ByePod

I've been bereaved.

I'm grieving.

My iPod is broken. It broke yesterday when I had the termerity to change a song before it had decided it wanted me to. In a divine twist of cosmic irony, the song in question was "The End" by The Doors. That is so awesomely appropriate. I would have felt kind of gipped if my iPod had given up the ghost halfway through playing Las Ketchup, or a monologue by John Travolta on bacon, or the Miss Piggy remix of Crazy Train (all these are on iTunes). And if it had died halfway through anything by Savage Garden, well, I probably would have beaten in the side of my own skull with a claw-hammer. But "The End"... awesome. Awwwwwwwesome. That's some opium music, right there.
The final moments were dramatic and explosive - very good television, if any TV producer out there wants to buy my script about an iPod who realises the futility of life and goes on the run (starring Ray Romero as the iPod, and Kiefer Sutherland as a left earphone who just won't play by the rules) . It kind of flashed, froze, then died with a melodramatic death flourish (in its dying breath, it begged me to go find its parents and tell them it loved them. I won't do it. Fuck 'em). Now, whenever I turn it on, all I get is a sad iPod icon, and advice to go visit the Apple website to seek help for my problems (mental, spiritual, and iPod-based):



I would be more annoyed at this point (HOW THE HELL AM I GONNA BE ABLE TO LISTEN TO GRAND FUNK RAILROAD WHILE CYCLING TO ROWING???) but, well, I'm too charmed by that lil icon fella. Just look at him. How can I be mad at somebody with such a sweet little face? He's all cross eyed and sad. He's already obviously going through enough pain. Any other insults I pour onto his little broken head will just be pointless overkill. So yes, I've taken this loss with an unusual amount of good grace. And hey, maybe that high pitched, painful ringing in my ears will end now I don't have the Pixies blasting out 100 brands of pure punk guitar tunage into my delicate eardrums at full volume for hours each day. Perhaps this iPod breaking is the best thing that's happened to me. God bless you, lil fella.


"God bless you too, Tom!"

I love you.


"I love you too, Tom! Lets get married and have babies!"

Man, those would be some high tech, user friendly babies. With added headphones.


"They sure would. Let's call them Shuffle, Nano, and... Yourmum."

Cool.

Actually, I think this incident highlights an important difference between Mac and PC products. When a Mac product (say, an iPod), breaks, at least it does so with a sense of decency and personality. It shows you its human side, as if to say "Hey, even though I'm an mp3 player, I got feelings too, and the fact that you can no longer listen to the awesome part of River Euphrates five times in a row during a History lesson is hurting me far more than its hurting you. All you feel is the lack of amazing bass guitar thrashage, I feel the eternal shame of failing my master and my kindred. I'm no longer worthy of you." In fact, iPods are like those awesome japanese fellas who killed themselves with a samurai sword through the belly if they lost a single battle in their war against the magical robotic flying ninjapirates. They don't like to fail.
Alternatively, when a Windows product (for example, I don't know... WORD?) dies, all you get is (if you're lucky) a blue screen of death full of random flashing digits. EG:



Seriously, what the fuck is that shit? Where's the love? Where's the little PC face-man saying "Whoopsy, I broke, but don't worry, I'll try and fix myself right soon. Don't worry about all the rest of these letters and stuff, it's just useless Geekobabble!"? I'll tell you where he is. HE'S NOWHERE. Fucker. Of course, there will be some fellows out there (PC users, most probably) who claim that a little face with a website link is next to useless when compared to a technical readout of what's wrong, but I say that those people are cretins. And cynics, who don't appreciate the beautiful things in life, like snowdrops and unicorns and unicorns made out of snowdrops and encased in solid diamond-studded gold. And balloons. And candyfloss at Spring.

So anyway, I followed the website link and tried out all the amazing troubleshooting tips that Apple gave me, like "Making sure the iPod is switched on", "Checking that it has battery charge," "Turning the iPod on and off and seeing if that helps", "Shake the iPod about a bit in the air chanting voodoo fertility rites", or, my personal favourite, "Download five different updates, plug in the iPod then delete everything off it". Is it me, or does "Delete everything off the iPod" sound somewhat similar to "Just napalm the entire jungle, that oughtta sort out them Viets," ? Maybe it doesn't. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. But whatever, none of their trouble-shooting things worked, except for the last one, which was "Get a new iPod." I'm not joking, it literally said something similar to that. So I guess that I'd better go find the John Lewis Receipt and go bust it down to them and get a new one on the warranty.

But I'm nervous of doing this, for three good reasons:
1: The warranty is in case of technical malfunction uncaused by misuse of the iPod, and I'm pretty sure the reason it broke in the first place is because I dropped it on the changing room floor twice, dropped it in the garden once, cycled about with it in sub-zero temperatures, scratched it up like a bitch, didn't bother to buy a case, shook it about every time it failed to immediately load the next song, probably accidentally doused it in water on several occasions, filled it with illegally downloaded and possibly corrupt song files, played several Linkin Park songs on it, and sat on it several times [delete as applicable]. Is that covered by the warranty? Actually, who cares? I'll just lie. I'm a rebel like that.
2: I have a feeling that they don't make my nice iPod anymore. The default model is now the Video iPod, which, in my humble opinion, imho, is a fucken brick. The scroll wheel is too fecken small for the iPod body, and that screen looks designed for scratching and I just don't like it at all. Eughy. Also, when the fuck am I ever gonna want to watch episodes of Conan O'Brien on the bus? I don't even travel on the bus. Fuck off with the advertising, Apple.
3: I like the personality of my current iPod. It's pleasant and nice to me. When it breaks, it shows me a nice face and is apologetic. What do I know about this new iPod? It could be a total cunt to me. If that one breaks, it might not show the face. It might just insult me. I don't think I could live with myself if I dropped my NewPod, and the next time I switched it on, THIS came up:



AAAAAAARGH!

Coming Soon to Stores: iPod Yourmum - now with the ability to be an iWhore with all your friends! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!