Four Reasons to Replace My Mp3 Player

(or reasons I have become too dependent on publicly shielding myself from the outside world)


- The loop function would be handy to break down passages in songs. Seeking out the same point of a song over and over again takes a lot of time. Music focus gone.

- At lunch, I had to listen to a gentleman at the next table equate the Phantom of the Opera movie to his marriage. He said something about how she became a born-again Christian and dumped her boyfriend with whom she used to sneak around in college. Parallels to the movie and all, the nice gentleman even paused mid-sentence to say grace. Crossword puzzle focus gone.

- This morning, I woke up on the train from a half-nap to a masculine woman asking if she missed her stop. Apparently she had fallen asleep, too. Once awake she had to tell our half of the train car: she was punched by a CTA employee last week for scolding somebody else's child, is in love with her husband, is not a holy person, thinks there is somebody for everybody, thinks America has gone to shit, and that she and her husband have boxes and boxes of love letters to each other. God was thanked quite a bit during this lecture. When the woman departed the train, somebody said: "Why do they always talk to me?!" Sleep focus gone.

- Music at the gym. Repeatedly picking things up and putting them back down is not enough for these people. You have to listen to the exact same sounding beat set to different pop songs as a way to 'pump you up'. It's hard to pick things up when somebody is screaming about how she think she's in love to the same drum pattern used in another song to describe how tonight is going to be fun. Sprots focus gone.

. . [~] . 0 (Grumble) Grumbles .