My iPod is named HAL

As I was driving to work a couple of months ago, I pulled into the Union Station parking garage while listening to The Shins' "Caring Is Creepy" on the Garden State soundtrack (pretty worthy, by the way) on the CD player. As the song went into the chorus, I thought, "I've heard this before . . . in another song." I was sure I knew that chorus, or the vocal pattern, or something -- it wasn't an egregious rip-off on the part of The Shins, but still damn close. Of course, you can never think of a song with another one playing, and it was just bugging me.

I parked the car and began walking to my building. Just as I was about to turn on the iPod and tune out, I even came up with a couple of lyrics: Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire / something something something . . . dammit, what is it? I shook my head, plugged in the earphones, and gave up. Oh, well.

iPod shuffle, second song as I walked to work. Crowded House, "Weather With You." Son of a bitch.
Out of 9,057 songs, it nailed it in two tries. I was stunned, and felt like buying a lottery ticket or something. Didn't, of course, which is why I didn't win.

* * *

Fast forward to this weekend. I was working in the yard, accompanied by The Pod once again. (The iPod, not the Ween album, of course.) Shuffling it up, as always, and Killing Joke's "Eighties" came up. Now, I don't know how many of you recall this song, and of that group how many of you have heard it since, say 1991, when an up-and-coming Seattle act lifted the riff nearly note for note to create one of the staples of the grunge campaign. It was worthy of momentary reflection, though, when I was weed-eating (i.e., doing yardwork, not practicing Herb's erstwhile recreations) and "Eighties" charged into my ears with its sped-up "Come As You Are" intro.

While the Shins/CH similarities are debatable and perhaps only apparent if you listen to way too much music, the Killing Joke/Nirvana tunes were close enough that litigation almost came into play when "Come As You Are" hit the radio. (Kurt Cobain was always humble about who and what his band pilfered from, most frequently naming the Pixies but definitely acknowledging this particular borrowing. I think that forthcoming approach to his musical "creations" may have saved him some court costs and more.) Anyway, the notable parallel between the Killing Joke song and its later, more popular counterpart, was the most uncanny event in a mundane morning of yardwork until three things happened.

1.) I decided I'd like to hear the two songs back-to-back for good measure.
2.) I decided I probably would never bother to actually play them back-to-back.
3.) The very next song on the shuffle after "Eighties" was "Come As You Are" by Nirvana.

My jaw instantly fell open with a "Wha?", and I looked around the yard to see if I were on some reality television show. After realizing that it would have been the most boring, dreadful visual for any TV show ever, I simply stared at the machine with a "How'd you do that?" look. I was perplexed for half a hedge's worth, but I eventually came to the only conclusion there can be.

The iPod uses earphones that are jammed way into your ears, (a) likely destroying your eardrums gradually, but more relevantly (b) pressed way up against your brain. Over time, the player, with its feelers tapped into your brainwaves, starts to read your thoughts, musical and otherwise. Usually this just manifests itself in the shuffle coming up with the perfect song for the perfect frame of mind, but occasionally, like in these two examples, there happens that rare case where it reads the synaptic request for a particular track, and it delivers.

I'm dreading the day I casually click on the Disco playlist, only to have my iPod blurt into my earphones in HAL's voice, "Just what do you think you're doing, Whitney?"

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