Doom of the Serious Kind

We are T-minus something like 18 hours until I am scheduled to be on vacation in St. Louis, hopefully with a mimosa in my hand by 8:55AM. Approximately 15 minutes ago, my iPod broke. I feel like falling to my knees and cursing at the sky. Happy now, God!? You have successfully crushed my spirit.

How is one expected to live through a plane ride without music? When my sinuses begin to try to escape from my skull through my eye sockets at 20,000 feet, the only thing that keeps me from breaking down into a sobbing puddle of goo is some sort of musical number that I can dance along to in my head until my body properly pressurizes. Usually a showtune, maybe something from Chicago, or Oklahoma, or Dreamgirls. But that's all been taken away from me and I am so very bitter now.

Because not only did it break, it spectacularly broke, in a manner befitting something owned by me. I went to unplug it from its USB port on my computer this morning and instead of it sliding out like usual, only the exterior plastic part of the iPod came out. The rest, the shiny innards and soldered bits of metal and the thick ribbons of wire and all those "CPU's", all stayed dangling from the computer like some sort of demented strand of garland. Mocking me.

After much trial and error and constant worry of death by electric shock, I was able to get everything back into its case, but now the USB connector is no longer attached correctly to the chip that talks to the computer. There was no way to reattach it to the plug, I just had to shove it back in to its rightful place. Meaning the iPod will play fine right now, but it will never again charge up or let me change any songs.

This also means I may have a loophole, though. Since it was fully charged when I went to disconnect this morning, it may very well have 8 hours of play left inside its mangled interior, which should easily last me through the weekend. The only question is do I want to take on the risk of carrying around a collection of metal bits and electricity that I myself have inexpertly wired together?

Because you know my luck. The second we reach cruising altitude on our flight up there and they let us turn on our devices, I'll hit play and the entire thing will combust in a huge rain of sparks and fire and I will burn to death with the sounds of the new Killers CD as accompaniment.

And all the news reports will list me as a crazed terrorist who tried to hijack a plane by setting himself on fire. And then the airports won't allow any more iPods on flights as a security risk, and my legacy to the world will be "That guy who got iPods banned from airplanes." And people will visit my grave just to spit on it, and curse my name.

Gosh.

It's just not fair.