When something goes wrong, I reflexively blame anything but myself. For example, if I slip on the ice, I blame the sidewalk. Perhaps, I can never get rid of this reflex, but I can learn to see it whenever it occurs, and always reject it for something more reasonable. Amen!

Old people like McCain for his "straight talk". Tall people prefer Obama for his ability to unify America. Women, especially those over 50, like Hillary for her "35 years of experience". Italian Americans tend to seee something special in Guliani. Mormons believe that Mitt Romney has the "competence" and "leadership qualities" (he reminds them of their Bishops, I guess) to be the next President. We like Presidential candidates who validate our public personnae, then rationalize it in some politacally acceptable way.

. . . so, inspired by the excercise bike, I invented the excercise motorcycle. Jus sit on it for ten minutes at 60 m.p.h. and log your ten miles.

Which is what makes it so wonderful. It is the listener and not the artist who wraps meaning around melodies and chords. The tensions and movement in music resonate with emotional complexes in the listener, if we're lucky. This is because we use our temporal lobes for emotional processing as well as sound processing and when we are processing music, the hypothalamus or something believes we are processing emotions. Thus when we hear a resolution in the music we often experience what we believe to be an emotional resolution.

. . . so they can afford my mp3s . . .