I Didn't Think My Breast Was So Savage

Last night I was online chatting with a friend and listening to a pretty cool playlist I had put together on Rhapsody. Some quote-alternative-unquote rock from the nineties mixed with some newer stuff. I was listening to it with dinky little earphones instead of real headphones, or it would have been perfect.

At least they weren't "earbuds." Do you want to hear me rant about earbuds?


You want me to put these where?

 In the beginning were headphones. They weighed a hundred pounds and made you look like a radio operator in a bad sci-fi movie.


Ground Control to Major Dork.
(bracing myself for complaints from Daddy, who probably owned
these headphones and this radio, too)

 But there was nothing like kicking back and listening to your White Album or your Dark Side of the Moon with a good set of 'phones.

Or whatever the hell Jack is listening to.

Then in the 80s the Walkman was invented, and headphones started to shrink.



Tubular.

They didn't actually sound so great, although we all pretended they did because they were "modern" and "cool" and "didn't make your ears sweat." But since all you could listen to on a Walkman were *choke* cassettes, it didn't really matter.

Then Steve Jobs came along and screwed everything up, as he so often did, yeah yeah, God rest his soul, get over it already. But he gave us the iPod, and when he did, he gave us iPod earbuds. And earbuds are like suppositories for your ears, except that in addition to feeling horrible going in, they don't actually cure your hemorrhoids.

Believe it or not, there was not a single picture

related to a search for "suppository" or "hemorrhoids"

that I could post without losing my lunch.

And the frequency response on your average set of earbuds falls between a medium-high Mariah Carey arepeggio and whistles only dogs can hear.


Tinny, is what I'm saying.

 Anyway, I'm currently in the market for a good pair of Koss headphones like I used to wear over my perm back in the day. But until I get them, I've got a pair of actually not-too-bad earphones - the kind that are flat instead of capsule-shaped. They got the job done for my cool playlist last night.

None of this has anything to do with the story I'm about to tell.


Srsly?

 So...I'm chatting with my friend, and listening to my tunes, and I start to get crazy depressed. Like oh-my-God-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life? depressed. It wasn't my friend's fault; we were talking about Kids Today and How Funny Is Craig Ferguson, keeping it light. All of a sudden - boom! - I'm feeling like a no-talent hack in a world of geniuses, an outcast in a world where everyone is cooler and better than me.


Don't do it, man. We love you.

 Not that this kind of thing doesn't happen to me all the time. It just usually doesn't hit me out of nowhere. I'm insecure, not insane. Mostly.

After I had logged off - because I was too depressed to type, and really how freaking depressed to you have to be to not want to type? - I started to wonder if the music that had playing in my ears for the last two hours had anything to do with my feelings. Believe me, I get hugely affected by music.


Another song featuring Adam Levine??

So I decided to go back and have another listen to my playlist. And I decided to subject you to it, as well, because otherwise I'd have wasted a lot of time on this shit and not ended up with anything to post today.

(If you belong to Rhapsody and you want my actual playlist, it's here: Chuck's Rhapsody Playlist. Enjoy. Or get depressed. We shall see.)

So here's what I was listening to last night when I decided that life sucked.

"Blown Away," Tripping Daisy - Nah, it wasn't this. Tripping Daisy songs never make enough sense to get upset about.

"I Will Buy You a New Life," Everclear - "You say you wake up crying/Yes, and you don't know why." A song about financial and emotional bankruptcy. Hmmm...I'll have to think about it.

"I Come from the Water," Toadies - But...but everything by this band is so damn cheerful. And Todd Lewis' voice is nothing like fingernails on a blackboard.

"Feed the Tree," Belly - Happy, happy song about a squirrel. Or something. Next.

"Rearviewmirror," Pearl Jam - Uh-oh.

"This Is a Call," Foo Fighters - Fingernails are pretty. It says so right in the song. That's a happy thought. Not going to pin this on Dave Grohl & Co.

"We Are Young," fun - This...could be described as a little melancholy, I suppose. The title itself is a downer, when you think of it.

"Hey Man Nice Shot," Filter - Um. Yeah. Huh.

"I Miss You," blink-182 - How can a song that mentions Jack Skellington be depressing? Other than every other line being dark and sad, I mean.

"Harder to Breathe," Maroon 5 - Not only a pretty damn dark song, but it's kind of a bummer to think that Adam Levine mostly spends his time singing "Moves Like Jagger" these days.

"I Will Possess Your Heart," Death Cab for Cutie - Eight and a half minutes of Death Cab for Cutie. Enough said.

"Closer," Nine Inch Nails - O_o

OK, well, there's another 25 minutes of music or so after that, but I think you see my point. Which is that I'm really surprised I didn't jump off the roof after listening to all that. I mean, great music, every last song. But maybe I should have mixed in some Tom Jones or some Petula Clark. Maybe some Carpenters. I mean, not "Superstar," but you know. Is this how we all spent the last couple of decades? No wonder we elected George W. Bush twice. We were out of our freaking minds.

Note to self: Lighten up. Play some Chuzzle. Eat some pea soup. Pet a cat. Listen to something by Ringo.

Get some decent headphones and drag out the vinyl records. That's a happy thought.