what doesn't kill ya: London, Munich, everybody talk about Pop Music

Last night I binged on a buffet of music downloads. Noelle has been asking me, over and over, then again, and WAIT, ONE MORE TIME - until she asks again in five minutes - to make her a cd. I ran out of good reasons to keep postponing it, except that I have a moral opposition to Ashlee Simpson downloads, which Noelle just doesn't understand at her tender age.

After trudging my way through the Backstreet Boys and JoJo, I was ready to burn Noelle's cd. The playlist actually wasn't all that bad. She has some Gwen Stefani and Black Eyed Peas in the mix. Although, I had to say no to anything referring to "all that ass inside them jeans" or "this shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S." I could get away with telling Noelle's preschool teachers that "No, really, she doesn't know what flipping the bird means!" after she's flipped off the entire pre-K class and half the staff. (She honestly didn't know what it meant; she was copying a developmentally disabled child who was sticking her middle finger up and didn't know any better. And Noelle, being in the midst of a "monkey see, monkey do" phase, was all too eager to take up what she thought was a new version of a thumbs up.) I could not, however, explain to the teachers and parents that, yeah, you are TOTALLY right, these lyrics are inappropriate, and I'm sorry my daughter has been singing them to the kids all day, over and over, but hey, at least they can spell "bananas!"

After Noelle's purple cd ("Purple, mama! I want PURPLE!") was finished and handed over to her in - what else - a PURPLE jewel case, I scoped out some downloads of my own. It was the least I could do for myself... you know, after all I'd been through.

A couple of hours later, I was reviewing my finds. A truly wide range of musical tastes had emerged. And I do mean WIDE. I'm thinking I'll pass on putting Notorious B.I.G. and Patsy Cline on the same cd. Somehow, "Big Poppa" just doesn't transition to "Blue Moon of Kentucky" all that well.