iPod, youPod

I have a long history of computer retardedness and general behind-the-curveness. My sister can rattle off RAM and gigabyte info effortlessly while I'm more about knowing why Lindsay Lohan and Ashlee Simpson were feuding. How is it that I know celebrity gossip? Osmosis? I don't even have cable, but I can somehow tell you that Courteney Cox has an extra 'e' in her name, and that she went to the same high school as Natalee Holloway. Not quite as useful as computer knowledge.

By the way, Gigabites would be an awesome computer cafe name. Is it taken?

I have overcome my handicap admirably recently by buying both a laptop and an iPod. It's been like the Kate Special Olympics this week.

When we first got a cellphone, my sister would pretend to talk on it and I'd laugh at her 6th grade excitement. Now I have no songs on my iPod, but that hasn't stopped me from walking down the street with my white earbuds dangling, a signal to all that I've joined the 21st century. I'm just that cool. It's nice to be so excited about something.

I have my discman too, and when I do need real music I listen to my new Kanye West CD, which has some songs I just put on 'repeat'. Kanye bookended my day with performances on Ellen and Oprah. He was on there doing "Golddigger" with the modified lean back move from Fat Joe, and all was going well until he got to the line that culminated with "he'll leave your ass for a white girl." The audiences -- full of white girls -- had been trying to bop along with their suburban friends and didn't quite know what to do with that.


"Late Registration" is not quite as deliciously clever as his debut, which I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for, mostly because it let me drown out so many disfunctional coworkers. There were days when I'd literally not take off my headphones while they fought with each other and talked in baby talk to their husbands.

He's probably the reason I'm not in jail for murder right now.

Urban outfitters

I saw a woman today dressed in a Big-Bird yellow fuzzy fleece unitard. (Can't spell "unitard" without "tard." Remember that the next time you want to wear your unitard out of the house.) It was embellished with black leather trim and pockets. She was pulling a little dog in a rolling suitcase.

Upon further inspection, "she" might have been a dude.

This was the second most notable outfit I saw today. The top honor goes to a young woman sporting a left torso wrapped in gauze, as though she had been stabbed within the fortnight. The great part was, she was still rocking her Puerto Rico halter top. Her boyfriend/common law husband escorting her overcompensated on fabric and coordinated on the national pride issue. He took to the street in a knee-length homemade T-shirt that said in marker "Kiss my Spanish ass."

As a person who struggles with low-rise jeans, I admire the people of all nationalities in this city who look in the mirror every morning and think, "I'm not going to let this extra 30 pounds/baby in a stroller/recent stab wound stop me from showing all my business to the world."

I salute you ladies, if for no other reason than you make the rest of us look better.