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August 02, 2004

26: the iPod

Here's an update, kids.

For the record, my hair still looks killer. That said, I appreciate the support I've been getting lately.

The weekend got off to a rocky start when I received word that this blog is not so much "pink" as it is "red." Unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. Don't sweat it though, this will be fixed ASAP. Just calm down. Everything's going to be fine.

You have more important things to worry about.

Like the fact that I now possess an iPod.

Chris has given me, again, the gift of music.

My previous mp3 player came to me as a Christmas gift, and despite some recent glitches in its performance, my little Nomad II has served me well. It gave me hours of joy, and what did I give it in return? Well, I gave it a face full of pavement about a week ago. I caught the earphones on my belt and the player flew out of my hand. It shot into space and crashed back to Earth right where Park meets 30th. It splintered into a million pieces and passersby stopped to see if I were foolish enough to dart into the intersection in an attempt to rescue my little friend. I was. It's not been the same since, but I knew our time together was drawing to a close. It had been acting up in the past two or three months, stopping in the middle of songs, shutting off, or turning on at random. In hindsight, its voyage into the middle of a busy intersection was not an accident but a thwarted suicide attempt. That mp3 player wants to die! It's ready to move onto its reward. Unfortunately, that reward is being thrown into a drawer full of unused cables and adaptors.

Chris gave me his iPod and an incredible amount of music, perhaps in return for being such an awesome little sister for the past 24+ years. Perhaps because I have such a winning personality, incredible wit, and awesome eyebrows. And with the iPod came a ton of pirated music that I might browse through and JUDGE, were it not for the fact that I can't manage to operate the thing.

I'm not sure I can be trusted with something so delicate and sensitive. I'll only drop it or throw it into the street! Maybe it will meet with the same fate that took countless cd players before it! In a Sainsbury's in London, I once dropped a cd player as I left the checkout. It survived the first drop but definitely not the second one, which tragically happened only seconds later! The cashier sighed and shook his head as I scraped up the pile that was my cd player and ran outside to bury my shame in a trashcan. I can't be trusted with these things. Shortly after that incident, I accidentally dropped my cell phone at the top of a flight of concrete stairs. Rather than picking it up, I some how managed to kick the phone down the stairs. Perhaps because I was a bit tipsy, the confusion of the whole event required me to have a sit before trying to retrieve it. Some how the phone survived, but could an iPod? I think not.

The iPod clearly has a thirst for destruction. I can see that much already. As soon as I have its inexplicably circular earphones in my ears, I am unable to see anything around me. All of my energies are focused on the player, I find myself unwittingly walking into traffic, nearly falling off subway platforms, crashing into pedestrians, meeting scaffolding with my face. Something bad will come to the iPod just as something bad will come to me. Together, we blindly charge towards death -- nothing in our minds but a faint concern over skipping to the next song.

Before that happens, the iPod and I have unfinished business. I was unable to switch Chris's music for my own because I couldn't figure out how to attach the player to the cube at home. When I attempted to lift the cube to see what was underneath, it shut off and I gave up. In doing so, I may have given the iPod and myself another day of life. Tomorrow, we may walk headfirst into oncoming traffic – let us listen to awesome music until then.

Amen.

Posted by ashley at August 2, 2004 03:48 PM

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