profession he's the epitome of masculinity: he builds motorcycles, he plays street ball, he breaks hearts, and his name is Cash Lawless. He's recently started to hike the Appalachian Trail, one section at a time, in a "roughing it," self-sufficient sort of way. I knew about this hobby, and admired it, but never considered going along. Until I did.

Cash doesn't do anything halfway. Before he even hiked his first section of the "A.T." (as the Appalachian Trail is referred to by the canteen-and-neckerchief crowd), Cash tes …

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Offline: how do you look at porn?

2012-12-03T11:07:53-05:00

offline porn paul

It was late June, about two months after I left the internet. I was in Mexico City, and there was no HBO in my hotel room, so at around midnight I ventured out into the narrow, dark streets, bouncing from convenience store to convenience store in search of a magazine. I tried to buy it casually, disguise it among some snacks, but my face was still flush as I handed over the pesos.

The magazine was soft core to the max - pillow soft. I found only one of the women in it attractive, and was soon bored with my purchase. To hide it from the hotel maid, I put the magazine in my bag, and that's how it ended up flying home with me back to New York. …

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