I am not a materialistic man. So I certainly never thought it possible to love someone more based on a gift.

Then, for my 32nd birthday, I received a video iPawd.

Sadly, Lisa is hoist on her own petard, since, while I do love her more for her generosity, there is a good possibility I love her gift more than I love her, or possibly anything. It's a lucky iPawd because it only has small holes, since I think I want to make sweet sweet love to it.

This will not be a gadget geek post. I won't get into the particulars of how incredibly cool this thing is. But for a lifelong music geek like me to be able to take his 20-year music collection with him everywhere he goes...that is a life-changing experience.

I'm not inordinately fond of gadgets, but I am the proud owner of a penis, so I do have an innate fondness for playing with handheld devices. I've always been a practical sort, though...I do like my toys to work well and be skookum. (Yes, skookum. It’s a BC-only word but is useful and should be more widespread). It's been quite bewildering to discover that a whole industry has sprung up to kit out the iPawd. Frivolity does not sell to me, nor do aesthetics (which I appreciate, but not at the expense of skookumness). If I had a riceburner, I would not be the guy spending whole paycheques buying pieces of moulded vinyl trying to make my anaemic 4-cylinder car resemble a scary dragon...I do not need my iPawd to also be a laser pointer, to plug safely into a shower radio, or to have a belt buckle it can snap into (yes, all these products exist).

When I went into the store my iPawd came from, the dude there was pretty insistent that I get a case for it. He was really nerdy and assured me that he wasn't trying to upsell...he didn't get any commission on accessories. But he told me that nearly everyone who gets an iPawd scratches it badly within 30 minutes of removing it from its box, and this hurt his sincere, gadget-loving heart. I could see the wisdom in that, so I got this cool sleeve made of corrugated black rubber. My iPawd now resembles a chunk of truck tire and is pretty much bombproof...eminently skookum. I named it Darth. The morning after I brought it home, the cats proved the salesdude right. Presented with a fun new cord to chew, they pulled Darth right off my desk and onto the hardwood floor.

To do justice to the fancy new toy, I definitely need new headphones. The little iPawd buds are shitty, and my old headphones are held together with wire, duct tape, and luck. Also the other day I discovered them on the floor with their wire mostly chewed through. Thanks, Squirrelly, for hastening the inevitable, but couldn't you have waited until a little closer to payday? My parents, Luddites both, think it's hilarious that while portable music devices have become ridiculously tiny, headphones have become much larger. (They're right to laugh, really).

Now I hate shopping of any kind, even for fun things. I gotta say, though, that shopping for headphones is a particular pain in the dong. I want nice headphones, but I am quite particular in my needs, and durability is one of those needs. You can try on headphones all you want, but you can't really determine how comfortable they are over a long session (and I wear cans all day at work) or how fragile they are when their cords snag something and they hurtle off your head. And I want good ones, which means going to audiophile stores and dealing with salespeople used to dealing with audiophiles because those are the places with really good skookum headphones.

Now, I took a lot of Linguistics courses with an eye to pursuing speech sciences and audiology. I know for a fact that many of the aural advantages marketed to and debated by the snobby idiots who buy this kind of shit are undetectable by the human auditory apparatus. Add the effete bastards who facilitate these nonsensical purchases looking down their noses at me as I enter the store, and you have one hellish shopping experience for ol' Matty.

It makes me much happier about a purchase if I can ask people I know about it. So I asked my pal Colin, who runs a recording studio. He told me that four years ago he found a brand which is not only comfortable, but has stood up to four years of near-daily (ab)use by snotty punk bands experiencing creative differences. Comfortable. Durable. Recommended by a close friend who knows what he's talking about. And most importantly, I don't have to shop anymore! Sold! Now I just have to find someplace that sells the damn things. Preferably online, so I don't have to deal with any more salespeople.

The iPawd is a pretty lush gift, no mistake. Lisa is the coolest girlfriend ever (and she has now found this diary, so now she'll never know if my compliments are sincere or not! Mwahahaha, Google Girl! How's that petard feelin'?). If she were anyone else, I would probably feel either guilty for accepting such a gift, or uneasy about her motives in giving it to me. With her I'm lucky not to have to consider either possibility...she just wanted me to have it. But at the same time (not that she needed to, mind you) she has most definitely earned a clear conscience about leaving the country at the end of the month, leaving me with an unsavoury task.

Lisa is going to France from Apr 23-May 4 on a school-related trip. She will stay with my pal and ex-roomie Emmett in Paris. She is a brutal wad of stress lately and she totally needs and deserves to go. It's awesome for her and I'm very happy and jealous that she gets to go. Problem is that while she's away, I have to move into the love nest all by myself. This I don't mind so much since I can move gradually all through April...but the heavy stuff comes at the end whilst I'm all alone lugging stuff up the rickety steps to our new pad.

At least once I'm ensconced in the new pad, lying in bed missing my frogbound ladyfriend, I'll have Darth to keep me company.