Tuesday

Why iPod's shuffle feature will change the world

So I am cleaning around the sink with a toothpick-what do you mean why? How else do you clean between the lip of the sink and the counter? No, it is not OCD. Obviously you and your mother did not enjoy special bonding time over scrubbing the refrigerator with Q-tips. That's not weird! No, my mother does not have a distorted view of work ethic. Who asked you anyway?

Moving on, I am cleaning and I have my iPod set to shuffle. Fugazi comes on. I don't remember downloading it, it must have been in the heady days of "reclaiming" music from record industry moguls via Napster. Damn the man. Anyway, it totally took me back to my first concert as a teen and those great times when you are sixteen and invincible. I am not a musically talented person, quite the opposite, but as I get older I am starting to develop a real emotional attachment to music and how it defines me. I now consider my shuffle to be a totally comprehensive view of myself, Marvin Gaye, Wilco, Kanye West were what followed my Fugazi. iTunes may do nothing but make Steve Jobs a great big pile of money. But, it might also change the world by reminding us of where we have been, extending the invincible us.

I am currently at war with my husband to get his (and the kid's) junk off my iTunes. Nothing kills my momentum like Dar Williams, ugh make it stop. By the way, note to the Pentagon, if you are looking for a new way to torture people in secret prisons, play them the same three Snow Patrol songs in a row, over and over and over again. I'm pretty sure that Chad has either inserted subliminal messages into this album or is trying to wear me down to the point where I buy him his own iPod. I hear it my sleep. . .

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

The subliminal message I've inserted into the Snow Patrol songs is "stop trying to clean around the sink with a toothpick!" Obviously, it's not taking hold.

Snow Patrol always me think of either a) Grey's Anatomy or b) Las Vegas. The GA cue is pretty obvious. I always think of Vegas because I downloaded the album just before we went to Vegas, and I was listening to the album as we flew in. Ah, good memories!

Anonymous said...

Could your hubby start putting a subliminal message in to buy me an iPod as well. Preferably a 30 gig, but I'll settle for the 80 gig. Not that I would ever admit to this in public, but my roommate gave me 8 gigs of music. This is in addition to the 4 gigs I already had I now have 12 gigs. Plus, iTunes now lets you store videos on the new iPods so I can watch the Daily Show and The Office anytime I want...if only I had that new iPod. My 1 gig Nano and 1 gig shuffle (which you guys "gave" me) just aren't cutting it.

ang said...

I am not a huge Snow Patrol fan so I cannot help you out there! I do agree that the ipod has "stretched" my music. Have you ever listened to Rhett Miller? Check him out - he is a fave of both Tina and myself!

by the way, Can you email me that photo of Olivia and Bucky? I LOVE IT!

Liz Allman said...

Yeah, good luck with that Sean. Considering your brother has been begging me for a Shuffle for about a year and I have refused, I think the traction that you will have with the 30 gig is about zip.

Liz Allman said...

Yeah, Ang I love Rhett Miller, but so does Chad so I keep listening to him at home by myself for fear of it turning into a Snow Patrol-type situation.

Anonymous said...

FYI - I gave Chad an MP3 player to use on the flight back home when he was in CA. Soooo, now he can put his music on his own MP3 player and Liz can erase them off hers. Problem solved. Isn't it nice to have someone to anticipate problems and solve them ahead of time.

Sean said...

In that case - I'm anticipating needing a job in less than 4 months. Can someone solve that problem for me ahead of time?

angieoh! said...

hmmm. I sense some family issues here. just like my own family, let me butt in...

Sean... work hard... get your own job ... save money... buy an ipod. ahhh capitalism.

:) - just giving you a hard time.

just wait til Olivia has an ipod and is jamming to some punk garbage!!!! ha ha ah!

Liz Allman said...

Excuse me, I will be loading that punk garbage on her iPod. The kid will never know what a CD is, isn't that crazy?

Jim-the MP3 player is only half the battle. The other half is to get all of his MP3's out of my iTunes where they are automatically loaded onto my player. Which I had to give birth for by the way. BIRTH, to a 9.5 lb child.

Anonymous said...

doing manual down loads with individualized play lists eliminates the hassle of you getting songs you don't want on your player. For example, I have two iPods. When one gets plugged in,the "Shuffle" playlist downloads onto my shuffle.
When I plug in the nano, the "Nano" play list downloads. And for when I know I have a car trip with dad, I have a "Dad's Music" playlist that downloads onto the device I choose. It makes it a lot less annoying. I don't have things on my ipod that I don't need.

Liz Allman said...

That is essentially what I did. I hadn't for a long time because I like the shuffle feature and that doesn't work with the play lists, but it does with the party shuffle feature on the latest version of iTunes. I hate sifting through the thousands of songs to make the play list though. Even when I do it by album it takes forever. I wish I could log into my iTunes with my own individual settings, just like you can on Yahoo, or Windows for that matter. Then only my songs would show in the library.

Anonymous said...

I don't know exactly how iTunes manages libraries in Windows, but the two of us essentially have separate iTunes profiles on our Mac laptop, because we each have our own profile with individual settings on the laptop. So I set the iTunes library to be in a folder shared between the two profiles. All the music is available to both of our iTunes, but we can manage our library to delete the songs out we don't want to hear, without taking the music off the laptop or making it inaccessible to each other. It shouldn't be too hard to do the same thing if you have separate logon names with Windows...