manSense May '11

Guitly Pleasures by Daniel J. Hogan

There is one problem with all of these new fangled .MP3 players.

No, not their capacity being less than what is advertised (I paid for 20 gigs, not 18.4). Nor is it batteries that seem to die about every other year, forcing us working stiffs to shell out another $200+ to replace a fancy paper weight.

I’m talking about the guilty pleasures hiding in the shadowy corners of all those gigabytes.

You know what I mean. A song, or songs, you are ashamed to confess your love for. A personal digital music device lets you stash those Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’s alongside the acceptable (in my case) Master of Puppets and Creeping Deaths.

But it does not stop with just one. No. You add another. Then another.

Before you know it, Material Girl pops up on random after Skulls by the Misfits. Or worse, Wicked Game comes on when you have the fellas over to play some “Settlers of Catan” over a few beers. No one will be trading with me after that, I can tell you that much. Hell, I wouldn’t even trade with me after that. Not for all the sheep in the Holy Hogan Empire (that’s what I call my cities while playing Settlers).

You think, “Meh, no one will ever know just how much I love Careless Whisper, I’m safe.”

Wrong!

Picture this: you are out and about celebrating Columbus Day, air drumming to Come On Eileen, when BAM! You drop dead. That is bad enough on its own, right? It gets worse. The police find your body, and your iPod is still playing one of your guilty pleasures.

The aforementioned scenario is one of my biggest fears. I will be driving or running or riding an ostrich, with my .MP3 player set to Shuffle (or as I call it, Dictatorship, because it chooses the music for me).

I turn down a side street on my ostrich. Ninja Rap by Vanilla Ice comes on and I get in a fatal accident before I can hit Next, or better yet, Off. As part of the accident, my .MP3 player freezes and is forever locked on Vanilla yelling, “Go ninja, go ninja, go!”

The newspapers the next day, by which I mean Twitter streams and Facebook feeds, read “VANILLA ICE FAN FOUND DEAD IN FATAL OSTRICH ACCIDENT.” Yikes.

And a friend of mine will make a boneheaded statement like, “Well, he went listening to his favorite song—Ninja Rap. What more could you ask for?”

Word gets around to Ice himself, and he overnights one of the jackets he wore in the movie “Cool As Ice” to my parents, so I can be buried in it.

On second thought, that may not be too bad, actually.

And for the record: if On Eagle’s Wings is played at my funeral, I’m coming back to haunt y’all. I mean it, with chains and everything.

Daniel J. Hogan is the Geek half of the Ginger and the Geek Podcast. He does not actually have Ninja Rap on his iPod. It is on his phone. You can follow him on Twitter @danieljhogan.

© 2011 Daniel J. Hogan