You may not realize it, but this is the dawning of a new age.

The age of iTunes.

I didn’t notice it was happening until this week. I had just successfully weaned myself off Friendster after an intense weekend of withdrawal where I had several seizures and wrote testimonials to the tiny boxes of cornflakes in my room. Despite my best efforts at hitting the Refresh button every twelve seconds, Wesmatch was still telling me it was running on Central Time and wouldn’t be up for a few hours. And Weshop was out of Swedish Fish. For one beautiful moment this week I was free from all addiction and vice. I was in the clear, on the road to sobriety. It was like an ad for genital herpes medication.

And then iTunes for Windows came along.

I didn’t even see it coming. It had its fairly innocuous beginning in a commercial for iTunes I saw at Weswings while enjoying my daily regimen of 12 orders of spicy fries (as my grandmother used to tell me, grease makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. And then it puts him out if his misery with a mercifully fast heart attack.). Now, this commercial knew how to get the attention of every aspiring pseudo-wanna-be self-hating hipster type who wears a scarf because he lost his aviator glasses. It said the word “iPod”.

Nothing is cooler than the iPod. If I may say it, I “heart” iPods.

Looking back over my actions of the past twelve seconds, I suddenly feel ashamed. I can’t believe I just used the word heart as a verb. At any moment a grammar death squad should be arriving at my door to dispense a linguistic style execution. Before they do, however, I would like to apologize to you all. But I digress.

This semester was when I began to realize just how acute my iPod envy is. The mere sight of someone walking around with that telltale white cord coming out of their pocket brings a twinge of envy to my heart. I’m not sure what it is about the iPod that makes it so attractive. It’s just another step in the long process of really cool small things. Like mini-muffins and midget musicals.

Also, it seems like all the cool kids have one. Now I know that’s a stupid reason to want anything, but frankly, I don’t care. I never got to be the cool kid growing up. When the cool kids had some cool fashionable haircut, I was the kid whose mother gave him a crew cut in the bathtub. When the cool kids had big elaborate toys that whistled and lit up and pooped in their diapers, I had to settle for a library card and an old refrigerator box. And in high school, when the cool kids were out partying and drinking and crashing their Beamers, I was at home with my mother watching AMC and doing needlepoint. Maybe it’s stupid, but I want to be the cool kid for once.

iPod seemed to be my way in. After all, it wasn’t a cool kid thing in the “I’m a super jock/jackass” way, or even the “I like to pretend I’m a hippie so that I have a good excuse to smoke copious amounts of pot and listen to Bob Marley without having to consider the hypocrisy between my ideology and my lifestyle” way. No, iPod is cool in the “I have good taste in film and music” kind of way. And that seems doable,

I have a whole iPod outfit planned out and everything. I’ve got the faded jeans. I have the youth-sized T-shirt with the post-ironic message on it. I have the jacket from the thrift store. I even have the long scarf in case it gets cold. All I need is the iPod. And therein lies my problem. iPods are god-awfully expensive.

My original plot for obtaining an iPod involved robbing the Fleet Bank on Main Street. Sadly, it looks like someone beat me to it while I was figuring out what size ski mask fits me. My back-up plan was still fairly viable, but the mail-order hovercraft I purchased from the back of Popular Science hadn’t shown up yet so it was going to be a while anyway. This was when I got word that iTunes was coming to Windows.

iTunes seems to bring me that much closer to my beloved iPod. It works kind of like an iPod, and one day when I steal an iPod from a blind crippled orphan, I can use iTunes with my iPod. And in the meantime, I thought it could be possible to purchase some white earphones, hook them up to my laptop, put my laptop down my pants and pretend I actually have an iPod. Rushing back to my room after seeing the commercial, I downloaded iTunes.

Unfortunately, once the initial excitement wore off and I changed my underwear, I realized there wasn’t much to iTunes. That was, until I noticed the Shared Music option. I’ve discovered a new hobby, no, a new way of life, and this is what I’ve come to tell you all about. Forget discriminating people based on their race, religion, gender, or colloquial term for four-square, it’s all about playlistism. That’s right, judging people by their iTunes playlist. Now, I can’t take full credit for this idea; playlistism is really the brainchild of Katie “the iTunes Hatemonger” Brown, but if playlistism ever takes off like the Klu Klux Klan did, I’d be a Grand Wizard. Let me explain the basics.

Some people don’t have any Elliot Smith in their playlist. This means they’re not as brooding as they ought to be and they have no respect for the dead. Not the type of person you’d want to meet. Some people have crazy scary German bands. These people are usually bad-ass fascists or enjoy wearing mesh shirts. Or both. Either way, be careful. Some people have extensive collections of show tunes, often with accompanying karaoke-style instrumental tracks. All right, so maybe that one is only me, but you don’t know the thrill of signing Fiddler on the Roof in your underwear. Some people have obscure bands I’ve never heard of. These people are probably too cool for me and I’ll leave them alone until I have an iPod. Some people have a song called “Dead Baby Orgy Club.” I’m not sure how to respond to this one.

So I don’t have an iPod. But I do have iTunes if it’s any consolation. And while I can’t be cool and condescending about having an iPod, I can be cool and condescending about people’s playlists.

And in the end, isn’t that almost the same thing?