Happy Beatles Day

I’ve spent the last half hour or so flipping back and forth between a few different pages on Amazon.com trying to decide if I should buy all the reissued Beatles music separately, or if I should just buy the box set. I’m waffling a bit. Do I really need to buy this music again? I mean I already own it. And do I even have stereo equipment good enough to be able to hear the difference between the original CDs and the remastered ones?

As for the answers to these pressing questions - no I don’t, strictly speaking, need to buy them again, however I really, really want too. Also, technically speaking here, I don’t actually own all of the original versions of the CDs that have been remastered (just most of them). The final point is perhaps the most valid concern. The audio equipment I own, while by no means horrible, is still a far, far cry from anything that would of even moderate interest to a true audiophile. So I am a bit concerned that I wouldn’t actually notice any real improvement in sound quality if I were to buy these again.

The other, perhaps even more ridiculous, purchase I’ve been pondering is The Beatles Rock Band. Now the last time I bought a gaming console it was a PlayStation, so I’d first have to buy either an Xbox 360, a PS3, or a Wii, and then buy the game version that came with the instruments (using the term instruments pretty loosely here - specialized controls might be more correct). I could get by with just buying the Wii version (again the version with the instrument like controls) since my roommate already owns a Wii - a workable and less expensive midterm solution. Sadly it has an obvious flaw, it is unlikely that my roommate and I will continuing living together for the rest of my life (not that we have any immediate plans to stop being roommates, but at some point I imagine one of us will do something like get married or get a job in another state or some such thing). This would create a future source of awkwardness when I’m eventually forced to steal his Wii when he stops being my roommate (admittedly I could at that point just buy my own, but that is less dramatic, and thus less fun to ponder scenario).

Decisions, decisions. I suspect there is about a 50-50 chance I’ll be the part reluctant, part proud owner of an Xbox 360 by the end of the month.