the poor flaming monkey

This is Ipod thing is pretty damn neat-o! And I mean that in a "this Ipod thing is pretty damn neat-o" kind of way. I have spent hours downloading music into my computer, transferring it to the Ipod and scrambling it so that I might enjoy it as the background music for my trip. The musical score of my life, as the saying goes. It's a great idea and I'm sure that many people have thought of it before me, however, I'm not sure it's truly relevant to the events of each and every moment of the day. Listening to "Send me your money" by the Suicidal Tendencies doesn't seem to be appropriate when driving across the vacant, sun-drenched plains of Nebraska. It does make that four minutes go by a lot faster and maybe that is why it played right then. (those people at Apple are so smart)

I have the 1000 songs playing on random, so I am never sure what is going to play. For the most part the musical score of my life is working out well, I hear some Vandals and some Ministry, but then in the middle of a four song power play, a ballad by Tori Amos pops up and then a Gordon Lightfoot song. Then it's over to George Jones, then the Beattles, then Allison Krauss, then Otis Redding... It's hard to figure out what kind of mood my Ipod is trying to put me in. With each song that is played, my attitude toward the world around me changes. I really appreciate the aesthic of the landscape when a ballad is played, but would probably want to see that same streach of land scorched when I hear the Sex Pistols. The variety of emotional responses to music brought to me by the Ipod is making the driving a little bit more entertaining.

I purchased a radio transmitter that hooks up to the Ipod so that I might play it through my car stereo or any stereo, it's a little piece of neat-o. I like headphones, but the car stereo adapter just makes me feel like I am at the forefront of technology today. It's not really the forefront, but it's enough for me. I evolve slowly into tomorrow's new inventions. It took me five years of Ipods to get one. It took me ten years of CD players to get one of those and I still haven't purchased my first hypercolor tee shirt. The most advance technology I have is my lovely apple computer, now too old. My Ipod with 4 gigs, 56 shy of the new ones. My sonic care toothbrush, the first model, three back from today's fresher, more effective one. That's it. That's me on the cutting edge of what's hot and fresh.

I love the thought of having every song that I ever cared to listen to twice being stuck in a little tiny piece of metal that I can hide in my ass if I ever go to prison and need a musical score there. I don't need 60 gigs of hard drive, I don't know that many songs. I still have 40 percent of my Ipod open for more and I have run out of ideas. My sonic care cleans my teeth just as well as the newer ones. Hell, my manual transmission toothbrush works just as well, but the sonic care was a gift and I like it. If you have never tried one, it's a lot like a brushing your teeth with a vibrator.

I wish I could say that I am listening to every song as it plays on my Ipod, but I am so fascinated by the technology that I spend most of my time just playing with the damn thing and seeing what else I can make it do. A common hereditary trait of humans. It's not enough that we invent a tool, use the tool and perfect the tool, we have to find new uses for that tool and, when we have the time, add shit on to it. (I think his trait is known as the SWISS ARMY gene) I know that I have made doorstops out of Irons, books, piles of clothes, a shoe and countless other things who's original purpose has nothing to do with doorways. I have used my keys to open plastic containers, credit cards to scrape ice off my windows and I have used hairbrushes on women for... combing their hair. I know that when I use some tool I always wonder why the inventor didn't add this or that to it to make it more effective. I think the best example of this thinking can be seen in hammers. For years, all hammers pretty much looked the same, then someone thought, we should make the handle... Longer. That's it. And it has taken off big time.

With all of this exploration of the use of tools, I am beginning to wonder what simpler-man came up with. I wonder what the first few people around fire thought. I'm sure they thought it was warm, but how long did it take them to figure out that you could cook things with it. I wonder how many of our monkey-like relatives caught fire before they figured out not to touch the shiny end of the burning stick. How many different shapes did the wheel go through before they settled on round? Why was Tarzan, raised by apes, the only one wearing a loin cloth?

I don't think my fascination for all things invented stops at just this little hiccup in the computer world. I'm sure that in two years this Ipod will be looked at much the same way we look at 8 track players today as a funny little piece of pop culture trivia and nostalgia that you can't pawn and you can't find parts for. If you think my assessment is harsh, how many of you have a cell phone for which batteries are no longer sold? How many of you have televisions that you can't use a DVD player with? How many of you still have a stereo with dials, nobs or non-LED displayed information? How many of you have calculators that you don't use but won't throw away?

So I am enjoying my youthful and monkey-like enthusiasm for my Ipod, which is balancing my frustration over trying to find a battery for my cell phone. It's an older model phone and the people at the phone company almost shit themselves when I asked for a battery for it. They had a look on their faces like I was about to touch the shiny end of the burning stick with my bare hand. If they ever make the killing of humans legal for everyone, not just the CIA personnel, then these people are the first on my list. Just as soon as the skin graft on my hand heals up. I gotta run, "Way cool junior" just came on.