Currently Listening To . . .

NOTHING since my GODDAMN, MOTHERF&!#ING, CHEAPASS piece-of-consumer-gadgetry-iPod broke 13.5 months after I bought it, just in time for the extended warranty that I didn't buy because I was relying on Apple's ability to design and manufacture a $350 electronic device that WOULDN'T BREAK in a year to kick in. YES I know that is a run-on sentence of the most offensive order. It pains me to bring myself to buy a new one, as I cannot picture myself voluntarily handing Apple another $300, given its inability to create a quality product, in addition to its hubris in failing to meet my expectations as a previously-satisfied Apple customer. "You should have bought the extended warranty" is not a satisfactory answer. I've gone from appreciating to resenting Apple's cutesy, effective marketing campaign given that its product SUCKS. However, I have been sans iPod for over a week now and it is killing me (I am painfully aware of the way in which that statement has revealed my otherwise comfortable, blessed life). Aside from my ability to listen to Rhapsody at work, which does not allow me to fully listen to and appreciate it, my life is devoid of music right now, and my ears are starved. Plus, I am being forced to listen to the grotesquely banal, meaningless conversations of my fellow commuters. I realized that I haven't listened to an actual el or Metra commute for about a year. I have just recently noted that these commutes have been reduced to a series of inane conversations and cellphones and BlackBerrys chirping and buzzing incessantly. Is this what we have been reduced to?

Thus, I have reached the conclusion that I may just have to fork over the money (when my budget allows for it) to reluctantly purchase another goddamn iPod. Because I am trying to make lemonade, it will allow me to start anew as my old iPod has some negative associations that I will be glad to be rid of forever. I am just going to have to do something to assuage my yuppie guilt.