1. It's iPod Day in the national media, as The New York Times finally cracks open the musical conspiracy known as "the shuffle feature" -- in which the iPod seems to play favorites when picking random songs. On a personal note, we've noticed our own iPod has an unhealthy obsession with Burning Airlines, 50 Cent, Paul Simon's "Rene and Georgette" and everything from At the Drive-In's "Vaya" EP. Damn you, iPod … damn you to hell.

Meanwhile, other people (read: jackasses) have decided the iPod's constant musical stimulation is ruining their "New York Experience," and have quit using it altogether. "I moved to New York, in part, because I wanted to experience the city’s sidewalk cacophony, everything from the rumbling buses to cabbies hollering 'Get the f--- outta my way!' With my earphones in, I became deaf to the urban orchestra playing around me. Even worse, my iPod had sapped the energy that makes New York more exhilarating than the places we all escaped from. Except for better bagels, I had traded one kind of suburban isolation for another."

Blah-dee-blah… Just yesterday, we used our iPod to block out a spontaneous hippie drum circle in the Union Square 6 Train station. Thank you, iPod. Thank you very much.

2. For all you Natalie Portman fetishists who found her beautiful but annoying in "Garden State," this could be what you were looking for.