Conspiracy Theory

I'm convinced that there is some sinister conspiracy going on to prevent me from listening to my favorite CD.

As some of you may know, my car was broken into in 2003 while I was still living in the Elyria "ghetto". The thieves / operatives took my car stereo and the 10 cds that were in the car at the time. 9 of the 10 stolen cds were just burned copies that were easily replaced. However, one of my favorite cds of all time, Vertical Horizon's Live Stages was also taken. This was my original disc, not a burned copy like the others.

I thought the car stereo was the original target of the thieves, but recent events have convinced me that the stolen stereo was just a diversion for the true target: my Live Stages cd.

I ended up purchasing a second copy of the Live Stages cd and life returned to normal for about 3 more years.

During that time, I went through the exercise of ripping my entire music collection to mp3s so that I would, never again, lose one of my original cds.

Fast forward a few years to 2006. My Live Stages cd almost never left my car's cd changer...for when it did, it was put back in rotation within a matter of days. You can imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that my Live Stages cd was not in my cd changer, was not in my car at all, and was not in my apartment either!

The thieves had struck again! They must have been watching me for 3 years, waiting for that perfect moment to swoop in and take my replacement copy of Live Stages! At least this time they left the cd player intact (no...my new car was not broken into).

I was pretty upset that my Live Stages disc was gone. However, I was comfortable in the fact that I had a digital copy of all of my cds on my computer. But, like the sneaky Secret Service Agent Cummings on 24, the digital archive was tampered with and all traces of the recording erased!

(There's a small possibility that I never ripped Live Stages to mp3 because it never left my car...but I'm still convinced that it was a stealthy ninja garden gnome)

Now they had taken TWO copies of my favorite cd and erased all digital copies of it as well!

I have now purchased a third copy of Live Stages and made sure that the first thing I did when I got it home was rip it to mp3.

So if the conspirators/thieves/garden gnomes who have been infiltrating my cd collection are reading this...be aware that I have made a copy of Live Stages and gave it to Dick Cheney to be held securely in an undisclosed location.