The World is Round: The Muck and the Mire

Happy New Year, and here we go again: MTV and Microsoft are teaming up to launch a new music service called Urge. It's just like iTunes, except it's not. Songs purchased through Urge will be compatible with the Microsoft Media Player. Joe Music Lover will likely have a choice between purchasing individual tracks, entire albums, and subscriptions. Joe and his pals will also be able to move purchased tunes over to their MP3 players. But not to their iPods. So, as I said, here we go again.

If there is one thing the powers that be never learn, it is that mucking things up and henceforth maintaining maximum muckosity is no way to gain their customers' trust. And all of this "If you buy music at our store, you won't be able to port it over to your iPod" is about as mucky as mucky can be without mixing in some mucky mire for bad measure.

I mean, check out the numbers. The iPod is, by so far it's hard to fathom how long it would take to get there traveling at light speed, the number one portable music player. I know that if I were running an online music business, I'd want the tracks people bought from me to be able to play on the number one portable player. Not only does that make good sense, it's good business. And good cents.

But the competition doesn't want to play fair with Apple. Neither does Apple want to play fair with the competition, but still. Can't all of these companies get together and iron out an acceptable agreement that causes consumers to win for a change?

All of this corporate hooey just burns my toast. There are too many portable music players, too many incompatible formats, too much jockeying for position and too much greed for all the players to maximize their investments. There has got to be a way to fix this.

I've just dreamed up the solution. Here goes. Lets get some top scientist-is Mr. Wizard still doing his thing?-and set him up in a super, top-secret lab somewhere in the middle of nowhere-say, Northern Iowa-with all of the scientific doodads necessary to do the following: allow all people, of all ages, to regress to the day they were born. Specially-trained surgeons at selectively-selected hospitals-the ones where the nurses are hot and the escargot are gone, baby-will implant into the noggins of these newly-reborn infants a chip no larger than a sunflower seed, and on that chip will be every song ever recorded. Every song, including the collected works of Tiny Tim, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and Ronnie Aldrich and his Two Pianos. Also on that chip will be every television show ever aired, and outtakes from The Real McCoys. Once the chip is implanted, there will be some hocus-pocus and the newly-reborn shall change back to how old they were before all of this going back in time to the state of constant drooling and chip implanting. Then, with all of this cool media inside of their skulls (residing somewhere between the medulla and the oblong-gotta) at their disposal, they will be able to hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see when they want to hear and see it (except for the old TV show My Mother, the Car, which will remain unlicensed until the next Ice Age). The only catch is that each person will have to pay a million dollars per track or show, payable in full through a direct connection between the person's thought processes and their local bank. If they can't pay up, they can't groove to the tunes. The companies won't get their money, and neither Joe nor his pals will get their music, but hey, that's the breaks.

Happy new year, everybody, and please remember to shake your booty.

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