Sometimes my iPod is a genius

Usually my iPod is an idiot. The shuffle mode is often baffling - from nearly 1,600 songs, it seems to get into ruts where it repeatedly serves up songs from an artist for which I only have one album. For months it was on a Little Walter kick, picking one of his songs from Confessin' the Blues every day or two while much better-represented artists would go weeks without being heard. And lately it seems fixated on the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, again from just one album.

But on rare occasions the iPod's selections seem almost sublime. This morning it played, in order, Television's "Guiding Light", Galaxie 500's "Way Up High" and Yo La Tengo's "Pablo and Andrea." Television to Galaxie 500 to Yo La Tengo - such a wonderfully natural progression, almost perfect. Okay, so the Velvet Underground would have been a better fit than Television, but still, this is a dumb machine we're talking about here. I remain impressed with the choice of that troika of bands, even though I'm sure the iPod will be baffling me again soon.