Howard Who?

It is official…I am the last person in the hemisphere to jump onto the podwagon. I confirmed this fact when I visited my grandfather, who had to visit a friend after he received a phone call. Visiting a friend to him means going down or up a floor in his senior apartment building. Anyway, when he had returned, he held an Ipod Shuffle which he was intending to load with Chinese opera.

 My grandfather was always into media, taping all of his performance sessions with a recordable walkman. He’d even given me his older models when he bought a newer one. Finally, he decided that he’d rather get something smaller that holds more music. Who could blame him?

 Everywhere I go people talk about Ipods like water, water everywhere (and not a drop for me to drink). The question is not whether you have an Ipod, but where is your Ipod? When I reveal that I haven’t one, I get a look of “You’re kidding right?” No, I’m not. After that point, I am subhuman.

 And people are not demanding it because of short supply either. Rather all this talk is generating from people having too many. Friends are getting hand-me-down Ipods like yesterday’s khakis. Stocking at Christmas are stuffed with them. People trade them in for bigger better ones at a nominal fee.

 The closest I got to getting one was using a gift certificate to get one practically for free. I almost laid down my shame to join the throngs. Yet I hestitated, wondering if life was going to offer me greater fulfillment. You could go to websites like Ninja Pirate that can make you feel better with the Ipod-penis enlargement comparison. Would I go the way of one of my best friends and try to get a TORQ, basically an Ipod combined with a Treo and a PSP?

 No, actually, I went the regressive way. Like the Cro Magnon that I am, I got an RCA Mp3 disc player from Fry’s for $25. It’s like an Ipod but bigger, heavier, and worse. The good news though is that it can play a crap load of stuff. And I’ve made an art of creating Mp3 compilation discs that will play on this contraption. The best I’ve come up with is a disc with 19 different “albums” on it (the discs must be divided into folders of Mp3s so that you can select them like chapters in a DVD). And with a handy dandy CD visor clutching to my vanity mirror, I can pull out a maximum of 8.4 Gb of song storage while driving.

 I know it’s no match for a 30 Gb Ipod, but on an emotional level it’s far more satisfying. I get to not pay tooth and nail for all that convienence with the added bonus of not looking cool as well.

 I’ll say it once…and once only. SOMEONE GET ME AN IPOD!!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 at 5:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Pop Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.