The Shame of the Song List
I don't know if this is true for everyone, but after finally installing the iPod that Dad got me for my birthday, I am finally getting the chance to take a long hard look at my musical preferences.

Each individual entry is defensible. Billy Joel's Greatest Hits has some real classics. Pirates of the Caribbean is good music to write to -- no words, just orchestration. Faith Hill's Breathe is atoned for by some Debussy and Brahms, and the Chieftains and Da Vinci's Notebook and Diana Krall all sort of fall into that "cultured person non-objectionable" area that makes me happy and elitest.

And then suddenly it's Don Henley and the Eagles and Matchbox Twenty and Sting and Evanescence, and I just have to avoid eye contact with anyone in the shared network.

However, if I can embrace my hackdom as a writer and a reader, I can embrace it as a listener. I bought Nielsen and Tchaikovsky and some Hundred Years of Jazz Guitar CD-pack all by myself like a big boy, so if I want to listen to Queen's A Kind of Magic, I'm damn well entitled.