SAN FRANCISCO- If yesterday's keynote address by Steve Jobs is remembered for one thing, it will be the collective sense of letdown the CEO unleashed on the MacWorld attendees at the Moscone Center. While it's true that the level of excitement and anticipation that preceded the recently unveiled iPad virtually guaranteed some unmet expectations, few could have guessed the depths of such disappointments. It seems the $499 creation possesses no actual, inexplicable magic.
To begin with, the over-hyped device has neither camera, scanner, or videophone. While these omissions may seem forgivable, the lack of even a basic form of printer is not. And anyone hoping for even the simplest telepathic interface is simply out of luck, you'll still be forced to manipulate the iPad with crude finger gestures. So much for pushing the envelope.
Those hoping for a little more real-world security are out of luck too. The iPad is not equipped with an emergency GPS transponder, retractable knife blade, or even a stun gun. That it doesn't boast a heart defibrillator seems scandalous in this day and age. So much for piece of mind.
Also glaringly absent are any features which appear to violate the general relativity principle, so it goes without saying that consumers hoping the device would offer even the most basic form of time travel will be sorely disappointed. Though to its credit, the iPad's screen is remarkably sharp, and the video clip from 'Lost' shown in the demo looked clear and the motion fluid.
Powering the device is a standard (albeit long life) battery, not a miniaturized embedded nuclear power source as many analysts had hoped for. Some optimists had even rumored it would be powered by a proprietary perpetual motion generator. Maybe in the next iteration, folks. In fact, most if not all of the iPad's functionality appears to stubbornly obey the laws of thermodynamics and nowhere to be seen were any features that couldn't be explained by the known laws of physics.
While it will function as a fairly capable e-book reader, it will not read those books aloud in a pleasing British accent, nor express surprise as plot twists arise. The iPad could have been the most incredible creation ever devised by the hands of man. Instead, Apple seems to have taken the easy path, releasing a consumer device aimed merely at providing entertainment and media consumption.
The iPad's durability failed to impress as well, being incapable of surviving a simple 3-story fall onto solid concrete, day-long submergence underwater, or just a few minutes in a pizza oven. In all three tests, the device failed miserably or at least behaved in a diminished capacity.
Despite the iPad's massive shortcomings, Mr. Jobs remains the eminent huckster. While the vast majority of the press and public attending the conference appeared underwhelmed, most interviewed planned on purchasing the device on the day of it's release.
Mine hands hath not been idle. They have been laboring, though not on postings here as anyone capable with a calendar can judge. Sorry, that's the Two Gentlemen of Lebowski speaking. I'm currently reading through a Shakespearean re-penning of the Coen's grand slacker manifesto, The Big Lebowski and kicking myself for not having done it first.
But that is not the reason I have forgone not only writing, but exercise, Facebook, family outings, and reasonable temperament these past four weeks. Truth be told there are two reasons. You don't really want to hear the first reason. The first reason quite simply makes for a shitty tale. It's as boring as can be. OK, but you asked.
The first reason was there is an application-layer packet tracer enabled on some Cisco firewalls that scans a subset of port traffic, one version of which has a bug in which CPU utilization will spike and sporadic packet drops can occur, when coupled with a (previously to Friday morning undiscovered) ten-fold increase in database load on a separate application sharing DB space, a ramping up of zombie database connections can occur on your web servers and...I'm certain I lost half the readers there. OK you diehards, thanks for sticking around.
Well to tell you the truth the reason is because I can understand and type such a ludicrous, technical thing, and the accompanying month-long overtime ordeal it takes to learn such a thing when your job depends on it. It's a hell of an education when technology goes sour like this, but a body can take only so much of such cram sessions. I've lost several pounds of muscle mass and I would swear, numerous patches of hair from where I pulled it out trying to find this bug. On the bright side I can now talk like Scotty if need presses.
After four weeks of a problem like this one, one which had you seriously wishing you had chosen fine arts instead of computer engineering, there is an actual, palpable sense of a yoke being lifted. Honestly I feel several inches taller and years younger. This was without a doubt one of the best three day weekends ever. Upon my triumphant Friday evening return to the homestead, I chased the boy around the yard then actually sprung for takeout. The next day we drove to the beach and flew kites. Sunday we threw a birthday party for the kid. Monday I drank rum and played video games. My apologies to the ghost of Dr. King. All of which was completely unaccompanied by any worries whatsoever of work. Completely.
Life even smells better after you get past a rough haul like this one. Or at least it must, as lately I find myself taking deep breaths and exhaling wistfully as I grin like a schoolboy. This is how the freshly paroled must feel.
The other reason for my authorial absence is the 69 Mustang's eventual return to the road and subsequent ignition fire at 90 mph. Not to fear, all survived the smoky, panicked pull to the curb but a few Nixon-era smoldering lengths of wire awkwardly cowering behind the dash. But that damn thing is it's own story for another day. I'll do a motor-head edition for all you grease monkeys out there soon enough.
Anyway, back to business as usual. Thankfully there aren't too many readers hanging on this pulpit's every word else I'd feel guilt for having left my flock untended. Well that's true in spirit if not in number, the Bunker has been reeling in a few hundred eyeballs each month now. Which you would think would make me as proud as a strutting cock in a locked hen house, but for the fact that 9 out of every 10 hits we get around here is someone looking at that damned Snoopy photoshop I did of Charlie Brown reading a scandalously discovered Playbeagle magazine. That stupid joke has gotten hits from, seriously, something like 170 different countries. Every day I get people from Kuala Lumpur to Guam looking at that. I guess people the world over love a good picture of Charlie Brown chastising Snoopy for his crude taste in canine pornography. Thank you, Google images, for this weird bit of Internet pseudo near-fame.
LOS ANGELES- Citing irreconcilable differences, singer/songwriter George Thorogood's liver has applied for a legal separation from its host of 59 years.
Thorogood's popularity peaked in the 70's and 80's as the creator of hard drinking songs such as "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer", and "I Drink Alone". It is hard to imagine a pool hall jukebox not stocking at least one of his blues rock hits.
Yet on Tuesday in the L.A. County courthouse, George Thorogood's liver appeared via teleconference seeking to finally end what it deems an abusive relationship.
“I've done my job faithfully,” said the liver as it read a prepared complaint, it's speech slurred and often halting. “For almost six decades, day in, day out. All George ever gave me was unending toil and ingratitude, never once considering me or my health.”
“You come into this job with a sense of purpose. Like you could change the world,” it read. “But when you see how there's no light at the end of the tunnel, how you're being taken advantage of, (there is) only so much one small liver can do”. Fighting back tears the yellowing, sickly organ concluded its statement, “sometimes I feel he's just trying to slowly poison me.”
The liver said in an earlier released written statement that it hoped to find someone more deserving and appreciative of its labors. "I'd like to find a nice quiet place where I can rest and maybe one day write my story."
Judge Lamar Quincy asked Thorogood if he had anything to add. The musician merely grunted, saying (his liver) should “quit being such a pansy and bone up." He then flipped the monitor the middle finger and the signal was disconnected.
If the request is granted, it would be the first time a major organ succeeded in having itself removed from its owner since Ron Wood's lungs successful bid to separate as soon as a viable donor was found.
WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND- Proof of alien life or elaborate hoax? Some farmers call them otherworldly art and are thrilled to discover one of the mysterious visages gracing a hillside. Others say it is outright vandalism, no more than a waste of valuable grain by mischievous pranksters. Whatever your belief, in the world of crop circles the southern region of England is the place to be. No other place on Earth has a higher concentration of crop circles than right here.
And it was in the county of Wiltshire last week that Mr. Jeremy Benthingham first discovered his fields had joined the ranks of the ethereally decorated. On the morning of October 30th shortly after the farmer pulled his tractor from its barn, Mr. Benthingham first saw the mysterious designs. And he was not impressed.
“If you ask me it looks like a damned joke. The fellow must have been bloody blind” he said. “Or just learning” he added with a chuckle.
In place of a soothing circular pattern or complex geometric mandala, the field had been transformed into a mishmash of drunken squiggles. “It's embarrassing” he said. For farmers of this and the neighboring counties which make up the breadbasket of England, the first crop circle is normally a badge of honor. But despite his disappointment, Mr. Benthingham is not alone in his less than stellar experience.
In June a farm 30 kilometers to the south was visited by a mysterious crop-circler that left behind a barely discernible representation of a human form. “The left arm was completely out of proportion from the body like a fiddler crab,” said one witness of the amateurish attempt. “It had no neck, sort of a stick figure with a crooked spine.” In the nearby town of Saxsbury a mangled rendering of the Solar system was said to resemble “a rather unsuccessful Etch-a-Sketch” said the landowner Jamie Spitts. Not only were the orbits wavy and badly skewed, but there were only seven planets. One of which embarrassingly intersected with the Sun. An area of crude back and forth swipes has many believing it to be an attempt to cover a mistake. “Like second grade art class.”
While some state the entire episode is a hoax on a hoax, Ken Potter of the Crop Circle Alliance disagrees. “Could it be there's a hidden meaning in the misshapen forms, and that our primitive minds can't understand them?”
Crop circle enthusiasts disagree on the reason for the recent spate of poor quality visitations. Some of the believers say the ethereal beings responsible are indeed training new artists or trying out new equipment. “Even the military has training exercises” says Potter. “Or for all we know, the circles we've seen all these years were performed by a handful of very talented beings. Perhaps the torch is being passed. And no one's born a Picasso”, said Potter. “Except Picasso I suppose.”
Whatever the reason, most agree that 2010 can only be an improvement over what many are calling the lost year of the crop circle.
They just get thrown away. Or do they? I can't imagine the things ever wear out. And even if yours starts to show some age it's not as if you'll be embarrassed if someone sees the shape it's in, because as a rule people don't see other people's dildos. Unless a moving day goes horribly awry.
This goes for male or female shaped latex goodies of course, I'm not just picking on the ladies here. Feel free to substitute the words “pocket pussy” in place of dildo if it makes you more comfortable, we're all adults here.
And it's not like most people are eager to have to buy such things more than once. Once suffering the humiliation of their first sexual aid purchase, most slink from the store with the paper bag clutched as tightly and hopefully inconspicuously as possible to the chest thinking to themselves and the heavens “Well that's over with”. It's a relief as profound as finishing a public speech or meeting the in-laws. You only hope you never meet the clerk who sold you the thing at a church/school/business function.
Would a rusted steel dildo ever be turned in for scrap? Price of iron is up. Maybe your melted-down dildo could one day end up part of a skyscraper. It would be an ironic turn of events to say the least, a phallus reborn. Or would it be polished one afternoon to restore its onetime gleam? I'll bet a fiver the web already has instructions on how to do this. Perhaps it would be disposed of with the hopes the neighbor boys didn't pick your trash. My uneducated guess is that it would be hard to be parted with, maybe hidden away like an old lover for 'lean times' before it was eventually forgotten and misplaced. Perhaps a generation later a suddenly scarred descendant would notice what that old paperweight on grandpa's tool bench really was.
You'd be surprised at some of the pathetic objects people will haul into the pawn shop hoping for a buck or two. I once saw a man happily accept three quarters for an old extension cord and a hacksaw blade. Would a similarly illiquid crack fiend actually try to cash in a used sexual device? More importantly, what would it fetch? I'm tempted to go undercover just to catch the reaction of the aged pawnkeep's face as I argue how it was barely used. Maybe if I swear it had been boiled in hot water.
Oh this is just great. I give every last one of those damn kids a candy bar, and one of them decides it would be funny to throw a rock through our glass storm door. Watch your feet, dear. Trick or treat? Oh this trick is just Hilarious!
Honey, where's the dust pan? And while you're at it, where's my baseball bat? I'll play ball with the wonderful little sprites!
Sigh...no dear I'm not going to do anything drastic. Yeah they're just kids, but dammit look at this mess! I pulled some pranks in my day, but this is over the top. Are we out of Hefty bags? What? No, Hefty bags! You know, the really thick ones. I think they're by the water heater!
Forget Snickers, next year they're getting a jawbreaker each. Those generic ones. Or Bit o' Honey, I'll bet those are cheap. No wait, trick gum! The kind that gets really hot. Oooh boy, next Halloween's gonna be FULL of tricks let me tell you!
Owww! Damned glass. Can you bring me a band-aid too, honey? I can see how that whole razor blade in the candy thing got started. No dear, I'm just joking. Jeez.
What do you mean the rock looks familiar? It's just a rock. You gave one of them a WHAT?! Holy mother of God are you kidding me? The grumpy kid with the flying ace dog and messed up ghost costume? You've been giving him one every year? Why not give him a roll of toilet paper and a can of spray paint while you're at it?
Talk to his mother? And say what? He returned the rock we gave him? A rock! Brilliant. You're the one that should be cleaning this up.
Um, have you seen the cat this morning?
* Encore edition sounds so much more dignified than "rerun", doesn't it? Then again unless you've been following this jalopy for a year now, it's new to you. Even if Letterman does reruns, I feel I need to ask your forgiveness: I've got my hands full rebuilding a small block Ford right now and figured this post might just need to become an annual ritual.
I know, I know, the ancient Chinese warned us against pursuing our wishes. Let me start out by saying, to hell with the ancient Chinese. But I do recognize the need to be careful what you wish for, or at least be prepared if those wishes come to fruition in strange, twisted ways you hadn't envisioned. If the stars are in an ornery mood get ready for a curve ball.
It would be my rotten luck that I would finally meet Bill Murray in a men's room at some hotel bar. I step up to the urinal for some routine business and there he is taking a leak one stall over. Do I dare break the Golden Rule of the men's room, striking up a conversation with a stranger in mid-flow? As I silently cursed the Universe for putting me in such a conundrum I'm sure my mind would race for a loophole, some way of acknowledging one of my greatest heroes without being added to his mental list of autograph assholes.
In the unlikely event I ever fall into such a circumstance, I've prepared a statement. “Sorry Mr. Murray, but I'm just not going to bother you for an autograph with your cock in your hand.” I'd then give a friendly nod and walk back out to the bar like nothing had happened. I think he'd appreciate it.
That's the dream of all us fans, to meet our number one living figure and say something so clever or devastatingly cool they not only laugh, but possibly offer up a dinner invitation, or ask if you have any interest in seeing their record collection.
Since I have no idea when I will meet Bill Murray, I find myself preparing for every possible contingency. If we become trapped in the same elevator, I will say “Emergency call buttons are for pansies!”, and volunteer to be the guy that tries to climb through the ceiling hatch thingy and up the greasy cables, heedless of any damage to my clothing or person. There is no film in which this escape route has failed to work.
If we find ourselves at the same DMV getting our licenses renewed I will pipe up with “You know Bill, if you put Organ Donor on your license it makes for a great dirty pickup line.” I wrestled with the question of whether I should use his first name so soon, then came to the realization I'll have to gauge each situation accordingly.
Another challenging introduction would be accidentally backing into his Mercedes as I leave the airport parking garage at two in the morning. I'm loaded down with jet lag and sleeping pills, fumbling for the radio when BAM, a familiar looking gray-haired figure is fuming in my rear view mirror. But I am prepared. “Tag, you're it Bill!” I think that one calls for a first name basis, just to break the ice.
Of course, delivery here is crucial. I don't want to anger him further by treating the accident like my lucky day. His dream wasn't to meet me, and I probably just made him late for something. I'll make sure the man isn't hurt, then offer to buy him a steak. Or if I signed for the extra insurance on the rental, offer to let him take it for a wild ride around town, not worrying about the bodywork. Everyone wants to scrape a rental car along a Jersey barrier doing forty.
With any luck we'd end up drinking Johnny Walker on his veranda, smacking golf balls onto the roofs of his neighbors. No one minds if Bill Murray hits a golf ball onto their roof. They get a thrill when they hear one hit, knowing its source. Very few people on the planet have this power. He'd tell me stories about hazy weekends at Hunter Thompson's farm or the time he joined the Mile-High club with a Lufthansa stewardess en route to film “Stripes”. And oh the laughs we would have doing donuts in Harold Ramis' lawn.
Now I'm no stalker. Nor will I subject myself to kidnapping and tying up his pool cleaner for an opportunity to sneak onto his estate in disguise. I'll instead allow the hands of destiny to work their magic. Of course trusting in fate to introduce me to Bill Murray runs the risk of frankly, running out of time. Let's face it Bill's not getting any younger. And with his hearty passions for life's pleasures, I personally don't see him pulling off a George Burns-style longevity gig.
A friend suggested I steer my efforts into landing a bit part in the next Wes Anderson picture, of which he has starred in all but one. This plan presents another level of complexity, but one thing it has going for it is that as Mr. Anderson is my favorite director, I wouldn't feel any guilt in using him so. Time to get cracking with some acting lessons. That or bribe his casting director. Either way it's just a matter of time. I can feel the stars at work already.
There's something unmanly about passing out in our culture. It's normally portrayed as the stuff of the meek or anemic, bringing to mind images of ladies in large feathered hats falling into someone's waiting arms when a mouse is spotted in the kitchen. But I'll be man enough to admit I do it all the time. It happened when I had my tattoo. It happened one New Year's eve as my broken scapula was being set in the emergency room. It happened when I had a grout splinter pulled from beneath my fingernail. To be fair that last one would have probably made anyone's reptile brain reach for the emergency brake. It even happened to me before surgery after my IV line was inserted. The thing that pissed me off in retrospect was that they actually revived me before administering the anesthesia.So of course if blood is being drawn, get ready to test your strength catching 210 pounds of my lifeless ass. I warn all my phlebotomists beforehand. I learned to do this after a panicked RN summoned an ambulance when the local she administered before removing a biopsy sent me into dreamland. Most shrug my warning off with a laugh and tell me I have nothing to fear. It's as if their skill has been called into question and now they need to show me just how talented their light touch can be. There is no one so prideful in their work as a phlebotomist.I can usually even make it through the entire procedure before I feel the dizzy warmth start to creep over me. When it happened yesterday we had completely finished the draw. More than a minute had passed and 'Ms. Pearl' had labeled the sample and filled out some form. I had even complimented her accent as something that brought to mind Ms. Cleo. But once I feel that harbinger of the certain unconsciousness to come, there's nothing more you can do but tell them to get ready to test their strength. Even still they always assure me, no honey you did great, everything is fine, just take a few deep breaths. How about a cookie? I make a few jokes and then comes the nothingness. Once my body senses even the slightest drop in blood pressure, the shutdown sequence begins and there is no turning back. It's like sugar in the gas tank.There is nothing and I mean nothing so utterly peaceful as when you're out like a light. And nothing so utterly confusing as when you're coming out of it. The first time I can remember taking an involuntary nap was in the fifth grade. We were outside for recess and I was standing against the wall. You stood against the wall of the schoolhouse and watched the other kids play if you had done something bad and had the misfortune of getting caught. That spring I seemed to spend a lot of time against the wall, though the reason is now lost to the ages. Two other kids that did the same were Mac and Alison. That afternoon Mac and Alison were having an argument about something, but for some reason I ended up getting stood between them. Probably to keep them from each other's throats. At some point Mac said something that must have really gotten the girl's goat, because the next thing I knew a melon-sized chunk of asphalt was hurtling our way. And then I found myself opening my eyes and wondering why I had been sleeping on the playground on such a lovely day. The letter of apology Alison had to write my mother was priceless. “Dear Mrs. Soyke, I'm very sorry I hit Eric in the face with a rock. I was aiming for Mac.” I hope my mother still has it.Yogis practice all their lives to shut out external stimuli. I can do it before you can say “pass the smelling salts”. I've been through the routine so many times now you'd think it would be routine. But waking up on a hard lab floor as panicked nurses slap wet paper towels over your face can get old.I'm tempted to conclude from my manifold pseudo-near-death experiences that there is no afterlife. I base this on the fact that when I'm out, there is nothing. No dreams, no beckoning lights with robed figures, no sound of harps or visions of myself floating through the ceiling. Just nothing. In the incident in the surgery room, the doc told me he'd never seen anything like it before, that my pressure had bottomed so low he was worried he was going to have to fetch the electric paddles. I think he just wanted to test the things.Over the years I have become convinced that the brain is just a machine. A computer. And you can track the progress of your booting sequence as each system comes back online. Slowly, very slowly, the first system to come back online oddly enough is intuition. This probably wasn't what you were expecting, but thinking back it's a common thread. You just sense that something is wrong. Like you've forgotten something as you're leaving for vacation times ten. Or if you've ever woken up first thing in the morning and had that feeling like you're not sure if you should feel joy or dread for the day to come, that's what I'm talking about. Then you decide on dread. There's an unmistakable feeling that something is terribly wrong with this world and it's starting to make you mad, but you can't put your finger on it. I guess this is the id beginning to stir.Next come your senses. Hearing is first, though speech recognition isn't up just yet. After the ringing begins, you'll soon be able to hear other noises that after 10 or 20 seconds you will recognize as human voices. They'll be very faint and you will wonder why you are hearing them. Eyesight comes up soon after. But now even though you can technically hear and see, you have no idea what on Earth you are hearing or seeing. Those faces hovering far, far above you are still just distant shapes that make no sense, just like their words. You can't but wonder if this what stroke victims feel. Or maybe insects. You have no idea what year it is, who you are, or why there are so many wet paper towels on you. This is when the weirdness begins.Did they say something about someone passing out? Sucks for that guy, as you can't remember ever feeling so relaxed before. Soon comes understanding. After catching a few more words you slowly gather you're the guy everyone's talking about. A few pieces of the puzzle click into place. The urgent need to remember something important is overpowering now. And then you have it, the riddle is solved. You had a blood test today. You are now lying on the floor. You're soaked with sweat. Dammit.Next online is speech, and the very first thing you will want to say is how perfectly fine you are. No need to worry ladies, I'm perfectly, perfectly fine. I do this for kicks sometimes. Of course other than your eyelids and vocal cords you still can't move a muscle, that doesn't come for another twenty helpless seconds or so.
I've never seen myself during or after one of these slips, but apparently you turn whiter than an Elk's Lodge in Utah. By the time they're lifting your head off the linoleum, you've already sweated more than if you had just spent the past hour on a stair master. In the Mohave. And even though the entire ordeal lasted maybe two minutes you would swear you had slept a solid two days.
When you've blacked out so many times that you begin to consider yourself a connoisseur, there comes the realization that our consciousness is quite probably just an illusion, cooked up by too many synapses and tiny squirts of dopamine. That even our most involved dreams and spiritual experiences are nothing more than an extremely confusing sequence of chemical reactions. Maybe Einstein was right and we are just finely crafted timepieces created by a watchmaker that decided on a permanent vacation once his shift was over, and we are all just ticking away until the tiniest of springs goes pop. Or maybe death is the beginning and those who have never passed that door have no idea of the kingdom to follow, etc. Either way, next time I'm giving blood laying on a couch.
SAN FRANCISCO- If yesterday's keynote address by Steve Jobs is remembered for one thing, it will be the collective sense of letdown the CEO unleashed on the MacWorld attendees at the Moscone Center. While it's true that the level of excitement and anticipation that preceded the recently unveiled iPad virtually guaranteed some unmet expectations, few could have guessed the depths of such disappointments. It seems the $499 creation possesses no actual, inexplicable magic.
