I hate CDs. Compact Discs. I hate them.
This is a big joke in my band. Our label always presses a bunch of CDs for promo use and we bring a chunk on tour just in case someone—anyone—doesn’t know how a digital download works. Every time our label asks how many CDs we want for tour, I grunt and roll my eyes. “None. I don’t want any of those pieces of shit CDs.”
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My band thinks I’m crazy, and I am because we do actually sell CDs at shows. It really confuses me. I just don’t understand why you would want a CD when you could buy the record and get the digital download instead. I mean, you don’t even have to have a turntable, but the vinyl is nice. It looks good! Vinyl lasts. That’s why it is still around in 2012 and making a bit of a comeback while CDs are now just something you cut up lines on. CDs are dead-ass, late-80’s bullshit and I wish they would just go back to where they came from (which, in my mind, is hell).
Why do I hate CDs so much? They are limiting. You bring one in the car and you are stuck with it. Making mixed CDs is beyond stupid. Dubbing a mixtape has this hands-on, intimate serenity to it, whereas dragging songs into a folder on your desktop and then clicking “copy” is detached. CDs malfunction so quickly. They scratch and skip if you even look at them wrong. They are so, so high maintenance. And lastly, CDs are stubborn. When a CD gets stuck in your car stereo, it is never, ever, going to come out. At least with a tape you can jam a screwdriver or your fingers in there and maneuverer the cassette until it pops, but a CD is so skinny, so feeble. It crawls into that stereo and if it doesn’t want to come out, it’s never coming out. Seriously. CDs are pieces of shit.
Why am I writing this? Well, because I just had my final straw with CDs. I tolerated them before, but now, because of this afternoon, it is over.
The last thing I had to do before tour was mail a big, heavy box of CDs to Seattle. As I picked up the box and trudged down my stairs to our van outside, I was tempted to drop kick the box into my lobby. Before mailing the CDs, I had to rush to our jam space to get the actual discs and pop them into all the cases, which I had in the box.
Trying to park near my jam space is a nightmare because the alley is filled with street people and drug dealers walking back and forth in the one good place to park. Like pigeons, they barely move in time when you are driving forward. Their movement happens last minute and it’s magic when no one is hurt. I parked, plugged the meter, and ran inside our jam space.
After grabbing the stupid CDs, I tried to unlock our van with the fob attached to the keys. We just bought a new van. It’s very family-style, very fancy. It has a fob. Did you know that fobs are almost as dumb as CDs? As I get out of the van, I tried to unlock it with the fob, but nothing happened. The “dead battery” red light flashed. Shit. I had to do it the old fashioned way, so I unlocked the driver’s side door with the key. Suddenly, the alarm went off. It started mellow, but then blasted into full on alarm sounds as I fumbled with the fob trying to shut the thing off. Why was the alarm going off? I used the key to the open the door, not a crow bar.
I started panicking as the people walking by starred down at me. Even the drug dealers were yelling at me. “Shut your fucking alarm off, girl!” The women they were standing with were laughing and yelling at me too. “Come on, dummy!”
I flipped, screaming back at them with a string of “FUCK”s while I frantically searched in my phone for someone to call. The alarm was still going off. I put the keys in the ignition. Nothing. I pressed everything. Every button. Nothing, so I called the suburban family man who sold me the van to ask for help. He told me that this happened to him once and the only thing you can do is get a new battery. He suggested I run to the nearest store. That’s what he did the one time it happened to him, he said.
Twenty minutes later, I returned to the van with a new battery. I had to run through an entire mall to find it, frantically begging the girls at the Japanese dollar store to help me unscrew my fob to find out what kind of battery was inside. Do you know how hard it is to find a teeny, tiny fob battery in a crack-head mall that only has a McDonald’s, tanning place, dollar store, and a bunch of weird kiosks? It’s hard.
As I was running through the mall, raging with frustration, all I could think of was the CDs. I gave them personalities and made them real. This was their fault! Stupid needy CDs. Why am I sending CDs? I hate CDs. I had gone mental. When I finally got to the UPS store, I started packing the CDs into the CD cases, my rage in full swing. I swore at each CD under my breath. People might have been staring, but I didn’t care. I had lost it.
It cost me $60 to send the CDs. I could have kicked them to Seattle for a lot cheaper.
The thing I really hate about our new van is that is has a CD player. As I drove home from the UPS store, the CD started to skip. I ejected it from the stereo and threw it into the trunk. Stupid piece of shit CD.
