So of course, I wasn't going right to Kid A. I needed time. I was still mad - at the band, at their music, at John Mayer, at anyone who had ever told me that Kid A was the best that I had promptly ignored. They were all right, and I had been all wrong. Yes, it was silly of me to classify music like that in the first place, but does that mean it has to be my fault? Hell no! I told myself that, and variations of that, until I was sure that I hadn't missed anything all that good anyway. Until I just knew that that little piece of plastic held virtually nothing good, or nothing worth my valuable time, at least. I knew I didn't need to listen to it. I knew that until I cracked, and I listened to it. The answer was still choice (A), only now there was no one else to blame.

I made excuses instead, the way any human would to avoid admitting fault. No one wants to be wrong, especially about something as silly and universally inconsequential as this. It's the small things that can end up being the most embarrassing, the things that won't matter in another: month - week - day - fifteen minutes. The personal defeats can cut the deepest. "Everything In Its Right Place" falls right into my lap. It's whirring and it's clicking and it's humming, but not the way I remembered. I had been so annoyed that these sounds weren't BIG enough that I had completely overlooked how this song needs to fall and to whir and click and hum in order to even be. This is the song of a waking machine. The buttons and switches light up, the gauges flutter, everything works beautifully. Nothing wrong, nothing abnormal: everything perfect. This record had been waiting to come to life in my mind for so long. Maybe that John Mayer isn't so bad after all. But maybe that's too big a step to take right now. It's only been one song - he might remain an asshole yet.

I'm trying to keep busy as I listen - read, clean up a little, play a video game - but I can't do it. Every once in a while I just have to sit back down and do nothing and just listen. When "The National Anthem" starts coming at me like some twisted robot marching band straight off the train from hell, I need to stop. The vocals are metallic and make clanging noises as if steel traps are slamming in the back of my head. The batteries running its creator's voicebox are beginning to run dry. Though it shouts of "holding on!" I can't help but feel as if it's only barely clinging to some tattered delusions of life. What else do robots hold on to? The bassline of "How To Disappear Completely" begins to crawl up and down my spine, over my face, around my body. It's everywhere. I need to stop. The thick tension of "The National Anthem" is wiped away in twenty brief seconds like loose dirt from my cheek. A song from no one to nothing about not even being. Existence as an option considered and passed on in favor of something less binding. A perfect song for a fake life. And an answer already: robots don't need to hold on to anything, not even those delusions. Robots are just as alive as you and me.

And they live how they please.