When There's No Room Left in Hell, My iPod Will Walk the Earth

iPods are like women: Can't live with 'em, can't prevent them from ultimately eating your entire music collection. My old, heavy-as-a-brick iPod, which had already died and resurrected itself once a year and a half ago, bought the farm for what I fear may be the final time this evening. And this time, it appears to have taken all 2,500 of my MP3s with it.

Funny, I was just thinking earlier this week about how I really should finish backing up my music collection. I started that process a long time ago, but only got through about letter G of the alphabet before becoming quite fed up with the hassle of it all. Tonight, while I was listening to "Junior Kickstart" by the Go! Team, my iPod started doing that "zzzzz, click" thing it likes to do when it wants to be contrary. As per the usual, I attempted to break the "zzzzz, click" cycle with a force-restart. In what was probably the biggest act of consumer electronics defiance I've ever witnessed, my iPod looked at me and said:

"Force-restart, huh? Guess what, buddy. I got your force-restart right here. Select language."

Just like that, my iPod had re-formatted itself, returned to factory setting and digested all my MP3 files.

The new iPod Touch is currently selling for less than what I paid for my first iPod. Do I really want to set myself up for more audio player drama?

That wasn't a rhetorical question. Please tell me whether I want to set myself up for more audio player drama.