Music and criminal parents

I've been using my iPod more recently, thanks in part to the fact that I take it with me to the gym, and also the fact that with my new job, I no longer take the Metro with Torsten in the mornings, and therefore I listen to my iPod during my commute instead of talking to him. The problem is that my music library, vast though it is, has become very boring to me. So I've downloaded a few new albums in the past few days, including The Fray, Snow Patrol, Augustana, Regina Spektor, Carrie Underwood (what?), Kelly Clarkson (shut up, she's good), Pink (and I had no idea that she wrote political songs these days--really I just wanted U + Ur Hand), and some old Ben Folds that I was missing.

But it still isn't enough to satisfy me. So, I need your advice. What fabulous music am I missing that I should absolutely be listening to? What do you listen to most often? Bonus points if it's upbeat enough to propel me through yet another Week Three workout of the C25K (have I mentioned that I'm stuck on Week Three? The workout continues to teeter on the edge of Impossible, and since I have no reason to ever need to run a 5K, I've decided to stay there for the cardio benefits rather than killing myself trying to get to a meaningless distance goal).

In other, much more serious news, there's an article on CNN today about Madeleine McCann, the British girl who went missing in Portugal four months ago. Apparently, her blood was found on the inside of a car that her parents rented 25 days after she disappeared. Her mother, Kate McCann, was questioned for almost 11 hours yesterday by the Portuguese police, and has now been named a formal suspect in the investigation. I've been following this case from the beginning as I imagine many of you have as well, and it's just horrible to think it could have been the parents. I really hope it's not true. It's so frustrating that the Portuguese legal system doesn't allow for the release of facts of the investigation. Her blood in a rental car that her family didn't obtain until weeks after she had supposedly disappeared seems pretty incriminating. I'm trying to think of how that could have happened if it wasn't them, and as of yet I'm drawing a blank.

But imagine if it were true. It kind of messes up your world view, to imagine that parents could kill their own child, that they could come up with the perfect cover by intentionally garnering as much international publicity as they possibly could and getting donations from celebrities and even meeting the Pope, that doctors could kill a child, any child, much less their own child. It's so much easier to tell yourself that some deranged pervert or sociopath did it. The reason this case has caught so much attention in the first place is because it's an attractive, well-off, young white family that appeals to the demographic that likes to read about sensationalized cases like this. It's the exact same kind of family that you would never imagine could kill their own child.

It's scary how you can never know about families, like with Munchausen Syndrome by proxy (like in the Sixth Sense)--parents who intentionally make their own children seriously sick throughout their lives, so that they miss out on normal childhoods and spend most of their time in hospitals, just because the parent needs to play that role and have that attention. Which is so upsetting beyond the fact that a parent could ever do that to their child, but also because it's such a waste of hospital resources, and it's such a slap in the face to parents of genuinely sick children, parents who would do anything to give their kid a childhood free of hospitals and sickness.

Anyway! Enough about messed up families whose children become innocent victims of sick parents! Let's talk about music, shall we? My iPod is begging you to save it from its own tired playlist.