Five Lines

My first mp3 player died an ignoble death on a flight of concrete steps, and when I opened it up to check for vital signs it had about a tablespoon of canola seeds inside its little body (don’t ask, I’ve no idea).

My second mp3 player, unmentioned thus far, is an RCA Lyra purchased in late summer 2005, while I was making government-bucks.

At 256 Mb it’s woefully small; I used the SD card from my old camera and brought it up to 768 Mb, which is still only enough for just over a hundred songs.  Yet for years I’ve enjoyed changing the music out every couple of weeks depending on my mood.  What I haven’t enjoyed is changing the batteries.  From an initial $70 investment, I’ve probably spent close to that feeding it triple-A’s.

So one of my New Year’s resolutions (#8) was to buy a new mp3 player when my final package of Duracells ran out for the Lyra.  Which is about to happen!  I have one battery left, and at 26 hours playtime per battery, surely it will pass by the end of January.  Ees exciting!  New things, they excite me.

I’ve decided on a Zune, please don’t leave a thousand comments telling me how much better an iPod or Zen would be, I don’t want one.  My great difficulty now is customization and I’ve been pondering that for weeks.  You can get some gorgeous designs engraved on the back of your Zune for a pittance, about $30 depending on the design… but it’s too hard to choose between the dozen that I like.  You can also get up to five lines of text engraved on the back, I think about 27 characters per line including spaces.

The obvious choice for that option would be my name and a bit of ‘If lost, please contact’ info, but a) Help, serial killers, and b) Why not have something more interesting to look at when I flip it over to check my lipstick?

I haven’t really narrowed it down.  I do love me some poetry (mainly Nabokov, Pasternak, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Larkin) but a lot of that shizz has to be taken in context.  Song lyrics would be perfect but I like too many artists’ lyrics too much to immobilize any permanently on the back of a music player.  (Secondly, since I never look up lyrics, I mostly know them from listening to the song.  This can backfire.  What the hell, for example, is that woman saying in Fluke’s ‘Atom Bomb’?  It sounds like ‘Give me someone’s Passat.’  But if she’s got the head of state, and the president, and destiny, and supremacy, and everything ever from A to Z, what does she want with a subcompact car?)

What should I put on the back of my Zune?  I’m throwing it out to you, dear readers, and I know I can count on your creativity.  If you’ve got song lyrics that particularly inspire you, tell me!  Or some of your favourite poetry.  Or a short, beloved quote… or some words of wisdom.  Or a brilliant haiku, written on the back of a napkin!  Or an underrated life lesson, such as the classic ‘DON’T PANIC.’  Or some Simpsons lines… or a Duckman line, such as his legendary toast “An Indian stick is called a totem/ But underneath is a big swinging…”