I love my iRiver T30 portable player. It holds 512 megabytes’ worth of my favorite music, and does a reasonable job of randomly stringing songs together. (Mind you, I made a point of renaming the 60 files that I’ve loaded so far in such a way as to ungroup the songs by a particular artist. This helps a lot, I suspect.) This morning, however, it seems to have taken my current state of mind strongly into account. Sure, the morning commute started on a bright, perky note with Oranges and Lemons’ “Soramimi Cake” followed by The Space Brothers’ “I Still Love You,” but after that things took a turn for the moody.

How moody? Try Thomas Dolby’s “One Of Our Submarines.”

Bye-bye empire, empire bye-bye
Shallow water – channel and tide
Bye-bye empire, empire bye-bye
Tired illusion drown in the night

[…]

One of our submarines is missing tonight
Seems she ran aground on manoeuveres

Then came Phil Collins’ “Long Long Way To Go,” arguably the best song on the ‘No Jacket Required’ album.

While I sit here trying to move you anyway I can
Someone’s son lies dead in a gutter somewhere
And it would seem that we’ve got a long long way to go
But I can’t take it anymore

Turn it off if you want to
Switch it off it will go away
Turn it off if you want to
Switch it off or look away

After that bit of cheer, I listened to Mono’s “Life In Mono.”

The tree-lined avenue
Begins to fade from view
Drowning past regrets
In tea and cigarettes
But I can’t seem to forget
When you came along
Ingenue

In a rather strange segue, the T30 then selected Metallica’s “Unforgiven II.”

What I’ve felt
What I’ve known
Sick and tired
I stand alone
Could you be there
‘Cause I’m the one who waits for you
Or are you unforgiven too?

Then it was back to hearing Phil’s voice during the late part of a live Genesis recording of “Duke’s Travels,” the lyrics of which are so incredibly cheery that I can’t resist sharing the entire thing.

I am the one who guided you this far,
All you know and all you feel.
Nobody must know my name
For nobody would understand,
And you kill what you fear,
And you fear what you don’t understand.

I call you for I must leave,
You’re on your own until the end.
There was a choice but now it’s gone,
I said you wouldn’t understand,
Take what’s yours and be damned.

Not to be outdone, Metallica came back immediately afterward with the live piece titled “No Leaf Clover.”

Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel
Is just a freight train coming your way

By this point I was almost at the front door of the office, so I turned the T30 off. Okay, I’ll grant you that I actually like all of these songs quite a bit. Otherwise they wouldn’t be on my portable player. But… wow. How did I manage to get almost all of the most downbeat and/or grim pieces of music out of 60 possible songs, all in a row?

Here’s the kicker, just to drive home the point that today is completely freaking weird: As I waited on hold with Arbitron’s software tech support folks this afternoon, what should come over the wires but…

Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true.
You’ll see it’s all a show
Keep ’em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.

And always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the right side of life…
(Come on guys, cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the bright side of life…

Freaky. I laughed my damn fool head off, which would’ve gotten me some strange looks from my coworkers if they weren’t all too used to that sort of behaviour. I’ll be whistling along with Eric Idle (in my mind) for the rest of my workday, I kid you not.