(Here’s the skinny jeans incident.)

I put Lady Gaga on my mp3 player.

See, I pretty much only use my mp3 player for when I go jogging, and I have quite a mix of embarrassing music on that thing. I didn’t think this would be much different.

The problem is that I can’t listen to a Lady Gaga song and let that be it. I see her face and her ridiculous outfits and I begin wondering what it’s like to be her, and why the heck someone would go through so much trouble to create such an image and that maybe I’d like her more if her preoccupation with image didn’t undermine talent that she has. And then I think that she’s completely achieved what she set out to do because people like me are attempting to listen to her and then thinking about why and either way she is getting attention. And then I think about the stories that I’ve come across about her–like all the pictures of her falling because she was wearing such a ridiculous pair of boots, and about how she took a flight in a ridiculously tight outfit that could actually cause damage because it could cut off circulation if she sits in it for a long amount of time, and about how she doesn’t ever want to be seen in public without high heels and how she refused to wear bowling shoes at a bowling alley and caused all sorts of damage on the floor and just gave the employees tickets to her show after that and how, if I were the manager of the bowling alley, I would’ve made her wear the goddamn bowling shoes.

And then I wonder if I’ve really read that many stories about her and what the heck compelled me to do so and why my brain is retaining this information about Lady Gaga when I don’t even really consider her to be someone that I even feel very strongly about. I don’t love her. I don’t hate her. I shrug about her.

And then I wish that my brain would spend time pondering more important things, like why Prince’s antics (ass-less chaps, the whole name change, this picture) don’t prevent me from listening to his music and just enjoying it for what it is. Or for what it was, since I have no idea what kind of music he is making now.

And then I think about how maybe grad school would’ve been more successful and enjoyable had my brain had the drive to consider poems the way it considers Lady Gaga.

Anyway, I took Lady Gaga off my mp3 player. I don’t want to think about all that stuff when I’m out for a run.