Well, the inevitable has happened- I've been given an mp3 player (Thanks, Dad) and you can guess what THAT means, can't you? Yep, no time for blogging, barely time to eat and sleep- all I want to do is load the little box full of stuff and walk around listening to it. I'm so busy doing that I think I forgot to poop today. Did I remember to go to work? Ye-e-e-s... I think so. I must have since nobody called to ask why I wasn't there. Not that I ever answer the phone. Heh-heh. What am I, a secretary? What sort of things am I downloading and uploading and crossloading into my (c'mere you little rascal, I need to read off your name for the people out there on the web..) Muvo V 100? Well, some Edison cylinder recordings of semi-bawdy music-hall tunes, an entire live concert of the Almost Acoustic Band, a Librivox recording of a few of Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales and, well, the list is growing even as I speak. There are hundreds, if not thousands of hours of great material to be had both free and legally. In many cases, the artists themselves are fully aware of and entirely supportive of this. Think about that for a moment, willya? Record companies are suing people over how they obtain copies of music, while some musicians are giving the stuff away. We're not talking about just crappy homemade demo recordings from bands nobody's ever heard of, either- though I like a lot of those too. Honestly, I don't know why anyone would pay to listen to most of the crap that passes for popular music these days anyway. The real crime is taking money for it, not the other way around. But that's not my problem. I'll never be sued (for downloading music) because I'll never need a copy of anything the record companies care about, and if I do need one, I'll just check it out of the library and listen to it until I've heard it enough. If I can't hear it enough in three weeks, or I need it again later, I'll check it out again. Simple. Who needs to own a copy of everything? Not me. In my entire music-loving life I've only purchased about 35 recordings, yet I hear as much wonderful music as anyone on the planet, or at least I hear enough to suit my needs. Ask anyone who knows me whether I know what I'm talking about when it comes to music, and then ask them how many times they've heard me say "I just gotta go buy that record!". Doesn't happen very often. That doesn't make me a saint, it just makes me slightly (very slightly) more sensible than the rest of the world- and probably only in this and perhaps in several other obscure but highly important areas of life. There, my sneaky bragging has overwhelmed my natural (and mostly fictional) modesty, so everything is in balance.

Speaking of inevitability, I did finally hear back from the nameless Internet giant about the job I was supposed to get before I took the book-warehouse job, and I have an invitation to an interview Monday afternoon. Today I had to tell my new boss I was sorry about it, but I might run off and leave him in a lurch. And I was sorry, because I do like my job. I like it more each day, and I think I'm actually getting to be pretty good at it, for a beginner. The poor guy was polite and didn't call me any dirty names to my face, but I wouldn't expect that to last long if I actually do run away. But then I wouldn't be around to hear it. Or maybe I would. I just had a strange premonitory inkling: I think- and this is way out of character for me, since deep down I don't like having one job- that I might be able to work forty hours at the Internet giant and fifteen or twenty at the book-warehouse. The work loads involved would not be crippling, the schedule would not be too awful, and it might actually be fun, not to mention putting some more dough in my see-the-world-before-it-melts fund. I guess I'll have to decide fairly quickly whether to do both if I get the other job. The interviewer says if I get it I will start Tuesday, and that means my current boss will start needing help... Tuesday. Well, heck! I feel much more peaceful about all of this than I thought I would, and am probably less troubled by it than I deserve, though I don't see what else I could have done, and I was completely honest with all parties from the very beginning. So fuck 'em all. I have to have money, and nowhere in the Constitution does it say I have to please everyone all the time, or even try very hard to do so.