A couple of years ago (really? has it been that long? Let's see...funny...I have no way of finding out how long ago I bought this thing. Apple's online sales records only go back 18 mos...oh, well) - anyway, some time in the last two years, after having an iPod Nano for a while, I bought a full-sized iPod Classic.


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I use it for running, for listening to music at the office, and for music in my car -  I have an iPod cable on my car stereo so that I don't have to use CDs any more. The time in the caris the most use that I get out of the iPod, as I'm always driving alone, although I run less than half of my miles alone.

Well, my iPod has broken.

Not COMPLETELY broken - it's just that the cable connection that allows it to hook up to my car stereo is broken. It's not the cable in the car that's broken - I know this, because Ethel's iTouch still works there just fine.

So, even though I can still use the iPod for running and sitting, I can't use it for driving - which means, to me, that I need another iPod.

Now, once upon a time, I would have thought that having a whupped-up CD player/tuner with two amplifiers pushing Polk cabin speakers and a big honkin' MTX subwoofer was a wonderful thing, all by itself, but now I find that carrying CDs and changing them in and out is way too much trouble, and now I need an iPod dedicated to just sitting in the car. When did I get this spoiled?

On another front - the lamp for the 65" Mistubishi Football Watching Device came in yesterday, and Ethel did the repair herself, by watching a video on YouTube that gave step-by-step instructions. So when I got home last night, we watched a brief DVD episode on the big screen. In the week that we went without that lamp, it was surprising to me how much less interest I had in watching movies - or even football games, with this being the last week of the season.

When did I get this spoiled?

How could I have gotten myself into such a jaded state that I don't want to listen to music if I have to actually change the CDs, and don't want to watch a movie if it's not on a 65" DLP 1080p screen?

Okay - on the changing CDs, I can understand that, a little bit, in that I once had a wreck while changing a CD. But I kept driving and changing CDs for the next twelve years after that, until I got the iPod and adapter cable.

Graham Greene once wrote that "man has a dreadful adaptability". I see this in myself;. Once upon a time, I lived in a pup tent, with no car (not even a bicycle) and no furniture and only a few clothes and one piece of electronic gagdetry - a second-hand boom box, with two cassette tapes: Bonnie Tyler, _Total Eclipse of the Heart_, and "Willie Nelson Sings Kris Kristofferson's Greatest Hits".

Now I've got so much stuff that I don't have anywhere to put most of it, and wind up giving it away - Ethel calls St. Vincent de Paul or Goodwill to come and get truckloads of stuff. We have so many antiques in the garage that we can't fit all of the cars in easily ('easily' in this context means that Ethel has told Silas to park outside the garage until he can learn to pull his car over far enough to let hers in).

Where did all of this stuff come from? How did I get so spoiled?

I think that it must be Ethel's fault.

Hundreds of years ago, my people roamed this continent wearing buffalo skins, eating buffalo meat, and dragging the dead buffaloes along behind them so that they could drink their blood when they got thirsty. We walked barefoot over burning rocks and frost-covered tundra, and we would shove sticks through our pectoral muscles and hang from them over hot coals. And we did this because it was FUN.

Now I get up early to go for a run, and step outside - and, if it's chilly, I have to put on running tights and a long-sleeved shirt and a fleece vest and a pulover hat and gloves, put electric warming devices in my running shoes, put a video of a hot cracklin' fireplace on my iPod screen. Then I just sit down on the front porch and wait until it's time to go inside.

See, while we Indians were doing the buffalo thing, Ethel's Euro-ancestors were building bigger and warmer castles, inventing shoes and buttons and artificial fibers, and developing margarine and Cool-Whip, and basically doing everything that they could to insulate themselves from their environment.

That would have been fine, but then they came over HERE, and seduced us with these comforts and pleasures, to the point that nowadays I can't even butter my bread unless I put the butter in a microwave first to soften it up.

My Native American soul  rebelled at all of this, to the point that I wound up living in that pup tent, and later on I was living in a Pontiac (which, although it's more comfortable than a pup tent, is at least named after an Indian) and Ethel brought me inside and kept me warm and fed and sent me to college to get a BS in computer science with a minor in math. (Can you imagine Cochise's wife saying to him, "Honey - have you done your differential equations homework? You don't want to let your GPA drop, or you'll fall off of the Dean's List!" No, you can't. Apaches never worried about their GPAs or their credit rating.)

So now I sit before you, a slave to my comforts, trying to find a cheap-enough iPod that I can leave it hooked up to the stereo in my car so that I won't be stressing the USB connection at the bottom.

But, now that I've thought about it, the next time I'm sitting in my Beemer convertible listening to my iPod over the Pioneer stereo and MTX subwoofer - I'm gonna look for buffalo.