I fought Adobe, and Adobe won

Illustrator is smarter than me. I read the manual, and what I want to do should be dead simple, and there are directions for that very thing, but what should happen is not happening.

Back to fingerpainting for me, clearly.

Edit: On the other hand, I've finished wrestling Pages to the ground; and I have created a brochure hawking our services to the newbies. It just needs two (possibly three) graphics, which see above. ...Also I have to find out where the hell I am supposed to get this printed.