Friday, December 01, 2006

Le shuffle

Every once in a while my Windows Media Player gets stuck. It chooses fifteen or twenty songs from whatever playlist I've chosen, and it shuffles them in a loop. It's mostly just funny - I guess even a computer can like totally dig the drumline/band horn bit in the middle of Radar Love - but sometimes it just strikes me as lazy. Eh wot? Oh, yer want a new one... er... sure, here, more Paul McCartney fer yer.

Talented as he is, Sir Paul cannot be allowed to sing "Let 'Em In" more than once or twice in a workweek. I turn from my work, wander to the mouse, and double-click something not in the loop. Here - Jimi - GO.

And then, four songs later - "Martin Luther... Phil and Don..."

That's not lazy, that's rebellion. As Auric Goldfinger said, "Once is chance, twice is coincidence... three times is conspiracy." (Maybe not exactly like that, but I like the alliterative pattern.) That has to stop. End program.

Today, it's something new. I pop the playlist, go about my business, and nothing seems amiss. Then I notice that the machine has spat out "Sgt. Pepper's" and "A Little Help From My Friends" back-to-back. Sweet, that's going to happen every once in a while, even with 607 songs to choose from. And then I notice the opening riff from "Lucy in the Sky," and if it wasn't already sort of creepy, hearing it in the context of the above is...

Well, I went over to investigate, and I noticed that somehow, part of the way through the list, the shuffle function turned OFF.

How about a nice game of chess?

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