Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Top Ten songs on my iPod meme

I must confess that I don't often listen to my iPod.  I use Linux, and you can only manage the iPod (well) via iTunes, and there's no iTunes for Linux.  And so I'm stuck in the old geek joke:
Infinite Loop.  n.  See Loop, infinite.
As a result, everything on my iPod is old - probably 4 years old or more.  Driving from Atlanta to Austin yesterday, I got sick of the commercials on radio, and so I put the iPod on.  And was suddenly transported back in time to a not very good part of my life.

The last 5 or 6 years haven't been particularly good.  It's not the years, it's the miles - but a lot of those weren't paved.  The music was all from this period.  It's strange how the music selection can take you back in time.  This one is a dull knife, sawing through my guts.  Cool song, just the juxtaposition isn't very good for me:



This one, too:



And so I won't do this again for a while.  CDs and FM Radio for me.  The last few years have I think made me a harder - not a better, or a stronger - man.  I find myself unwilling to once again pull the curtain back on those years.  And the Top Ten?

I don't want to look.  Sorry.  Hope this year is better.

10 comments:

Bob said...

I hear ya. I keep wondering when I'll hit bottom and start getting better years, and every year it seems that the hole just needs to be dug a little bit deeper...

bluesun said...

Sounds like you've got a nice, expensive, new target there!

NotClauswitz said...

See n. Loop, string. Music on the iPod top-what? Huh? How do you tell?
I don't listen to it in my ears anyhow, that's condition White.

GuardDuck said...

Was just talking to a guy yesterday about how even music you didn't like twenty years ago can stir up good memories. And those songs you loved bring back some very bittersweet reminisces and you don't like that song so much anymore.

Dave H said...

That must explain why I'm such a fan of 70s and (much) 80s music. Those were good times in my life. 90s and beyond, not so much.

All this time I thought it was because today's music stinks.

Goober said...

Honestly, it has been since 2007 for me. I got sick and stuff went downhill from there.

F*cking rheumatoid arthritis hurt me so bad this weekend that i canceled a fishing trip tht I'd been looking forward to for a month.

I find myself more and more wondering if i can get out of bed each morning and go to my stupid, stressful job.

I'm 31 years old and my health is ruined. My hair is gray. My job has suffered. I hurt all the damned time.

I don't know what I've done to deserve all of this.

But then I look at my daughter, and she inevitably smiles at me as 10 month old babies are wont to do, and I get up and go because of her. I look at my wife who has stuck with my owly ass through all of this and keep after it because she is what is important. There is more good than bad in life, even when you've been dealt a shitload of lemons. It beats the alternative every single day.

Dwight Brown said...

"I use Linux, and you can only manage the iPod (well) via iTunes, and there's no iTunes for Linux."

I know there's no iTunes for LINUX, and I confess to not having looked at this closely (it isn't a priority in my current LINUX setup) but I thought there were a lot of LINUX tools for loading music onto and managing the iPod. Do those just not work for you?

Borepatch said...

Goober, amen. That's what kept me going, too, because you can give up for yourself but not for your family.

Dwight, Banshee is supposed to do this, but my experience is that it's not great. And it doesn't work at all with iPhone.

Midwest Chick said...

For good or for ill, we are the sum of our experiences. If the past few years have made you a harder man, they have also, it seems to me, made you a more self-aware man. I think we all have times that we'd rather shut the cover on and leave be, but those things that happened during those times color our worldview--if we are aware of THAT (as you are), then it's good.

As a not so good segue, for myself, I listen to the 80's. Who can resist hair bands dressed in spandex and electric drum sets for a mood pick-me-up?? Ironically enough, word verification is 'hamest'.

Borepatch said...

Midwest Chick, I think that you're right.

Although we tended to listen more to the cleaned up bands: David Bowie (Let's Dance), Art of Noise, etc.