Happy Birthday, Susan.

     You taught us to enjoy life, live every day like it was our last.

     Sorry I forgot how.

     It’s just not the same when those you love aren’t around…

     I need an Xbox 360 Pro.  Or Elite.  I don’t give a damn.  Either one.  But not a shitty Arcade.

     I need one because I have a marketing idea.

     Only thing is, I can’t afford one. 

     So here’s what I propose…

     I’m thinking about selling a Solid 24K Barack Obama Coin on the Internet. 

     With the following disclaimer:

     “* Contents subject to Change during shipping.  Recipient experience may differ greatly.”

      So who wants to buy one for the low, low price of $299.99?

     Okay, so I’m browsing software today, and I see this incredible plugin:

blog, new beginnings, new plugin. My latest plugin, the WordPress Politically Correct plugin, PC plugin for short, is a fitting plugin for today’s 2.0 bloggers. Turning your blog into something your mother would be proud of has never been easier.

Like it’s name suggests, the PC plugin gets rid of all the non PC language on your blog.

     Yep, sure as excrement, it works.  I should maybe use something like that on my Contact form, seeing as how so many of those less than intelligent, copulating extremely ill-mannered people keep sending me the most mean-spirited cow excrement I’ve ever had to copulating read.

     I don’t know why, but over the past two years, the phrase, “Uhh, that’s gay,” has popped back into my vocabulary.  I think it’s probably because my former roomate’s gay daughter said, “Uhh, that’s gay,” every other sentence when she wasn’t screaming, “That f&*$ing c*%$!!!” about, if not at, some other female who she apparently detested to limitless degrees.

     But there are degrees of this “gayness.”  Some stuff is just gay.  Some stuff is really really gay.  Other stuff is f$*%ing gay.  Still others are really f$*%ing gay.  There was even, “Gay like Zacque’s house key.”  Then, of course, we had this…

     I’m sorry, but MacBooks suck.  Most of the people who work on them are friggin’ clueless morons.  This is why most MacBooks cannot be fixed.
     Of course, it also has to do with the fact that to replace a hard drive, you must completely and thoroughly disassemble the machine.  No panel-popping, ease-of-upgrade here — hell, no!  It takes a friggin’ degree in Chinese Engineering, no less than five types of screwdriver-type devices, several gin and tonics and unwavering faith in Christ to get the damn things apart.
     Upon finally getting the hard drive out, and looking at the carnage, I looked at Zacque.
     “Dude…”
     “Uhh, dude…”
     “That’s gay.”
     “F$*% Mac.”
     “Yeah… it’s gay…”
     (The Henny Youngman constituency in my head asked, “How gay is it?”)
     “…It’s gay like Mac.”

     For some time now, that has stood as the be-all, end-all of gayness.

     Gay like Mac.

     Gay like, “Think Different,” in a world where PC’s are easily fixed most of the time, where a simple screw covers a panel whereby a hard drive can be removed without the limitless drivel and lack of know-how of the “Mac Store.”  “Think Different,” where CEO Steve Jobs is such a brazen asshat that he can’t see the forest for the fruit.  “Think Different,” where common sense and logic go out the window with Jobs, because despite any manufacturer of PC’s being his actual competition, he vehemently spews vitriol and venom at his “perceived” competition, Microsoft’s Bill Gates.  “Think Different,” where your company is so lacking in sales — because you suck at running a business — that you go directly to the US Government and lobby for them to attack your competition due to “anti-competitive practices,” when it’s actually just a ruse for you to position yourself as an anti-competitive bastard.  “Think Different,” where you can charge upwards of $350 for a piece-of-shit phone that doesn’t work half the time, might catch on fire, and yet, you’re able to justify the cost and the problems because “Microsoft phones sucks!  They’re anti-competitive because they have a bigger market share!”
     Yep, “Think Different,” where the iPod is the most popular mp3 player, but the software cuts your PC off at the knees so you’re more inclined to buy a piece of shit MacBook.

     “Think Different,” because these days, Macs are more glitz than guts, being pretty much demoted to a seriously underperforming-yet-highly-polished Linux machine, without any error notifications to let you know your machine is actually really f$*%ed up.

     “Think Different.”  Think mindless sheep.  Think Asshat.

     The big use I had for the Mac was Photoshop, because it actually works and doesn’t suffer from the Memory Leaks and issues that it does on the PC (although, that’s Adobe’s fault, not Microsoft’s).  Well, okay, and Final Cut Pro, too (although, I’m more likely to go for a “real” video editor these days).  And this old-ass Hypercard game called “Asylum,” but OS/X won’t run it, and as of System 7.5.1, the damn game ran better under emulation on my PC.
     In essence, I like Macs overall, but I see them for what they are.  They’re a machine.  Apple is a big-business company.  Steve Jobs is such a pedantic tool that co-founder Steve Wozniak can’t even get along with him.  Apples other ventures are easily comparable to Sony, who put out too much high-priced shit and people buy it because of the name.

     Apple is not, however, the socio-political movement which it is touted by the large consensus its blind masses of users.  You know, the blind masses who are most always highly liberal, extremely pedantic, ridiculously argumentative and unable to face the fact that by buying into the hype and supporting it zealotously despite major snafus, they’ve become Steve Job’s bitches.

     That mentality… That’s the final level of Gay… so Gay it needs Special Rights.

     Yesterday, three quarters of Microsoft’s MSN & Live services were up and down for around twelve hours.  There was no news about the incident.

     Tonight, Twitter has had intermittent connectivity, also with no news.

     The Truth Laid Bear, a well-past-its-expiry-date blog ranking site, has had numerous issues for some time with no apparent plans to fix anything:

Access denied for user 'nzbear_ttlb'@'63.247.140.96'
to database 'nzbear_repdb'

     The outage that seems to be causing the most blatant angst for users, however, has occurred on MySpace, where their Applications platform, MySpace Apps, has been down for two days.  While MySpace has left over two hundred million users unable to use the Applications platform with little explanation as to why, users have taken to posting bulletins with everything from conspiracy theories to all out rage against the ad-driven site.  

     The vast majority of MySpace applications are immensely simple, session-based games, most of which are based off of a much more simplified model of the archaic Solar Realms Elite-style BBS games of the early 1980’s.  However, the outrage at being denied the privilege to play these games is very real.  Some users have reported that a Lawsuit against MySpace has closed the applications.  Others have conjectured that it is due to rampant cheating on a points-for-cash system which doesn’t exist.  Some have found more sinister motives, claiming that MySpace’s creator, Tom Anderson, is pulling a coup d’etat against its media mogul owner, Rupert Murdoch.

     Still others blame the spirit of a deceased Tom Anderson as he posts bulletins from the grave, lame-duck President George W. Bush, Lucky the Dog, and an illegal alien named Urinous Hatte, who claims to be from an extra-solar planet in the vicinity of Beta Orionis.

     I would like to address these particular MySpace users directly:

     While MySpace upgrades their OpenSocial platform to v0.8, this leaves many of you with a great deal of free time.  However, this outage has a silver lining.  This is time that could better spent dealing with emotional trauma, finding girl/boyfriends, educating yourselves, raising your children correctly, or any number of other worthwhile objectives which may actually prove that you can do something for your own, or the greater, good.

     In other words:

     Please remove your heads from your asses and get out from in front of the damn computer.

     Thank you, drive through…