A Comedy of Errors

So today, after surviving three freeways at rush hour, I really did not think my undoing would come at the virtual hands (so to speak) of iTunes -- the savior of electronic music online, courtesy of Apple. I downloaded iTunes sometime ago but have never quite done anything with it until today, because until you've spent 3 hours driving across an endless landscape you don't realize that Sarah Brightman does not have a greatest hits collection. This is a problem because I was thinking the other day that if I had to recommend a CD, which one would it be? And I do have my particular favorites, but even the ones I'm not especially fond of have moments of absolute brilliance on them. I thought that perhaps Classics would be a good way of solving the dilemma, but in general, that compilation CD mostly features Sarah's operatic pieces and doesn't highlight anything else.

So, what's a girl to do but take matters into her own hands? So, with able assistance of Bjorn on the telephone, I proceeded to rip 21 songs from eight CDs. Bjorn, who uses iTunes himself, was kind enough not to laugh at me. I really had no earthly idea of what I was doing and I don't believe in reading help files. The end result was me screaming and Bjorn saying, "Well, hold on a second..." I'm amazed the boy didn't hang up on me; I would have hung up on me.

To give you an idea of just how utterly clueless I was: I couldn't figure out how I got the first three songs off The Andrew Lloyd Collection. I mean, somehow I clicked my way through the CD and the songs appeared in the iTunes main window. But when I went to duplicate my efforts with Harem and just could not do it. I was like, "There's an import button around here! Where did they hide it?" In the meantime, XP was being its usual helpful self saying things like, "You have inserted a CD into the CD-rom drive. What would you like to do with it?" Unfortunately, "rip songs into iTunes" was not an option. But somehow, I got a few songs off "Harem," and by the time I started on Dive, I'd located the "import" button.

When I ripped the songs from the CDs, they came across with descriptive names like "Track 02" because I couldn't figure out how to name the songs. I couldn't get CD info from the database because you have to be online to do that and I had Bjorn on the phone, so I couldn't get online. And at first, I was like, no big deal -- but then I realized that I had multiple tracks called "Track 02" and no way to differentiate "Unexpected Song" from "Anytime, Anywhere." I clicked all over the frelling thing, and could not figure out to how to do this.

Because I was slowly going insane, I started to write down the playlist in the order that they appeared on my screen so that I could differentiate one song from another. Example: "Track Three - In Winter Light," "Track Three - Just Show Me How To Love You." etc. Finally, Bjorn reminded me you can rename songs easily by just double-clicking them (well, duh, Seema).

So then after the naming-of-the-song drama, came the whole creating a playlist drama, and finally I had like six playlists because I really am that incompetent. I'd like to say that the playlists reproduced on their own, but that is not the case. Folks, after using a PC since 1986, I've been finally forced to accept the fact that I cannot drag and drop to save my life or double-click properly.

Anyway, the end result is that an hour and 44 minutes later (according to the log on my phone), I finally had a "Sarah Brightman's Greatest Hits CD" or perhaps, it should have been more aptly titled "Seema's Favorite Sarah Brightman Songs" because I omitted "Nessun Dorma" and "Nella Fantasia". But it all burned properly and it plays in my CD-alarm clock, if nothing else, and so life is good. I, however, am exhausted. I don't trust Mac people any more. There's nothing easy about iTunes, nothing at all.