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Holding down the fort
Here I am on my own still, going into the second week. Maybe I should do like Charles does with OS X and go with "Bachelor Odyssey, Day 11," or something like that. I'm doing pretty well, considering. I swept the floor this morning and I've already done a couple of loads of laundry. You won't find me having trouble with this kind of housekeeping, because until I went beserk three years ago and told my wife it would be all right for her to quit her job so we could move to New Mexico, I was not only senior editor for Applelinks.com but also the Mother of all House-Husbands. (Somehow that doesn't sound quite right, but I'll let it pass.) Since then I've been so freaked out trying to crawl my way back to the middle class that I stopped taking care of things like the dust buildup behind the faucets in the bathroom. It got so bad, my wife even went back to vacuuming on her own. Now that she's taken off on an extended sabbatical to recharge her soul, I have to comport myself like one to whom bachelorhood is more than just an aberration. I'm stuck with it for a while, in other words.

I remember when I was single and lived in an apartment connected to my landlord's real estate office. He sometimes shared the only bathroom in the building with me and could always tell when I was expecting a "guest" because I'd actually clean the toilet (I may be dumb but I'm not stupid). Now that I'm older and find myself alone until the fall, I clean the bathroom just to keep from hearing myself say, "LOOK at that, you sorry sonofabitch! Do you want people to throw stones at you? And suck in that gut while you're at it!" Which reminds me, I haven't shaved yet today. [short pause ensues] Ah, that's better.

This time alone is probably good for me, in lots of ways. I get to eat all the bacon I want and sleep until ten, hooray. Something else I can finally do is upgrade the tangerine iBook. This week the nice delivery man will bring me extra RAM and a package of screen cleaners so I won't have to do the heavy breathing and wipe-it-with-my-shirtsleeve bit, and then I can change the operating system. I can hardly wait to hear a certain lady sit down to check her email once again and shriek, "AAGHH! What's THIS?!"

"That's OS X, my dear. I'm told it's easy and you'll like it."

 

Just don't look 'em in the eye
It's been a hard week on the news front. Apple-wise, there isn't much to say these days except that things are so awful in the industry that even Cupertino's hurting. Oh, they're still making money, just not as much. The boardroom boys are raking in the dough by selling stock, as anyone with piles of options and a modicum of sense is wont to do. All perfectly legit you understand, and doubtless well-deserved, though the contrast with my own affairs is surely giving God a belly-laugh. At least our favorite computer maker's on the up & up, as far as anybody knows. This is one area where "thinking different" really counts, and boy I'm glad it does.

A lot of companies aren't, you see. On the national level, so far this year almost a thousand corporations have been forced to readjust their balance sheets (now there's an oxymoron) because of excessively inventive accounting practices, i.e. lying through their teeth. And now that "Hey, the other guys are doing it!" has just been named the 11th Commandment or something close to it, one can only hope that other countries really are the pagan fiends we make them out to be and pay no heed to Moses' legacy. I'm talking about the new "shoot 'em first & whack the leader" policy, a doctrine I have trouble reconciling with the good-guy, white-hat cowboy films I used to love. Imagine the Lone Ranger riding into town and killing anyone who might be set to rustle cattle, before a single head has disappeared. Talk about a short movie...

Never mind the international touring teams of 11th Commandment assassins (no wonder Cheney needs a bunker), what about pre-emptive strikes by rival businesses? Microsoft already does this, true, but no one's fighting back. What if something changes, though? Surely the ranks of ego- and finance-crushed developers will yield at least a few good candidates for "suicide erasers," hardy souls who crash into Redmond server farms wearing portable electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generators. One of these could show up in your office any day now. (There he is, lunging for your hard drive! -- "WATCH OUT, he's got a MAGNET!") Closer to home, you might be crawling through the mall with bags of designer clothing tied to your ankles, dodging bullets from competing franchises. If that Land's End manager looks like she's about to put pedal pushers on sale a day early, what's a Gap guy to do, just sit there?

 

Showing up is half the fight
But back to the news: I said a couple silly things this week and caught hell from certain quarters demanding journalistic excellence. A tall order for the semi-voluntary corps of writers making up most of the Mac Web, but that's to be expected and happens all the time. You wouldn't believe the hectoring I get about what's owed to readers and whether I'm delivering: "Do the research! Ask me first! Check your sources! THINK!"

To some extent the call is right: I only have the time to point some folks to what looks good and really have no business holding forth on things I know nothing about. One can't just produce a URL, however. I have to say something. Take a viewpoint, add some color, sing a song, and do it all at breakneck speed. Call it creative indexing or news blogging, perhaps. But this isn't journalism and never was. One could make it so, in the same way one could take a pile of sticks, sit outside in public view and learn to make a cabinet, hoping all the while to be hired by as a designer for IKEA or maybe someone really good. Your heart had best be in it, and you'll need a trust fund, too, unless you're simply dedicated and fanatical enough to work all day and never eat. On the other hand, if you look at some of what's supposed to be the best, the part-time volunteering mob of good guys filling up the space at Mac sites everywhere are pretty freakin' good, sometimes. What do I know, maybe this is journalism. But if you want investigative reporting, your're in the wrong place. I think that's been declared illegal now, in any case, hahaha.

I'm not into making cabinets, and capitalism bores me. I just don't think mankind was "born to buy," much less to sell -- at least I wasn't, or I'd be doing a better job of it by now. Not that this is evil stuff, however. People have just about convinced me that Microsoft's not evil, just huge, blind, and ultimately stupid. (Read that again and you might hear "hu-" and "b" and "s," which almost mispells hubris. I hope that's not where this stuff leads, but the Mayan calendar shows heavy weather up ahead and my umbrella's full of holes.) Options, market share, and QuickTime bandwidth leave me gasping for air. Hopalong Cassidy would read the business news today and ride his horse straight off a cliff. The Cisco Kid would not wait for Pancho. I'm still here but getting restless.What I'm good at is being blown away by awesomeness and telling you about it... Hmm. [scribbling furiously on notecard]Mountains are awesome, doggone it. That's why I put them here this week. While you wait for next week's dispatches from the front, you can have a good laugh over my cramming OS X onto a vintage iBook and losing all my sweetheart's files:

"But look babes, the windows have little colored buttons on them! Honey?"

I may be cleaning toilets longer than I think.

 

  "Grack!"

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr will be posting most of the above pictures and more at Fotofeed.com. (If the site looks like something the dog threw up, you need to upgrade your browser.)

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June 17: "Magnum Mysterium" June 10: "Six Weeks Before the Mast" June 3: "Hair, Skin, and Bare Feet" May 27: "I Went on a Trip to Mingus" May 20: "Creative Procrastination" May 13: "It's Ten O'clock!" May 6: "Sagebrush Saga" Apr. 29 "Universe of Lies" Apr. 22: "Earth Day All the Time" Apr. 15: "Oh, THOSE Taxes!" Apr. 8: "Turn Left at the Llamas" Apr. 1: "April Drool" Mar. 25: "Tuzas on the Curb" Mar. 18: "Holy Ghostbeak" Mar. 11: "Lord of the Turkeys" Mar. 4: "The Heart of the Matter" Feb. 25: "New Stuff: Browsers, Servers, etc." Feb. 18: "Mascot Lore & More" Feb. 11: "Killer Email & Wiccan PotLuck" Feb. 4: "Meanies, Guerillas, & Subscription Copycats" Jan. 28: "Full Moon Frenzy, w/ PowerMacs" Jan. 21: "iMacs & Webmaster Schadenfreude" Jan. 14: "Was It Only a Week Ago?" Jan. 7: "Useless Column" Dec. 31, '01: "I Want a Refund"

AUDIO CREDIT: embedded 44k file, European Birds -- Sounds and Sonograms.

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