My girlfriend laid waste to my heart last semester when she broke up with me.

I didn’t think I would ever be able to define the word “love,” never mind actually possessing the feeling, again.

My friends couldn’t help noticing me mope around campus for days, unshaven and without my contact lenses. (Well, nobody noticed the unshaven part, because I am at the facial hair development of a nine-year-old.)

During that hazy stupor I traveled in, the amount of love I felt was almost as much as the St. Louis Rams’ fans love for the colors red, white and blue after Superbowl XXXIV.

Being a star-crossed lover, and a Rams fan on the edge of violence, left me little time for so-called emotionally healthy activities like “dating” and “social-interaction.”

But that all changed Monday . when she entered my life.

When I walked into my dorm that afternoon she was waiting for me with a face that would brighten up any dark day. She was my perfect mate and the only way to bring music back into my tone deaf life.

Unable to contain my frenzy for her, I spirited her up to my room on the ninth floor of Rodes-Harlin Hall, calling in my friends to help me caress her smooth, pale curves and undress her.

I wanted to ravish her with all my friends watching.

I had finally replaced my ex-girlfriend, with the new love of my life – the Apple iPod mp3 player.

“Eileen,” as I have taken to calling my iPod, rates as quite possibly the sexiest thing I’ve laid my hands on – machine or otherwise. With her 10 gigabytes of storage, right now we have over 1,100 files of music I dote on as “our songs.”

And the ladies will appreciate that I spend all my day listening to her and everything she’s got whirling around in that tiny hard drive of hers.

She’s fast, too, downloading 900 songs in my music collection in 15 minutes, but we’re taking our relationship slow. I’m resisting the temptation to sleep with her after only having met a few days ago.

But sadly, having Eileen around all the time is already fueling jealousy in our relationship. Since we’ve been together, no fewer than 10 girls have tried to get their hands on my pod.

My falsetto renditions of “Staying Alive” and offbeat gyrations bewilder my neighbors, and they just scoff at our love. Eileen is the only thing I can find for under $500 that will be there for me in the morning.

Eileen is the solution to all my problems. When I’m done with her, I’ll be able to carry my entire CD collection around in a box the size of a deck of cards. I’ll never have to seek human contact again.

And when we get married, I’ll be proud to lend my name to our freakish offspring: the Hi-pods.

But, I know what you’re all wondering – Why am I yammering away about a toy?

Simple, I’m selling out to Apple computers BIG TIME. Now where’s my check?

Picks ‘O the Week

•Calling all gear heads. Calling all gear heads. If you want to wake up early in the morning and lust after cars I’ll never be able to afford, then cruise over to the Beech Bend Raceway for two mornings of Corvette Racing Action. From 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday you can see Corvettes dodge and swerve through cones in a low speed Corvette autocross. Come back to the raceway at the same time on Sunday and you’ll see competitors burn down their tires in a Corvette-only drag race. Admission for both events is $5. If you want to enter your own Corvette, you better bring $15.

•If you’re still looking for more of Bowling Green’s pride and joy, you can visit the Corvette Celebration at the Corvette Museum from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $5 for Western students, if you can prove it. This year’s event will feature the third generation Corvettes – built from 1968 to 1982.

Reach Hollan Holm at [email protected].