Too Much of a Good Thing?

Imagine for a second that you had the power to sleep with any woman in the world right now. Pretty sweet huh? I think Jessica Alba would be pretty high on the list, but that's not the point. Now imagine if you got to sleep with any 5 women in the world right now. Okay cool, got some variety going on.. Now I want you to imagine if you got to sleep with any 50 women in the world right now. Err ok, that's cool, now we're not really being picky with who we're choosing. We're just picking names and suggestions from friends just for the sake of picking 50 women. Now, imagine if you got to sleep with any 1000 women in the world right now. Okay, I think it's safe to say that it's starting to get excessive. Especially if you had to do the task right now, you'd better be getting paid for this! This brings me to my somewhat related point.

If you pick anything in life, let it be material / pleasure / emotional or whatever, there's always gonna be a threshold as to how much you can take before it starts to suck. It's the all-encompassing economic rule of diminishing returns, you receive less and less utility from something as you gain more of it.

What got me thinking about this principle was my new Ipod. I used to previously have a 30 gig Ipod, but after I lost that one I've replaced it with my now 80 gig Ipod. Now when I load an Ipod, I'm pretty anal about getting the correct album art/title/artist and details for the songs I'm loading onto there. You should know that it's surprisingly time-consuming when you try and keep those details organized for each song, multiplied by thousands of songs.

This is what got me thinking about the MP3 player trend. More and more MP3 players are coming with larger hard drives that you can utilize for music or videos or what have you. It amazed me that I ended up paying 125 bucks LESS for my 80 gig Ipod compared to when I bought my original 30 gig. But that's the advancement of technology and the consumer psyche of getting more for your money. Still though, a bigger hard drive is better to have.

If anyone had seen my previous Ipod library, they could back-up my claim that I had a lot of shit on there. I had songs from EVERYWHERE imagineable. Hell, I had the Mighty Mighty Bosstone's whole CD on there, even though it was proven that they only had one hit for a reason. Why did I put so much crap on there? Because I could. Because I had the room to use and I figured I may as well fill it and then start figuring out what I don't want.

I've begun to take the same approach with my new Ipod. What I've started to do is make a rolling list of songs/artists that I'll think of in the middle of the day when I'm at work or school. Then I'll be sure to add it on there, even if it's something that I'm sure I'll never end up listening to or watching.

What I've started to wonder is if this is all really necessary? What are my benefits of having access to ten's of thousands of songs on my Ipod at any given time versus the time and effort I used to add them and to scroll past them everytime?

The song that really made me question the necessity for all these files was 'Tubthumping' by Chumbawumba. Now really, when am I EVER gonna listen to that song? But I will say that it is always good to have an entire library at your disposal at any given time. I remember for the last new year's eve party I went to, the entire group of people had a sudden urge to listen to old school music. FINALLY!!! My time to shine! I dug into my pocket only to remember that I had lost my Ipod weeks beforehand. That's a moment I'll never have back...

I guess the whole thing about the Ipod library is that once you have the track setup and on the Ipod, you don't have to worry about doing anything else. It's there and it's filed away for those moments where it'll make for the perfect song. But really, have you ever had a moment where Tubthumping fit in at all?