Despite 1TB Of iTunes Music, Local Man Still Has Same Songs Stuck In His Head
Thanks to the proliferation of cheap digital storage space, local man Paul O'Donnell now possesses over one terabyte -- or one gigabyte in 1995, and one byte in 1945 -- of music. Unfortunately for O'Donnell, this does little to change the "constant, relentless melodies" of the same dozen or so songs stuck in his head.
The tortured listener says he finds solace when he puts in his earbuds and browses through his quarter-million-strong song collection, but that's no help when he's agonized by 'You Can't Touch This' or the opening riff to 'Ice, Ice, Baby' when at work or in church.
"I'm sure that some people hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in their quiet times, but not me," lamented O'Donnell. "No matter how many hard drives I swap with friends, it's always something like BTO's 'Taking Care of Business' or 'Dare to be Stupid' by Weird Al that pops into my head."
The troubled young man, who says that modern technology has failed him, is now considering going to a professional psychologist -- anything, he says, to to be free from the catchy refrain to Van Morrison's 'Brown Eyed Girl'.
Dr. Emily Bardot, a psychologist who has offered her services to O'Donnell, advises, "The first step for Paul would be to delete the offending songs from iTunes, because when [the program] is on random, there's nothing stopping [Jimmy Buffet's] 'Margaritaville' from playing."
Bardot shuddered, adding, "Even a few chords of that one would be enough to trigger an episode lasting the rest of the day."
Bardot stressed that keeping one's headphones in all day long cannot cure the condition -- only delay it, until the inevitable earbud-free moment when the funky bass of 'Play That Funky Music White Boy' unexpectedly blares out the open window of a passing car.
"Damn it! Now that song is stuck in my head, too," cursed Bardot.
Some professionals advocate a radical treatment opposite Bardot's: listening to the very songs that are on one's internal loop as a way to address the problem, a tactic similar to one employed by those who, afraid of being raped, just go ahead and get it over with.
O'Donnell, however, has already tried this (listening to the songs, not being raped), finding it to be ultimately unhelpful.
"One day it got so bad that I actually had to go to my old drawer of cassette tapes and put on [M.C. Hammer's] '2 Legit 2 Quit', but listening to it only made it worse, and it was with me all week," cried O'Donnell. "Not even Pantera's 'Fucking Hostile' helped -- and I listened to that at full blast."
O'Donnell insists that the mostly late-80's/early-90's hits stuck in his head by no means indicate the music he prefers to listen to, wishing instead that his mind's ear would occasionally get stuck on some Slayer, or even some Frank Sinatra. Still, some in the recording industry maintain that it's not necessarily a bad thing, and even pride themselves on a job well done.
"Our various payola and media consolidation strategies of the 80s and 90s are really paying dividends now, even in the face of this internet menace," said Greg Wermer of the Recording Industry Association of America. "All the barely-known indie bands in the world won't save your brain from the hundreds of hours of Hootie and the Blowfish that we forced it to endure before your precious Napster came along."
"Mister Jones and me..." sang Wermer as the interview concluded. "Haha, you can't stop it!"
