Banning Justin Timberlake from the play list is just the beginning of your plans. It will be awesome. But there's a catch. Unless you want to stand at the stereo and be DJ, your music is at risk. That stack of CDs you bring to a party tends to end up being a shorter stack by the end of the night. It's just one of those things.

When lots of people get together, things happen. One of the mysterious rules of the universe. Don't believe me? Well, the restaurant industry has figured this out.

That's why they force you to pay a 15 per cent tip if there are more than six of you - otherwise they find you won't tip. You know how it always ends - "Hey, we're about $12 short. Everyone throw in a Twonie." And these are your friends.

Okay, back to the party. Now that you have learned to mistrust your friends, you think it wise to burn copies of your CDs and bring them instead. It's certainly less tragic to lose copies of your tunes. But there is another danger - CDs end before parties do. And there is an unwritten rule of parties that states – and I quote, "Whenever a CD ends and there is dead air greater than or equal to five seconds, the person with the worst taste in music becomes the new DJ!"

And Murphy's Law ensures they will happen to be standing right next to the stereo too.

This is not what you want to happen. So what's the solution? Well, we have learned that party music is ideally inexpensive and long running. iPods are long running, and the MP3s they play are inexpensive. But would you really want to leave your iPod out unattended? The iPod itself doesn't fit the inexpensive requirement; and a spilled beer on an iPod is definitely not covered under warrantee.

Same goes for a laptop. And if you happen to witness someone spilling beer on your laptop, you might end up losing that friend along with the laptop. Oh well, he's probably the same guy who didn't pay his share of the dinner anyway. So, short of hiring a band, what's the solution?

What technology is cheap, portable, holds hours of continuous music and sounds amazing? Well, you probably already own it! That's right, that box blinking "12:00" and gathering dust under your TV: the humble aging HiFi VCR is the answer. Most people don't realize it, but you can record eight hours of near-CD quality music onto one VHS cassette - more than adequate for recording MP3s onto. Blanks only cost about a buck (and they're "rewritable" too ;)

So if you don't already have one, get yourself a $5 cable from Radio Shack to connect between your PC/Laptop/iPod and your VCR. Hit record and there you go - instant eight hour play list! You'll have hours of high quality music on a cheap reusable cassette. You don't even need a TV for this to work - just attach the VCR to the stereo like you would plug in a CD or MP3 player.

Chances are there will already be VCR at the party, so you’ll only have to bring the cassette. But if not, hey, it's light and it's not like you were using your VCR anyway, so just bring it.