iPod Mishaps

I am assuming, because you're here, that you can read. But there wa a time that you couldn't. I mean when you were four you could just make out the symbols and begin to construct basic phonetics. But it's not like you really could read, you couldn't "get" a basic story. Before that (hopefully before that) you used to shit yourself and chew things for entertainment. By the time you were in first grade you were just beginning to be able to understand simple sentences. Middle school is when you read your first "real" novel, often Catcher in the Rye or Huckleberry Finn. And if you read the latter later, you will "get" it on a much more satisfying level. And it wasn't until middle or high school that you finally knew what a semicolon was; neither could you properly place one to divide independent clauses that would otherwise make seperate sentences, were they not so closely related. So imagine what it was like to be completely illiterate. You can't. You simply cannot imagine how to not be able to read. Even if you go to foreign country, after a few days, you'll start to recognize certain words and assign them contextual meaning. Once a human child assimilates symbolic thought and a recognition of visual patterns that human is literally incapable of not doing it. You read automatically. That capability is one of the things that defines humanity, it is as much a characteristic of the human species as a whale's tail or an insect's six legs. (Another human characteristic is the ability to recognize consciousness in other entities, and assign agency to that consciousness outside of basic--like the ones that beehives have--social rules).
I have an iPod. Much as I cannot imagine the lack of ability to read, I cannot imagine not having an iPod. It completes me. And I listen to my iPod on "shuffle" because I have thousands of songs and the shuffle brings many a fine suprise. Few things are better than that "hey, I haven't heard that in a while" feeling. But here's what happens from time to time: I'm walking down the street, listening to the iPod on shuffle and there's a Rolling Stone's song, a Postal Service song, a Shins song, a bit of Bach, it's all good. And then, well let me preface this. I listen to harder music when I work out. I mean Death Cab for Cutie is all well and good but it doesn't exactly pump you up to run for a few miles or go to the gym. So I listen to metal and hardcore when I work out. Pretty soon, you're walking down the street to the dulcet tones of Arcade Fire or Air or Astrud Gilberto and then...BOO YAH!...Iron Maiden or Misfits. That kind of sucks. I'm just chilling and Slayer "South of Heaven" comes on and it totally freaks me out. I'm just chilling and all of a sudden "Six six six is the number of the Beast! Sacrifice is going on tonight!" And then I'm all out of wack because now I'm all metalled out and I was just enjoying my quiet MidWest college town, but now I have to kill to satisfy my satanic bloodlust.