There are basically two kinds of people in this world.

There are people who have an iPhone and people who don’t.

Among those with an iPhone, there are basically two kinds of people in this world.

There are those with a model which features fingerprint identification running iOS 12.3.1, and there are those without.

Among those with an iPhone model which features fingerprint identification running iOS 12.3.1, there are basically two kinds of people in this world.

There are those who store music on their iPhone model which features fingerprint identification running iOS 12.3.1, and there are those who don’t.

Among those who store music on their iPhone model which features fingerprint identification running iOS 12.3.1, there are basically two kinds of people in this world.

There are those who use the alarm clock functionality and also store music on their iPhone model which features fingerprint identification running iOS 12.3.1, and there are those who don’t.

I am one of those people.

Now that I’ve self-identified all of the necessary qualities on the intersectional checklist, it would seem that the only thing I need to do is to feed the last bit of my cream cheese slathered Saturday morning Everything bagel to the TharpSter TreadMill, provide my preferred pronouns, and then proceed to the meat of this piece by introducing the theme sentence which begins in the same manner most of my theme sentences do.

For what it’s worth, Faith is now pacing the house and keeps coming here into the blue walled Bloggery as if she’s expecting something. 

“He”, “Him”, “His”, and “Donor”.

Whenever I call her, that last preferred pronoun appears on Juniorette’s iPhone model which features fingerprint identification running iOS 12.3.1.  She uses the alarm feature, but does not store music on it, so I’m not talking about her today.

Good Lord in Butter, it’s barely 70 degrees out there right now.  If I’m going to walk the dog, now’s the time to do it.

Well ladies and gentlemen, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

There comes a time in all of our lives where we realize that the big tech companies are messing with us, but we just can’t figure out what in tarnation their motivation is.

In this case, I have to point the booger-laden finger at Apple.  After all, the two items I’m here to discuss this morning have been observed in one of their products; namely the iPhone 8 with fingerprint identification running iOS 12.3.1 in which I use the alarm clock functionality and where I’ve stored a few thousands songs for listening enjoyment.

For item #1, let’s discuss the music storage issue.  First of all, this is not a new issue.  I’ve personally encountered it for a few years now across at least two different iPhone models. 

Before I proceed, it should be stated right here and now that this is a first world problem up there with having my hammies stick to the leather car seats when I wear shorts on a hot day.  I should be so lucky to have this as one of my only problems in life.

The album art doesn’t match the music on my phone for what I estimate to be no more than 20% of the catalogue of tunes I have in there.

I know, right?

This issue isn’t really new to me either.  Doing a search out there on the internet indicates it to be a common issue.

I have a whole collection of some live stuff I’ve captured in recent years at the concerts I attended where I’ve assigned pictures I took at the concert as the album art.  The pictures have subsequently been replaced by album covers from completely different bands.

I have some live Def Leppard tracks which feature album art from Air Supply or the Eagles.

I have some live Journey stuff which features an Aerosmith album cover.

I have a live album for Black Stone Cherry, and all but one of the tracks feature the correct artwork.  That one  other track features the artwork from an album featuring Gustav Holst.

Now ladies and gentlemen, I can understand the first two anomalous entries.  I have music from Air Supply, the Eagles, and Aerosmith on my phone.  I could chalk it up to the algorithm within the iOS getting a little confused by my late 20th century centric taste in music.

Color me a few shades of baffled on how the bespectacled visage of Gustav Holst landed on my phone.

For what it’s worth, I haven’t found an effective process for correcting the artwork yet.  I’ve read plenty of articles and discussion forum entries with the suggestion to remove all of the music from your phone and then re-sync it. 

That method has yet to work for me.

There’s been a lot of talk lately that the big tech companies are altering their algorithms in order to provide specific search results and recommendations to those of us who use the internet.  The idea is that Big Tech can take over and rule the world by guiding our opinions and behaviors. 

Messing with the album art on our iPhones (the ones which feature fingerprint identification running iOS 12.3.1. where we use the alarm clock functionality and onboard music player) appears to be at the vanguard of that particular effort.

Not far behind that initial vanguard of messing with my head resides item #2.

I had an epiphany regarding the fingerprint identification the other day.  It was 5 am on a weekday, and my iPhone 8 with the fingerprint identification running iOS 12.3.1 with the alarm clock functionality executed perfectly in accordance with my instructions.

For the record, the alarm tone is a symphonic piece which accompanies a trailer for a movie that was released a few years ago.  It starts with the a single note played on a piano.  I don’t know what the note is, but gun to my head, I would suggest it’s a C flat.

From there, another note strikes a couple steps down on the treble clef, and then another note comes from a few more steps up.  Violins can be heard faintly in the background.  As the piece progresses, more of the symphony joins in on the cacophonous demands made by my phone to deactivate the alarm and get out of bed so that I can endeavor to persevere.

The thing about me and my alarm is that my phone is rarely given the chance to play more than just that first C flat that emits from the speaker.  I don’t let the whole piece play, even though it’s hauntingly beautiful. 

On a side note, I wonder if the work of Gustav Holst could be characterized as hauntingly beautiful.

I immediately reach over to the phone, and present my innate credentials to the fingerprint identification device to stop what could be characterized at 5 am on a weekday morning as infernal racket. 

It was my deactivation of the alarm a few days ago in which it occurred to me that the good people at Apple with potentially nefarious intentions were bent on me validating my identity before I could endeavor to persevere.

What if I had taken unconscious steps in the previous hours to remove my fingerprints?  After all, I do have a palm sander which could most likely be modified by someone in a nocturnal state to be a fingerprint sander.

What if I had been visited by aliens in the hours before, and while conducting experiments on me while I slept, they changed the nature of my fingerprints to read as some naughty joke which would only be understood by some other alien who was familiar with that particular dialect?

Had that happened, how could I turn off the alarm if I couldn’t even provide the right set of fingerprints?

So there you go people.

Big Tech, for reasons unknown, wants me to associate Journey’s ‘Any Way You Want It’ with the movie poster for ‘Rock of Ages’.  They want me to think of the album cover for some AC/DC tribute album with the a Blues Brothers track.  When I hear ‘Better Life’ by Keith Urban, my phone shows me Bowling For Soup.  And then of course, they want me to draw a correlation between Blackstone Cherry and Gustav Holst.

Going further, they want me to prove I am who I say I am when it comes to turning off an alarm in the morning.

At this point ladies and gentlemen, I have no answers for such poignant questions and I’m finding it difficult to make any conclusions about these concerns. 

In instances like this, I’m left with no other option than to fall back on an old standard.

Here’s a little something from a composer who Apple thinks I should be aware of.