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.