Sinister: a strange fear gripped me and i just couldn't post

[garymaher at xxx.com]

We must all respect each other's feelings.  The other day, I bought an
inexpensive, portable mono transistor radio.  It was at a flea market, as
we Americans refer to what essentially amounts to a junk bazaar.  I was
feeling nostalgic for my 70s childhood.  It was either the radio or an
8-track player, but I thought I'd have more listening options with the
radio.

Anyhow, shortly after this purchase, I noticed that my CDs would only
play in mono -- even the ones recorded in stereo.  This was acutely
obvious with my Zombies and middle-period Beatles CDs, hard-panned as
they are, since I was hearing mostly-only vocals or mostly-only backing
tracks.  Apparently, while I didn't realize it at the time, either the
CDs or the stereo (still not sure which was the culprit) had gotten the
wrong message -- that my purchase of the monaural radio indicated a
preference on my part for listening to things in mono.  Their feelings
were hurt.  In reaction, the stereo tracks somehow merged or went
missing, depending on the artist.

While this did result in some interesting new mixes of some of my
favorite records (for some reason, all of my ELO records filtered out
everything but the strings and Jeff's voice, sounding quite disembodied
and ethereal), it was rather disturbing.  After all, every artist should
have the right to determine how its music is mixed, and my stereo / CDs
had no business tampering with the finished product!  Besides, I missed
the lovely backing vocals on my TFC CDs, and Cotton Mather just isn't the
same without any guitars.  Whatever was behind this mutiny also had the
audacity to replace the real horns and strings on all of my beloved B&S
releases with really cheesy synthesizer reproductions.  (Bad 80s Yamaha
sounds, not even nice Korg patches.)  Claudio Reyna is from the next town
over from my home town and I feel bad his team was humiliated so badly,
but maybe that will rile them up enough to actually accomplish something
in Europe.  But that's beside the point.  Where was I?  Oh yes.

So I went to my CDs and demanded an answer.  "What's up with these
bizarre mixes?  How dare you?"  No response.  I turned to my stereo and
implored, "Please return yourself to your prior condition!  I miss
hearing my music in stereo!  Why are you doing this to me?"  "Hey, don't
look at me -- I'm inanimate, remember?" it replied.  "Oh, right, sorry,"
I apologized, feeling quite silly for having personified my audio
equipment.

Then things got strange.  Whatever CD I put on the stereo, only one song
would play (in mono) -- "Feelings".  (Yeah, the one from the 70s. 
Suppose I asked for that bit.)  Even more curious, every occurance of the
word "feelings" was replaced by the word "mono".  ("Mono, nothing more
than mono . . .")  Those were about the worst few days of my life, until
the light bulb went off.  I eventually realized that I had
unintentionally dissed the stereo portion of my CDs and/or my stereo
system by focusing my attention on the little mono transistor radio.  My
quest for nostalgia had caused modern audio technology to abandon me!  So
I sold the sucker on eBay for twice what I had paid for it, moved my
speakers farther apart for better separation, and, as quickly as it had
arisen, my little mono dilemma was history.

But now <gulp>, everything plays in quadraphonic.  And I still only have
two ears!
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