On iPods and Guilty Pleasures

So a couple weeks ago I was over at Lauren's place trying to pillage cool stuff from her CD collection. Most of it was stuff I already had, but haven't gotten around to ripping yet. Some Alice In Chains, Billy Joel, Garth Brooks and yes - I'll admit it - Wilson Phillips. I knew it would come around and bite me in the ass. At dinner on Thursday night, Lauren announced at the dinner table in front of her whole family that I had, in fact, ripped her Wilson Phillips CD.

"You weren't supposed to tell anyone about that," I said in feigned embarrassment.

I turned red for about 3 seconds and then realized something: Everybody there who had an iPod probably had at least a dozen songs on it that they would never admit to listening to. Over Men's Weekend, Cousin Al, Walt, Matt and I had a brief conversation about that while Al scrolled through through my songs.

Yeah, I've got a bunch of really crappy songs on there. I'd prefer my guilty pleasures to dead air, though. My iPod has 60GB of space, and I'd prefer to have my favorite 15,000 songs on it than only the 5,000 or so that I'm not embarrassed by. Yes, I have "Summertime Girls" by Y&T. Yes, I have three songs by Firehouse on there. Yes, I have an entire Dixie Chicks album. Don't like it? Well, screw you - let's see what's on your iPod.

It made me think about the interview I did with that Los Angeles radio station a couple weeks back. The interviewer told me her friend lost her iPod and was completely devastated. I commented that I thought iPods were highly personal items and that there are always a few songs on there that you probably wouldn't want other people to know you listened to.

So, confess your guilty pleasures in comments. I'll start by adding to my list. I've got:

• An entire Whitesnake concert from 1990, which I listen to often (especially on long road trips).
• "The Final Countdown" and "Carrie" by Europe.
• Two Heart albums
• An Indigo Girls album
• At least half a dozen John Cougar Mellencamp tunes
• Almost everything that Poison and Def Leppard have ever recorded
• REO Speedwagon
• Restless Heart
• I could go on...

Another Blog Calls Bullshit

Check this out. Basically, this site is saying the same thing I am regarding how close Cheney was to his victim, but they actually had the time to do the math. The verdict? Whittington was probably more like 10-15 yards away, possibly as close as 5 yards.

As I said earlier, I was inclined to let this one go, as it sounded like a simple hunting accident, but I believe that some of the details are sketchy and someone should look into this further. Maybe Cheney is embarrassed he shot someone at such close range. Maybe he had more than one beer at lunch. Who knows? But something's definitely fishy.

Something Fishy

My first inclination when I heard about Dick Cheney's little hunting accident was to let it go. I knew the media would try to make something out of what was most likely nothing. Then I read a story or two about it. Here's what I'm not buying. A story in this morning's Newsday showed a graphic of the damage to Whittington's neck and chest. (The graphic is apparently not on Newsday's site.) I'm no CSI investigator or anything like that, but I have a hard time believing that a 28-gauge can do that sort of damage with that sort of shot pattern at 30 yards. I think either Whittington was closer than reported or Cheney's choke was tighter than it probably should have been for bird hunting.

How Stuff Works

So I have Optimum Voice hooked up so that the network e-mails me any new voice mails I get. I get a .wav attached to an e-mail. Since I'm working from home today, I forwarded my office phone to my home office phone. I got a voice mail this morning and I clicked on it when the e-mail came in. This, of course, launched iTunes and I listened to it. At some point after that, I downloaded a couple songs to my iPod.

This is how you end up in a situation in which you're minding your own business, listening to your iPod, and then suddenly hear a voice mail from work come through your headphones right after your favorite ZZ Top song.