Open the iPod Bay Doors, Hal

As a gift to myself on my birthday, I bought an iPod Nano (red, for those of you who are both Apple-savvy and socially conscious). Because size matters, I bought the 8 Gigabyte Nano...and yes, that's an oxymoron. I'm not sure how you can call anything a "Nano" if it can potentially store FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS WORTH OF MUSIC.

In keeping with the Electronic Tradition of ThingsFailingToWorkRightOutOfTheBox, it took a while to get the thing installed. I didn't have to spend a whole lot of time troubleshooting; I downloaded the latest version of iTunes and everything worked.

And work it does. I am in love with this thing. Not only does it store and play back my music, and allow me to set my own playlists, it also sorts everything by artist, album, song title, genre, and composer. If I have more than one album by an artist I select on the Nano, I find that I can select all the songs by that artist, or the individual albums. Likewise, if I choose a compilation album, I'll see a menu of the artists whose music comprises the compilation. And it's all automated. All I have to do is load the thing, stick in the ear buds, and jam.

When I see those iPod commercials which feature people (or their shadows) dancing like spasmoidal hyper-lunatics whenever they hang the player's ear buds in their aural canals, I can so totally relate...no, that's not a descriptive enough term...I grok in fullness. Even now, as I write this, I can hardly refrain from tapping my toe to "Afraid To Dance" by Don Ross. Not only does the song kick ass, but so does the Nano.

Listening to music this way is ass-kicking squared.

When a device is this simple, I think it should kick this much ass. It should be this convenient. I shouldn't have to format the device, or program it a certain way to get it to work.

Ass-kicking aside, this much convenience makes me slightly uncomfortable, as though I need to know what I did to deserve it. Surely, I must have done something more substantial than capitalize the second letter of certain proper nouns. It doesn't help that, for such a very long time, I have openly smirked at people who professed their passion for iDevices.

It's the lower-case "i"; it seems to indicate possession, but with the normally capitalized first-person pronoun reduced to lower case, while the device's name is capitalized, is there some message of subjugation there? By owning one of these, is one submitting to the Will of Apple? And just what possesses who, if the "i" is attached to, and smaller than, the device's title?

I still smirk at the Apple iNotion (or perhaps it's an iCorporate iPhilosophy) that electronics are somehow vastly more powerful if they are plug-and-play-accessible to everyone. I've used Apple computers often over the years, and invariably ran up against the anti-immigration fence between what I needed the machine to do and what it would do*.

I show up at the computer store like Rodney Dangerfield, "Two of those, four of these, six boxes of the naked lady tees, and oh, my! That has to be the worst looking thing I've ever seen! Do you get a free bowl of soup with that computer? Oh, sorry! I looks good on you though!" Later on, if I see you around the electronics superstore, I'm likely to snort derisively and shout, "Hey, Whitey, where's your computer?"

I mean, am I the only one who hasn't missed the fact that the Mac computer spokesman is Justin Long, who has made a career out of playing Megadorks. Don't get me wrong: there is no one better at playing dorks than Justin is. Maybe that's the iMessage: "You own a computer, so you're already a dork. You should be the absolute best dork you can possibly be, and we can help you with that."

Let's face it, this little ass-kicking Nano is all the help anyone needs to be a complete dork. Or at least dance like one.

If you happen to be cruising around San Diego, I'll be the one rockin' out like Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

*Key distinction: I said what it would do, not what it could do.