Never Give An Internet An Even Break
Saturday, October 21, 2006 • 04:06:38 AM EDT
The Internet is not like a crack dealer. Granted, I don't know any crack dealers. But I do know the Internet, and frankly, I'd rather have a crack dealer in my neighborhood.
Look at it this way: a crack dealer (or crystal meth dealer, if you're running for reelection in November and you prefer to portray yourself as a Simple Man Of The People) is going to be the first homeowner on the street to take his empty garbage cans in from the curb on trash day. He's the very last member of the community who'd run a leaf blower at some ungodly-early hour of the morning or allow his dogs to crap all over somebody else's yard.
Your kids will get their Frisbee back when it lands on the neighborhood crack dealer's roof. Indeed, the kids will fall over each other trying to be the first to shovel the neighborhood crack dealer's walk or rake his leaves before anybody else. He's the least-likely to welch on the payment…also, all he has is hundreds, and he's too distracted and twitchy to wait to collect his $85 in change.
Yes, a crack dealer is a valuable addition to any community because he, above all other professionals, is sure to focus obsessively on your needs and keeping you happy. He knows that he's just one set of noisy wind chimes away from an anonymous noise complaint and a casual visit from the oblivious local constabulary, and this enforces an ongoing observance of The Golden Rule.
You don't get that sort of brotherly love from the Internet. Case in point:
Here you see David Bowie singing "The Man Who Sold The World" on a 1979 broadcast of "Saturday Night Live." Even better, you can hear him as well. Though because this is Bowie (God bless 'im) you'd still be having a pretty good time even if you lost the audio. Because you'd be watching three minutes of video of a man with mismatched eyes wearing a fiberglass tuxedo, being backed by two cross-dressing space mimes. You could hardly feel cheated, under those circumstances.
It's called "Showmanship," people. Honestly, I don't know where some of these performers get off, taking the stage in their street clothes and then sullenly grinding their way through the setlist with one eye on the video prompter and half of their thoughts focused on how much money their latest home remodel is costing them.
See, going out to see a live show requires a considerably greater investment of cash and determination than simply staying home and listening to the CD with a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos balanced on your belly. If the performance doesn't improve upon that experience, then dammit, I'm throwing a folding chair. It'll make me feel a whole lot better…plus, when I'm tasered and then dragged off by event security, at least the rest of the crowd will finally be getting some sort of real show. If I'm still conscious, I'll try to toss out a couple of verses of "Radar Love."
And if God forbid the performer is one of those feebs who takes the stage in his or her bare feet, I'm not going to even bother tipping out the seat's occupant first. Bare feet! I don't get that. Did this person finish in the Top Four of the Dogpatch edition of "American Idol"? Or did he run straight here to the arena after breaking out of a court-ordered rehab?
I consider myself a Bowie fan…and yet, I'd never heard that one before. "To the iTunes store!" I declared, striking a suitably-heroic pose. And then I dutifully held down the Command key and tapped "Tab" three times.
Well, dang. "The Man Who Sold The World" is off of his third album, released in 1970, and the original arrangement and performance underscores all of the reasons why every time there's a state ballot initiative to make it legal to trap, kill, and burn hippies for fuel, the measure passes by an enthusiastic margin. The "SNL" version is edgy, innovative, evocative. The version on the iTunes Store gets its ass kicked even by the Thorazine-fueled Nirvana cover.
I mean, no offense to Nirvana fans…but Kurt Cobain wouldn't know what to do with a German cross-dressing space-alien countertenor if the aforementioned GCDSACT were also a licensed electrician and a fuse blew in the recording studio. And if you've seen and heard that video, you'll agree that a solid GCDSACT adds a certain zip to any proceeding.
The man's name is Klaus Nomi. If not for the sad fact that he's commonly cited as the first celebrity to die from AIDS — at a time when such a diagnosis meant instant and total ostracization by a world that understood absolutely nothing about the disease, except that it was terminal and somehow communicable — I'd say that he was pretty shrewd to die when he did. He had a couple of well-regarded albums, but it was still too early to tell whether he'd still have a career if he were forced to get by without the makeup and the hair and the fiberglass tuxedo.
Apparently, this recording isn't available anywhere in any form, other than the mono and illegal posting on YouTube.
What I'm getting at with this whole tale is that you'd never get this sort of behavior from a crack dealer. When a dealer hooks you on a product, he's willing to supply you with it immediately and regularly, starting three minutes after your first dosage and ending approximately three minutes before either of you are arrested or killed. But the Internet seems to think it's funny to hook you on a great song that you can't actually get anywhere.
David Bowie: The Ultimate Mean Girl
Sunday, October 22, 2006 • 12:20:08 PM EDT
What I Learned from Reader Response to Friday's Post:
1) My readership includes many cruel, cruel people, men and women with shards of chilled, black obsidian where a human heart ought to be. Yes, I hadn't posted anything in a month and you were right to point that out. But — and my Mom confirms this — I am so a productive member of Society who's worthy of love. That was just cold, man.
Mom didn't go so far as to reassure me that a great many people would care if I suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth, but even so, I bet one of you feels pretty darn foolish right now.
2) My demographic also includes many (many) David Bowie fans, and a surprising number who already knew dashed-well who Klaus Nomi was. My coffers are now replete with bootleg recordings, thanks much. These will nicely supplement the CD that I ordered from Amazon late last week.
That Saturday Night Live video inspired another new feature for my AppleScript blog app. Now, if I'm on YouTube and I see something that's nifty enough to share with y'all, all I have to do is click "Embed YouTube Video" from Safari's "Scripts:YellowText" submenu. Viz, another example of YouTube Bowie-ey goodness:
This clip is the reason why I've added Ricky Gervais' "Extras" to my NetFlix queue.
It also illustrates why his David Brent character on "The Office" was so compelling. For all of Brent's bluster and idiocy and arrogance and insensitivity, everyone around him could sense that he was probably the most vulnerable man in England, and that one comment could send him into a weeklong sulk.
This clip represents the sweaty nightmare of anyone who lives even the barest trace of self-doubt. It illustrates the point that junior high never ends. It's just that the clothes get better and the playground gets bigger and sometimes, if you're extremely unlucky, it's not a random Mean Girl who somehow psychically tunes in to your Demon Inner Voice and casually repeats it all for the world to hear: it's David Freaking Bowie.
Dam and Blast
Monday, October 30, 2006 • 03:15:18 PM EST
Canny readers of this blog spot items like the preceding one and immediately think "Ah! Ihnatko is on the move, eh?" Because yes, a demo of CWOBber in front of a live studio audience almost always implies that your correspondent is spending a few days brushing his teeth with a folding toothbrush and wondering how the hell he managed to not pack the battery charger for a $1300 camera.
Greetings from — hang on, let me check the TV; there's a channel that does nothing but reel off nerdy navigational information from the ship's bridge — here we go: 21° 28.13'N 85° 17.58' W. This translates in human terms as "Somewhere in the Caribbean between Key West, Florida and Belize City, Belize." The important information is that the captain and crew of the Veendam seem to be doing a fine job of keeping the ship on the dry and breezy side of the ocean, which is perfectly all right by me.
Let's all take a minute or two to think about the name of this ship and the many ways that a passenger might incorporate puns into his daily life. Begin with "I can't remember what dock we need to be at; I just know it's some dam ship in the Holland America line" and proceed from there.
Yes, technically I'm on a cruise ship. But I can't say for sure because honestly, I haven't seen daylight since I boarded on Saturday, y'see.
An 8 AM flight to Tampa meant having to flee my home at 5. The idea of getting some sleep Friday night was like a New Year's resolution to finally start a gourmet cookie business: made in frank earnest on December 31, and provoking an embarrassed laugh on January 1.
Suffice to say that as I boarded a shuttle bus to the airport, I was about as useful and capable of independent self-aware thought as an empty toner cartridge, and half as desirable to sit next to on a three-hour flight. I got to Tampa, made it to the cruise terminal, and zombied my way through an (unusually) huge wait to check in to my cabin.
All throughout the slings and arrows of outrageous bureaucracy I forcibly reminded myself that when one is severely short on sleep, one of the first casualties is good manners. So I report with no small pride that even when the last barrier to boarding the ship proved to be a full, airport-style security checkpoint, my sole response was merely to flash a very dark glare at the security guy. The one that says "Sir, if you truly do think I'm carrying a gun, why on earth would you want to provoke me like this?"
And then I grimly proceeded to unpack two laptops, unsling my SLR, un-pocket two pocket cameras and an iPod, unwind my headphones from my neck, disgorge my coinage, and my pens, along with my last fifteen grams of determination to continue to be nice to people.
Truly, every moment between boarding the ship at 4:20 Saturday and right now (10:38 AM Monday) has been devoted to either sleep or MacMania classes. Nearly all of my talks were scheduled for the first day of the cruise. Which works out well for yours truly; I spoke for five hours yesterday and the rest of this trip will be almost like a vacation. I'm participating in a nightly Q&A and a couple of panels, but there aren't any responsibilities ahead that require me to spend a couple of late-night hours fussing over my slides and my handouts.
There's a certain peril involved with speaking at a conference on a cruise ship: if you lay a massive egg, you'll see your audience every day during breakfast, lunch and dinner for an entire week. And there's no charge for food, so if there's an impulse to throw a big sloppy ball of tuna salad, why suppress it?
No worries, though; everything went well. I did make a dumb rookie mistake though. My morning session was an introduction to the Mac OS. I call it "The Ground-Floor Guide to the Mac," warning people that turning the machine on was only the second topic. Apparently I forgot to convert to Metric time because I thought it was supposed to run for three hours, not just two and a half.
Um…oops.
Fortunately, I'd intentionally planned it out so that things would get increasingly less-fundamental as we lurched forward, and by the time 2.5 hours rolled around (which was when someone came in and told me they needed the room) I'd just finished discussing the last of the Compulsories. Still: damn and blast. Bad dog; no biscuit.
Ha, ha. It's a cruise ship: there will always be biscuits. Delivered straight to your room underneath three scoops of ice cream and drizzled with hot fudge and bacon. Don't be silly.
I enjoy giving these Intro classes. Most of the talks I give are either brand-new topics (for which I write a brand-new show), or talks that I've given so often that they've been road-tested and buffed to a showroom-finish. But every Intro class is a bit different. I start off with the same enormous outline that contains every feature and subject that I could possibly present. The night before, I decide what needs to go in and what I'd like to try to get to, and which topics I'm going to throw away on-the-fly if it looks like the crowd is already fairly hip.
And then there are always new opportunities to make the thing better. I got up fairly early on Sunday morning and found myself huddled in one of my cabin's closets with my camera and a MacBook, shooting pictures of the startup process. Each one of those momentary screens means something; should people know that? Well, this one time, let's assume that they should.
But the class went very well, despite the screech of the brakes at the very end. I also seem to remember cheerfully asking "So! Any Catholics in the house, tonight?" at some point. I'm going to wait to see the feedback forms before I decide if that was a good impulse or not.
Oh, it's coming back to me: I demonstrated some feature or some trick that actually provoked a startled and delighted gasp from the audience. I mused that I ought to go on eBay and buy a set of little bells, like the ones the altar servers shake during Mass when the priest holds aloft the Communion wafer and announces "The body and blood of Christ."
Like one of the central miracles of a 2000-year-old faith, some features of Mac OS X are so incredible that they merit a little extra showmanship after the Big Reveal. That's all I was suggesting. If the International Council of Former Catholics Who Feel That They Can Make Those Kind Of Jokes chooses to revoke my privileges as a result, it was a worthy sacrifice.
I was terribly pleased with my evening session: two hours on the subject of Things That Every Mac User Should Try Before They Die. This was a catchall of features, ideas, and techniques that too few users know about, in my opinion. When I fly out somewhere and give talks, I'm not looking to buttress my ego (it's merely a very important background process, like the window manager). As I prepare and deliver my talks I'm hoping to leave the audience thinking that they didn't waste their time and so a comment like "This was worth the whole cost of the conference" leaves me in an extremely good mood.
∴
Now, about this "smelling like a goat" business. True. Very true. But of course, I'm utterly blameless; context is everything and I assure you that I am the Nelson Mandela of spicy body aroma, convicted of trangressions provoked by circumstances of injustice.
This is my third MacMania cruise. On Sunday, my two classes were separated by six hours during which the ship would be docked in Key West. I spent four hours tramping around with my camera ("tramping" in the old-fashioned sense of wandering around idly as well as the thing were you take pictures of women in halter tops showing off their butt tattoos).
Temps were in the mid-Seventies. I sweated clear-through (I almost wrote "clean-through," which provoked a bitter chuckle) my shirt and undershirt and made damned-sure that I got back to the ship with plenty of time left to take a shower and change clothes before my 6 PM class.
It turns out that I had wished upon a monkey's paw. What I should have declared was "I'm going to get back to the ship with plenty of time to take a shower and change clothes, and I also declare that I will not turn on the taps and discover that Maintenance has shut off all the water."
So what could I do? The ship has squirty hand-sanitizer machines everywhere. Yes, stripping off in the lobby and lotioning my entire naked body with antibacterial gel would have solved the personal hygiene problem but it would have put countless elderly passers-by straight off their Lipitor. I changed my clothes, I took a "dry" shower of sorts, and then I buttered myself with my deodorant stick…and then I commended my soul to God and headed out of my cabin.
Key West was a lot of fun. It seems like I spend one shore day on each of these cruises with no agenda apart from wandering around an unfamiliar port city with a camera and the freedom to take my time getting a perfect photo of a beaded-glass monkey. I ate lunch at Jimmy Buffet's restaurant but I couln't bring myself to order the Cheeseburger In Paradise…even though what I desired most on this Earth was for somebody to grind up a cow, hold it over a fire, and then serve whatever remains on a bun. With fries.
I also spent a solid hour or so at Ernest Hemingway's house. I really, really wanted to see a typewriter that he actually used. I was thinking about my relationship with Lilith. Did Hemingway had the same sort of attachment to his writing tools? Could you see a patch of bare metal on the side of it, where he'd rest his hand in between thoughts, just like Lilith has a patchwork of scratches next to the trackpad where the buckle from my watch rubs against the wristpad?
Reverent as all get-out: good form, lad. But later in the day, I and some other people were discussing the man's tipple of choice. Somebody wondered "Did Hemingway drink Vodka?"
"Hey, the guy drank buckshot," I said. "On that basis, I suppose that nothing would have been off the menu."
(Let's just move on.)
I happily report that I was more in awe of the typewriter than the penny-squishing machine outside the gift shop. Still, let's not completely gloss over the coolness of a squished penny with Ernest Hemingway's face embossed on it. Will I ever become so beloved by Humanity, will I ever achieve so much within this mortal span, that one day I'll deserve such a tribute?
This is should be your goal in life, dear readers: through your deeds and example, provoke somebody to commission a squished-penny machine in your honor. And every time some random visitor is eager and delighted to put in fifty-one cents and get just one (non-negotiable) molecule of currency in return, well, that's just another feather in your set of angel wings.
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