The Ryndex

That is, if you have a new iPod Shuffle.

I have a discman — a very nice one. It was offered to me by the members of my old workgroup before I left for France, and I use it all the time. It’s fixed beside my bed for night-time snoozing melodies.

Nope, it’s been years since I’ve walked around with music playing in my ears. Then I realized that my mobile phone (which is better than your mobile phone) was capable of functioning as an MP3 player. So I bought a cheap SD card, loaded it up and had music.

Hours that would have been filled with metro coughing, screeching and ringing are now filled with the likes of:

Caribou – The Milk of Human Kindness: Dreamy, driving Canadian electronica that you can tap your toes to.

Squarepusher – Ultravisitor: Experimental jazz-influenced noise music that you can push a nail file under your toenails to.

INXS – Kick: Revisited from the grand old years, they sound more together and yet more human than they did in junior high. In those years, I remember dancing to INXS with a really nice girl — she leaned over and commented “you don’t listen to this type of music much, do you?” I don’t know what that was supposed to mean, but years later when I got a car, we cruised around the city for hours listening to INXS.

Green Day – American Idiot: Like the Scissor Sisters, this is an album that sat around unlistened to for ages — then burst into one of my favourites of the day. It’s a rock anthem to apathy and manipulation.

Jack Johnson – In Between Dreams: He used to be a pro-surfer, and he has a lazy, laid-back folk style. A bit bluesy, but in a good-natured and cheerful way. Like The Beach Boys, this is music for optimists and can be a bit too sweet. Unlike The Beach Boys, it doesn’t completely suck, constantly and across epochs.

Feist – Let It Die: It sticks to the inside of your mind. That’s not a judgment about whether she’s good or bad, talented or irritating. But she sticks and will not be scraped off.

Anyway, to get back on track, my mobile phone is much better than your mobile phone. For Roggles P. Naysayer, who claims that not having a phone is better — I can boast that my phone only receives calls half the time, if I did a soft reboot recently. And to make up for it, it sometimes makes calls that I didn’t even know needed making!

One of the only disadvantages of having such a genius master-of-all-trades device is it’s size. I can’t run with it. So I bought an iPod Shuffle.

This is a little device, slightly larger than a USB key or a pack of gum. It looks delicious, but must not be eaten. It weighs but a pittance, and it plays music — oh sweet music! — that comforts me in my travails.

The disadvantage is that you must use iTunes to manage the little bastard, even though it functions otherwise like a USB data key. Also, it doesn’t have a screen, which didn’t bother me at first. However, given that I have a terrible memory for music, this means that I will never know who’s playing when I autofill.

Autofill is auto-awesome, however. I plug the thing into my computer, and it automatically fills it with random music, taking into account my ratings (if I’d ever bothered to rate something).

In conclusion, I posted a travel log about Amsterdam on my other blog, and you should go read it.