Ipod Quotes

He tells me to pick the music. I’m not sure if he knows that handing me his iPod is like handing me the window to his soul.

Him: Confession: I deleted all the 1 Direction from your iPod when u were in the can. You’re welcome. Me: WHAT?? I’m going to kiss u! Him: With tongue? It takes me a second to realize what happened, at which point I’m completely mortified. Me: Kill u! I meant KILL. u. Damn autocorrect. Him: Surrrrrre. Let’s blame it on autocorrect. Me: Shut it. Him: I think someone wants to kiss me…

If I knew I was going to die at a specific moment in the future, it would be nice to be able to control what song I was listening to; this is why I always bring my iPod on airplanes.

The iPod completely changed the way people approach music.

Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. [Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006]

I would rather have someone read my diary than look at my iPod playlists.

This is the biggest damn IPod I've ever seen," Claire said, which made him choke on his beer. "Kidding. I have seen a jukebox before.

Shoulda gone to China. They give away babies like free iPods. They put them in guns and shoot them out at sporting events.

Without Mona, Hanna felt like a great outfit without matching accessories, a screw-driver that was all orange juice and no vodka, and an iPod without headphones. She just felt wrong.

Who or what is an Ipod?

My iPod rumbles again. It's not actually an iPod. It doesn't play any music and the earbuds are just for show. It's a gadget that Sandor put together in his lab. It's my Mogadorian detector. I call it my iMog.

Simply handing over your iPod to a friend, your blind date, or the total stranger sitting next to you on the plane opens you up like a book." (Steven Levy)

I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools (in America) that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.

To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing’s pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly…but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places any more but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets’ checkouts, airport gates, SUVs’ backseats. Walkman, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows it’s about something else, way down.

If it weren't for acid, you might not have an IPod, and you definitely would not have some of the best music in your IPod.

When you're doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you're not going to cheese out. If you don't love something, you're not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.

There are many differences between a baby and an I-Pod. And one of the biggest is, no ones going to mug you for your baby.

I snatch the iPod from his hands and stuff it in the bag. “One Direction does some great harmonies.” “Strongly disagree.” His chin lifts decisively. “I’ll make you a playlist. Obviously you need to learn the distinction between good music and shitty music.

Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator. What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally. That's why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That's why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam. Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He's an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn't care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important, not because he expects you to pay him for it. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

This is the biggest damn iPod I've ever seen,' Claire said, which made him choke on his beer. 'Kidding. I have seen a jukebox before.' 'The way you're feeding it, I'm not so sure. You think you picked enough songs?

Dani: Crank it up. Lets get this party started. *I hand Dancer my iPod.* Lor: What is this crap. Where the hell is Hendrix on this thing? Jo: Did you get any Muse? Dani: Muse is something you do Jo: Distrubed is something you are Dancer: And Godsmacked is something you get Lor: Don't you have any Motley Crue or Van Halen? Christian: How about some Flogging Molly? Ryodan: Whats the deal with all the Linkin Park, for fuck's sake. Dancer: Mega has a crush on Chester Jo: You got any Adele? Dani: Got some Nicki Minaj. Ryodan: Somebody kill me now.

My limbs feel really heavy. I kind of want to go home and crawl into bed with my iPod. But the curtains start to open. And I keep moving forward.

Do you have your iPod?' That was like asking if she'd brought her boobs along.

Lagu-lagu yang ada dalam iPod seseorang itu mengungkapkan banyak hal tentang seseorang; hal-hal yang dia pikirkan, apa yang membuatnya sedih, dan apa yang membuatnya bahagia. Benda itu diisi dengan lagu-lagu yang mewakili perasaan-perasaan itu dalam hidupnya. It’s their soundtrack, the story of their lives.

One of Job's business rules was to never be afraid of cannibalizing yourself. " If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will," he said. So even though an Iphone might cannibalize sales of an IPod, or an IPad might cannibalize sales of a laptop, that did not deter him.

It's that quirky kind of weekend feeling they write ridiculous sunny-day songs about. You know the ones--I'm sure they're on your iPod even though you'd never admit it.

The first thing I did when I got inside was turn on the kitchen light. Then I moved to the table, putting my dad's iPod on the speaker dock, and a Bob Dylan song came on, the notes familiar. I went into the living room, hitting the switch there, then down the hallway to my room, where I did the same. It was amazing what a little noise and brightness could do to a house and a life, how much the smallest bit of each could change everything. After all these years of just passing through, I was beginning to finally feel at home.

سيأتي وقت تختفي فيه كل الآمال / تصبح كل الأشياء عادية / خذ عطلة طويلة عندها / دع الأولاد من حولك يلعبون

If Apple were to grow the iPod into a cell phone with a web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble.

I think the iPod is the true face of Republican politics, and I’m in favor of the music industry … standing up proud and saying it out loud: We in the Chiclet-manufacturing business are not about social justice, …we’re not about a coherent set of national ideals, we’re not about wisdom. We’re about choosing what WE want to listen to and ignoring everything else…. We’re about giving ourselves a mindless feel-good treat every five minutes. …We’re about persuading ten-year-old children to spend twenty-five dollars on a cool little silicone iPod case that costs a licensed Apple Computer subsidiary thirty-nine cents to manufacture.

We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you're doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you're not going to cheese out. If you don't love something, you're not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.

To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it's because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that's where phrases like 'deadly dull' or 'excruciatingly dull' come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that's dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing's pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly...but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places anymore but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets' checkouts, airports' gates, SUVs' backseats. Walkmen, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. The terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can't think anyone really believes that today's so-called 'information society' is just about information. Everyone knows it's about something else, way down.

I pull my iPod out of my backpack and plug it in. It's the first thing I do every time I get in it, like a ritual. Music soothes the soul; at least it helps soothe mine.

I thought listening to hip-hop would help distract me from the scumbagginess of my task, but after "99 problems" and "Heartless" I flung my iPod away.

Partnerships are increasingly seen through the prism of promises and expectations, and as a kind of product for consumers: satisfaction on the spot, and if not fully satisfied, return the product to the shop or replace it with a new and improved one! You don't, after all, stick to your car, or computer, or iPod, when better ones appear.

Come on," she said, smiling for the first time since she'd stepped on the plane. "We need to get to the bus before Ian plugs his iPod into the speakers." Dan shuddered. "I'd rather face a thousand Vespers than listen to Beethoven.

Jobs planned the iPod to be the first of a new generation of portable post-PC devices, but that secret was invisible to most people.

Sure, they all have iPods, smartphones, whatever. Generally speaking, it’s in our own best interest to keep some kind of electronic device in their hands. Otherwise they might talk to us.

Music made my day so much easier. Walking through the halls at school was somehow easier; sitting alone all the time was easier. I loved that no one could tell i was listening to music and that, because no one knew, i was never asked to turn it off. I'd had multiple conversations with teachers who had no idea i was only half hearing whatever they were saying to me, and for some reason this made me happy. Music seemed to steady me like a second skeleton; I leaned on it when my own bones were too shaken to stand. I always listened to music on the iPod i'd stolen from my brother, and here- as i did last year, when he first bought the thing- I walked to class like i was listening to the soundtrack of my own shitty movie. It gave me an inexplecable kind of hope.

What’s the point of you? Try this, for starters. And underneath there’s a long list. He’s written a long, long list, that fills the page. I’m so flustered, I can’t even read it properly, but as I scan down I catch beautiful smile and great taste in music (I sneaked a look at your iPod) and awesome Starbucks name. I give a sudden snort of laughter that almost turns to a sob and then turns to a smile, and then suddenly I’m wiping my eyes. I’m all over the place.

PS, I want a stripper for my birthday,” GQ announces. “Just decided now. Get on it.” “I’ll make a couple calls,” Garrett promises, but the second his friend wanders off, he confides, “He’s not getting a stripper. We all chipped in to get him a new iPod. He dropped his in the koi pond behind Hartford House.” When I snicker, Garrett pounces like a mountain lion. “Holy shit. Was that a laugh? I didn’t think you were capable of showing amusement. Can you do it again and let me film it?” “I laugh all the time.” I pause. “Mostly at you, though.” He grabs his chest in mock pain as if I’ve shot him. “You’re terrible for a guy’s ego, y’know that?

All right, Jeffy. Here are some big-boy pants. Put 'em on and crank out fifty miles for me. By the way, the iPod only has one playlist on it. Press play when you leave the starting line, okay?

The soundtrack should be a lilting indie affair; equal parts hopeful and with a broken, bittersweet lyric hook that makes your heart hurt for some unknown reason. But instead it’s scored by the 1980s hair metal I found in an incriminating iPod playlist titledGym. “You seriously got those abs while listening to Poison and Bon Jovi,” I crow, and he can’t deny it. It’s just us, windows down, stereo cranked, the road curling in front of us like a tongue.

The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don't really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music. We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you're doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you're not going to cheese out. If you don't love something, you're not going to cheese out. If you don't love something, you're not going to cheese out. If you don't love something, you're not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.

نبحث عن الحقيقة وسط هذا الكذب / ونجد الإجابات عندما نتعلم فن الموت / إنه عالم رائع في كماله

Jobs's intensity was also evident in his ability to focus. He would set priorities, aim his laser attention on them, and filter out distractions. If something engaged him- the user interface for the original Macintosh, the design of the iPod and iPhone, getting music companies into the iTunes Store-he was relentless. But if he did not want to deal with something - a legal annoyance, a business issue, his cancer diagnosis, a family tug- he would resolutely ignore it. That focus allowed him to say no. He got Apple back on track by cutting all except a few core products. He made devices simpler by eliminating buttons, software simpler by eliminating features, and interfaces simpler by eliminating options. He attributed his ability to focus and his love of simplicity to his Zen training. It honed his appreciation for intuition, showed him how to filter out anything that was distracting or unnecessary, and nurtured in him an aesthetic based on minimalism.

He tries again, swallowing hard to ease away the painful lump in his throat. "It's just important. I love you. I'm yours. I need people to know." "Alright," Lindsay says suddenly. He leans down to grab at Pip's bag, throwing stuff out onto the carpet, his iPod and phone and wallet and gloves and Attitude magazine until he finds what he's looking for, a green marker pen, and holds it between his teeth while he starts tugging at the hem of Pip's t-shirt. Pip's too surprised to do anything but submit, he lets Lindsay peel off his t-shirt and throw that on top of all the things from his bag then just watches as Lindsay pulls the pen out of the cap in his mouth and signs his name in big green letters on the side of Pip's stomach. He holds his breath, trying not to suck in the belly fat everybody else keeps telling him is imaginary. "There, you're mine, are you fucking happy now?" Lindsay snaps, and throws the recapped pen across the room to get lost in the bookcase somewhere.

The rich covet the new iPod not for the sounds it can make in their heads, but for the impressions it can make in the heads of others.

"Whoaaaaa–AARRRGGGGGGGHHHH...shove two fingers down my throat and pull out my heart...to prove that you love meeee...!" Clutching her iPod, Nellie emerged from the hatch ad lurched towards them, like creature put together from spare parts–a motion that Dan and Amy recognized as dancing. Pulling out her earbuds, she raised her face to the sky and let the rain pelt her for a few seconds. "Whoo-hoo, that is better than a facial!" she cried, running to join Dan and Amy under the overhang. "Stick around," Dan said, "for a lava treatment.

Your own love story? Your paramour may have had lovers before you. But no one has ever loved him the way you do. No one has ever heard music. Not the way you hear it. The songs are beautiful vampires, asleep in your iPod, coming alive at night, aglow. You can have them on your hours, yours to conduct. Music shapes us and we shape it.

They key to a great party is the music," Sam says, scrolling through his iPod as we tramp through the sand. Eddie - the guy having the party - put Sam in charge of the playlist. "If it's too intense, no one will be able to hang out and talk. But if it's too mellow, it will turn into a snoozefest. You also have to consider timing. There's a particular kind of music appropriate for each stage of the party - intro, warm-up, full swing, wind-down, and outro.

So when his tractor came to a smash-halt, the potato-digger rising up behind and then crashing back down, Bob was flung forward over the engine block and directly into the Dome. His iPod exploded in the wide front pocket of his bib overalls, but he never felt it. He broke his neck and fractured his skull on the nothing he collided with and died in the dirt shortly thereafter, by one tall wheel of his tractor, which was still idling. Nothing, you know, runs like a Deere.

هناك قاتل على الطريق / عصا المشي جنبه / يأخذها معه أينما ذهب

Hey wedding DJ, there is no way in hell I'm paying you $1,000 when all you're doing is plugging your iPod into the sound system #AHOLE

I stood a better chance rescuing Amber with the help of my iPod.

Your iPod is whispering in your ear. It was keeping you company, but now it's like a good friend turned bad [...] It is turning your life into a dark, looping rock opera.

My head whips back from the impact and my ribs twang like a dropped guitar. The sky spins above me like a penny. My bike has dematerialized, and my iPod is strewn about the intersection in a million glittering pieces. When I try to move, ten different parts of my body light up at once, like someone's pressing all the buttons at an anatomy exhibit. The magnolia tree blows me a kiss of perfumed air, and I can't decide if what I'm feeling is incredible bliss of excruciating pain. This might just be the greatest moment of my life. It's possible. And if it is, I don't want to waste it lying around in the middle of the road. For a single, golden second I breathe galaxies.

What was remarkable was that associating with a computer and electronics company was the best way for a rock band to seem hip and appeal to young people. Bono later explained that not all corporate sponsorships were deals with the devil. “Let’s have a look,” he told Greg Kot, the Chicago Tribune music critic. “The ‘devil’ here is a bunch of creative minds, more creative than a lot of people in rock bands. The lead singer is Steve Jobs. These men have helped design the most beautiful art object in music culture since the electric guitar. That’s the iPod. The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

Do you know my band’s song Once in a Lifetime?” I nod my head because I know that song very well. It’s one of the ones I used to listen repeatedly on my iPod. “I wrote that song about you. About meeting you that night.

Other runners try to disassociate from fatigue by blasting iPods or imagining the roar of the crowd in Olympic Stadium, but Scott had a simpler method: it’s easy to get outside yourself when you’re thinking about someone else.

. . . it is called 'camel case' or 'intercapping' -- of writing small letters next to large in the same word, as in such popular significations as iPod, eBay, iTunes, etc. which few would argue is a distinct sign of illiteracy.

Do you need someone to talk to?" she said gently. "Oh. Thank you. No, no, I'm fine." He touched his face – he'd been crying harder than he'd realized. "You sure? You don't look fine." "No, really. I've just . . . I've just had a very intense emotional experience." He held out one of his iPod headphones, as if that would explain it. "On here." "You're crying about music?" The woman looked at him as if he were some kind of pervert. "Well," said Duncan. "I'm not crying about it. I'm not sure that's the right preposition." She shook her head and walked off.

Music from my iPod was setting my life to a dramatic soundtrack that only I could hear.

Him: Confession: I deleted all the 1 Direction from your iPod when u were in the can. You’re welcome. Me: WHAT?? I’m going to kiss u! Him: With tongue? It takes me a second to realize what happened, at which point I’m completely mortified. 'Me: Kill u! I meant KILL u. Damn autocorrect. Him: Surrrrrre. Let’s blame it on autocorrect. Me: Shut it. Him: I think someone wants to kiss me… Me: Goodnight, Graham. Him: U sure you don’t want to come back here? Give our tongues some exercise? Me: Ew. Never. Him: Uh-huh. PS—check your email. I sent u a zip file of music. Actual music. Me: Which will be going straight to my trash folder.

Lagu-lagu yang ada dalam iPod seseorang itu mengungkapkan banyak hal tentang seseorang. hal-hal yang dia pikirkan, apa yang membuatnya sedih, dan apa yang membuatnya bahagia. Benda itu diisi dengan lagu-lagu yang mewakili perasaan-perasaan itu dalam hidupnya. It’s their soundtrack, the story of their lives

We tiptoe around like we’re the Frank family and the Gestapo is downstairs. The baby monitor is in our room, and the unspoken rule is that when the kids go down, so do we. So at seven P.M., I’m in bed waiting for the sandman to come. I can’t watch TV, because the noise may wake up the kids; I can’t listen to music with my iPod earbuds, because then I can’t hear the monitor; and I can’t have sex, because that could wake up Janice.

Sometimes they ask if you want to hook up your iPod for background music. Do not do this. It's a trap. They'll put it on shuffle, and no matter how much Beastie Boys or Velvet Underground you have on there, the following four tracks will play in a row; "We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover" from Annie, "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips, "That's What Friends Are For, Various Artists, and "We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover" from Annie.

Liv runs. Every morning, and some evenings too. Running has taken the place of thinking, of eating, sometimes of sleeping. She runs until her shins burn and her lungs feel as if they will explode...She plugs in her iPod earphones, closes the door of the block, rams her keys into the pocket of her shorts, and sets off at a pace. She lets her mind flood with the deafening thumping beat, dance music so relentless that it leaves no room for thought.

The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don't really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music. We mad e the iPod for ourselves, and when you're doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you're not going to cheese out. If you don't love something, you're not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.

Instructions for Dad. I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I got lonely? I promise not to scare you. I want to be buried in my butterfly dress, my lilac bra and knicker set and my black zip boots (all still in the suitcase that I packed for Sicily). I also want to wear the bracelet Adam gave me. Don't put make-up on me. It looks stupid on dead people. I do NOT want to be cremated. Cremations pollute the atmosphere with dioxins,k hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. They also have those spooky curtains in crematoriums. I want a biodegradable willow coffin and a woodland burial. The people at the Natural Death Centre helped me pick a site not for from where we live, and they'll help you with all the arrangements. I want a native tree planted on or near my grave. I'd like an oak, but I don't mind a sweet chestnut or even a willow. I want a wooden plaque with my name on. I want wild plants and flowers growing on my grave. I want the service to be simple. Tell Zoey to bring Lauren (if she's born by then). Invite Philippa and her husband Andy (if he wants to come), also James from the hospital (though he might be busy). I don't want anyone who doesn't know my saying anything about me. THe Natural Death Centre people will stay with you, but should also stay out of it. I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things. Say I was a monster if you like, say how I made you all run around after me. If you can think of anything good, say that too! Write it down first, because apparently people often forget what they mean to say at funerals. Don't under any circumstances read that poem by Auden. It's been done to death (ha, ha) and it's too sad. Get someone to read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare. Music- "Blackbird" by the Beatles. "Plainsong" by The Cure. "Live Like You Were Dying" by Tim McGraw. "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands" by Sufian Stevens. There may not be time for all of them, but make sure you play the last one. Zoey helped me choose them and she's got them all on her iPod (it's got speakers if you need to borrow it). Afterwards, go to a pub for lunch. I've got £260 in my savings account and I really want you to use it for that. Really, I mean it-lunch is on me. Make sure you have pudding-sticky toffee, chocolate fudge cake, ice-cream sundae, something really bad for you. Get drunk too if you like (but don't scare Cal). Spend all the money. And after that, when days have gone by, keep an eye out for me. I might write on the steam in the mirror when you're having a bath, or play with the leaves on the apple tree when you're out in the garden. I might slip into a dream. Visit my grave when you can, but don't kick yourself if you can't, or if you move house and it's suddenly too far away. It looks pretty there in the summer (check out the website). You could bring a picnic and sit with me. I'd like that. OK. That's it. I love you. Tessa xxx

I found myself thinking, more than I really should have, of Frank’s hands on my bare back, of his fingers tangled in my hair, of his mouth on mine, of the way he’d run his thumb over my cheek, of the fact that it had been, without question, the best kiss I’d ever gotten. But none of this changed the fact that I missed him in my life. I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to rely on him, how often I’d text him throughout the day, how much I needed his perspective on things, how boring my iPod seemed without his music.

In a way it was like a bunch of guys in a game. They were falling behind every minute that passed, but they had lost interest in the score. It was as if they were just a ton behind and had given up on the win. And maybe deep inside they didn't want to peep the score, maybe they knew what was happening but just didn't want to think about it anymore. I could understand that. I had played enough ball in my life, and was deep enough into my game to know I had to be in the hunt for a win or I could lose who I was. And once I lost who I was, my inner me, then all the CDs and all the iPods and all the bling in the world wasn't going to make it right. The strange thing was that everybody was feeling the same thing, that there was a huge game going on, and that the game was going to decide who was a winner and who lost. But so many of the brothers on the corner didn't have a play...I could feel for them because they were just like me in most ways, thinking that everybody should have a number, everybody should have the same playing time, and knowing it wasn't going to happen.

Printed works do not take up mental space simply by virtue of being there; attention must be paid or their content, whether simple or complex, can never be truly assimilated. The willed attention demanded by print is the antithesis of the reflexive distraction encouraged by infotainment media, whether one is talking about the tunes on an iPod, a picture flashing briefly on a home page, a text message, a video game, or the latest offering of "reality" TV. That all of these sources of information and entertainment are capable of simultaneously engendering distraction and absorption accounts for much of their snakelike charm.

( Eddie Chalmers) ~ His iPod exploded in the wide front pocket of his bib overalls, but he never felt it. He broke his neck and fractured his skull on the nothing be collided with and died in the dirt shortly thereafter, by one tall wheel of his tractor, which was still idling. Nothing, you know, runs like a Deere.

To me, at least in retrospect,26 the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us27 spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing’s pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly… but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places anymore but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets’ checkouts, airports’ gates, SUVs’ backseats. Walkmen, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows28 it’s about something else, way down.

All that matters in the world is to believe. Never mind evidence or facts; as long as you believe, then you’re admired for your passion. And in a modern world where every greenie, leftist, or prog embraces their iPads and iPods, as well as the organic food trucked in by, um, trucks—to Whole Foods—they still “believe” that man-made stuff is bad.

We in the west think of unpredictability as a menace, something to be avoided at all costs. We want our careers, our family lives, our roads, our weather to be utterly predictable. We love nothing more than a sure thing. Shuffling the songs on our iPod is about as much randomness as we can handle. But here is a group of rational software engineers telling me that they like unpredictability, crave it, can’t live without it. I get an inkling, not for the first time, that India lies at a spiritual latitude beyond the reach of the science of happiness. At

Whenever you hear a snotty (and frustrated) European middlebrow presenting his stereotypes about Americans, he will often describe them as “uncultured,” “unintellectual,” and “poor in math” because, unlike his peers, Americans are not into equation drills and the constructions middlebrows call “high culture”—like knowledge of Goethe’s inspirational (and central) trip to Italy, or familiarity with the Delft school of painting. Yet the person making these statements is likely to be addicted to his iPod, wear blue jeans, and use Microsoft Word to jot down his “cultural” statements on his PC, with some Google searches here and there interrupting his composition. Well, it so happens that America is currently far, far more creative than these nations of museumgoers and equation solvers. It is also far more tolerant of bottom-up tinkering and undirected trial and error. And globalization has allowed the United States to specialize in the creative aspect of things, the production of concepts and ideas, that is, the scalable part of the products, and, increasingly, by exporting jobs, separate the less scalable components and assign them to those happy to be paid by the hour. There

It's a complex song, and it's fascinating to watch the creative process as they went back and forth and finally created it over a few months. Lennon was always my favorite Beatle. [ He laughs as Lennon stops during the first take and makes the band go back and revise a chord.] Did you hear that little detour they took? It didn't work, so they went back and started from where they were. It's so raw in this version. It actually makes the sound like mere mortals. You could actually imagine other people doing this, up to this version. Maybe not writing and conceiving it, but certainly playing it. Yet they just didn't stop. They were such perfectionists they kept it going This made a big impression on me when I was in my thirties. You could just tell how much they worked at this. They did a bundle of work between each of these recording. They kept sending it back to make it closer to perfect.[ As he listens to the third take, he points out how instrumentation has gotten more complex.] The way we build stuff at Apple is often this way. Even the number of models we'd make of a new notebook or iPod. We would start off with a version and then begin refining and refining, doing detailed models of the design, or the buttons, or how a function operates. It's a lot of work, but in the end it just gets better, and soon it's like, " Wow, how did they do that?!? Where are the screws?

The world is getting noisier. We've gone from boomboxes to Walkmen to portable CD players to iPods to any song we want, whenever we want it. We've gone from the four television channels of my childhood to the seeming infinity of cable and streaming. As technology moves us faster and faster through time and space, it seems to feel like story is getting pushed out of the way, I mean, literally pushed out of the narrative. But even as our engagement with stories change, or the trappings around it morph from book to audio to Instagram to Snapchat, we must remember our finger beneath the words. Remember that story, regardless of the format, has always taken us to places we never thought we'd go, introduced us to people we never thought we'd meet and shown us worlds that we might have missed. So as technology keeps moving faster and faster, I am good with something slower. My finger beneath the words has led me to a life of writing books for people of all ages, books meant to be read slowly, to be savored.

Sobre el fin del milenio, las personas que tienen asegurada casa, comida, entradas al cine, ropa y discos viven hostigadas por la idea de que hay una fiesta, una gran fiesta, pero que está siempre sucediendo en otro lado. Les tengo malas noticias, amigos: la fiesta no está en ninguna parte. Estar conectado, vivir sin riesgos, imaginarse el mundo como un lugar claro y racional donde queremos habitar…Esa es la distopía que propulsa a las propagandas de telefonía celular. En realidad no estamos conectados con nadie. Cada vez acumulamos más información -podemos tener 5 mil canciones en un ipod- , pero, ya no podemos pensar. Ya lo dijo Sara Connor, la mamá de John en Terminator: Las máquinas vienen por nosotros. Se achican, cada vez más pequeñas, símbolo de perfección y pedigrí para quien las posea. Mientras tanto nosotros engordamos de comida, discos, películas y revistas que ya leemos de reojo porque no damos más…

What I’ve got here are my own constraints. I’m challenging myself, using found objects and making stuff that throws all this computational capacity at, you know, these trivial problems, like car-driving Elmo clusters and seashell toaster-robots. We have so much capacity that the trivia expands to fill it. And all that capacity is junk-capacity, it’s leftovers. There’s enough computational capacity in a junkyard to launch a space-program, and that’s by design. Remember the iPod? Why do you think it was so prone to scratching and going all gunky after a year in your pocket? Why would Apple build a handheld technology out of materials that turned to shit if you looked at them cross-eyed? It’s because the iPod was only meant to last a year!

The morality of need. The pastor preaches to minds that believe bigger is better; the more spectacular the more important; the most important thing about life is that it is enjoyed; basic needs are a nice home, two cars, a three-week paid vacation, several weekends away; life has cheated you unless you have a Caribbean cruise, a DVD player, and an iPod. People have a corrupted sense of need. Needs become values, they take on their own morality. The language of need has replaced the language of greed.

Oh, you know for years we’ve been making wonderful things. We make your iPods. We make phones. We make them better than anybody else, but we don’t come up with any of these ideas. You bring us things and then we make them. So we went on a tour of America talking to people at Microsoft, at Google, at Apple, and we asked them a lot of questions about themselves, just the people working there. And we discovered that they all read science fiction when they were teenagers. So we think maybe it’s a good thing.

The continent has embraced a spiritual death long before the demographic one. In those seventeen European countries that have fallen into the "lowest-low fertility," where are the children? In a way, you're looking at them: the guy sipping espresso at a sidewalk cafe listening to his iPod, the eternal adolescent charges of the paternalistic state. The government makes the grown-up decisions and we spend our pocket money on our record collection...the long-term cost of welfare is the infantilization of the population. The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to have total choice over their satellite TV package, yet think it perfectly normal to allow the state to make all the choices in respect of their health care. It's a curious inversion of citizenship to demand control over peripheral leisure activities but to contract out the big life-changing stuff to the government. And it's hard to come up with a wake-up call for a society as dedicated as latter-day Europe to the belief that life is about sleeping in.

Except Caitlyn. High school dating, drill team, school spirit—it all seemed silly to her. Why did it feel like high school was crushing her soul? She had nothing concrete she could point to. All she knew was that she didn’t belong here. She preferred old, used clothes to new ones; her iPod was full of classical music; and photos of castles and reproductions of old European art covered her bedroom walls, including a Renaissance painting of a young girl in white, named Bia. It should have been pop singers on her wall, or movie stars

There was something oddly soothing about working out while the rest of the world was aslep. I slipped in, scanned my membership card, and untangled my headphones from around my iPod. On the most stressful days, I hit the treadmill and ran fo three or four miles. Other days, I did the elliptical or the bike. As long as I was moving, my heart pumping for reasons I could understand, I felt better. So much so that, once all the applications were in and I started sleeping through the night more regularly, I still dragged myself out of bed to work out a couple mornings a week.

Music?” he asked. I nodded and handed him my iPod. We’d been running together three more times now and had worked out our routine. We talked for the first mile or so, while we were warming up. When breathing became more important than talking, we switched to music, which we would listen to for the rest of the run, and then we’d turn the iPods off as we’d cool down and walk to one of our houses—we alternated. But the run before, Frank had proposed that we switch iPods so that he could see if my “music, not observational comedy” theory was effective in terms of helping him run faster, and I could apparently learn all about some group called Freelance Whales which was, apparently, an actual band. I’d made him a mix of my favorite songs that hopefully weren’t too alienating for someone who claimed he never listened to country and had no idea who the Cure was.

Extremist material of any kind always looks gaudy and cheap, like a bad pizza menu. Not because they can't afford decent computers - these days you can knock up a professional CD cover on a pay-as-you-go mobile - but because anyone who's good at graphic design is likely to be a thoughtful, inquisitive sort by nature. And thoughtful, inquisitive sorts tend to think fascism is a bit shit, to be honest. If the BNP really were the greatest British party, they'd have the greatest British designer working for them - Jonathan Ive, perhaps, the man who designed the iPod. But they don't. They've got someone who tries to stab your eyes out with primary colours.

Some lives work better with routines, and Liv Halston's is one of them. Every weekday morning she rises at seven thirty am, pulls on her trainers, grabs her iPod, and before she can think about what she's doing, she heads down, bleary-eyed, in the rackety lift, and out for a half hour run along the river. At some point, threading her way through the grimly determined commuters, swerving round reversing delivery vans, she comes fully awake, her brain slowly wrapping itself around the musical rhythms in her ears, the soft thud-thud-thud of her feet hitting the pavement. Most importantly she has steered herself away again from a time she still fears: those initial waking minutes, when vulnerability means that loss can still strike her unheralded and venal, sending her thoughts into a toxic black fog. She had begin running after she had realized that she could use the world outside, the noise in her earphones, her own motion, as a kind of deflector, Now it has become habit, and insurance police. I do not have to think. I do not have to think. I do not have to think.

Ask a random kid today if she wants to be popular and she'll tell you no, even if the truth is that if she was in a desert dying of thirst and had the choice between a glass of water and instant popularity, she'd probably choose the latter. See, you can't admit to wanting it, because that makes you less cool. To be truly popular, it has to look like it's something you are, when in reality, it's what you make yourself. I wonder if any works harder at anything than kids do at being popular. I mean, even air-traffic controllers and the president of the United States take vacations, but look at your average high school student and you'll see someone who's putting in time twenty-four hours a day, for the entire length of the school year. So how do you crack the inner sanctum? Well, here's the catch: it's not up to you. What's important is what everyone else thinks of how you dress, what you eat for lunch, what shows you TiVo, what music is on your iPod. I've always sort of wondered though: If everyone else's opinion is what matters, then do you ever really have one of your own?

When you are faced with something challenging and you don’t know how to deal with it, you can get real low and sad and not sure what to do next. Well, that’s when you ‘sit a while’. You just find a spot out in the bush, in a paddock or at the beach. Turn off your iPod because you need to connect to the wind, the air, the wildlife and the old spirits around you. Sit on the ground and hold some dirt, sand or a rock in your hands, and work towards getting your breathing normal, then slow it down a little. It might take five or ten minutes or it might take an hour, it all depends how bad your situation is. When you calm your spirit and allow it to connect again to Country and if you are still and quiet enough you may be able to feel a subtle shift in your emotions – like a wave of strong wind – then calm. For me, when the shift comes, my confidence grows stronger. I might feel a little lighter around my shoulders and chest and a couple of times I’ve felt warmth on the back of my head. Eventually I look at the situation with my heart more open and I don’t feel so shitty. Now, I’m not saying this happens all the time,

I guess you’ll just have to get used to having a police car outside the grocery store, the gym, and wherever it is you go for lunch with your friends,” Jack lectured. “And this goes without saying: you need to be careful. The police surveillance is a precautionary measure, but they can’t be everywhere. You should stick to familiar surroundings, and be vigilant and alert at all times.” “I got it. No walking through dark alleys while talking on my cell phone, no running at night with my iPod, no checking out suspicious noises in the basement.” “I seriously hope you’re not doing any of those things anyway.” “Of course not.” Jack pinned her with his gaze. She shifted against the counter. “Okay, maybe, sometimes, I’ve been known to listen to a Black Eyed Peas song or two while running at night. They get me moving after a long day at work.” Jack seemed wholly unimpressed with this excuse. “Well, you and the Peas better get used to running indoors on a treadmill.” Conscious of Wilkins’s presence, and the fact that he was watching her and Jack with what appeared to be amusement, Cameron bit back her retort. Thirty thousand hotel rooms in the city of Chicago and she picked the one that would lead her back to him.

There was still some time before the train opened its doors for boarding, yet passengers were hurriedly buying boxed dinners, snacks, cans of beer, and magazines at the kiosk. Some had white iPod headphones in their ears, already off in their own little worlds. Others palmed smartphones, thumbing out texts, some talking so loudly into their phones that their voices rose above the blaring PA announcements. Tsukuru spotted a young couple, seated close together on a bench, happily sharing secrets. A pair of sleepy-looking five- or six-year-old twin boys, with their mother and father dragging them along by their hands, were whisked past where Tsukuru sat. The boys clutched small game devices. Two young foreign men hefted heavy-looking backpacks, while a young woman was lugging a cello case. A woman with a stunning profile passed by. Everyone was boarding a night train, heading to a far-off destination. Tsukuru envied them. At least they had a place they needed to go to. Tsukuru Tazaki had no place he needed to go. He realized that he had never actually been to Matsumoto, or Kofu. Or Shiojiri. Not even to the much closer town of Hachioji. He had watched countless express trains for Matsumoto depart from this platform, but it had never occurred to him that there was a possibility he could board one. Until now he had never thought of it. Why is that? he wondered. Tsukuru imagined himself boarding this train and heading for Matsumoto. It wasn’t exactly impossible. And it didn’t seem like such a terrible idea. He’d suddenly gotten it into his head, after all, to take off for Finland, so why not Matsumoto? What sort of town was it? he wondered. What kind of lives did people lead there? But he shook his head and erased these thoughts. Tomorrow morning it would be impossible to get back to Tokyo in time for work. He knew that much without consulting the timetable. And he was meeting Sara tomorrow night. It was a very important day for him. He couldn’t just take off for Matsumoto on a whim. He drank the rest of his now-lukewarm coffee and tossed the paper cup into a nearby garbage bin. Tsukuru Tazaki had nowhere he had to go. This was like a running theme of his life. He had no place he had to go to, no place to come back to. He never did, and he didn’t now.

ultimately, most of us would choose a rich and meaningful life over an empty, happy one, if such a thing is even possible. “Misery serves a purpose,” says psychologist David Myers. He’s right. Misery alerts us to dangers. It’s what spurs our imagination. As Iceland proves, misery has its own tasty appeal. A headline on the BBC’s website caught my eye the other day. It read: “Dirt Exposure Boosts Happiness.” Researchers at Bristol University in Britain treated lung-cancer patients with “friendly” bacteria found in soil, otherwise known as dirt. The patients reported feeling happier and had an improved quality of life. The research, while far from conclusive, points to an essential truth: We thrive on messiness. “The good life . . . cannot be mere indulgence. It must contain a measure of grit and truth,” observed geographer Yi-Fu Tuan. Tuan is the great unheralded geographer of our time and a man whose writing has accompanied me throughout my journeys. He called one chapter of his autobiography “Salvation by Geography.” The title is tongue-in-cheek, but only slightly, for geography can be our salvation. We are shaped by our environment and, if you take this Taoist belief one step further, you might say we are our environment. Out there. In here. No difference. Viewed that way, life seems a lot less lonely. The word “utopia” has two meanings. It means both “good place” and “nowhere.” That’s the way it should be. The happiest places, I think, are the ones that reside just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with; likewise, we wouldn’t want to live in the perfect place, either. “A lifetime of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on Earth,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, in his play Man and Superman. Ruut Veenhoven, keeper of the database, got it right when he said: “Happiness requires livable conditions, but not paradise.” We humans are imminently adaptable. We survived an Ice Age. We can survive anything. We find happiness in a variety of places and, as the residents of frumpy Slough demonstrated, places can change. Any atlas of bliss must be etched in pencil. My passport is tucked into my desk drawer again. I am relearning the pleasures of home. The simple joys of waking up in the same bed each morning. The pleasant realization that familiarity breeds contentment and not only contempt. Every now and then, though, my travels resurface and in unexpected ways. My iPod crashed the other day. I lost my entire music collection, nearly two thousand songs. In the past, I would have gone through the roof with rage. This time, though, my anger dissipated like a summer thunderstorm and, to my surprise, I found the Thai words mai pen lai on my lips. Never mind. Let it go. I am more aware of the corrosive nature of envy and try my best to squelch it before it grows. I don’t take my failures quite so hard anymore. I see beauty in a dark winter sky. I can recognize a genuine smile from twenty yards. I have a newfound appreciation for fresh fruits and vegetables. Of all the places I visited, of all the people I met, one keeps coming back to me again and again: Karma Ura,

Fatigue has built up after all this training, and I can’t seem to run very fast. As I’m leisurely jogging along the Charles River, girls who look to be new Harvard freshmen keep on passing me. Most of these girls are small, slim, have on maroon Harvard-logo outfits, blond hair in a ponytail, and brand-new iPods, and they run like the wind. You can definitely feel a sort of aggressive challenge emanating from them. They seem to be used to passing people, and probably not used to being passed. They all look so bright, so healthy, attractive, and serious, brimming with self-confidence. With their long strides and strong, sharp kicks, it’s easy to see that they’re typical mid-distance runners, unsuited for long-distance running. They’re more mentally cut out for brief runs at high speed. Compared to them I’m pretty used to losing. There are plenty of things in this world that are way beyond me, plenty of opponents I can never beat. Not to brag, but these girls probably don’t know as much as I do about pain. And, quite naturally, there might not be a need for them to know it. These random thoughts come to me as I watch their proud ponytails swinging back and forth, their aggressive strides. Keeping to my own leisurely pace, I continue my run down along the Charles. Have I ever had such luminous days in my own life? Perhaps a few. But even if I had a long ponytail back then, I doubt if it would have swung so proudly as these girls’ ponytails do. And my legs wouldn’t have kicked the ground as cleanly and as powerfully as theirs. Maybe that’s only to be expected. These girls are, after all, brand-new students at the one and only Harvard University. Still, it’s pretty wonderful to watch these pretty girls run. As I do, I’m struck by an obvious thought: One generation takes over from the next. This is how things are handed over in this world, so I don’t feel so bad if they pass me. These girls have their own pace, their own sense of time. And I have my own pace, my own sense of time. The two are completely different, but that’s the way it should be.

Was it as scary for you as it is for me? Falling for Sawyer?” “Not really, no.” She shakes her head. “I’m sure I had some of the same worries, everyone does. But I’m a leaper. You’re a thinker. We process things differently.” “You didn’t have a panic attack and run away?” I ask sarcastically. “No,” she muses. “Not even that time he refused to have sex with me.” “That was your first date, Everly. And you did have sex,” I remind her. I know, because I heard about it for a week. “Whew.” She blows out a breath. “It was a tough few hours though. How is Boyd’s POD by the way? Can we talk about that?” She leans forward on the couch, looking at me expectantly. “Um, no. I don’t think so.” She shrugs good-naturedly then changes the subject back to me. “Chloe, why didn’t you tell me you were struggling with your anxiety? You know I’m never too busy for you, no matter how many husbands or children I have.” “You have one husband, babe,” Sawyer says, walking into the room at that moment. “You’re still the one, baby.” “We’ve been married for three months, Everly. I sure as hell better still be the one.” “Sawyer,” she sighs. “I was trying to have a moment, okay? Work with me.” “Next time, try waiting more than a day after downloading Shania Twain’s greatest hits to your iPod. You do realize the receipts come to my email, don’t you?” “Um.” Everly looks away and scrunches her nose. “No?” “You’ve been on quite the 90’s love ballads kick this week. Which is weird, because you’re not old enough to have owned the CD’s those songs were originally released on.” He looks at her with amused interest. “What’s a CD?” She blinks at Sawyer dramatically. “Cute. Keep it up.” “Nineties music is all the rage with the millennials,” she tells him with a shrug. “I saw a blog post about it.” “Don’t worry, sweets. We’ll beat the odds together.” He winks and she scowls. “You’re still the only one I dream of,” he calls as he walks into the kitchen and grabs a bottle of water. “See! I don’t even care that you lifted that from a song. It still gave me all the feels!

Before you decide,” MacRieve interrupted, “know that if you were my mate, I’d make sure you had whatever you needed to be comfortable.” Her lips parted when he pulled her bag from behind him and proceeded to dig through it. “Like your toothbrush.” He held up her pink toothbrush. He’d retrieved her things from her car? And rooted through her personal possessions. She’d seen MacRieve’s ferocity, and now she was getting a good glimpse of his sly side, his tricksy side. She could see what Rydstrom had been talking about. MacRieve seemed . . . wolfish. Then she remembered what else she had in her bag. Oh, great Hekate. Dread settled in the pit of her stomach. Mari had private things in there—rocket of the pocket-type private things. Like a tube of lipstick that wasn’t really one. “Or this.” He carelessly flicked her birth control patch. “Doona know what it does, but I ken that people who use patches for whatever reason might be eager for a new one.” He displayed her iPod next. “It’s my understanding that females your age canna go long without listening to music or they become irrational and impossible to deal with. And how long’s it been for you, then?” He drew out a blue-labeled bottle and shook it. “You had several bottles of Orangina in your Jeep. Must like it, do you no’?” Not the Orangina! Her mouth watered even more. “And here’s your bit of Mayan gold that you’re probably keen to hold on to.” He held up the weighty headdress. Stunning. She hazily remembered seeing it in the severed hand of an incubus, as if in offer, but she’d thought the piece had been lost into that crater. If MacRieve gave the incubi’s headdress to her, it would be her first payment as a mystical mercenary. No, resist him! To act like his mate? To follow his orders? She could resist the food and the Orangina. She could even resist gold, but there he went digging once more. He’d find it. But maybe he wouldn’t know what it really was— “And your lipstick,” he said with a wicked glint in his eyes. Oh, no, he knew, and he was playing with her. She was going to die of mortification. Her face grew hot when he added, “You must be in sore need of this after three weeks without.

I left Brookstone and went to the Pottery Barn. When I was a kid and everything inside our house was familiar, cheap, and ruined, walking into the Pottery Barn was like entering heaven. If they really wanted people to enjoy church, I thought back then, they should make everything in church look and smell like the Pottery Barn. My dream was to surround myself one day with everything in the store, with the wicker baskets and scented candles, the brushed-silver picture frames. But that was a long time ago. I had already gone through a period of buying everything there was to buy at the Pottery Barn and decorating my apartment like a Pottery Barn outlet, and then getting rid of it all during a massive upgrade. Now everything at the Pottery Barn looked ersatz and mass-produced. To buy any of it now would be to regress in aspiration and selfhood. I didn’t want to buy anything at the Pottery Barn so much as I wanted to recapture the feeling of wanting to buy everything from the Pottery Barn. Something similar happened at the music store. I should try to find some new music, I thought, because there was a time when new music could lift me out of a funk like nothing else. But I wasn’t past the Bs when I saw the only thing I really cared to buy. It was the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, which had been released in 1965. I already owned Rubber Soul. I had owned Rubber Soul on vinyl, then on cassette, and now on CD, and of course on my iPod, iPod mini, and iPhone. If I wanted to, I could have pulled out my iPhone and played Rubber Soul from start to finish right there, on speaker, for the sake of the whole store. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to buy Rubber Soul for the first time all over again. I wanted to return the needle from the run-out groove to the opening chords of “Drive My Car” and make everything new again. That wasn’t going to happen. But, I thought, I could buy it for somebody else. I could buy somebody else the new experience of listening to Rubber Soul for the first time. So I took the CD up to the register and paid for it and, walking out, felt renewed and excited. But the first kid I offered it to, a rotund teenager in a wheelchair looking longingly into a GameStop window, declined on the principle that he would rather have cash. A couple of other kids didn’t have CD players. I ended up leaving Rubber Soul on a bench beside a decommissioned ashtray where someone had discarded an unhealthy gob of human hair. I wandered, as everyone in the mall sooner or later does, into the Best Friends Pet Store. Many best friends—impossibly small beagles and corgis and German shepherds—were locked away for display in white cages where they spent their days dozing with depression, stirring only long enough to ponder the psychic hurdles of licking their paws. Could there be anything better to lift your spirits than a new puppy?

Images of people in the Middle East dressing like Westerners, spending like Westerners, that is what the voters watching TV here at home want to see. That is a visible sign that we really are winning the war of ideas—the struggle between consumption and economic growth, and religious tradition and economic stagnation. I thought, why are those children coming onto the streets more and more often? It’s not anything we have done, is it? It’s not any speeches we have made, or countries we have invaded, or new constitutions we have written, or sweets we have handed out to children, or football matches between soldiers and the locals. It’s because they, too, watch TV. They watch TV and see how we live here in the West. They see children their own age driving sports cars. They see teenagers like them, instead of living in monastic frustration until someone arranges their marriages, going out with lots of different girls, or boys. They see them in bed with lots of different girls and boys. They watch them in noisy bars, bottles of lager upended over their mouths, getting happy, enjoying the privilege of getting drunk. They watch them roaring out support or abuse at football matches. They see them getting on and off planes, flying from here to there without restriction and without fear, going on endless holidays, shopping, lying in the sun. Especially, they see them shopping: buying clothes and PlayStations, buying iPods, video phones, laptops, watches, digital cameras, shoes, trainers, baseball caps. Spending money, of which there is always an unlimited supply, in bars and restaurants, hotels and cinemas. These children of the West are always spending. They are always restless, happy and with unlimited access to cash. I realised, with a flash of insight, that this was what was bringing these Middle Eastern children out on the streets. I realised that they just wanted to be like us. Those children don’t want to have to go to the mosque five times a day when they could be hanging out with their friends by a bus shelter, by a phone booth or in a bar. They don’t want their families to tell them who they can and can’t marry. They might very well not want to marry at all and just have a series of partners. I mean, that’s what a lot of people do. It is no secret, after that serial in the Daily Mail, that that is what I do. I don’t necessarily need the commitment. Why should they not have the same choices as me? They want the freedom to fly off for their holidays on easy Jet. I know some will say that what a lot of them want is just one square meal a day or the chance of a drink of clean water, but on the whole the poor aren’t the ones on the street and would not be my target audience. They aren’t going to change anything, otherwise why are they so poor? The ones who come out on the streets are the ones who have TVs. They’ve seen how we live, and they want to spend.