Nice to have powered speakers in my room once again. You may have seen the box w/ the speakers in yesterday’s video.

Yeah, so now I get to listen to my mp3’s more of the time… y’know, it just makes sense to. This is the thing about digital music: in the early days of Napster (and even before that) when downloading music from the Internet first started to be all the rage, I never really got into it. Even after I had my own computer and capabilities to participate in the piracy, I only would use said ability to maybe download a song that I couldn’t get out of my head (see Dave Clark Five’s “Five O’Clock? World”) or a new one that I found particularly catchy (see Alien Ant Farm’s “Smooth Criminal”).

Well, my opinion of digital tuneage has swung considerably. I’ve had it with CD’s, man. All the storage space required for these discs that can only hold about 74 minutes of music? What’s that? And the handling of the discs, the opening and closing of drawers, the getting up, the sitting down, I’ve had it. I want a digital jukebox: everything on the computer, all I have to do is pick the tunes from Windows Explorer, load ’em into Winamp, that’s it. And if I wanna load up a playlist that’ll go all day, I can do it.

I know what you’re saying!! “Why don’t you just rip all your CD’s then, hoser?” Ah, yes, if it were that simple. But are you aware that I own some 300-350 CD’s? Who the hell wants to take all the time to rip those damn things? Not me, my friend, not me. I need to hire some lacky that’ll do it for me for virtually no money. In fact, for absolutely no money, just a couple beers. But where will I find such a lacky? There’s the rub.

And here is a wacky thing: while I don’t like handling CD’s, or changing them, or whatever, I still enjoy having them and shopping for them. Like, say you could circumvent buying CD’s altogether, just download them from a label’s website or what have you, I wouldn’t want to do that. I like going to the record store. I like flipping through the jewel cases. I like browsing through the collection that I keep in two large books.

I am a crazy, sick bastard.

Take a look at the Interesting & Factual Tale on the bill for today, written by friend and colleague Ryan Wordell, whose half-naked self is pictured on the main Tales page.

Oh, oh! I almost forgot! Good responses initially to the call for your Saddest Song(s) Ever Written, thanks much. Keep ’em coming, (if you haven’t offered one already) and I’ll have a list up probably this time next week.