Do I need a new computer? I don’t know that I really do, but I’m about to lay out a bunch of money to buy one. I don’t plan on playing games with it, and apart from the fact that I tend to run a lot of programs at once, I don’t really tax my current system all that much. Sure, it takes some time to load this or that program, but not by the standards I grew up with. Things used to damn well take time to load, and I’m not just saying that because modern society makes me feel like an old man in my mid twenties. I’m used to a little load time. I like to think that I have a rich enough inner life to keep myself going for the few seconds it takes to load a damn program. So that leaves me with screen brightness, memory, and… you know… the fact that new computers are cool.

I already have a use for the old one, the one I’m typing this on, so it’s not a total waste, but it seems like a bit of one. New computers aren’t cheap and there’s nothing else on the list besides hiking books that tops $100. In fact, computer stuff aside, I could get everything else for less than the computer.

I generally try to stay out of the big ass TV race. Why is it the computer race always pulls me back? (Though I’m not getting top of the line here.) Over the past several years, the way we use computers has not generally been that much harder on the computer, unless you play video games, which have trended at their usual pace.

The wonders of modern technology.

Some school in the area of her home town signed on for a grant program that has their elementary school at the forefront of testing exotic fruit experiments. The remainders make it to the store.

Now, I have no idea if this was a GMO, or just a breeding accident that someone realized tasted like fakey grape. I don’t really care. All I know is that it made me uncomfortable. I felt old. Some things just shouldn’t be done. The fact that these two apples made the entire dining room reek of jolly rancher only exacerbated my fear.

But, remembering that all good technology is used to piss off old people, I decided to soldier in and taste the damn thing.

Really, I have to wonder about the thing. It doesn’t really taste like grapes, or even fake grapes, when you bite in. Mostly you get apple flavor, something close to a honeycrisp, maybe a braeburn. Hidden somewhere in the front of the flavor is grape jolly rancher flavor. I don’t know how they do it, but it’s like when you looked at crystal pepsi and it tasted different. I’m not sure I would have tasted anything, if I hadn’t been told this was a grapple.

So, really there is only one use for these things. Here’s how you get the most out of a grapple.

1) Find a grapple and some form of powerful hallucinogen.

2) Drug a friend.

3) When your friend is high, feed him the grapple. Don’t tell him that it’s been engineered to taste like that. Tell him that an army of tiny gnomes, carrying miniature grape jolly rancher candies, rubs the apple down before each bite. If he looks fast enough, tell him, he can see them rush in just before the apple reaches his mouth.

Science at work folks. We are at the forefront of a brave new world, where we take real food, and make it taste like fake food. The children at the school, I hear, were fans of this apple. Who can blame them? It tastes like what they know.

So, today was one of those days, where I sat in the cube farm and did a little daydreaming. I happened upon a link at LifeHacker that was supposedly about choosing a place to live as a freelancer. It took me here to a Forbes article.

Now, in this article they say that it’s relatively easy to get $100,000 as a skilled and dedicated freelancer. Fair enough, I don’t really know these things. But then they say that earning the second $100,000, so you can be middle class in California or New York. *blink* *blink* One quick trip to a Wikipedia article (of course) set me aright on the facts. Now, lets say this guy is right, and you need at least $150,000 to be middle class in one of these areas. If you look at the graph in the wikipedia article, the one about a fifth of the way down, that tracks income distribution, a little over 5% of our nation would qualify as middle class, if they lived in New York City or somewhere in California. At that point, I have to question the metric by which middle class is defined.

Note: The Forbes article is from 2005, so be sure to adjust up about 6% for cost of living inflation.

Jeffrey Goldberg has this article in The New Yorker. It covers some of Walmart’s campaign to improve their image. A beautiful moment occurs when an employee brags about eating at Subway, but clams up when it is pointed out that he makes millions of dollars. There is also a great bit where a former Democratic campaign aide trails off halfway through admitting he sold out his principals for cash.

The latest New Yorker had an article on the state of the movies. It contemplates movie theaters where I might get a good martini, sit for a while and chat or read a book. Then I’ll wander into the theater and watch a movie. Not only does that appeal to me, (Cocktails and the movies? Together?) but it also makes me excited, like the author, and probably naively, for a future in which the movies can something close to what nostalgia tells me I wanted them to be, with smaller budgets, that don’t risk as much money, and some better plots wouldn’t hurt, but who am I to talk.

Warning. Do not listen if you understand fractions, basic math, are pregnant, or are thinking of becoming pregnant. I had to pour myself a drink to finish listening. It makes me want to go stab people. It also makes me so happy that I am not with Verison. If you have Verison please do listen. You should hear this.

I would love for one of these people to let this go to collections. It would be great to see one of these reps dragged into court, where they will be dealing with a judge, who we can assume will understand fractions. Having gone through law school, I think its safe to assume that they got out of elementary school.

It was a nasty looking day outside. I went and bought four kinds of bitters from the liquor store. I had intended to buy six or more, but they didn’t have all the brands that I wanted to try. It’s sad when you don’t have all the bitters you want for winter.

Mark went with me, and he bought some lillet. When we both got home we mixed drinks, 20th Century coctail, Sazerac, and Manhattans. It was good, except for the drink I mixed with amaretto. I don’t know why I bought that. It really did seem like a good thing to get. Then I wasted scotch mixing it into this horrible drink called a godfather. Mark poured it down the sink when I wasn’t looking. That man saved my life.

I also went to see Stranger Than Fiction, which was pretty good. It didn’t change my life, but I did enjoy it. I was a little intoxicated while I was watching it, see the previous paragraphs, and there were a couple of moments where I had ideas for things of my own to write, but alcohol swept them away in the great mass of other thoughts, that probably weren’t worth writing in the first place. I was frustrated for a moment when I was walking out of the theater. That was followed by me remembering how many of my ideas I did remember had not been fully written yet.

I did at one point lean in and chat with a friend of mine who’s at the University of MN for creative writing. We agreed that the movie made writers and publishers look hunormously more wealthy than was realistic. I wish I lived in a huge apartment with wood flooring and modern furniture. No, wait, I like my apartment. It’s cozy.

OOPS

Three T-shirts are named in the letter (yet not the robot evolution one, which is odd). The art is heavily pixelated in two of them, but there’s no text, which might make it hard to get it through as satire or parody. Then again, at least one of those two shirts barely looks like what Lucasarts says it does. It seems that they have the copyright on two curves and a circle, when joined by two dots? Come on. Chewie is My Co-Pilot is also easy to defend, as it’s clearly satire, a defense that has repeatedly held up in court.

Sadly R Stevens is but a maker of comics, and will likely not have the money to fight this. For what is likely a limited time, you can buy a three pack of the shirts and celebrate a right that copyright law, and the occasional large bank account, is rapidly stripping.

That first post I linked reminded me of a class I took in college on the publishing industry. In the class, the instructor, who had worked in the industry for some time, and was an alum, was asked about reaching the upper tiers of editing, where you actually get to choose what gets published and what doesn’t. “Well,” he said, and this was a while ago, so I’m not going to get it quite right, “you aren’t at an Ivy League school. So you should probably just give up on that.” It was one of the most resigned moments I’ve ever seen. I could practically taste the crushed ambition in the room.