Okay, the zombie world has now overtaken my iPod. It's possessed, I'm sure. Shortly after moving out here, my iPod died. Dead. Without life. No amount of charging or connecting could revive it. Then, one night, after a thunderstorm emanated from a bright green sky, my iPod crossed back over the river Styx, and with it, a terrible curse. On half a dozen occasions I've woke up in the middle of the night or in the early morning to hear the soft sounds of music being played, only to track down the sound to my earphones, connected to the locked console of the phantom Pod. Apparently the spirit is a fan of Talking Heads, Radio Soul Wax, and Hits of the '80s.
Even more creepily, twice now, during my 6:30 commute-by-bike to school, through the A.M. fog of the bay, and at the top of exactly the same hill, my iPod has interrupted whatever playliist I was enjoying at the time and switched to the original version of "Downtown Train" by Tom Waits.
Theory #1: an electrical short and a series of coincidences have got me again. True? Most likely. Fun and Interesting? Not in the slightest.
Theory #2: after the iPod regained the spark of activity, I cleared a bunch of stuff off of there with the idea that, perhaps if the memory were slightly less full, the thing would work better. Among the deleted, my Best Of Marvin Gaye album. Is he back for revenge? Is he a Tom Waits fan? Perhaps he is the one that originally wrote "Downtown Train" and is desperately trying to set the world to rights from beyond the grave.