People are eating their iPods...

That's a nice little morsel. Pretty soon they'll start listening to music on them too.

LifePod

This guy muses his new life with an iPod. My mom just ordered a MacBook and an iPod nano. I bought a nano what seems like forever, and it is still doing me good. But I do agree with this guy:

I want useful playlists. I want "Tori Amos songs that make a damn lick of sense." I want "Beck songs where the rhythm track doesn't sound like he's throwing Ben Wa balls at an armadillo." I want "Nick Cave songs that aren't explicitly about bleeding to death."

Someday I'll get this all sorted out. I don't have money right now, but after a few months in Korea I should have some cash to buy a Mac; I'll probably go with the MacBook Pro because everybody says if you buy a laptop it should be a Mac. And I'll use it to pretend to finish writing my novel, even though Steve Jobs nobody reads. (Read that article, it's quite good.) Computers are great for pretending.

Meanwhile, I have been messing with the Smart Playlists, creating rips in the mp3-time continuum; buying CDs, downloading tracks (legally!), fretting about loss of audio quality, superior open source file formats, worried about new releases or re-releases on DVD-audio or other superior quality formats, whether or not Apple will open their entire iTunes library, all the video and audio that I have that I need to compile and edit and so on and so forth. All the books I have read. And write. Meanwhile I have all the freetime in the world and I'm sitting here typing about all the things that I'm not doing.

Okay, I'll stop. Let's stop it now. Unplug the pod.

Yesterday I was in the Apple store and I wanted to do something but I didn't. I wanted to go to one of the smug salesmen, go up to him, say, "Hey! Listen, this is my first time I've been in an Apple store. I see all kinds of products here, and I'm quite intrigued--if not overwhelmed. So, listen. I own a nanopod, and I want to upgrade to a newer one; also, I'm intrigued by all the laptops available--I've heard they're the best--although I'm not sure whether I'd want to buy a MacBook or a MacBook pro. Oh, I got so many questions. But let me ask you one thing: Here it is first question: Do you guys have a bathroom I can use?" And then after they point towards the bathroom I'd ask "Is it okay if I make a poopie?"

Mp3 players that record audio and have a ton of memory

I have a very large music library. It is nearing 300 GB. It's ridiculous. But that's the reality. In a few months I will be back on a payroll, and so I am contemplating purchases. All I want is a decent laptop--only for listening to music, basic internet use, and word processing. That's easy. But what I'm looking for is a magical Mp3 device that will let me upload TONS of music and also let me record on the fly.

ANd I don't give a damn about how big the LCD screen is. My 1st edition nanopod's LCD screen is as big and nifty as I could wish for. But it seems like all the rage is LCD screens? What's up with that? Kurosaw and Herzog don't translate so well at that size. Though getting this up on my iPod:

would be sweeeet. But never mind that, LCD playback drains on the battery--gimme music, gimme recording--I don't give a damn about the rest!!!!

So, I will come back to this after I do some research. For about $400 dollars I can get 160GB player by Archos. It looks very nice--and man, the field is so competitive that you'd figure that somebody would get their price down below the 160gb iPod Classic! The strategy of the manufactures seem to be to add more features. And I want a particular feature, line-in recording, and ability to play lossless formats would be nice too. But I wish there was a streamlined player with good PC interface, lots of playback options and a freakin' line in for recording! And shitty mic for kicks.

All I have to do is upload my bootlegged copy of Sony Vegas and I can make tunes without nothing but my index finger! Keep me posted.