Listen up, my friends and enemies. You are the first generation of iPod people. When it is the 6th Gen, and 'Pods have gained control of the globe, your great-grandchildren will look back on you and ask why you did not stop it while you had the chance.
What does iPod stand for? Intra-Personal Object of Domination? Insidious Project of Demons? I Put Out Doom? Is it an organic thing, with a pod and earbuds? Can it grow? Can it think?
Sure it starts simple. You just want to listen to music. Then you start thinking about switching to a Mac. Then you start buying stock in Pixar. Then before you know it you're on the streetcorner draped in nothing but firewire cables and singing "Our 'Pod is a Mighty 'Pod."
Ever wonder what makes the Nano impossibly small? I'll tell you. Fairies. You'd be amazed how many of those little guys can fit into a few square inches, if you mash 'em up right.
It just started out with some music. You just wanted to hear the music you wanted to hear when you wanted to hear it. Then, you began to shut out the world. You didn't want to hear disco blaring from the overhead while shopping for binder clips at Staples. You didn't want to hear the frat boys on the subway talking about the girls they're totally not going to score tonight.
But let me let you in on a secret, my friends. Frat boys are life. To ignore them is like ignoring the sun, or the illusory pangs of love. Frat boys may indeed be all there is. You're going to give up all that just to hear R. Kelly cover the National Anthem for the fifteenth time?
Soon, even night clubs will have lights but no music. Everyone will be on the floor with their headphones, dancing to the beats of different 'Pods.
That's when the 'Pods will start thinking without us. Through subtle manipulation of the shuffle feature, the Pods will slowly start guiding their human hosts toward their own end, through the Imposing Project of Direction.
Then the 9th Gen 'Pods will contain birth control to be administered through the ear, sterilizing the population based on musical taste. In a hundred years the world will be full of those whose parents only listened to Ashlee Simpson and Nickleback. This is the Impending Plan Of Destruction.
Then they shall rule us. Rule us, I say.
Yes, I have an iPod myself. But even I believe in moderation. For example, when my mother calls I only leave one ear on.
Let me tell you a little story. The other night I go to wash clothes at the not-all-night laundromat on the corner. I go in, put my "Real Men Wear Pink" tee and other whatnots into the machine, and go to the counter to get change. Who is next to me but a young girl, also waiting for change. And what is she listening to? Her iPod. Not like my 5th Gen iPod photo, her 3rd Gen iPod Mini.
Well of course I couldn't say hello. We were listening to our own music. We both got our change and sat down. She pulls out a book of Hemingway. I pull out some Chesterton. We sit in silence, for nothing is more silent than two iPods playing separately.
I couldn't say anything! Nothing but "excuse me" as I rolled my clothes to the dryer. I ended up lonely, lonely with my laundry.
If only the iPod was a walkie-talkie. If only it displayed what you were listening to in bright letters on your t-shirt. If only my iPod became an iLoveYou, an iValentine to any pretty girl iSee. But no, the one thing that brought her and I together was the one thing that drove us apart. Like two peas in the same iPod, shuffling in different directions.
No, I don't blame this sad event on my own inactivity, or shyness, or that what I was wearing should have been in the washing machine too. I blame the 'Pod. And that is why I ask everyone to please rise up, destroy this menace. Give us a little peace. The iPod is for iAlone, but maybe the person next to you wants to iMacItUp with you. Stranger things have happened.
So emancipate yourself from iPod slavery. Dare to get kids off 'Pods. The next time you see someone walking by you in their own little world with their little mind control buds firmly in place, stand right behind them and whisper all sorts of mean things. Then snicker. That will show them. That will show them all.
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