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ipod + mc = end of me?
last week, i broke down and submitted to the rampant consumerism that steve jobs demands of me on a eerily predictable (quarterly?) basis: ...after year(s) of unsatiated lust, my wanton desires find de-vice. meet io:
it's not as bad as you might think; i did find a way to squeeze a little better deal through the closing days of my ADC membership, but this shiny bit of kit still represents a decandent foray into a world i'm not too familiar with: cutting-edge gadget hipness.
for the moment, i bask in the glow of heavenly geek-cred: the precious days where your gadget has not yet been technically outdated, and you still have not yet received the bill.
(admittedly, it's usually questionable about which of the above will happen first).
anyway, that's not really the premise for my post. (besides, the ipod is a week old now, so it's old hat.) --instead, i digress into a recent insight to the possible ramifications of io in my life.
with 15 gb of music-stuffing potential, io is the first device i've owned which holds the promise of being able to deliver more than an hour of continuous music w/o repeating a track, or requiring 'fiddling.' (i.e. flipping tapes, swapping cd's). endowed in such a way, io is uniquely suited for the highly illegal practice of wiring headphones into a motorcycle helmet.
(any prior attempt might condem the rider to having to listen to any particular artist, or set of songs, on repeat, for infinity).
so: being unseasonably sunny, today was the prototype launch:
* leathers : check
* boots : check
* motorbike: check
* ipod : check
..........
jack sets io the ipod to random, selects 'pop' playlist, presses play and stores in interior coat pocket. io dutifully selects 'this is hardcore' by pulp, and begins spinning away.
10 minutes later, jack, io, and tomahome (the motorbike) are now on the very fringe of town, carving a line through commuter traffic for the nearest mountain road. --it takes about that long to realize that having io as a riding partner might just be a bad idea.
quite simply: i know now that it's surprisingly easy to drain out that 'quiet voice in the back of your head', (oft refered to as one's conscience).
surely, almost everyone is familiar with the quiet nagging doubts: 'maybe this isn't such a good idea', or, 'perhaps you might want to slow down a bit before that next corner'?
imagine, for an instant, that you're straddling a yellow bike, deep in the woods, deep in the throttle, and you were to replace that skin-saving interior dialogue with a particularily rocking live rendition of 'is this it', by the strokes?
in retrospect, it's a miracle i survived.