As of Tuesday afternoon, I am officially part of the twenty-first century. Hooray for me! On an unrelated note, my entire life has been a series of apparently discontinuous experiences of finding out that you get what you pay for.

Item 1: The shuffle nonfunction. It starts at the first song and shuffles five songs forwards each time, producing world’s most predictable random song arrangement. I tried to circumvent it by starting shuffle while on a different song, but it just moves forward to the next multiple of five. If anyone out there can fix this, I’ll pay you in sexual favours.

Item 2: Hot hot heat. Hard drives get warm; that’s why computer towers come with fans. My MP3 player gets HOT – to the point where I could probably be picked up at a bar by someone saying, “Is that a burning coal in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?” Incidentally, here’s where we get to find out whether lab coats are really flame-retardant or not.

Item 3: English As A Fifth Language. An actual quote from the instruction manual, which is at any rate printed on hot-pink paper and is unreadable to begin with: “Keying the menu is like key the trackball.” What trackball? What menu? This was on the very first page, so I assumed it was important and I’ve tried to keep it in mind.

But the main thing is that I paid just over a hundred dollars for 1.5 G of space and now I can get my groove on to Right Said Fred in the tissue culture room. That’s what’s important, in the end.

(Yes, the very first album I put on it was ‘The Top 100 Queer Anthems.’ Shut up.)