TRANSFORMATION BOOGIE

Man, I've got to shake off this weird mood. Help me, soooome-body! I need some boogie-juice and I want it now! Money, testosterone, megahertz, religion, strong drugs, anything: let it roll on in. . .

No wait, to hell with drugs! Can't enjoy being zonked out when you're sitting between the rails, after all. Yessir, you wanna put your guts in a blender, just set your easy chair down on the railroad tracks! Nothing like it. Don't get me wrong, though: this is a good thing. I know it is. When I stood alone in the bathroom last night and asked what I was supposed to do, "GO!" rang loudly and impatiently between my ears.

I've been bitching for years about how everybody I know seems all happy and complacent, how nobody ever wants to talk about things that really matter. (grumble, mutter) Party hearty, that's about it: meet for drinks, talk about movies and food, tell a few jokes. Hey, I need a laugh more than most people, but so little is funny anymore. I need some serious comedy! Sid Caesar can make me laugh till I cry just by twitching a few facial muscles, but let me tell ya, stupid ain't funny.

Anyway, in case you've missed it: speaking of stupid and sitting between the rails, why, there's Kosovo!

Take those Serbian "policemen" (please). Somewhere there must be a Cosmic Toilet for flushing the blood-hungry bastards off-world so they can loot and slit throats all day long without wrecking things for the rest of us. These guys have a tradition of starting world wars, you know, and they're very good at it. The Creator must have invented the cultural glue-sniffing of Serbian "nationalism" just to see how the rest of us would react -- what a joker! It does feel good to blast the swine with cruise missiles and 2000-lb.bombs, but you know what'll happen to the first captured NATO pilot, don't you? They'll strip him naked, whack off his privates, and peel his skin off in long, thin strips. The whole damn thing will be live on the Internet, too. And then where will we be?? Cowboys and Indians, that's where. And make no mistake about it, we'll have to send in the cavalry. It'll be too late for the Kosovars, though. They need a goddamned miracle, and so do we. I need a drink. I need several drinks.

I told you I had a few things to shake off! Those crazies in camo give me a real pain in the heart. I need to be taken out and shaken like a bathroom rug after a week's worth of unwanted company. I need some juice! I need a damn keeper.

I need somebody to buy the house, too. . .

Remember when the "For Sale" sign went up and I felt the stake poking into my "poor little heart"? Hah! Take the damned thing! Lay twenty or thirty grand profit on me and flush the ole homestead down the hole with those Balkan good squads! There's nothing like getting a place ready to sell to make you wish you didn't own it. Oh, it's a fine house, all right, with fabulous views. You can look out over green fields soaked with nitrates, see the dwindling forests, and watch the cute little modular homes pop up, one by one. It's just a mile and a half from the greenish brown soup of the Chesapeake Bay, where even the crabs are disappearing. (When the bottom feeders are in trouble, watch out! Don't worry, though: when the sun shines on it, the water still looks blue.)

When your realtor calls to schedule a showing, you feel like an Albanian peasant hearing his front door being smashed in! Yes, and once you start to sell your house, you see it with the eyes of a buyer. You see all the dirt, the cracks, the leaks, the peeling paint. Now you understand why those other people looked so relieved at the closing in your lawyer's office! Oh well. At least I have a house, and it hasn't been set on fire by vodka-soaked morons with machine guns.

(Wake up, jocko! The ground is shifting under your feet! Oh, these are perilous times, but raging with potential. . .)

Two years ago this summer I bought my first and only real computer, a solid gold and platinum, jewel-encrusted Power Macintosh 8600/200. Yes, yes, some of you are doing just fine with your older Macs, and I love you all, but those are sensible, modest machines. There's very little you can do to upgrade or soup up the little beauties, but you don't care, do you? You read the catalogs, look at the hardware and system requirements, and breathe a sigh of relief when you realize that new app won't run on your computers! But with my 8600, I can go mad! Stark raving bonkers!! Lose my mind completely!! Ahahahahahahahahaha! Great God Almighty, I now have four credit cards! Two hard drives! Too much RAM! Extra VRAM! A bigger cache! At least five different 3D modeling programs, none of which I can use! Ahahahahahahaha!!!! I get thousands of emails each month, sometimes 3 or 4 computer catalogs a day! I not only think different now, I am different! (I'm in debt, dammit!)

But really -- I have a life! I'm a Macintosh monster. I'm an Internet dude. I get email from Australia. I get goodies from Denmark. I get spam from God knows where. I review software and get free stuff. I'm a bleeping pioneer. I'm "in the game." Who knows where this will lead?

Well, it had better lead somewhere!

My wife quit her job. We're selling the house and leaving town. I'm writing a book, the news, this column. I'm going nuts! This is good, remember. We're gonna go live in the mountains. Do you have any idea how much fun it is to live where I do now and take a trip to the city? Do you??

Talk about a change! Every day there's a story in the back pages of the Baltimore Sun along the lines of, "so-and-so was shot 6 times while sitting in his car at such-and-such an address in the middle of the afternoon. Police have no suspects or motive for the crime and really couldn't care less." It didn't used to be this way, I know it didn't. Even the freeways are different now. The uppity suburbanites who bought property next to the road complained about the noise, so now the state has walled in the roadways! Talk about ugliness. Talk about feeling unwelcome! Now they won't even let me look at the damn trees.

The other day my wife and I were waiting at a red light in Annapolis, a fine little town ruined years ago by traffic and too many people. In front of us was a lady in a gold Lexus that cost half as much as our house. We were in my beloved '91 Nissan 240SX with 156,000 miles on its intermittently-functioning odometer. All I could think was, would it really be worth another fifty grand to be sitting forever at that traffic light, our lives oozing away second by second, in that car? We all had to wait for the light, right??

When it turned green, I knew the two of us would at least get to drive home, the final 30 miles or so on a nearly deserted two-lane road, but Ms. Gold Lexus would still be waiting at another light. The image was artificial but soothing. . .

Onward, I say! Yellow and red license plates! (I hear the current ones are green) Mountains! Wide-open spaces! Poverty and crime! What? How'd that get in there?? Oh, just one of my correspondents, committing the truth. Sounds like my brother-in-law, talking about Atlanta. Hell, no place is perfect. We could stay here forever, watch bad teevee, talk about movies and food, and listen to the soft sucking sounds of the house being eaten by mildew year after year. Or we could drink that boogie-juice, sell everything we own, look for a new place to plug in the PowerMac, and let the cat take his chances with the coyotes and the mighty puma. I'm already different. The Internet is my workplace and I can give it a shot anywhere.

Meanwhile the Serbs want to turn the clock back 600 years and we think putting the lights out in Belgrade is going to stop them. The meatgrinder is revving up, the Russians are talking tactical nukes, Microsoft and Y2K are headed for a crash, the sun's about to blow, and the stock market's never been higher. (Are you taking notes?) Have you done everything you've ever wanted to do? Why not?? Let's boogie, chil'len.

Now pass dat juice!!!

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and welcomes your comments. His own Web site, the ZOO ZONE, seemed to have attracted some business, but now it looks like our client bailed! Oh well. Would you send money to someone you've never met?

Photo Credit: burning Kosovar village shot by Louisa Gouliamkai, Agence France-Presse.

The Farr Site Forum . . .(now where did I see something about that?) Better put something down! You know how cranky Leos get without feedback.

The Farr Site archives offer links to all sixty-five columns. Read 'em now before the book comes out and save yourself a bundle!

OFFICIAL FARR SITE DISCLAIMER: 1. This is still a beautiful place to live. I know because we just took a drive on back roads down to the Bay and poked around. For about ten minutes I considered turning everything upside down again and staying here, but then I remembered the mountains and the mighty puma. And Pfiesteria (look it up)! 2. Baltimore is a grand old city and has many fine points. Did I mention it was old? 3. God loves Serbs too, but if I were in his place, my patience would be wearing awfully thin. 4. I'm in a much better mood now. Really. At least until I pick up the morning paper.

January 08, 2009