An Audiophile Halloween

We don’t get many trick-or-treaters in the suburban mountains – the distance between homes is too large and people value their privacy too much for it to be an efficient use of those few hours trick-or-treaters get to gather their tons of candies and sweets. I mean, we’ll get one every few years and, since we have purchased no candy for this rare Halloween emergency, we give them 10 bucks or so [hey, the made it up 50 yards of a steep driveway and then up 45 steps, in the dark, on Halloween, they deserve to be rewarded for their intrepidity]

Last night was an average Halloween, and we received no visitors. Just kind of hung out. It was a really warm [for these parts] Halloween and maybe we should have gone out and done something. I don’t know. You never really do. ‘Know’, I mean.

So we were just hanging out, shooting the breeze, marveling at this or that piece of juicy insider gossip that most people would probably find incredibly geeky and BAMM! the stereo starts playing music.

Kind of weird…

You know, when this happens, we check to see if someone is holding the remote, and then, which happens sometimes, we check to see if someone is SITTING on the remote. So a little squirming and a ‘finally getting up and peering at the couch’ later, … no remote. The remote is sitting on the CD player.

Hmm….

Well, we all have probably been there when a little power spike comes through that is hardly noticeable but is severe enough to power cycle something that is set to AutoPlay on power-up.

Well, this CD player was not set for AutoPlay but it does have the capability, so maybe a few bits in its EPROM got munged and well, there is nothing spooky about this. These things happen, right?

This particular CD that was now playing was one of those sampler CDs. It sounded pretty good so we left it playing and went back to our gossiping and frenzied giggling [just kidding :-)]. So first we heard an old Dire Straits cut, then an old Pretenders, then a cut from the Police [Roxxxxxxxaaaaaaaaaaaaane… ], and we were really feeling the groove, you know?

So I asked Neli, when did you get this CD? and she tells me that she had no IDEA what CD it was, that I must have put it in.

Yeah, right.

Well, maybe. My memory these days, I got CRS [Can’t Remember Shtuff] syndrome. Maybe I DID put it in. Still wondered what CD it could possibly be – I do not usually buy and do not often like compilation CDs. They usually just have a few songs I like and then the rest of the time I just really wanna wanna wanna push Next Track.

Well stranger things have happened, so I somehow must have purchased this CD and at some time in the recent past actually put it in the CD player. OK. [see CRS syndrome above :-)]. This is my life – I don’t pay close attention to the things I am doing and so have no memory of them actually occurring.

But then… But then, in the middle of Sympathy for the Devil [sounded like the cut on Get Your YaYa’s Out. An awesome cut, but this one sounded remastered or something because it actually sounded Tony-the-Tiger GRRRREAT] it just stopped playing.

Another power spike? Probably.

Well, I was really enjoying that and, when the music did not restart on its own [funny how easy we get to labor-saving power spikes] I grunted and groaned [for good effect]. got up and pressed play, intending on skipping tracks until we got back to the Stones.

But the weirdest thing… the first track was the 1st movement of Nelson’s Mass. I pressed skip, still looking for the Stones, but the entire CD was Haydn masses. This was weird AND really kind of annoying. I popped the CD out and yep, Haydn.

Hmmmmm…..

Well, we did what any normal, warm-blooded human being would do in this situation. We shrugged our shoulders and played the Haydn.

Still. Kind of mysterious….