The 100-CD Changer Blues...
...or, is this any way to spend a Saturday Night?

I found a used 100-CD changer a few months ago at the local Goodwill store. And, it sure was fun to set it on random play; I never knew what was coming up next. Sorta like a jukebox. You might notice that I've used the past tense here...lemme 'splain: Tonight, my changer stopped and wouldn't start again. I guess some of the discs, after playing, got caught in the machinery. I don't know how else to explain it. The changer has (well, "had") 4 racks with 25 CD's each. And, some of the discs in changer compartment #4 got "stuck" somehow; I couldn't get that compartment to open. The "Jaws of Life", commonly used in car wrecks, wouldn't have helped here.

So, I tried tipping the changer forward and lightly banging it on the back, hoping the discs would slide into their correct positions. No such luck. So I tipped it on its back, and all of the discs from the 3 other compartments fell into the cavernous back of the machine. So, basically, I had 100 discs trapped inside the machine. A case of not being able to take a sad song and make it better. So I had to take a screwdriver to the machine, take off the top of the changer, and reach waaaay in there to extract my CD's. And then, I had to put all (well almost all) of the CD's back in plastic CD cases which I had laying around. That stuff takes a lotta time! Which is why I'm up so late posting this. I felt the whole world had to know. Or, as Eric Burdon once said in a song, "Yes...I am...experienced."

These were all homemade CD's; it took the better part of a year to put them all together. I made 'em from old 45's that I gave away long ago. So I didn't wanna lose 'em. And, I'm gonna throw the machine away. Charlie Brown had the kite-eating tree. I had the disc-eating player. Bah humbug. I managed to save 99 out of 100 discs. One of them got caught in some "teeth" in the gearage of the machine; I'm afraid that disc is done for. CHOMP! That's the SECOND time in my experience that a CD player has EATEN a CD! I thot that only happened with cassette tapes! So that's my Saturday night. What's the lesson to be learned from this? The more parts a piece o'machinery has, the more liable it is to screw up. And, that as far as CD's are concerned, the old standby single-disc player is probably the safest way to play yer discs. I've never yet had a CD trapped inside a single-disc player. Emphasis on "yet".

Of course, people with I-pods and MP3's don't have to worry about all that. No moving parts, right? Everything's "virtual". It's just that those doggone things are so small. I would imagine that at any given moment, several million people across this great nation are trying to remember where they left their tiny little "virtual music machine", whether it be I-pod or MP3. Here's a great idea: Put your miniature music device on your key ring. That way you can lose your car keys and music player all at the same time! If things keep becoming more and more miniaturized, soon, postage stamps will be bigger than what you listen to music on. Have you seen HEADPHONES as of late? A couple pieces of STRING with an earpiece at each end. HUH? WHAT?

By the way, I still do have a Panasonic 5-CD changer, which hasn't screwed up yet (so far), and it actually has an MP3 jack, the function of which I have absolutely no idea. None. Zip. Nada. Modern technology...don't ya just love it? And, probably, the philosophy behind 2/3's of the household items you can by at any megalomania-mart...sooner or later, it's gonna break, and when it does, just buy another one 'cos the one yer havin' problems with is unfixable. And the best I can hope for here is that I didn't 'jinx' my Panasonic player with what I've just written. Evil spirits might be lurking inside of it, waiting to consume my CD's even as I type this. But it looks so innocent, sitting over there in the corner.
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In an earlier post, I referred to Seattle Mariner Ichiro Suzuki's 20-million-dollar contract over the next five years, and I included all kinds of statistical breakdowns, such as, money earned per inning played, money earned with each at-bat, etc. A post well worth seeking out; if it's not on this page, it's in the July '07 archives (somewhere in there). Except I was wrong...Ichiro is only gonna make 19-million-dollars. Still, that amount will buy a whole lotta sushi. (If Don Imus had made that "sushi" remark on MSNBC, would he have been fired for that? Gosh...I'm more insensitive than I realized!)