Ask Anything
Jacob McCormick
Issue date: 9/18/08 Section: Showcase
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I put my iPod on shuffle because I like to be surprised by the songs, but every time I do it ends up playing Britney Spears and Metallica back to back, all day long. Is there anyway to train my wild mp3 player?
Sincerely,
Shuffled out
Dear Shuffled,
You're in luck! Unlike my co-Ask Anything columnist Scott Hansen, I actually have a good knowledge of excellent and crappy music. The proof lies in the fact that every time I play my iPod around the office, Scott feels the need to change a good song to one by Aqua, 98 Degrees or Men Without Hats. Call me old fashioned, but I like people that write and perform their own original, ground-breaking art, much like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and the great Michael Bolton, instead of having someone else write it and have them sing or act it out.
And don't question why they are taking up valuable space on the device, because sometimes things sound like a good idea when you combine Colt 45 Double Malt, Michael Jackson's patented Jesus Juice and $35 worth of candy cigarettes. You know, the discarded chalk they reprocess into children's candy to get them used to holding a cigarette in the proper way? For all the money we put into anti-tobacco initiatives, it's good to know they can still go buy their favorite pack of Willy Wonka 100s at any gas station.
Anyways, I have also found some problems in my random playlists with constantly repeating Prayer Bolt and Dio back-to-back. If you get that first band reference without Google or Wikipedia, you deserve respect and a whole $1 from me.
The only real solution I've found is simply making playlists without those songs in them. Unfortunately, that's too easy of a fix for my required word amount, so I would recommend keeping Britney's first album because it's easily her best and anything from Metallica before James Hetfield decided to patent the "ya!" at the end of every line. Everything else just scrap and convert your tastes to post-agro fusion jazz grindcore - easily the best of the "-core" genres right now. Just sit back, relax in your favorite spinning chair and let the music wash over you like the hippies always say.
Dear Ask Anything,
I tried to buy a Mountain Dew from the vending machine today, but it ate my $2.00! I'm a poor college student, and that was all the money I had in my account. Can you help me find a way to get even with this villain pop machine?
Sincerely,
Mountain Don't
Dear Don't,
Once again, speaking from an experience I had sophomore year in high school, I'm an expert in the field of caffeinated beverages. It was a time when Mountain Dew decided it was a good idea to put the names of all the NCAA basketball teams on the bottom on their caps so if you picked the winner, you got a free mail-order jersey. Being the adolescent crack-whore that I was, determined to win at least one jersey, I collected around 150 caps in the span of two weeks.
Obviously, I triumphed by sending away for the maximum three jerseys, only to find out North Carolina, Arizona and Maryland decided to send out jerseys with double zeroes or another number no one in their right minds would wear. I wore the Carolina one once, maybe, and the other two are looking great hung behind my Cleveland Browns Tim Couch jersey in my closet back home. What's the point of this story? To show you how far I've come as a general contributor to society. Now back to your dilemma.
Also, speaking as a person who couldn't afford the elegance of the Pizza Hut buffet right now, I feel your pain. I've been searching for the King around the streets of Eau Claire, because he's apparently putting money in people's pockets. But since I haven't found him yet, I'm starting to question whether or not he exists.
Your second option starts with finding the three biggest friends you have and blackmail them into kicking the crap out of the machine you lost your money in until that $2 falls out in change. Why not do it yourself? Well if you're anywhere close to my size, and you have enough friends that have pure muscle in place of brains like me, it's a pretty obvious conclusion. The best way to do this would be to use a combination of roundhouse kicks, Mick Foley cactus clotheslines and a good old-fashioned People's Elbow once the machine is incapacitated on the mat. If that doesn't work, I recommend running like hell because that's what I'll be doing.
Ask Anything appears every Thursday. This week's columnist is: Jake McCormick
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