Midday Inspiration

From the end of his 2002 story on the death of the cassette. Enjoy: A cassette tape lets you know when it's dying.



It starts to give off the sound of music that would be played by a very small band in a suitcase, and then it sounds like that suitcase is inside another suitcase. It sounds like the singer is wearing little socks on his teeth. Consonants go away. Dolby Noise Reduction technology gives up, and if you didn't know what "Sussudio" meant in the summer of 1985, then there's no hope of knowing now, not when you pop in the cassette version.



Everything unspools.



Tonight you are feeling faithful anyhow. There's a tape in you trying to get out, and you feel like doing it the old…