COMANDANTE KARMA TWISTS THE KNIFE!

It had been a perfectly miserable week.

There was, I concluded after intensive examination, not a single solitary ray of hope or happiness anywhere. My default perceptual mode had shifted to Total Suckiness!

Politics sucked, that was certain. The corporate plutocracy had crushed the hapless alternative would-be presidential nominees and left us with the choice of a silly frat-rat ex-president's son and Big Al, whom I actually liked but wasn't sure why. For decades I had been voting to protect this or that right but now couldn't see that we had much left to defend. I was ready to vote for Satan, but he wasn't running! Or was he?

The Internet was in a pathetic state. For one thing, Amazon.com had patented the way we push our mouse buttons and nobody gave a damn. For another, the Macintosh web scene had turned into one of those Parties from Hell where all you care about is whether you've stayed long enough to leave without insulting the hosts. Whining, bitching, and slobbering wasted bandwidth from Nova Scotia to San Francisco while untold millions yawned and went surfing for sex.

The excesses of the economy weighed heavily on my tortured soul and brought forth surrealistic horrors: Wall Street was a giant slug salt-bombed by Greenspan's minions so millions could wager on how it would writhe. Analysts tasted the foam, tracked the slime, and were worshipped like gods. People too young to shave were retiring all around me. Dot-com mania meant that NOBODY talked about the environment, even though it hadn't rained in Texas since Davey Crockett died, and when was the last time you saw a lynx or a scarlet tanager?

The culture, such as it was, offered little solace. My radio had been on all weekend with nary a backbeat to be heard! [sob] At the supermarket on Sunday morning, at least three dozen magazines proclaimed sexual secrets miraculously undiscovered in the last million years of primate evolution. I attributed this naiveté to a serious rock and roll deficiency during their editors' prep school upbringings, though the insight offered scant comfort under the circumstances. I was suffering from the same malady myself and could hardly remember what went where or why I'd want to put it there.

Sunday evening, then, loomed dark and forbidding. . .

I took a couple of painkillers and slumped in my chair to await the inevitable, brooding with an intensity that caused small birds to fall dead from nearby trees! The pitiful little thuds of their limp warm bodies bouncing off the eaves filled me with dread and caused me to wonder what sort of demon would be drawn to the display. As it turned out, I didn't have long to wait.

"HIYA, SUNSHINE! Man, you may be a sniveling, pathetic, wimpy bastard, but you sure are HELL on juncos!"

"What the -- huh?!? Oh, NO!"

(As you might imagine, the last thing I ever wanted was a visit from that erratic unpredictable meddler from the depths of cyberspace, that self-proclaimed Force for Universal Good who always leaves chaos in his wake, the mysterious and dangerous Web entity known as Comandante Karma* -- but that was exactly what I got!)

El Comandante (hereafter CK): "Well?? Are you gonna teach me that trick, or do I have to sit here and waste my time until you give yourself a stroke?"

Me: (hereafter JHF): "Never mind that, how the hell did you get in here?! Oh wait, never mind, lemme guess: my AirPort base station spontaneously connected again, right? I swear, if I were a lawyer, I'd sue their miserable asses, I would. . ."

CK: "You wouldn't stand a chance! Do you have any idea how many they have? There's a whole squad assigned just to follow Jobs around and deflect emotional injury suits. Hahahahaha!! I kill myself. . . But believe me, your little birdy stunt is NOTHIN'! (Reflecting on this sends the Comandante into a powerful psychoactive state I have never witnessed before! His eyes glow yellow-green and his chest heaves deeply as brilliant magenta flashes emanate from his rapidly flickering, pulsating form. . .) I gotta tell you, DOS-for-brains, I am really digging these new special effects!"

JHF: [anticipating] "OK, OK, can we just get this over with, so you can get your cyber-ecto-plasmic self back to wherever it is you come from?"

CK: [instantly sober] "GLADLY, wimp-boy! 'Oh, poor widdle me, I feel so bad!' HAH! Why, if you had half the brain of of a Microsoft coder, you'd realize how bad things really are! But lemme give you something else to think about:. . .POLITICS??? [shouting] GIMME A BREAK!!! Don't you know you get the government you deserve? Listen up, ballot-breath: ol' Gee Dubya was elected governor of the Great State of Texas by the voters, fair and square! Now I ask you, can millions of Texans be wrong? Hahahahaha!!! Hee-hee! Oh, I really do kill myself. As for Big Al, why, what the hell do you want? He's a tree-hugger, isn't he?? Anyway, you could send both those boys out to score and neither one would come back with oregano! 'Course, George'd pay too much for his and Al's would be better, but you get my drift."

JHF: "Well, but what about the Internet?"

CK: [mocking] " 'Well, but what about the Internet?' Man, you are a case! What ABOUT the Internet? Geez! You built it, you fix it. What do I look like, Saint Francis, Ghandi, Martin Luther King all rolled into one?? Anyway, don't worry about your precicous "Macintosh Web," boo-hoo babykins! Who cares about a bunch of endlessly pontificating, self-important dilletantes, anyway? Hey, I'll tell you something really scary: most of those people already have full-time day jobs! You realize what that means? They do that stuff when they come home! IT'S THEIR LIFE!!"

JHF: "Oh my God, you're right! I never thought of it that way, but it explains a lot, doesn't it?!"

CK: "You betcher sweet base station it does. So tell me, hotshot, have you started that novel yet? Well??"

JHF: "Novel? Oh, you mean that thing about -- uh, no, actually. Not yet."

CK: [snickering] "Uh-huh. OK, next topic! MONEY!!! I really can't believe you still resent the fact that people who work all day and night fleecing suckers have bigger bank accounts than you do. Do YOU wanna live like that?? Go find your own damn cornucopia! I swear, if I ever have to listen to this whiney-whiney crap again, I'll --"

JHF: "No, no, really, I get it, honest I do, it's just really hard sometimes. And I'm worried about the planet."

CK: "The PLANET? See here, babycakes, the 'planet' is lots more worried about you than you are about it! Or should I say "Her." Actually, I shouldn't be telling you this at all, but as long as you brought it up: HEAD FOR THE HILLS!!! Hahahahahahahaha!! Oh, I really should be locked up, but then that's impossible. Where was I? Oh yes: running away won't do the trick, anyway, you know. This is the Big Pineapple, JohnBoy. The Whole Enchilada. Any minute now this big round ball is liable to shake its skin like an old hound dog and flick all you poor bastards off into oblivion. Well, most of you anyway. A dog's not a dog without a few fleas, wouldn't seem natural. 'Course now, if everybody GETS WITH THE PROGRAM, well, you never know. . ." [Note: see Special Disclaimer below]

JHF: "What are you saying? If you mean what I think you do, I'm gonna get really worried!"

CK: "I've said too much already. Just exercise, eat right, do unto others, all that good stuff. You'll be fine. . .I think! Hahahahahahaha!!! Oh man, if I were mortal I'd need a freakin' doctor! [catching his breath] Hee-hee-hoo. Whew! I tell you. . .

JHF: "So where does this leave us?"

CK: "ROCK and ROLL, four-eyes, ROCK and ROLL! Make your OWN MUSIC! Heal the sick, feed the poor, fix the Internet, make all the moolah you want and GET WITH THE PROGRAM! And if I were you, I'd hurry up.(Hahahaha, gotcha!) ROCK and ROLL, I said! It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it. Gotta be rock and roll music --"

JHF: "-- if you wanna dance with me, boom-boom-boom!"

CK: "Oh, so you DO have a clue in that self-absorbed mush you call a brain! I'm stunned. In fact, I'm outa here! Now SHAPE UP, DAMMIT!! This new photronic transport is kinda tricky to operate, and if I have to come back anytime soon, why. . ."

(A bright yellow flash and fierce orange-red glow mark El Comandante's surprisingly nondestructive redigitalization. The AirPort base station blazes an intense phosphorescent blue, shimmers, and melts over the edge of the desk like a Dali watch. No hospitalization required this time, just a new modem!)

JHF: [semi-hysterical] "Wait a minute, don't torture me like that! What happened to the old third degree? Why did you show up now? Was it the birds?? And just how did you know what I was THINKING ABOUT, anyway?"

CK: [distorted and distant but still piercing] "BRAIN COOKIES, idiot-breath! The damn things are all over the place out here! [fading] You wouldn't believe the crap I have to wade through every day. . ."

He was gone!

But had he ever really been here? Well, there was that melted base station, but who would ever believe the cause of that? Oh well.

It was time to dig out my old turntable and figure out where I'd stashed the vinyl. It was time for a lot of things, actually, and there would be no more Internet work tonight. Be good, Johnny, be good.

(And in the morning, sweep up those juncos, please. . .)

John H. Farr edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and invites your comments. The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past two years' worth of columns. John also writes his WebFaust column for MacAddict.com and a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM. His personal Zoo Zone site, an animated GIF wonderland, is aging rather well, we think.

* Not familiar with the our visitor? Here are all the previous Comandante Karma appearances: Interview: Comandante Karma, El Comandante Returns, Comandante K: Whine Patrol, In Mysterious Ways, and Millennium Hijack.

Official FARR SITE SPECIAL DISCLAIMER: A friend in Scotland has emailed to say he doesn't like the "doomsday visions" that pop up occasionally on these pages. Perhaps they are getting tiresome. In any event, since the environment is still on a fast track to hell, I conclude that very few are paying attention, doomsday visions or no. It may be that something else is needed to jolt humankind into an awareness of the interconnectedness of all things. For students of these issues, we note that virtually every trumpeted prediction of "earth changes," crustal displacement, and ecological mega-catastrophe that was supposed to occur in the last few years has failed utterly to materialize. Hey, maybe if we get past the cycle-ending destruction marked in the Mayan calendar for sometime in the next quarter century, we'll be home free. It's a thought...

To be notified whenever the column is updated, just send a message titled "Subscribe FSN" to this address.

.

November 20, 2008