My iPod is off the hook you guys! Literally! There’s something wrong in the headphone jack region that’s making me only hear the lead guitar parts, a hint of bass, and ghostly vocals mixed way in the back! And I’m scared to put a needle in there and clean things out lest the electrons suck me into my iPod where I’m forced to battle John Helliwell like you always hear happening!

There’s like one precise spot about 60% of the way in where you can hold the headphone jack at a certain angle that makes everything sound the way it should, but it’s really difficult to make that last for any meaningful amount of time and I am not a man who spares his meaningful amounts of time easily. So I start thinking “Is this how I spend the rest of my life listening to music? Precisely holding a headphone jack in one hand and an iPod in another and praying for no light breezes?” But then I catch a few seconds of “Love Train” by The O’Jays with the ghostly vocals and I start thinking, whoa, this actually sounds better. Suddenly the titular love train as sung by this detached, distant voice sounds like an envoy of Death, a reminder that any freedom we may have is ultimately ephemeral inasmuch as time’s inexorable march will inevitably remove us all from this earthly realm, and from that threshold we are merely riding the tropological train to the same unknown plain of supernatural existence where true unity will finally occur. As if a light has shone on me from above, I realize now that I am destined to progress through the entire recorded history of music and discern if there are other undiscovered layers to these songs waiting to be unearthed with this new paradigm in audio playback. Or maybe just get new headphones.