Wednesday, October 20, 2010

random thoughts: iPod edition

OK, so now that I've admitted publicly that a) I have Ke$sha on my iPod, and b) I know how to spell her name (although I did Google it to make sure I had it right), I'm feeling a fair amount of pressure to say something intelligent today.  Which is making it nearly impossible to think of anything intelligent to say.  So maybe I will just ramble on about my iPod, which has become a commodity fetish to me (see, I'm learning something in my theory class.  maybe not what she wants me to learn, but I'm learning.  A commodity fetish is --loosely-- when an object takes on a value that is far beyond its actual worth.  Technically, this would be due to market forces, but when you use it snidely as I am here, it just means that I've become mildly obsessed with it, because it is so cool and fills so many (perceived) needs).

Oh, yeah, I was just going to ramble on today.  So anyway.  I have a purple one.  Dh got it for me for Christmas three years ago, and it has been a lifesaver with all the travelling I've been doing.  It has music and podcasts and audiobooks and Chinese lessons (well, they're not there anymore, but they were when I was taking Chinese), and did I mention audiobooks?  Books for fun, kids' books for family road trips, books I need to read for school so I can get some studying done while I'm driving (right now I'm listening to the House of Mirth, which I'm supposed to have read by 3:00 tomorrow afternoon, so what the heck am I doing sitting here writing a blog post?). 

And playlists.  I have incredible playlists.  70s music, which is divided into two, pop and "real" stuff like Led Zeppelin and the Stones and Cat Stevens; Cooking Music (which is mostly Motown), treadmill music (which is hiphop and the TingTings and oh, OK, I'll admit it since I've alread 'fessed up to Ke$sha, Britney), mad music (start with the Immigrant Song, Black Dog and Slither, move on to more Led and Welcome to the Jungle, until by the end I'm laughing at Magic Bus and Pour Some Sugar on Me), Dinner Music for when we have friends over, and a mix that is constantly in motion that is what I listen to while I'm driving to school ten hours a week.  It's always a mix of old and new stuff.  Right now it has three Sleigh Bells songs (I have yet to meet another adult that likes them, but I love 'em--start with Rill Rill if you want to hear some, it's the least, um, different), a couple each of Stevie Wonder and Clapton, White Stripes, Plain White Ts, G. Love and Special Sauce, Jonathan Coulton (thanks to Lucy!), Queen and about a dozen other songs that interest me at the moment.  There's not much country, but a few-- like Kenny Chesney's duet with Dave Matthews, "I'm Alive" and Keith Urban's "You'll Think of Me."

OK, I'm boring you.  See, I told you: mild obsession.  So here's my advice:  about 30 songs in a playlist, because on any given day, you're not going to want to listen to a particular song, so that way you can skip right past three or four and still have plenty to listen to.  Because you clicked on my blog today so that you could learn how I set up playlists, right?  Right.  I knew that.

I do have something more intelligent to say but it's going to have to wait till Friday because that's all I have time for today (Shakespeare test tomorrow!!  House of Mirth!!  Why oh WHY am I sitting here??) and Thursday is the day that I leave the house at 7:45 a.m. and don't get home until 9 p.m.

Ciao.

And I'll just leave you with this:  All we want to do is eat your brains, We're not unreasonable, no one's gonna eat your eyes....  makes me laugh every time I hear it.

4 comments:

  1. Okay, now I just spent WAY too much time on YouTube listening to the Sleigh Bells. I like 'em. They're kind of alternative/techno with a little The Bird and The Bee thrown in there. Fun stuff.

    Oh, and only 30/play list? Really? My kid-friendly playlist alone has roughly 1300 songs in it. You, my dear, need a bigger iPod. Tell your husband I said so. ;)

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  2. Oh, well, there's over a thousand songs on the whole thing, but really??? you put a thousand in a playlist?? I'm going to have to re-think my entire iPod philosophy here.

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  3. I haven't really thought about a new iPod, because I'm so danged attached to this one. But you prompted me to go look. my current one is 8G, which I have full to the brim, but I can make it work by rotating stuff on and off. But now they have a new kind of Nano which is 16G. I'm intrigued. Might have to mention that for Christmas. I don't really want one of the larger ones (because of dimensions, not capacity). I like that this one is small enough to fit in my pocket.

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  4. Hehe, happy to give your husband Christmas present ideas. :)

    I currently have one of the 80 gb iPods with roughly 3300 songs on it. I haven't gotten through my whole hard drive yet, though, so there will be more added. So, yeah, I do have very long playlists. I think my shortest one is 30 songs, but that's the soundtrack for my WIP. All the others are much longer. Just my Top Rated tends to hover in the 450 song range.

    I'm a bit of a music junky, though, so you do what works for you. (Like you wouldn't anyway.)

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