ok.  i don't want to promote gender profiling here on banal fixation, but i have to ask - what heterosexual 28 year old computer programmer  dude blares german techno music - I am guessing specifically invented during the height of the cold war to probably gay up east berlin and expedite that wall coming down - all the time??

you know what sucks about techno?  besides everything.  it's that right as the music starts to fade and things slow down and it is just a touch quieter and your headache just begins to recede THAT is the exact moment the music gets its loudest and bass-iest and this-song-makes-me-want-to-suck-on-1000-pacifiers-at-once and further deplete what must be an already limited supply of seratonin in me to begin with.

Look, Upstairs Neighbor - I get it.  You like the techno.  I get it, hombre.  Been there.  Fine, am busted - I was into the whole lifestyle myself for a hot minute myself back in 1999.  Sure I've never taken ecstasy or X or 'tasy or what have you, but I have been to a rave.  In a real warehouse.  And sure, my friends dorm at University of Wisconsin - Madison was in fact sponsoring buses to the rave, but I get it.  I have danced with the glowsticks.  And squatted in  bathrooms while my heart was beating out of my chest out of boredom to music with no discernible lyrics and wishing I was back at my friends dorm with some breadsticks from Gumby's and "Bye Bye Bye" on someone's CD player. 

I get it.

But please, you've got to throw me a bone.  Headphones.  We're all in this together.  How would you feel if I blasted "Terms of Endearment, "Sex and the City," and "Mad Men" reruns 24/7?

Also - since we're talking about "Bye Bye Bye"  I remember it came out in 2000, and that fall I started college and  whenever that song would come on it would be like the signature move of hilarity for every dude at every party I ever went to my freshman year  to start doing the dance moves from the video, which for some reason they had all memorized.  I fell in love each time.

I am always wrong at predicting trends.  I was sure that Backstreet Boys would stand the test of time and 'N Sync was but a blip on the radar.  This was back in the days of Jheri-curl J. Timberlake and matching head-to-toe denim outfits with Britney Spears.