It was just last night. Or I suppose it could have been any night, it’s not terribly important.

I was listening to one of my favourite albums. For the sake of argument, let’s say it was “Bodysong” by Jonny Greenwood (he of Radiohead fame) which is oh so good with it’s “Chhk-nng-nng” and “Ba-dum Ba-dum-Ba dum” and crazy drum rythyms that make me jump up and dance like so many strands of animated spaghetti.

This album had been purchased some while back from a quaint little music shop on the other side of town. This music outlet only stocked about 40,000 albums, so I did find making a choice fairly difficult, but I found what I wanted and paid my hard-earned moolah to the lovely person behind the cash desk (At least I think it was a person. It could have been a cat, but that’s unlikely).

Upon returning to my warm, festering abode, I unleashed the CD from its wrapping and hurled it with gusto into a nearby CD player and set it going. It was good, and I was happy.

Many days passed. I decided to once again listen to my lovely little disc of musicy CD-ness. It was late at night and the wind was blowing. No sooner had I pressed play and the dulcet sounds of Greenwood’s tortured electronic rythyms had started, when I heard a rap-tap-tapping from the direction of the window. I turned to face said window and to my shock and/or horror, I saw a face staring back at me. It looked a bit like a cat, but it was also wearing some sort of crudely drawn headphones. Realization dawned slowly upon mine face as I realised what it was I was looking at.

“It’s”, I gasped, “…The Napster!”

Suddenly, and without warning, The Napster burst through the window, sending glass and wood and sealant putty and small pieces of metal flying here there and everywhere. It leapt over to my CD player and hurled it to the ground smashing it into lots of little pieces.

“What the…”, I said, as a standard stock response to any event that is both shocking and strange.
“I am here to stop you from listening to music which I dont want you to listen to because I’m some sort of strange corporate cat logo from a big company that cares not one jot about its consumers and is only interested in maintaining healthy profit margins!”. I found The Napsters statement shocking, not least because it was quite lazily constructed and could have been strung out over several paragraphs had the writer of said sentence not been eager to finish writing this dross so he could go off and make a bacon sandwich.
“But why?”, I asked.
“Because I can. Mwa-ha-ha!”. The Napster seemed like he was enjoying this
“But I bought this CD, with my hard earned moolah, from a shop, with the windows and the floorspace and the lovely, lovely DVD displays”.
“That matters not a jot! We have decided that from henceforth, music is only legal and good if it is purchased from our online ItunesNapster store and has sufficient measures installed to prevent it from being copied to another device more than no times, to prevent it from being anywhere near the quality of the original CD and to prevent it from actually being listened to!!”
I was shocked. And appalled. “But who’s this we?”, I asked?.

From out of the shadows stepped a figure, at first glance it appeared he was dressed all in black, but in actuality, he was dressed in pure white, the brightness of which stopped my eyes from working briefly. It was Steve Jobs. Apple Man of Mystery and maker of shiny gadgets that are inordinately expensive but which look so nice and huggable that they override people’s innate sense of not-wanting-to-buy-them. I was overwhelmed with an urge to go out and buy three hundred Imacs, but I fought the impulse.

“Steve Jobs!”, I shouted, “You have no place here. I am immune to your corporate jargons and your shiny white surfaces that while looking crisp and clean against the white background of your advertising campaigns appear somewhat stupid amongst the clutter on my desk! Begone back to the filth-pit from whence you spawned”.

I rushed over to where he was standing and smacked him in the face with a big pan. He promptly vanished and I was left once again speaking to The Napster.

“Ha! Without Jobs you are nothing! You will never succeed in this world where people demand music that is cheap and easily accessible. Your crazy schemes to turn music into something that is so easily obtainable yet so annoyingly expensive and hard to use, infuriating many and pleasing none will never work.”
“We shall see…”, replied the Napster. “Just wait for Napster-to-Go, it sounds fantastic but its bound to be full of as many pitfalls and difficulties as everything else!”
The Napster disappeared suddenly up its own arsehole, and I was left standing with a smashed CD player and a vague sense of unease. This was only the beginning, I thought to myself, and went off to make a bacon sandwich.