I was taking the F train out last night, without my iPod (Which meant I was forced to think about the things around me as opposed to just treating them as mobile obstacles, which is my usual MO). There was a pretty young woman sitting across from me. She had some kind of, and I mean this in a good way, piggish features. Which isn't to say she wasn't attractive: she was. . . In a manner not unlike a pig. But that doesn't really have the right connotation. She had porcine features. Yes piggy, but in a strangely royal sort of way. Like that way that struck you every once in a while, where you would look at Miss Piggy and kind of understand what Kermit was on about.

And I was (I just want to preempt your next thought by assuring you that the next verb does not operate in relation to any Muppet) fantasizing (aren't you glad for that warning?) about what incredibly gallant and intriguing thing I might say to entrance her. (I'm working on the assumption that everyone does this sort of thing. Like indulging in hero fantasies. Of course, it's yet unclear to me that other people actually have superpowers in their hero fantasies, but that's neither here nor there). And I realized that no matter how elegantly spoke, or how deeply heartfelt, there is no way that a guy has got game if he's coming with any combination of 'you,' 'pig,' and 'bear a striking resemblance to.'

When I was in the process of moving last month, I had to decide how to deal with a bunch of stuff I had collected. One set of such things included all the CDs I had bought since I had moved to Queens. There were about thirty or forty, I guess. The question I had to ask was: what to do with all of them? I mean, all of my music (and a substantial amount of other peoples music, I confess) sits on my hard drive, taking up very little space. The thirty CDs take up a bunch of space, and they are just a drop in the bucket when compared to the four hundred CDs that I'd collected throughout the period of my life previous to my moving to Queens. I could sell them, sure. Hell, given an average sale price of four dollars per CD at my local used record shop (I'd have to space it out, of course. Don't want to glut the market), I'd make over a thousand dollars, which 'd come up huge (except for the fact that, given me in a used record shop with $1000 cash, there's no way I'm not walking out of there with 100 new old CDs). But there's another consideration, in that there's NO WAY I'm selling my CDs. I have an emotional connection with my CD collection that goes further back than the retro-est of retro jerseys, and deeper than any relationship I've had with a human for years. Between the fact that I like having a hardware backup, and the fact that the very idea of giving up the liner notes to my copy of The Downward Spiral gives me the willies, it's looking like I'm going to have to rent some storage space.

As an historical aside, I remember a time when I first started switching to CDs from tapes. I was pissed that they cost 3 - 6 dollars more, and promised myself that I'd only buy Nine Inch Nails albums on CD, everything else on tape. And then it was only things on Nothing records. And then Ned's Atomic Dustbin albums. It all went downhill from there.

This is a shorty, since I'm writing it on the subway (the piggy girl left a few stops ago, and I'm almost at my station). And you are all invited to my place tonight for a flat-warming party. Errr, actually yesterday, since I'm going to forward post this by a day. But still.