Me, Myself and Ipod

A True Story: A good friend of mine recently moved to a vibrant medium-sized metropolitan city to go back to university. It was in fact my home town, and as such, I have a very intimate knowledge of its people and places. Before he left, like many students do, he bought himself a new G4 laptop. At the time of his purchase, Apple was throwing in a Free Ipod.
"Nice!", he said when he got the bonus gift.
After he had been there a few weeks, I asked him if he had met any interesting people.
"Not really", he said- which sort of suprised me, as the neighborhood he had chosen to live in [my former stomping ground] is literally crawling with students, scenesters, artists, technoheads and intellectual-types.
"Nobody?", I asked-incredulous of his claim.
"Nope", he said.

I conjured in my mind the very streets, cafes, bookstores, shops and galleries he was wandering by in his adoptive neighborhood. "Nobody", he had said...it made no sense! After all, he is a very attractive man; friendly, charming, witty and outgoing. He was walking in a dynamic neighborhood of others like him. An interesting chance encounter seemed inevitable to me. In my experience I measured such meetings on a per/block basis during the waking hours. I thought some more of this bizarre situation...it perplexed me...then suddenly it hit me!

"You aren't wearing that damned Ipod, are you"? I snarled.

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The Bird Flu Counter is in the shop for an overhaul. An error in initial design proved to be a significant flaw. The "counter" which measures the number of times per day "Bird Flu" is mentioned by the Media Paranoia Complex was lacking sufficient decimal spaces. Work is underway at Verge Limbo Industries to build a new one that will accomodate the exponential growth in fearmongering.
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