The other day, Martino calls me into his office to help him with an iPod issue.

“I can’t find these songs,” he says to me, with the frustrated/enraged/resigned look that is specific to iPod/Internet/printer functionality issues. “I know I loaded them on here, but for some reason, they’re only showing up in my Recently Added playlist, and not my library. WTF?”

It’s kind of funny when people come to me asking for any sort of computer-ish help — because I am, shall we say, not very good with computers? On account of having friends who are good with computers? Because I can just ask them to fix stuff for me, and buy them a beer as a form of payment for their services, and never have to worry about it personally? Todd Hyman knows what I’m talking about: He put Leopard on my iMac, taught me the ins and outs of bit torrent, and fixed the POP settings on my e-mail account. Although, if I’m being completely honest here, that whole e-mail thing still isn’t working right. But, I mean, even so: He knows a lot more than I do about these things, or at least pretends he does effectively enough to sell me, and for that, I owe him a beer.

It’s the pretending, in particular, that I’m good at, and I can fake my way through most iPod glitches pretty convincingly. Part of this comes from the authority with which I deliver my dubious technical support:

“Yep,” I say, looking over Martino’s shoulder at his computer screen. “You sure can’t find those files. And you want to know why? Any guesses? No? It’s because YOU LABELED THEM ALL WRONG. I mean, can you not see this plain as day? Is it not obvious? Seriously? COME ON MAN! Let’s get it together here! Jeez!”

And with that, I stomp out of the room, sneering. It’s an old IT-guy trick. I appear to know what I’m talking about, therefore, I know what I’m talking about. Perception = reality. (Which, by the way, is not to say that IT guys don’t know what they’re talking about, but based on the fact that my computer is still not connected to any printer in the building, I sometimes wonder.)

So anyway, later that day I hear from Martino again. Was my advice sound? Apparently, unlikely though it may seem, it was. “But if you’re considering a career change,” says Martino, “you may want to steer clear of academia or any sort of counseling-related field. You are too antagonistic. You need a softer touch.”

I consider this, and I decide not that I am too antagonistic, but that if I want to continue to be so antagonistic (and I do), I have to better practice what I preach. For instance: In an early installment of this column, I wrote that “anyone who doesn’t back up his [MP3] files deserves to have his hard drive crash and his iPod stolen.” This, to me, is exactly as antagonistic as a person needs to be in order to appear knowledgeable, yet: I have not backed up my own MP3 files since 2004. In this case, there is a fine line between laziness and hypocrisy, so in order to step back over that line and return to the realm of mere laziness, I decide that I have to endure the tedious and time-consuming process of backing up my iPod. This is not really as great a sacrifice as it might seem: Call me deranged, but I like this kind of stuff. I get a certain satisfaction from sitting at my computer for six hours while files are copied from my iPod to my external hard drive. It makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something.

At least, for the first hour.

By hour three, though, my mind starts to wander, to wonder. What would happen, I think to myself, if I lost all these files, all this music? Would I be despondent? Sick? Suicidal? Or would I be…relieved? Would it be nice to start from scratch, and not be burdened with the virtual weight of some 10,000-odd songs every morning? Would I actually enjoy the feeling of newness, of a blank slate? Would I rediscover a naïveté and joy in listening to music that has been lost as I have collected so damn much of it? I don’t stop what I am doing here, mind you, the files are still ceaselessly being duplicated, I’m just thinking about the implications of stopping: Are these songs a shield or a security blanket or a library or a personal history, or are they just 10,000 pounds of baggage that I am hauling around, like a pack rat or a widower, waiting for the moment I might need them again, even though I know, somehow, that having them available at all times ensures I will never need them?

I dunno. No idea. Like I said, I only pretend to know anything anyway, and in this case, I won’t even do that.