I'm afraid this won't be very interesting

1. Person who passed this meme to me: Laurel Snyder & Michael Schiavo (in an email)

2. 29369 songs, 78.9 days, 138.41 GB on this computer. The one in S's office has lots too. I also carry a 20GB iPod. I think our entire collection has been ripped--or almost the entire collection.

3. I can't remember the last time I personally purchased a CD. S buys/swaps most of the music and in such volume I cannot honestly keep up. The last time I was at Tower Records for the purpose of buying a CD (a few years ago) I purched Don Walser, a Texan yodeller. He's fantastic. Also I remember buying emergency copies of The Joshua Tree, some Tortoise, and a Travis album (which I regretted) from a Virgin in San Francisco in the days before our iPods when once we forgot to take a batch of CDs for the rental car. I worked in a record store for 4 yrs in Texas and saw live shows practically every night in Austin--my social life revolved around music then--but now find that I can tolerate neither most record stores nor most live shows. Go figure. I do still find music essential, of course. But have come to rely on a different system of discovery and delivery, a slow drip filter, so I am always behind. There was a time I could tell you the name, artist, and album name of everything on the charts, but now I am lucky if I can tell you the name of my favorite track on any given CD thanks to iTunes and the flipbook storage system because while I usually know the individual songs the lines between the albums are blurred, the album as a unit has been diminished. I regret the loss (they're tossed) of album art and liner notes. I cannot abide music with idiotic lyrics, of any stripe. I don't like showoffy manipulative singers. Ugh vocal noodling and all kinds of squeaks and purring. If you want to get on my nerves, play the Beach Boys for more than three or four songs in a row; I can't help it. There is a purity to old-style country that I savor and I still like metal for nostalgic reasons. Pedal steel always cheers me up even when it makes me weepy. I dig a twang.

4. Nothing. In the mornings I prefer no music. I usually put it on after lunch. On the mental soundtrack this morning: KRS-One's li'l rap from REM's "Radio Song" and the "what can you do with a drunken sailor" refrain, for which I blame Reen.