My iPod had been deader than John Cleese’s parrot for a week, and I’d fallen into sad ruminations. Boy I’d like to hear some 80’s-era Tom Waits right now. I wonder what that Frank Black album sounds like. Guess I’ll never know. And so, like a sap driving past his ex’s house, I tried plugging the old iPodotron in one more time.
There was a click, then a whirr: and the iPod looked up at me: I. Still. Function.
It was downhill from there. The reanimated iPod demanded speakers. And so I walked my boney-from-walking-everywhere rump down to the saddest excuse for an electronics store you ever saw. Their stock looks to have fallen off the back of a truck back when Nash Bridges and Lance Vance were Crockett and Tubbs. Bought a pair of speakers for the equivalent of $8, checked internet, bought foodstuffs, returned home.
Unwrapped my $8 purchase and waddaya know, in one of my speakers the flat metal cone that produces the sound had broken free from its cheap plastic casing. It still played music; it just sung into the floor of the speaker instead out out into my living room. After ten seconds of trying of shaking the dang thing and telling it to fix itself the way iPod did, I let loose with an unholy string of curse words, conjugated in new and innovative ways.
Whatever. Plug in speakers, activate iPod, ignore awful quality of sound, rock out for 48 hours of weekend. Why nothing else this weekend? Everybody was either busy or in Congo reporting on the satanic butchery. I called my Kenyan buddy from The People and said we should get out of town and check out giraffes. He agreed, but then got called into report a story on Sunday.
So. Me and a house and a word processor and about 12 gigabytes of music. Me free to yell ideas to myself while I do monotonous tasks, run to the computer to pound out brilliance on the keyboard, and basically all around wig out. Sing the lyrics to songs, inserting perverted lyrics simply for the sake of perversion. Giggle. Lucky for everyone (everyone but blog readers) that I’m too poor to buy bourbon. This whole entry would be pure Bukowski. Instead I just watched the water drain and noted that is does indeed go counterclockwise south of the equator.
Best lyric coming forth from iPod weekend: a love song by The Mountain Goats: “Our love never had a leg to stand on.” I laughed out loud. Most depressing: “I was so happy with you,” by someone I can’t recall. Which means it’ll be able to sneak up on me when I’d rather not hear it. Danged dirty iPod.
