I did it. I broke down and bought an iPod. (I won’t link to the Apple/iPod site, because, really, you can find it yourself. In fact, Apple is so omnipotent that if you just think about it, your computer will automatically take you to the Apple website, even if you’re not on the internet. Further, I know someone who bit into an apple — Granny Smith! not even a red variety! — while doing paperwork at his desk, without his computer on at all, and the thing turned itself on (hottt!) and then, first thing it did, was take him to the site.)
End parentheses.
So, I bought an iPod. I broke down and bought one because the other mp3 player I had, a non-iPod, broke down. It just stopped working, mid-play. Like a dog who, during a walk, decides he’s had enough and just plops himself down on the sidewalk, sprawled out and panting. Or “the girls” in certain offices I’ve worked in, who, at 5:00:01 p.m., are standing in their sneakers by the elevator bank, fingers curled through the handle-holes of CVS bags rather than above their keyboards.
I resisted buying one for a while, and told myself I wouldn’t become “one of those people”. I didn’t want an iPod because “everyone else has one”. Just like I didn’t want breast implants because “everyone else has one” (or is that “two”). But now I have a 20GB iPod (the latest and greatest! the “fourth generation” of iPod!) and 40GG iTits, and I couldn’t be happier.
Now all I need is a Razor scooter or a Vespa or a Segway or one of those seven-person bicycles — or whatever the hippest, happeningest, and hottest trendoids are travelling on these days — and I’ll be “good to go”.
I think it’s safe to say, though, that I haven’t been completely converted to trend-conformity, if I don’t even know what the trendy transportation is these days. Or hours. Or however long a trend’s lifespan is before it devolves into just another run-of-the-mill distraction (if regarded at all).
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must “jam”. (That’s what the posters at the Apple store told me I’d be doing, and by god, that’s what I must do.)
P.S.  I will be closing comments on Crybaby tonight, so if you haven’t spoken up yet, due to shyness or procrastination or because you didn’t want to follow the comment-leaving trend, now’s the time to do so.