Cultural Arts and Entertainment

Was there life before iPods?

Ladies and gentlemen, Ryan Beardsley has officially moved into the 21st Century. What do I mean? I mean that I've finally purchased an iPod.

Well, that's not entirely true. I was GIVEN an iPod Nano for my birthday. If I wasn't given the iPod as a present, I would have most likely been carrying around a Discman until I was on my death bed.

I didn't see the purpose in spending a couple hundred dollars on something I've had on CD for years now. But now that I've had it for about a month, I must ask one thing: Was there life before the iPod?

I love this thing. It's small and travel-size, yet sturdy. I can simply keep it in my coat pocket at all times, and pull it out whenever I need it. I love placing it on shuffle mode, and not worrying about searching for a new song. If you don't care to listen to the song playing, simply hit "skip" and a new randomly selected song will appear. You also can set up "playlists" if you're in certain musical moods -- such as all rock, all pop, etc.

In addition, you can download television shows, movies, videos; basically anything that your little heart desires. I haven't gotten the chance to download videos as of yet, but I'll get there. I'm a little disappointed with the whole paying for music thing -- yes, I was an illegal downloader in my teens -- but I suppose I can splurge the 99 cents for a song.

My iPod quickly has become my best technological friend. I actually think about grabbing the i-Pod before grabbing my cell phone in the morning, which is a striking reality.

Now, I know that most between the ages of 15 and 22 are saying, "Well, yeah! Where've you been, dude?" But like I said, I'm new to all this iPod stuff. Maybe I'm getting old and behind on the trends ("Nobody likes you when you're 23" -- Blink 182), but this is one trend that I'm glad I discovered.

Rock on iPod. Rock on.