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It's Sad to Need a Law You want me to do what? Friendly
neighborhood shaman I have no idea what's going to happen, but Earth Day seems like a propitious time to be chanted over, smoked at, and swatted with feathers and leaves. He might mix up some herbs for me to take later, although that could be a mixed blessing. A couple I know already went to see him. The wife learned she had several small things wrong with her, so the shaman gave her something to make her vomit. She gets up in the middle of the night, ingests whatever it is, and BAM, instantaneous projectile heaves. "Where did that come from?" she says she wonders every time. Whatever ailed her husband was fixed immediately. He woke up the next day uncharacteristically happy and "affectionate," according to my source, but part of her treatment requires no sex for two weeks, so... That's just one of the benefits of life in this windblown high-desert weirdo-ville, being able to call up a shaman on the phone. [Other benefits include radical involuntary downward mobility and having yourself turned inside out in ways you can't even imagine. Hang on!] Oh, your computer may do strange things, too. Take my 8600, for instance: last Friday it displayed a ridiculous Internet article that claimed the feds were considering using Passport to verify the identity of everyone who wanted info from U.S. government Web sites, hahaha! Yeah right, as if. <snicker>  NO!
Really? Oh geez :-( It gets even worse. Bill Gates wants every government in the world, not just our own compliant corporate lapdog administrators, to let Microsoft take the over onerous duty of verifying the identity of all their citizens. I think this is so outrageously vile, most people will assume it's science fiction and not get off their duffs until it's too late. That's the way the world is leaning these days, in case you haven't noticed, there apparently being no lie, no crime, no insult to the common intelligence too obvious to promote. Fortified by a renewed self-affirming zeal to fight this true evil in our midst, I saw a special issue of Macworld at the newsstand on Sunday and pounced on it. It's called "Macworld Total OS X" and I figured I'd better get it, although Mac Publishing LLC ought to be ashamed of itself for charging TEN DOLLARS for a skinny little magazine and two CDs. When I open up the plastic bag, I hope I don't find the "3-page essay" sleaze of jumbo fonts, wide line spacing, and useless graphics with big margins. [I want meat, you guys! Density, thick hard-to-read text blocks brimming with factoids, as much info-energy as possible crammed onto every page!] I will say this: if the CDs have enough essential OS X shareware goodies that I don't have to spend time searching and downloading, that alone might justify the cost. The specific conents aren't listed, of course, but I'll let you know.  I
love this place Earth Day and I have a history. (Check out this FARR SITE I wrote last April to get an idea.) I live for nature. I gave up the most comfortable lifestyle I ever had back in Maryland because too many bozos didn't give a damn. To cite just one example, I used to hike down a certain country road and count the indigo buntings in the spring, then one day new idiot homeowners bulldozed the hedgerow in front of their property and all the birds disappeared (I still can't believe it isn't a crime to destroy habitat like that). Westerners don't necessarily have more sense, but there are fewer of them. You can also drop a Super Wal-Mart out of the sky and have it just disappear. Well, almost -- depends on where it lands! But more sense? No, I can't say that. People everywhere have lost an essential connection to nature that needs to be restored so that sanity doesn't have to be legislated, a losing proposition in any case. Apple Computer is at least reputedly more concerned about treading lightly on the earth than most PC manufacturers, though I can't confirm that. I've read that underground water in many Silicon Valley locations is hideously polluted, too, the only thing "clean" about the semiconductor industry being a scarcity of visible smoke. Anyway, today is Earth Day. It's a shame that we only have one day designated to renew our acquaintance with that which gives us life, but there you have it. The way things are today, we're lucky it's still legal to pick up the trash. Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr is also the one to blame for Zoozone, Fotofeed, and JHFarr.com. Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone.
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