Dear My MP3 Player,

I lost you on the bus, I think, or maybe when I was just getting onto the bus. My MP3 player, I assure you that it wasn’t intentional. I had you playing, as I always did, and a song had just ended as I was getting on the bus, so I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t hear music for a moment, but then when I didn’t hear a song start up again, I checked for you and only found the end of the headphone cord. You were gone. Maybe you caught on something as I stepped onto the bus and fell onto the ground. I couldn’t find you on the floor of the bus.

You may have been an old MP3 player that I would often find reason to complain about. You had no option to play randomly and you had to spend three minutes “updating” every time I recharged you. But you were purple, which was cool. And you took a lot of damage, which is a useful skill for anything I own. You served me well for several years and now I miss you.

But that isn’t the main reason for this letter, MP3 Player. The main thing I need to say is that you are an MP3 Player, you can not read letters. Please stop reading this. It is freakin’ me out. Stop it.

Yours ponderously,
Patrick D Ryall

Okay, my latest encounter with the police has just occurred. It is just a small one, but I did say I’d put them all on here:

So I’d just gotten home from work and decided I’d go grab some groceries from the twenty-four hour Sobeys down the road. But I did not take a direct route, instead opting for a meandering path of walkin’ fun on side streets. I was wearing my mp3 player and dancing around like an idiot to Bowie as I went, and that was when I first noticed a car slowly going by me, which turned out to be a cop car. It went up ahead, then turned around and not-at-all subtly drove by me again, checkin’ me out an talking on the police-talking-machine. That was it, though. Didn’t even stop to ask me where I was going. Which is a shame.

I’ll never know if they were looking for someone in particular or if he was just checking out the mysterious trenchcoated scruffy guy walking around at four in the morning, but I do know that by the time that second pass-by happened, I was grinning like an idiot, which probably made me seem insane. Good times.

In other news: Bruise on my knee, don’t know why.

I like music quite a bit, which sometimes makes me ashamed about how little I know about it. I have trouble even understanding the concepts of basslines and tempos and treble clef aria reverb synthesizers. I also don’t know a lot about the people who make music. But just in case I ever get roped into some sort of Music Knowledge contest, I’m going to make this list, so that the facts will be on the Internet to back me up! Here comes a list of the Top Ten Things PDR Knows About Music:

1. Music is played by musicians or groups of musicians (colloquially known as “bands”). The act of playing music (called a “gig”) is, in fact, a form of communicating with noise!
2. The first musician was probably Beethoven! This was ironic because in his later life, he suffered from a condition which would make it hard to appreciate music: Orneriness!
3. Instruments were first added to singing by accident after a singer forgot the words and tried to cover it by pretending to get a trombone stuck in his mouth, but it turned out even better.
4. Modern music was invented by humans (Homo Sapiens), a species on the planet Planet Earth. They use music to give people time to think between commercials on the radio!
5. Elvis Presley was a musician whose name is an anagram of “les evil’s prey” because he was constantly being hunted by Les Evil, supercannibal.
6. Rick Davies from Supertramp and Ray Davies from the Kinks are not the same person, in spite of the fact they have the exact same name!
7. Speaking of names, the band Radiohead takes their name from a song by Talking Heads. The name of that song is “Radio Head”, which leads to the astounding coincidence that the song the band took their name from, has the same name as the band! Spooky coincidences like that make me suspect their may be some truth to those people who think musicians are in league with the devil (or multiple devils).
8. They even have music in Greenland! It is not even punishable by death there!
9. Even the full twenty-three minute long version of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” is not long enough to sate me. I could listen to that song for roughly Four Hours at a time.
10. From classical to country, from reggae to rap, from folk to funk, music is always, always, capable of rocking.

I had a dream I was back in New York last week. It was pretty sweet. So anyway, here’s some more memories of my trip there in November:

Around Central Park, some guy came up to me and told me he was selling a CD he’d made. I figured, hey, I could give that to Marq, I could. He’s the type of guy what would be interested in music stuff some random guy came up with (Kiiip meanwhile got a keychain with a sexy fireman). Anyway, here is what the album cover looked like:

So anyway, I paid five or seven bucks (I don’t remember which) and that was that. Eventually I came home and since I didn’t see Marq for like a month after my return, the CD just sat on my filing cabinet innocently. Then, when I finally do see him and give it to him, he tries it and finds out that it is way blank. It’s a blank CD. Guy is totally just scamming folk into buying a blank CD.

It’s a brilliant scheme, really. Buy a stack of CDs, throw some album cover on there and tell people you made some music. But what really makes it work is the bizarre and even confusing level of detail. The fact that he threw a twitter address on there? That’s awesome. The adorable little kid holding something (a cucumber?) and apparently having been awarded second place in some event (cucumber championship?) is also pleasing because of how nonsensical it was. And the fact it is labelled “Part 2” (or is that Part 0.2?). It is so much detail for a completely pointless cover. You could get as much of an effect with an album cover consisting of white text on a black background, probably, but this guy went above and beyond.

I can even forgive “alot” being one word and “N” being used for “and”. The whole money-grubbing theme of the title, which I had considered unfortunate at first, makes perfect sense as part of the scam. Basically, I’m saying, this being a scam is probably a far better present for Marq than an actual CD would have been.

The only drawback I can see is that maybe he will make people less trusting of actual people trying to sell actual music they’ve actually made. But y’know what? Screw those guys. They should stop trying to live their dream and get jobs that will help society. Like selling neckties or something.

Anyway, while I’m on the topic of my trip, I remembered something else that occurred while I was in New York. It goes a little something like a this:

I was at FAO Schwartz (the toy store where Big danced on a big keyboard) and I saw massive Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for sale. Like, huge. When I picked it up, it was heavier than a hardcover phone book. It was two cups, each the size of one of those frozen chicken pies they have at the grocery store. So, I saw these and I was like “I’m buying that thing and I’m going to eat it with my mouth!” so I took it and when I got to the register I was told it would cost like TWENTY-FIVE Dollars!!! (!) Now, I ask you. What is the real scam here, that guy selling the fake album, or candy so prohibitively expensive that it makes any hatred that poor countries feel toward us entirely justified?

Anyway, I still bought it of course. The day that I got it, one of them was the only thing I ate, it filled me so much. It was deliciously disgusting. If you ever want to cure someone of a Reese addiction, force them to eat one of those. By the end of that first cup, I never wanted to eat another item of food in my life. With the second cup I took my time and it lasted a couple more days and didn’t make me hate myself as much. So twenty-five bucks is one expensive candy, but it did last three days. Weigh the options and see which is more important to you. I think I can only give Giant Reese’s Cups Three out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake, because that’s about a perfect representation of their balance between horrible and wonderful.

Made at 4:30 in the morning in the Halifax Commons while listening to Led Zeppelin. Because if I didn’t do it, who would?