iLove my iPod

It's like an obsession. Right now I am STILL AT WORK, at 7:51 p.m. on a Friday night in New York City. Oh, I left. Please. I'm not THAT much of a dork. I haven't been here the whole time. No, I left to go to the Virgin MegaStore in Union Square and spend the gift certificate my team was generous enough to give me for Christmas.

But then, of course, I had to hear it all right away. I am a fiend with new music. I have been known to stay up until all hours, fighting sleep as I lay in bed with my ghetto blaster earphones on staring up at the dark ceiling as I listened. Sometimes exhaustion would overcome me and I would fall asleep while the music was still playing. The next day I'd go into work, bleary-eyed and disoriented, but the tunes would still be running through my head. So, I guess you could say I'm a fan. But aren't we all?

So, that is why I am here. I run my iTunes off my work machine which, though slow, has served me well so far. iPod owners will certainly cringe when I tell them that I am ripping music at a rate of aboooooout 1.8x AT BEST. You can send condolences to FCB - New York. It's TERRIBLE! It's FRUSTRATING. BUT it's working, and that's all I care about. It's a Pentium II, folks. It's my best option for right now! I have been promised by Jun from IT that I am getting a new, awesome, supercalifragilisticecksbealidocious (sp?), machine after the holidays. I expect the process to pick up wonderfully after that. In the meantime, I soldier on.

This process brings to mind something I didn't expect, however. I'm actually going to miss being limited to spinning only one disc at a time in my discman. I was never one to make mix CDs or similar. Though I did rock mix tapes when I was younger, of course. But I always just spun the shit out of whatever disc I was rocking, until a new one came along to replace it.

Wait a minute. I cannot believe I just bitched about the small, virgin-white miracle that has brought such wonder, joy, and enthusiam into my life. I am alive again! iPod has blasted a beacon of light straight into the dark, frigid, New-York-City-in-the-Dead-of-Winter days ahead. It's like the same light that emanated from Gandalf the White's staff, combined with a magnificent sunrise, at the end of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, enabling the defeat of the Orcs, those nasty bastards! Orcs are what winter in New York City is like, but let's not get into that just yet. But yeah. My iPod revelation is akin to that. Shame on me for even insinuating that there was something small yet fundamental lost in my acquisition of the iPod.

I won't miss the endless piles of jewel cases or the 3 day back ache every time I move, the results of carting my collection of music through my gypsy New York life. I won't miss all that album art and those liner notes. I won't miss greedily opening CD packaging with my teeth as I balance my bag, the 5 CDs I just blew my week's lunch money on, and my open discman, all the while awaiting the bus that will take me back to the Land of No Decent Music Stores, aka, The Upper East Side.

No, I won't miss any of that. Also? I don't miss my EasyBake Oven. Or the 3 hours of baking time required for small, miniscule pans of brownies. (Thanks, Steve, who was forced to eat whatever I wasn't brave enough to try myself.)

Recent Music Purchases:

The Cure - The Cure (iTunes)
Scissor Sisters
Best of Pixies, Wave of Mutilation
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.'s Dessert Origins, Pavement (2004 re-release)

and the one I HAD TO HAVE! COULDN'T WAIT ONE MORE MINUTE FOR...

Breakaway, Kelly Clarkson

And you know I ripped that biatch first, mofos! The soundtrack of my life!

(Thank you to MFDC for your part in bringing that record into this universe.)