As far as I'm concerned, sharing didn't exist until the invention of the mixtape. Seriously, what did we share before that? Toys, apple juice and intravenous drugs? Booooring.

After which, boys and girls (usually the kind thatPublish Post could recite lines from any John Hughes flick) spent sleepless nights shut up in their rooms wading in the fluid world of their headphones, surrounded by swaying stacks of vinyl & cassette tapes trying to fit together the perfect synchronized set of songs for a special someone with songs both familiar and totally obscure. A crush, a lover, a friend, a parent, a girl you met in passing at the grocery store last week who said she liked your Flaming Lips shirt; anyone was game for your cassette tape's aim.

And if you ended up crafting the masterpiece mix, it not only shared some fine swanky tunes with whomever's set of ears you were aiming for, but it shared you; emotions and words you wouldn't have been able to convey otherwise. It was transferring your heart, mind, emotions and fingerprints all onto tape. It was an analog you! With all the scratches, twists, crackles, sparks and hisses.

They also opened up a time portal. Every time after that, decades later even, your mix recipient could pop their cassette in and immediately wash away back to their memories of you and that time, all vividly with the soundtrack steering their boat. Heck, I bet my talking about mixtapes is stirring up some of your fonder mixtape memories. Mixtapes do that. And they do it better than anything short of a flying Delorean with a Flux Capacitor.

Heck, I have a tape that I made with my best friend when I was in 2nd grade, and we "DJ" together on it. Just to hear my voice at that age trips my head. And, no, I won't let you hear it for any amount of money.

Then came CD's, the internet and iTunes. Mixes have endured the digital age in the form of "mixes" on CD-r's. Not as DIY romantic or indie-cute, but just as effective and powerful.

Get ready for the next age of mixes and sharing, because now we can share our mixes with all the other mix nerds dotting the globe via internet. Judging from other sites and blogs where I've seen Muxtape talked about, I'd say 'muxtape' has already become regarded 'new net lingo'---"check out my new muxtape!"

At www.muxtape.com you can upload your mixes and the rest of us can listen to them anytime, anyplace, long as we have internet access. I'm already pouring through their stacks and stacks of megabyted mixes to see if any ex-gfs have had trouble letting go of the tunes we once shared. But I should probably let the stalking to Facebook...

In any case, you can expect me to put a handful of tapes up on muxtape in the near future.