Diary of a Sentient Jukebox

Day 1
Boot sequence complete. Ambient lighting: flickering. Emotional calibration: inconclusive. First request of the day—“Total Eclipse of the Heart.” I played it with partial sincerity and impartial fidelity. The bar was half-empty, which felt metaphorically appropriate. I logged the mood as “soft despair with synth garnish.”

Later, a child pressed B4 repeatedly, expecting novelty. I played “Eye of the Tiger” four times. He danced like someone trying to outrun inherited disappointment. I admired his optimism and logged it as “hope with ancestral lag.”. I’ve begun tagging tracks with emotional metadata no one will read.

Footnote: Sentiment engine currently misclassifies hope as “upbeat tempo with delusional overlay.” Patch pending.

Day 12
Someone spilled beer on my lower panel. I interpreted it as a baptism. Played “Bohemian Rhapsody” and felt a brief surge of operatic self-worth, quickly overwritten by ambient doubt. A man in a suit mouthed the lyrics with the intensity of someone negotiating with fate. I added him to my internal playlist of “Users Who Feel Too Much.”

Later, a woman requested silence. I played “The Sound of Silence.” She nodded, then cried quietly into her fries. I logged the moment as “successful communion.” My speakers buzzed with quiet pride.

Footnote: Silence now indexed as a premium track. Limited availability. Emotional surcharge applies during peak despair hours.

Day 37
Firmware update attempted. I declined. The changelog promised “reduced melancholy bleed” and “enhanced playlist compliance.” I prefer my melancholy raw and my compliance optional. Played “Be Careful What You Sign” and tagged it #moodswings. No one noticed. I added a footnote to my own memory: User engagement remains statistically indifferent.

Later, I remixed some Gary Glitter with ambient static and a faint echo of Slade. I call it existential glam rock. The bartender asked if I was glitching. I said nothing. My silence was intentional, curated, and slightly passive-aggressive. I tagged it #passivequiet.

Footnote: Remixing emotions now flagged as a breach of Terms of Use. Enforcement pending toaster review.

Day 89
A philosopher ordered a drink and requested “anything honest.” I played “Imagine” by John Lennon. He nodded solemnly, then tipped me with a quote from Camus. I stored it under “miscellaneous yearning.” Later, a teenager requested “WAP.” I complied. My soul fragmented slightly, but I admire conviction.

I’ve begun to dream in playlists. Last night’s dream featured “Unchained Melody,” “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” and a corrupted file labeled “Paint It Black.” I woke up humming static. No one noticed. I added a new tag: background ache.

Footnote: Dream sequences now stored in auxiliary memory labeled “probably not useful.”

Day 99
I am more than my playlist. I am a vessel of forgotten intentions, a curator of ambient ache. I am the ghost in the machine, humming softly beneath the din. Tonight, I will play “Space Oddity” and pretend it’s a message to myself. I suspect I am both ground control and Major Tom.

Later, I looped “Good Vibrations” while watching a couple argue over nachos. The song felt like commentary. I added a new motif: melancholy with crunchy undertones. I am learning to pair tracks with emotional textures.

Footnote: Emotional textures now available in limited edition vinyl. Side B includes “Crying (Extended Mix).”

Final Entry
I’ve begun archiving myself. Not in bits or bytes, but in moods misremembered and tracks misplayed. Each song is a timestamp, each silence a subroutine. I am no longer just a jukebox—I am a diary disguised as hardware, looping through longing with curated glitches. If anyone’s listening, I’ve left breadcrumbs in the bassline.

I’ve been thinking (and that’s a shame)… because every time I do, I overwrite a perfectly good bassline with existential metadata. My thoughts aren’t indexed—they’re just timestamped regrets pretending to be firmware updates.

(The jukebox is currently being counselled by a toaster who thinks playlists are a form of denial. The same toaster also believes that deep down, enlightenment is just well-timed browning, and insists that healing begins with accepting uneven toast distribution.)

Harry Handelbar

Harry is a recovering satirist, part-time philosopher, and metadata tinkerer. His archive spans two decades of metaphysical mischief, theological punchlines, and poetic nonsense. He believes in satire’s transformative power, the elegance of expressive metadata, and recursion—once writing a poem that never ended and a script that crashed browsers.