Yesterday I brought home a bouncing baby TiVo. I got it at Best Buy on Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street. Matt and I walked into the store as throngs of antiwar protesters marched up Sixth Avenue, shouting and chanting and holding signs and wearing stickers.

Matt had stuff to do afterwards, but I was dying to bring my new baby home and set it up, so I descended into the 23rd Street PATH station. As I walked along the platform, I passed the occasional protester returning home from a long day of protesting. I settled on a spot to stand and wait for the train. A protester stood nearby, a fluorescent orange anti-Bush sticker on his jacket sleeve, while I stood there, a fluorescent orange 40-hour TiVo Series 2 box at my side, representing the twin evils of American consumerism and American mass entertainment. I felt so iniquitous, and proud of it. I wish there’d been a photojournalist nearby to snap a picture of the two of us. In fact, it’s such a great idea for a photo that I’m tempted to restage it and have someone take a picture.

The PATH train arrived, rather crowded. I got on, put the box on the floor of the train and stood facing a row of seats. A woman sitting by me looked down at the box, looked up at me, and said, “You are the luckiest man in the world.”

I spent the rest of the evening setting it up and playing around with it. (Matt, technological genius that he is, managed to fix a broken phone jack in my living room, so I didn’t even need to buy an extra-long phone cord or anything.) I’ve already set up some season passes and wish lists, and it’s already recorded some shows for me. And I love the cute little TiVo guy. See? I’ve already been assimilated.

Bring on the sloth and iniquity.

Spring begins tonight at 1:49 AM EST (6:49 AM Saturday GMT). Hooray! Of course, it snowed this morning, and the weather can somtimes be chilly into April. But we’ll be getting more sunlight than moonlight now, and soon the trees will be covered in green leaves, and the Sheep Meadow of Central Park will be crowded. And Daylight Savings Time begins two weeks from Sunday.

Anyway, what better time to listen to Vivaldi’s Spring from The Four Seasons?

Or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring? (music clip)

Noiseways. Listen to New York City and Portland, Oregon.

“The negative effects of noise—stress and the disruption of work, sleep, learning and other activities—are well established by scientific research. And of course it comes as no surprise that there is a lot of noise in New York City. The Noiseways Project intends to complement this knowledge by letting visitors to this Internet site experience the effects of noise through the use of pictures and sound recordings. Instead of presenting data, Noiseways engages the senses.”