Thursday, November 17, 2005

11/17/05 The Ghost of Tom Joad

Within the last 2 weeks, I shifted my music listening into the 21st century and got myself an iPod. The first thing you do when you get an iPod (after freaking out that there's no power cord) is install the iTunes software. One of the first questions it asks you is whether you would like it to search your hard drive for mp3 files. Why yes. That would be lovely. After nearly a decade of amassing odds and ends mp3 files, backing them up on CDs, transferring them from computer to computer, and saving them in various folders all over the place, iTunes finally organized them. I then spent the better part of a Sunday ripping CDs onto my laptop, creating all sorts of duplicate songs. But whatever. At this point, I plugged in my new iPod and it started sucking up every song in that iTunes folder. All 1500 of them, at what seemed like about a song per second. It was amazingly quick.

So now I just sit at work, click "shuffle songs" and listen to my iPod all day. Even I'm shocked at some of the mp3s I have. Just before I started writing this, "The Ghost of Tom Joad" by Rage Against the Machine came on. It's one of those songs I haven't gotten tired of after all these years. That's pretty rare for me. But after all these years, I never decided to learn what the song was about (My bad, I know). I learned 2 things in this search. One - This is a Bruce Springsteen song (again, my bad. I just didn't know). Two - the song is about a character from "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. I probably should've known these things before. But hey, I'm the guy that, up until 2003, thought that Spinal Tap was a real 80's hair band.

Once again, CNN is on the spot with breaking news - "Half the homes sold for more than the median and half for less."

My dad, who has a real talent and eye for photography, suggests checking out Liquid Sculpture.

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