I Wish I Were A Boy So I Could Be Ugly But Could Still Get Action

 

note: That is my face but it has been photoshopped: I am not that terrible looking. And Scarlett Johansson is perfect, oh god.

A Letter to Windows Media Player 10

Oh, Windows Media Player 10, I miss you so dearly. It’s true: since Thursday I’ve made my transformation from Microsoft-User-Incessantly-Talking-About-How-Great Macs are to a new full-time Mac user, still befuddled by the abrupt change in applications, file types, and the lack of right-clicking. Oh, it’s as good as I knew it was going to be- it connected to the router and the other computers in the house automatically! I have photobooth at my disposal for a expanse of vain exploits, soon I will have the latest versions of Photoshop & Illustrator provided by my gracious Graphic Design Teacher, and a potpourri of other convenient applications with shiny icons and interfaces. 

But I knew, of all the things that one becomes accustomed to as a Windows user, I was going to miss you. iTunes is so cold and unfeeling. It laughed at my wma files just yesterday! I spent hours copying some of the songs we used to sing together from the old computer to the macbook- I was up until 1:30 am! I hadn’t even made a dent; there were still hundreds of files to be dragged and dropped. The next day, when I went to play these songs, they came up as .txt files! Jibberish, dollar signs, s’s and c’s and z’s from Gaj’s Latin alphabet with crazy accent marks, and numbers! When you couldn’t play a file you would tell me straight up: “Windows Media Player Does Not Recognize this File-type”. What does iTunes do? Sits back for ten minutes before I figure out it doesn’t read wmas at all, on my own.

And then, then! I tried ripping (oh I’m sorry, it’s called importing now) Jens Lekman’s CD. It’s not the physical CD, it’s one that someone burned me and added some other tracks to. I could rename the track name but what about the artist?! The album, the genre, the year?! I don’t know what to do! iTunes doesn’t understand the sentimentality of mix CDs, all it cares about is copyright protection bullshit. Where’s the advanced tag editor?! What am I supposed to do! Be a law-abiding citizen and pay for CDs?!

 

I just don’t know what to do, Windows Media Player 10.. we’d grown so accustomed to each other! I still remember  the day when I first downloaded you. I had Windows Media Player 8, and it crashed every time I opened it for whatever reason. I conceded that I must update to the latest version. At first I was leery, but then I saw how dark and handsome you were: you donned a sleek and shiny black and blue theme. And oh, how I admired your method of organization! So thorough yet so simple, and versatile.  iTunes just lists tracks on top of one another, songs in a barbaric list, but you archived my music so perfectly. 

I long for you in every moment of silence I spend on my new Macbook. I can’t get past the days when I would start you up, put you on shuffle, and enjoy my expanse collection of music in ease whilst I wasted away my hours on facebook and Perez Hilton. Maybe one of these days I’ll visit you at the old laptop. We can convert my albums into mp3’s, and look back on the old times..

Thinking of you, Sam