As the winds rise above the east and the stars peek out between the clouds, I’m reminded of a wise saying I once heard… OH! You expected me to actually TELL you the wise saying? Sorry, my remembrance of wise sayings is strictly for my own consumption.
What I AM here to write about is my fourth annual ChristHannaKwanzmas Holiday rant. Can you believe I’ve inflicted three of these on you so far and that Tim obviously doesn’t read a word of it before it gets posted? Yeah, I’m stunned too!
It occurs to me that while I have written quite a bit in the last four years in this now famous in my own mind missive, I have neglected to tell you the origins of ChristHannaKwanzmas and the cherished beliefs that I hold so dear. This religion of my choice is a peaceful one, filled with truth, light, and the firm belief that all those who do not feel the same way will burn in the fiery pits of damnation for all eternity. But I digress.
ChristHannaKwanzmas was created as a tax shel…I mean divine belief that all men and women were created equal, That children should be known by sight, but held quiet as they pass by aisle after aisle of pre-manufactured Spider-Man and Transformer movie tie-in toys. That giving is the most blessed form of sharing good fortune (especially to my overseas PayPal account).
Like those other LESS important religions, this is a special time of year for ChristHannaKwanzmasians. This is when they max out those credit cards buying gifts for people to bribe…I mean to encourage them to join our most holiest of causes. Like those other religions, we also have a patron who visits the homes of those good little ChristHannaKwanzmas boys and girls on ChristHannaKwanzmas Eve. His name is Saint Santa Fred™ and he visits their homes on a sled powered by recalled Chrysler 300 sedans and gives vouchers for deep discounts at Best Buy and Circuit City and QuickTime exploits to all the bad children. We have special songs that we sing as the overdue bills come pouring in. Let me share some of the titles with you:
God rest ye debt collector
Frosty the repo man
We wish you a merry bankruptcy
Saint Santa Fredâ„¢ is coming to town and is he pissed!
I’ll end this part of my rant on a happy note. We are currently in deliberation to have our very own soon to be animated holiday classic tentatively titled, “What the hell were you thinking Charlie Brown©?â€
As we are about to enter the year 2008 (known to some as the year of deliverance from GBush da second) it would behoove me (because you can’t have enough hooves) to talk briefly about American politics. By brief, I mean until I run out of amusing to myself things to say. I hope our readers who are not from the “States†will bear with me while I indulge myself. If you want to skip ahead where I start talking about technology without a clue as compared to talking about politics without a clue I won’t hold it against you. That is unless you’re a woman, very attractive, promise not to blab it to all your friends, and are in close proximity.
This is an election year. Of course there are elections almost every year about school bonds and saving wild pygmy aardvarks in some local park. These seem to pass by without much thought and little consequence unless you’re a wild pygmy aardvark and the chances of an aardvark (pygmy or otherwise) having internet access AND reading this column is so remote that I can’t remember why I even brought it up.
Getting back on topic for now, we here in the States get to choose our next political hack who will bend over backwards for special interest groups and lobbyists for the next four years. While there will undoubtedly be many fine candidates to choose from with a wealth of knowledge, political savvy and knack for making hard choices from an experienced point of view, we instead will have a choice between what the Democrats and Republicans foist upon us. It’s almost like going to a Chinese restaurant and ordering one from Column A and one from Column B, but in this case the heartburn lasts from 4 to 8 years.
For those inexperienced in such matters, you’re so lucky to have me here to explain it. Don’t worry about the minor detail that the process has already begun; it’ll be easy to catch up. Here are a few facts to throw out before we begin. Many of them will be painfully obvious to some, but not all.
Fact 1: George Bush is the current President of the United States (hint: that’s one of the more obvious ones!). He was elected with some controversy in 2000 over Al Gore. Al Gore has gone on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, direct a prize-winning eco-documentary (while apparently living in a home that requires more energy than the Las Vegas Strip), and be put on the board of Apple Inc. George Bush has gone on to piss off most the world, mispronounce common words, invade Iraq, and interrupt the TV viewing habits of most of America every time he makes a speech telling us who well things are going. Who actually is having a better time of it is certainly open for debate.
Fact 2: George Bush is ineligible to run for President again because apparently the last guy who won more than two terms in a row got sick and died. While many may wish a similar fate on George, the US Constitution states that he can’t. Those wishing for him to die will have to come up something better than that. Sorry.
Fact 3: Because it seems most Americans are sick and tired of the Republicans running the White House, both Houses of Congress, and deciding who the last few Supreme Court Judges were going to be, there will most likely be a Democrat for President when the whole thing is said and done. The Democrats already took control of the House and Senate after the mid-term 2006 elections. This explains why every utterance of a Democratic nominee is flashed across CNN, Fox News, MTV, and the Home Shopping Network, and the Republican debates are thrown in as an afterthought just at the end of a Spongebob Squarepants repeat.
Fact 4: The current top nominees for the Democratic Party for the Office of the Presidency of the United States are; Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Don’t feel bad if you have no idea who Barack Obama is. Prior to his running for President, I couldn’t have pointed him out either. He’s doing well enough however to be considered one of the front runners. The other of course is Hillary. She’s claiming to be qualified for the job based on having run the White House from 1992 to 2000. You may or may not support her, but what I find odd is that the only place she seems to feel she could have been elected to the Senate was Upstate New York.
Fact 5: The current top nominees for the Republican Party for the Office of the Presidency of the United States are; Michael Dukakis and Hubert Humphrey. I’m kidding of course. No one REALLY knows who the possible Republican challengers are. It was a trick question.
Fact 6: The various debates have been held and the amount of mudslinging has been almost embarrassing from both parties. I keep expecting that wrestling announcer guy to come out at the beginning and announce;†Let’s get ready to RUUUMMMBBBLLLE!!!†The various contenders would come out wearing wrestling thongs, bouncing up and down, and waving their arms in the air to get their fans excited. Actually let’s forget I even mentioned the whole wearing of wrestling thongs. I just ate.
The really funny part of the debates for both parties is that you are probably looking at main candidates for each for the next President and Vice-President of the United States. Apparently no matter how much you slam your opponents in the debates, all is forgiven afterwards and the Vice-Presidential candidate is forced to say nice things about the party platform no matter how much of an ass he thinks his running mate is.
Fact 7: Once the two contenders are crowned and blessed by the party faithful, the REAL fun begins. Several months of TV commercials accusing their opponents of everything from being weak on national defense to not knowing how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop (the answer is three, just ask Mr. Owl).
O.K.! Now you’re all caught up in the madness for the next year. You may either thank me or have me removed permanently as a friend on your MySpace page.
Let’s move on (THANK YOU SAINT SANTA FRED™!) to technology.
It has been one crazy year in technology and as proud Apple users (I’m guessing), we can take great pride in our very own little Stevie Jobs (isn’t he wunnerful!) kicking it off in January with the announcement that Apple would make a cell-phone. I’ve come to understand that at least four people were caught by surprise by this. I’ll leave this alone here since it will undoubtedly come up in my open letter to Steve Jobs.
Microsoft stunned the world will the amazing sales of their Zune portable media player. I’m joking of course. The Zune made little headway against the iPod juggernaut and if you would please take a moment to remember all the jokes you heard about it squirting, it welcoming you to the Social, the embarrassment of the Zune Marketplace with its instant free loan to Microsoft for all those unused points they forced people to use to buy content, the one dollar they had to give to Universal Music as a bribe to get their content, and (deep breath) its really horrible choice of brown as a color, you’ll save me a lot of typing.
Ready? OK… REMEMBER! HAHAHAHAHAHAHaaaaahaaaa! Oh my! I really needed that.
Later in the year, Microsoft released their next version of the Zune player. There were multiple models this time, some Flash memory based and others with hard drives. They are much improved and I predict they will be BIG hits if only they had been released in say, 2004.
The video game console wars have heated up with the release of Nintendo’s Wii. I’ve checked most of the local stores that SAY they sell the Wii, but it apparently is as elusive to the average buyer as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. The big pull for the Wii console is its unique controller that forces users to actually be active. The Couch Potatoes Union (Local 526) is up in arms about having to use more than their Hulk Hogan-like thumbs to play the device and would have striked, but they also couldn’t find any locations that actually have the Wii in stock and frankly the whole search of area Walmart stores was simply exhausting.
Sony’s PlayStation 3 had been released earlier but its price tag of one meeeellion dollars is a bit steep for many of its potential customers. A bonus feature for the PlayStation 3 was its built-in Blu-Ray player. Apparently this was less of a pull than expected since most people could only own so many copies of Starship Trooper.
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 had been released the year before with great fanfare and amazing sales figures that has resulted in a number of the units becoming so excited that they tripled red-ringed themselves to death. Microsoft has promised a full investigation into the cause and has sent out ADD medication to the units not yet affected. To those reading this, knowing what ADD medication is makes this funny. Really.
There were a number of Linux-based OS releases… I SAID, there were a number of Linux-based OS releases. I SAID…oh never mind.
This year the first of what some have called the first real malware for OS X. This may become a real problem for Mac users. Of course the fact that so far you have to go to a porn site, try to watch a video, purposely download what the site manger is calling a video codec required to watch the video, double-click it to uncompress it, and enter your administrative password to install it hasn’t stopped the anti-virus software makers from chortling with glee as they put out press release after press release hyping this up as the worst thing to happen since the last Jerry Lewis movie. While Mac users do need to be concerned about these kinds of attacks, please stay calm. Nothing is as bad as that last Jerry Lewis movie.
Moving on from technology, to my favorite part of the rant, my best wishes to all my friends and family.
To my wife. We celebrated our 15th year of being married with a romantic dinner and a gift exchange. Maybe next year we can do this together? I keed, I keed. You’ve kept me grounded for all these years and hopefully you’ll let me leave the house sometime soon. I look forward to many more years of being together unless you actually read this and then I think I’m in big trouble. I love you Tracey.
To my boys Guy Jr and Peter. Guy, you turned 13 this year, so I doubt it will be much of a surprise when you turn from being the nice son that you are to a raging hormone filled monster. The same thing happened to me and your Mom is probably wondering when the raging hormone thing will finally stop for Dad. Peter, you are our curly-headed delight. Your fixation on dinosaurs in the past has been fun, but you can stop now…please. I will never forgive Steven Speilberg for Jurassic Park 3. Not because the movie was all that bad, but the scene of the Spinosaurus killing the T-Rex (your personal favorite) has haunted you for years. You both are a constant delight.
To all my family everywhere. I know…I know…I can hear you say “You never write…you never callâ€. It’s not because I don’t love you, it’s that I can’t think of any reason why you would want to hear from me. It’s a personal problem. I’m here for whatever you need from me.
To all my friends. I really must question your judgment in who you want to be associated with. I mean really, you can read this and not question what made you decide I was someone you wanted around? Heck, sometimes I delay shaving to avoid looking at myself.
To MyMac.com and staff. We have an ever expanding family of friends and writers here at MyMac. Many of us take what we do for the site very seriously and strive to create fluid poetry in motion for our blogs, reviews, cartoons, podcasts, and how-tos. Don’t let my somewhat disturbed and disjointed ramblings discourage you. It isn’t contagious, I’ve always been this way.
Finally as I usually do, I’ll end this holiday rant with an open letter to Steve Jobs.
Dear Steve,
Holy crap Batman, what a year! I attended your keynote in San Francisco at Macworld. It was the first live one I’ve ever been to, and my first Macworld since the New York shows were ended some number of years ago. The Reality Distortion Field was in full effect even before the keynote started. The sheer crushing mob of people that ran to the escalators for what I assume were the best seats left no stone unturned and no old lady left standing. When I departed from the Keynote, all that was going through my mind was, “muuuust haaave iPhone…Muuust haaave iPhone!†Thank God the FCC forced you to delay actually shipping them until late June when the compulsion had been reduced to simply an annoying twitch.
The other product you mentioned in passing was the Apple TV. Great concept, poorly designed. It’s missing so much that my hand didn’t even convulse toward my wallet as you explained it. What does this product need? Let me begin by saying the whole point of a product like this in my mind is to replace other devices and make my life simpler. What did you give us instead? Yet another square-ish macmini-like box with an anemic little slow hard drive. How about this instead? Make it wider and taller. Big enough for a full size USER REPLACABLE hard drive. Give it a cable card slot for when the stupid US based cable systems finally realize that instead of forcing us to rent their stupid box, we might actually upgrade to a higher level of service with more premium content if that stupid charge wasn’t there.
How about adding an optical drive so we could (call me crazy here) watch our DVDs? So we get rid of a cable box and DVD player making it so we only have to switch between regular TV and content available on the Apple TV. Just throwing it out there Steve.
Next, the Mac mini. It stinks on ice. It’s an almost useless box you made to get people to shut up about a low-cost Apple system. Remember the LC series? Great design, full size hard drive, room for a combo or SuperDrive, space for a REAL graphics card instead of that integrated Intel crap. Yes, I know the iMac is supposed to be the consumer product that you want people to really buy. With the Mac mini, you’ve made that painfully obvious. So charge a little more for a much better product. Lot’s of potential switchers and people hanging on to older PPC Macs already have monitors they are perfectly happy with and don’t have the moola required to buy a Mac Pro. Marketing people with Apple are probably aware of this and are afraid to tell you. I don’t work for you so you can’t fire me and I’ll tell you straight. Make a better level-entry Mac. It’s what a lot of people would buy. I hope to see you at the Keynote in January and give my best to the wife and kids.
Well campers, that’s it for this years ChristHannaKwanzmas holiday rant. I hope you all are well and will be around next year when I’ll do this again unless forced to stop by either Tim or Homeland Security.
Guy
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