I make it a point to keep the CDs I've purchased, whether used or new, apart from the ones I received for free. But my purity is compromised, both A) because my "regular" collection includes some favorite CDs that I first picked up from the piles at Kim's old non-profit that were used to fill the CD grab-box at her annual Bammies fund-raiser; and B) because I sometimes decide that I like something I got for free so much that it has to be moved from the "for-review" collection to the "regular" collection, a decision I just reached with Oval's Ovalcommers album, for which I at least have the justification that I interviewed Markus Popp for Punk Planet and played a portion of the tape-recording of that interview for my English 489B "Contemporary American Fiction" course in the fall of 2001. Still, the guilt I'm experiencing as I make this confession is not small.
Needless to say, any CDs I've acquired through ripping and burning, whether by myself or, more commonly, other people are consigned to their own, even more guilt-shadowed category and tucked away out of plain view. Like any good Nordic soul of Ibsenite provenance, I believe wholeheartedly in the value of hypocrisy.
