GIBBLE GOBBLE, ONE OF US

The Night of the Living Dead just can't compete with this. . .

It's really curious, isn't it? 90-year-old ex-President Reagan lies in the hospital with a broken hip and reporters write of his "recovery." Meanwhile, the country is about to inaugurate a president who wasn't even elected, a baby-boomer who nonetheless promises to resurrect the awful 80's. Is this real? Who's dreaming whom?!

(Helloooo? Dubya?? "My g-generation," remember?)

It boggles the mind: right-wing crazies running Justice and Interior, and the new (old) Secretary of Defense wants to spend billions on a missle defense shield. Hey, you never know, the French might start lobbing ICBMs. (Saddam Hussein will just send in a pair of 18-year-old zealots with smuggled Russian nukes in the trunk of an old Borgward.) Geez! Before the election, the Supreme Court ruled that roadblocks for drugs were unconstitutional, but now Ashcroft and Falwell will have the poor bastards burned at the stake (and they thought that tossing in Florida would save them, hah!).

Great Mithras, we're going BACKWARDS! What'll it be next, federally mandated removal of pollution control equipment, "The only good caribou is a dead caribou," and heaven help us all, LETTING MICROSOFT OFF THE HOOK?? ( Uh, yeah.) Let's see now: they're also going to "concentrate on Central America," I read somewhere. Egad! Wasn't El Salvador's recent earthquake bad enough? The CIA must still have a warehouse full of those textbooks on how to throw dissidents out of helicopters. [slap, slap] Am I awake yet? I can't believe it. And the worst thing is: HE DIDN'T WIN, folks! [slap, slap, slap] It's no use, he's still on the cover of TIME! I'll just have to stay away from newsstands and dentists' offices until it all blows over.

At least we can count on one thing: Steve Jobs, yessiree! He may be a freaking zillionaire -- and can you really trust someone who'd turn up his nose at a fine green chile cheeseburger? -- but at least he talks like all my friends! I was beside myself with gratitude to learn from Wired News that when Jobs dropped in at a meeting of Apple resellers at Macworld last week, "every sentence he uttered -- every single one -- contained an expletive." What a relief! Here's an example (send the kids to bed!). Speaking of Apple's abysmal education market sales this year, the CEO said (and I quote):

And so you did, brotha Jobs, so you did, but that's all right, I forgive you. Selling decent computers to school boards is like getting Dick Cheney on a mountain bike, hahaha. But why I really forgive you is that you're one of us, oh frabjous joy!

Yup. I'll even forgive the turtleneck and the tofu, and I don't care if you never let me ride on your jet. I know that when it finally comes down, when it really counts, you'll serve up the "f" word, rock & roll, and titanium PowerBooks. Thanks, man! Yes, I know, I made fun of the Silver Slab when you showed it to the world, probably because I was pissed at not getting any audio on my streaming QuickTime during your speech (make it work at 28kbps and I'll spit-polish your veggie knives!). Imagine how frustrating it was to be a hotshot Macintosh news editor, sitting here in front of my hopped-up 8600, watching the usual herky-jerky crap without any sound! ("Awwww, man!")

I tried everything, too: restarted, dropped out, reconnected, rebuilt, zapped, updated, you name it. Nada! And just try reading the projected presentation at a slant in a teeny little video window. Can't be done. So there I was, reduced to waiting for the Apple site to update so I could see what The Thing looked like, except I couldn't, not even then. What rotten lousy pictures -- I don't care how thin it is, I wanna SEE it! Let's have a nice three-quarter view, and some closeups of things like that machined titanium power button. Thin is for wankers, I want HEFT! POWER!! ALL-OBLITERATING COOL!!! I want something that I can pull out in an airport waiting lounge that'll make all the cellphone-heads in black overcoats poop in their pants and fall over dead. Will this do it? I dunno. Better send me one quick, so I can review it.

In the meantime, as should be obvious from the fabulous free photographs adorning this page, it has finally snowed here in northern New Mexico. What's more, we're in for a Big One (so they say):

"The approaching Pacific storm system is forecast to generate significant winter weather late Monday night through Tuesday across the mountains and highlands of northern and northeast New Mexico. There is a high potential for significant accumulations of snowfall across the Sangre De Cristo, Jemez, and Sandia/Manzano Mountains into the northeast highlands. Anyone planning to travel in the mountains or into The highlands should take a winter survival kit and be prepared for hazardous winter travel. Similar storms in the past have resulted in prolonged road closures. "

"Prolonged road closures"? Won't make much of a difference, anyway. I tried four or five times to get the truck out of the driveway yesterday and couldn't. That was with only 4 - 6 inches of the white stuff, but on a steep hillside. The Nissan 240SX, with its spiffy new snow tires, scampered out like a cat with its tail on fire, but anything deeper than that is going to stop it cold.

Anyway, the isolation may be therapeutic. No television here, Zoroaster be praised, and the coronation is next week. The only way I'd get to see it would be the newspaper, and if I can't get down the mountain for the snow, well... Ooops,almost forgot! There's always the Internet, and CNN will probably have a video of the blessed event, hopefully in some unwatchable streaming format. Maybe it'll rain in D.C., too, and maybe while Dubya stands there blinking the drops out of his eyes, thinking of all the other stuff that'll come raining down over the next four years, he'll have a change of heart and 'fess up like our man Steve!

Just imagine:

Martin Luther King Day

I remember the day he was assassinated like it was yesterday, and the kick in the gut still hurts. He was the first real-life hero this boy ever had.

If Martin were alive today, he'd have had something unforgettable to say about the voters turned away from closed polls in Missouri and elsewhere, the outright intimidation and effective disenfranchisement of Floridians who weren't allowed to correct improperly punched ballots, the mostly black precincts saddled with outdated voting equipment, and all the rest. (If everyone's vote had been cast & counted, the above column wouldn't have been written.) God bless, Martin. God bless!

John H. Farr also edits the news for Applelinks.com and invites your comments (especially compliments). The Farr Site Archives will take you to the past three years of columns. . . John also writes a monthly op-ed page column called "El Emigrante" for Horse Fly in Taos, NM and has just redone THE ZOOZONE . (Over 70 pictures of beautiful New Mexico can be seen at the Zoozone News Photorama .)

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