Ode to iPod and iTMS Canada

Globe and Mail correspondent
Shawna Richer penned a nice article in celebration of the iTMS Canada opening that also serves as a glowing ode to iPod:

Unarguably, the iPod is the most life-altering gadget to arrive in my 37 years on the planet. For people who cherish
song, who find it impossible to live without, and need to exercise their musical freewill at the swing of a mood, the
iconic, milky white music player has improved life and listening immeasurably... But it's more than an unstoppable
machine. It is your personal soundtrack.

One of the elements that make this wondrous device so life-altering is its uncanny ability, when on random play, to intuitively select playlists that seem to fit the mood far more perfectly than what one may have consciously chosen:

It has offered up the previously unmixed but impossibly sublime road trip Browne-Stones-Springsteen trinity of
Running On Empty-Moonlight Mile-Born To Run. It has sensed, at the 50-minute mark on the treadmill at the gym with 10
to go that throwing me an AC/DC-Pearl Jam-Neil Young combo gets the job done.

How does it know when I desperately need a happy-go-lucky shot of John Mayer? Or that when I leave the office to walk
home that Dexter Gordon's Fried Bananas from Live At The Village Vanguard is precisely long enough to take me door to
door and exactly joyful enough to lift the day's stress? I swear it knows me better than I know myself.

I profoundly agree. When left to her own devices, DJ iPod always serves up something curious and random that,
zen-like, turns out to be delightfully perfect. Leave commercial radio to stifle itself in its own strict formats; iPod knows the optimal playlist most likely involves Beethoven following hot on the heels of Iron Maiden. I can't think of a time when she's ever been wrong.

Anyone have stories of magical moments enhanced by iPod shuffle?

(via MyAppleMenu)