Welcome to 1995

1995. What a year. A year when the internet didn’t really exist. No mobile phones. No iPods. No email. No nothing really. Just a soulless existence where you had to actually be on time to meet people and where Blur were preparing to do  battle with Oasis.

Well I’ve been forcibly transported back to that happy year as my iPhone has been sent to hospital.  Apparently they don’t appreciate being watered and my insurance company insists on inspecting its damaged carcass before asking Apple for a new one. For two long weeks I will be incommunicado via a mobile telephony device.  This is the first time for 10 years I have been without a phone for more than one day. This may get difficult especially given I am addicted to all things internets and insist on having a constant soundtrack to my life piped directly into my earholes. Instant cold turkey.  Probably in 5 hours I’ll be curled up in a corner shivering and covered in my own vomit. Or I’ll feel strangely liberated. Maybe this is the very push I need to stop checking twitter every 5 minutes?

Only a very long two week time will tell.

Everyone makes mistakes

It made me chuckle a bit when itunes tried to get some artwork… 

Scott 4:

Unicorns are people too (and guitars apparently)

How delightful

I don’t need a nanny thanks, I’m 27.

People moan about the nanny state, etc. Me? I don’t really mind that much being told how much veg I have to eat to stay alive, how much salt will kill me, to look both ways before I’m run over, but this is the final straw.

My iPod has colluded with my headphones for no other reason than to make me almost loose it on a crowded train. If I want to deafen myself with thumpy drums and Thom Yorke’s wailing then I should bloody well be allowed to do it right? Wrong. My favourite loud track didn’t even get loud enough to drown out that bloody patronising train lady telling me where I’m going, to mind the gap, and to watch out for unattended packages every 30 seconds . A far as I remember the last package that exploded on public transport was very much attended. Anyway I digress.

I tapped the + sign in frustration but it refused to budge louder than dinner party ambiance. Then I tried to trick it by turning it down and then up again slowly. No such luck the smug bastard. I contemplated hurling it out of the window but thought better of it – I paid 70 quid for those Bose headphones and this is how they repay me? They think they’re doing this for my own good? For the good of my hearing? Bollocks. They’re doing it to piss me off.

Trouble is they seem enforce their fascist volume control policy totally at random so the next track nearly did deafen me as Beck’s timebomb exploded in my ear canal.

Go fuck ya headphones!

Shuffling Along

Last month my iPod died. I morned for about a week and contemplated my mp3 fate. Should I fork out for a new iPod? But I don’t have an Apple computer of my own – this may pose a problem. Should I get a different mp3 player just to tide me over until I get my new Mac? Should I go retro and carry CDs and a diskman? (LOL)

Then in my grief I wandered into the Apple store on Regents Street and looked with longing at the pretties and stroked those iPod touches. Then a tiny purple shuffle caught my eye. It’s only 32 quid! I snapped it up just for an experiment.

I tell you it’s an interesting experience. If you’re like me and have several months worth of music you never know what you’re going to get. Most of the time I don’t know what it is when it’s playing as it has no display. Now is that JME or Dizzie Rascal? Dunno? (skip to next track). Is that Marissa Nelder or Anni Rossi? Dunno? Sounds pretty though. You don’t know what’s coming next either and purple shuffle makes some pretty odd choices: who knew that Star Wars followed by Spank Rock would work? But strangely it does.