Words have relative values. Someone who talks a lot has less value to their words than someone who rarely speaks. But when that quiet person speaks, people listen. When you publish 20 posts a day, your individual posts lose value. And when you finally do have something to say, it gets lost among the clutter. Your signal to noise ratio is too low.

"When I was fifteen years old, I missed a period. My boyfriend and I were using a diaphragm, but I knew it was fallible. I was good at math, I had the failure rate memorized, burnt into my subconscious. Or maybe it was my conscious, I can never keep them straight. Anyway, I was terrified. Our family dog started treating me differently-supposedly, they can smell a pregnant woman. Or a pregnant bitch, for that matter."

...

"My mother was clueless. My boyfriend was worse than clue-less -- in fact, I ditched him on the spot, because it made me realize what an alien the guy was -- like many members of your species." By this, she was referring to males. "Anyway, my grandmother came to visit," she continued, glancing back over her shoulder at the painting. "I avoided her until we all sat down for dinner. And then she figured out the whole situation in, maybe, ten minutes, just by watching my face across the dinner table. I didn't say more than ten words -- 'Pass the tortillas.' I don't know how my face conveyed that information, or what kind of internal wiring in my grandmother's mind enabled her to accomplish this incredible feat. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance."

...

She continued. "I didn't even really appreciate all of this until about ten years later, as a grad student, trying to build a user interface that would convey a lot of data very quickly, for one of these baby-killer grants." This was her term for anything related to the Defense Department. "I was coming up with all kinds of elaborate technical fixes like trying to implant electrodes directly into the brain. Then I remembered my grandmother and realized, my God, the human mind can absorb and process an incredible amount of information -- if it comes in the right format. The right interface. If you put the right face on it.

I looked at the “Album Only” button. Album after album on iTunes allows you to buy individual songs. You can do this from classic albums like The Who’s “Quadrophenia.” The Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.” The Flaming Lips’ “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.” Albums that were conceived, and meant to be listened to, as complete pieces, whole works of art not meant to be broken up for individual consumption. And yet I couldn’t buy this single song because the integrity of the entire soundtrack to “Garfield: The Movie” had to remain intact. God forbid I should listen to anything other than “Fat Cat Keeps Getting Fatter,” by the Squirrel Nut Zippers, after the Stray Cats’ “Stray Cat Strut.”