and i didn't need to upload it, as all those songs are already on my computer...

I’ve been having trouble sleeping. Well, no. I’ve had absolutely no trouble sleeping from 6 am to 3 pm. That’s been effortless. I have had trouble sleeping like a regular diurnal mammal. So, in between when I decide to go to bed and I actually fall asleep, I have been getting a lot done. For example, I have upped my winning streak on FreeCell from the low to the mid 300s. But, I felt that I could perhaps be even more efficient. So last night, I decided to go through a stack of unlabeled CDs to label them.

I found some weird things. I found a mix CD that was labeled. There was “[undisclosed name]’s mix” written on the front, along with the date and the #7. The date harkens back to a more innocent time, pre-9/11 time when we had boy bands aplenty, J. Lo had not yet met Ben Affleck, and Aaliyah was still alive. Ah, the halcyon days of yore. In any case, here is the playlist (seriously, you can’t make this stuff up, folks):

1)‘N Sync – Gone

2) something Indian

3) Theme from (the original) 90210 (which you now sadly have to clarify)

4) Linkin Park – Crawling in my Skin

5) from Rent – Rent

6)‘N Sync – Dirty Pop

7) something Indian

8) Blu Cantrell – Hit ‘Em Up Style (Oops!)

9) J. Lo – I’m Real

10) ‘N Sync – Do Your Thing

11) Mandy Moore – In My Pocket (a very poor quality version)

12) ‘N Sync – Celebrity

13) Xtina, Pink, Mya, Lil Kim – Lady Marmalade

14) Willa Ford – I Wanna Be Bad

15) from Moulin Rouge - Hindi Sad Diamonds

16) Jordan Knight – Give it to You

17) Aaliyah – Are You That Somebody (RIP)

Full disclosure: the tracks showed up in my iTunes without labels. I had to look them up (by reaching into my memory and instantly knowing the songs). Also, I was trying to detect a theme for the CD. And I couldn’t even come up with a joke answer. Something using the word bling?

Also also, let’s talk about 2001 in music for a second. Napster was in full swing then. Music was apparently doomed forever, and the sale of music would never be the same. Number one selling album that year? Linkin Park. This album went like ten times platinum. Things were free and still (somehow) legal, and something like ten million people spent actual money on the Linkin Park CD. Just saying.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, I had come across something even weirder. There was a CD with just two documents on it. One was a set of notes and the other was an essay written by, well, I don’t know. Not by me or anyone I know. WHERE DID IT COME FROM? And, if you are me, you would naturally start to play out the first twenty minutes of Enemy of the State in your head. Did Jason Lee drop this in my shopping bag before he rode his bike in front of a bus?! Is Gene Hackman standing on my roof?! Are a bunch of people going to try to kill me?! What is going on?!?! (Apparently, in my head, I am played by Will Smith.) (I imagine that actually casting the role of me would involve doing a wikipedia search to see if William Hung is still around and then calling the South Park guys to see if they still have the puppet they used in Team America).

I think it was someone’s homework. I hope that person worked it out, as this CD been in a box for years. In any case, I can cross that off of my list. CDs I never look at have been messily labeled. Good. So that way when I put them back in the box and not touch them for three years, they will at least have the words “mp3s” or “pictures” scribbled on the front of them. I can sleep soundly now.

full full disclosure: i may have been thinking of joanna kerns the first time

I once had a writing professor who decried the rampant iPod usage in New York City. You miss out on hearing the world around you, she would say. There is where you’ll find inspiration. There is where you’ll find stories. Well, I have been iPod-less for a while (not by choice, but by my clever combination of clumsiness and poverty), so my commute is often subject to inspiration and stories whether I want them or not. The other day, as I headed out to my second ever day of (still fartless!) yoga, I was unintentional eavesdropper to an odd conversation.

The woman next to me was telling her friend about her CUNY School of Journalism application. She complained as she flipped through the pages. “They want us to answer all of these questions. Here, look at this. They want us to identify all of these.”

Well, I felt like I was in it to win it, so I peeked at her list. There were many blank spots. “Look at this, I don’t know who these people are!” The first three were all blank: Judith Miller, Tom DeLay and John Roberts. “Who is this? Tom DeLay. I don’t know who that is.” Now, I don’t necessarily believe that everyone needs to who Tom DeLay or, say, the current Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court are. But surely, the one group of people who absolutely should is journalism students, right? Am I crazy?

Full disclosure: if someone were to ask me who Judith Miller is, I would quickly and confidently answer, “oh, she was the mom on Who’s the Boss?” But, I am not applying to be a journalism major anywhere. And, if asked who Valerie Plume is, I would know. So there.

I mean, different people know different things. She did have something written for a lot of the other terms. For example, for “Derek Jeter” she had written “Yankees” and for “Darfur” she had written “hunger.” She gets points for concision. Too many writers today suffer from an intolerable, over-modified case of logorrhea and pretension—showing off for their readers that they know who Valerie Plume is (as if it is somehow impressive). Touché, subway lady.

But, I can’t help but wonder why she is even looking at a degree in journalism. Is that really what you’re drawn to? I mean, it’s not exactly a degree that opens a lot of doors (says the English major). What is your end goal? Maybe she intends to learn who Maureen Dowd is (another blank she asked her friend about). Maybe. But the way she said it, it was as if no one should care who Maureen Dowd is. Like a high-school student asking during a poetry lesson, “when are we ever going to use this?” (Answer: the ability to understand metaphoric language is essential to all forms of communication; the overarching skill of being able to read, understand, and reiterate the meaning of a text is necessary for any professional job; and engaging the imagination, that is, the metaphoric, allows any and all learning to occur, you little punk). She then took her application, folded it into quarters, and put it back into her purse.

Maybe I am just a big snob (true) and maybe she has some vision in mind in which a degree in journalism will be useful (it’s possible). I mean, there are plenty of celebrity news writers and whatnot that probably have no clue who Samuel Alito is and will happily live their lives not knowing. And they’ll probably make more money than I will and get to meet cool people like Maggie Gyllenhaal or Zooey Deschanel or that guy from Once. So maybe she has a point.

Or maybe, I just need to invest in a new iPod (donations are always welcome).