Greggity hasn’t posted in a while. Here’s why:

I got an ipod. They kicked the price down on the shuffles, so I picked up the 1 Gig Shuffle, which holds approximately 250 songs (or 8,000 songs if you load it up with The Ramones).

I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time at my computer loading up my I-Library with tunes from my stellar CD collection. I’ve loaded about 800 songs so far. Then I pop in the shuffle and it randomly selects from the tunes imported in the I-Library.

I love this thing, y’all. I love the random-ness of it. It doesn’t have a screen, so it’s like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get. Forrest Gump’s mom would be proud.

The thing is I could control which songs are on it if I want to. If I want it to take 30 Guns N’ Roses tunes, 12 Trixter hits, eight RATT jams and five Dokken smashes, I can tell it to. And I could tell it what order to play them in. Play the RATT songs first! Then play Skid Row’s 18 and life! Then bring on Barry Manilow’s Copacabana! All night Copa!
But I like the unknown factor. I let the shuffle randomly select the songs and the order. So right now it may only have one or two G N’ R tunes.

I used to think I wanted the big ipod that holds five billion songs. I thought it’d be neat to be able to carry my entire music collection around with me wherever I went. But that’s not for me. I love the fact that this caps me at 250 songs. First of all, 250 is a big number itself. Even in Metro’s longest delays, I’ll never get through all of the songs in a single sitting. Secondly, I LIKE not being able to quickly access every single song in my collection at the click of a button. I like having to wait for things sometimes; letting the anticipation build and the joy that comes when you finally do get to hear it. Ever read that story Christmas Every Day as a kid?

My shuffle has already made my workouts a whole lot more fun. It’s much more fun to hit the 10% incline at 5 MPH on the treadmill when you’re listening to the Black Crowes one minute and Amy Grant the next.

However, the area my ipod has truly revolutionized my life is in the bathroom. You’ve all seen the ipod commercials where the black and white figure is dancing around like a spaz listening to their ipod, right? That would be me on the toilet. I don’t even need to take the Washington Post or the Sports Illustrated in there anymore. I just stroll in and pop on the tunes. The other day I listened to Poison’s Talk Dirty to Me, then OMC’s How Bizarre. It was great! I was tapping my toes, air drumming, kicking out some air guitar, etc. It really made my bathroom experience fun. I was standing at the urinal this afternoon and Jump by Kriss Kross came on. I just swayed and bopped my head. I strongly considered jumping, but I have little doubt I’d have made a big mess.

g.