I’m an iTunes junkie. Every week they publish a small list of free tunes, one of which is their “featured” freebie, and I download ’em all. Even the stupid “street mix” rap stuff that is 20 minutes of what might as well be called “unlistenable,” at least from my point of view. But maybe someday I’ll want it.

Yesterday I downloaded “The Bad Touch” by Bloodhound Gang. That’s the “do it like they do on the Discovery Channel” song with the feeelthy lyrics. Lyrical genius, I say… “love, the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket/ like the lost catacombs of Egypt only God knows where we stuck it.” Naturally I can’t listen to it around any other members of my family. I spent 99 cents (well… $1.05 after tax) for something I might get to listen to a dozen times.

Then I found that Daft Punk (or their corporate masters) had finally put their stuff up on iTunes. I almost blew the last $12 or so of my iTunes credit in one spot… and then I realized what I was doing. I was binging. I wasn’t going to be able to listen to all this stuff at once. I would quickly forget about having bought some of it, and might NEVER get around to listening to it, as it got lost in the 3500-song library of stuff I’ve ripped or iTune’d. I still have the new Sting album ($10+ of my $30 iTunes birthday credit) which I haven’t worn the shiny off of yet (okay… according to the playlist count I’ve heard the whole album over a dozen times, and the dance mix of “Send Your Love” over 30 times), and both Vangelis albums I got for my birthday are still shiny, too.

After a little introspection I only bought TWO of the dozen or so Daft Punk tunes I want. I’m listening to one of them right now, and the other one is queued up next. I’ve sorted a bunch of the newest music (new to me, anyway) into a single playlist called “Still Shiny,” and I’m going to auto-repeat that into oblivion as I draw today.

The playlist is as follows:
Bowling for Soup, “1985”
Hope 7, “Breakthrough”
Hope 7, “I Want Everything” (which sounds almost EXACTLY like the previous track, to the point that you can sing the previous song to it. This amuses me.)
Kelly Clarkson, “Miss Independent” (See? I’m a junkie.)
Bloodhound Gang, “The Bad Touch”
Daft Punk, “Technologic”
Daft Punk, “Da Funk” (I’ve wanted this one ever since I heard it in “The Saint” in the mid ’90s)
The Tubes, “She’s A Beauty”
Frou Frou, “Holding Out For A Hero” (yes, it’s a cover. Yes, I know that. It’s the coolest cover I’ve heard in a long time.)
Eve 6, “Promise” (this one has stayed shiny after a record-setting 167 playings. I LIKE this song.)
SR-71, “Right Now”
Jem, “They”
Lit, “Over My Head” (which has been my theme song, or at least one of them, for a couple of years now)

Hopefully this “create a new playlist thing” will keep me from just downloading new music for the sake of having something new. We’ll see. And now, I’ve got some accompaniment to which I need to begin drawing. Buffer=17.

–Howard