Column: Not Quite Nietzsche
I have been replaced by an iPod. I saw a friend on campus, yelled her name and watched in dismay as she kept walking.
I was crushed.
Was it something I had done? Maybe something I had said? It wasn’t until later in the day when I saw her – and her telltale white earbud headphone – that I realized just what had happened. I had been dissed for an iPod. It wasn’t the first time and it probably won’t be the last.
It seems like everyone is getting into the mp3 player craze and it’s easy to see why. The thought of taking an entire library’s worth of music anywhere you go is, even with all of our other technological advances, still a pretty novel thing.
For the better part of humanity’s existence, “taking your music with you” involved hiring a marching band for the day.
It was unwieldy at best, and at its worst, it both looked and sounded something like the Rodney King riots.
The rise of both popular music and the pop star at the turn of the century simplified things considerably. Now, rather than trying to stuff a hundred players and their horns into your Volvo, you could hire one vocalist.
It seemed easy enough, but even this wasn’t without its flaws. Popularity, for instance, brings with it price. A portable music library was still only available to the rich.
But even the rich found that this method had problems. Some artists, like Michael Jackson, are just better appreciated from a distance.
But we have left these problems behind in the modern era.
In fact, it would seem that our whole history points toward the invention of the mp3 player. And while the iPod may not have stopped the Spanish Inquisition, it sure would have made it a lot catchier. And, with all of the accessories, cases, and add-ons that come along with these things, the Inquisition would have been much more fashionable.
Buying an iPod is something like having a baby. It’s not enough to bring the thing into your house, you have to clothe, feed and love it.
Regardless of where you’re going or what you’ll be doing, there is an iPod case made for the occasion.
From stately black leather to a Paris Hilton-esque abomination made of fuzzy pink stuff and rhinestones, your mp3 player can now be as stylish as you are.
The iPod may soon, if current trends continue, replace the chihuahua as the favorite purse-bound pet of the masses. It is quiet, only makes noise when you push play and to date there have been no reported cases of an iPod purse-wetting.
Some have voiced concern over the mp3 player’s harmful effects on our social relations.
It’s true we probably don’t converse with each other as much as we used to, but let’s be honest: if your friends were half as much fun as your iPod, you might actually take off the headphones and talk to them.
It’s the survival of the fittest in action and some of us are being fazed out.
They say that a hundred monkeys with typewriters would, if given enough time, write something on par with a Shakespearian sonnet.
If primates can already do it, the iPod can’t be far behind. I dare say that the day the iPod develops an opposable thumb, most of us are going to be making our way to the extinction exhibit at the museum.
I’ll be at the head of the pack, but don’t feel bad if I don’t say hi -I’ll probably be listening to my iPod.
Zach Pendelton is a junior majoring in English.
Comments can be sent to zpendleton@cc.usu.edu