My Computer Can Kick Your Computer's Ass

Here is my thought for the day about computers: Never have I paid so much for something that is worth so little so quickly. What was a state-of-the-art machine two years ago is today’s Frisbee that you fling at the local landfill. What was the best thing two years ago is today’s quaint relic, an object of mockery for punk kids, a technological embarrassment. You buy a nice computer and two years later you find yourself in a digital, dead-end cul de sac and all of your neighbors have moved on to a better town with more features. You can either tough it out in your sorry little shack or suck it up and pay the price to move with them.

It was time for me to move on, computorily* speaking (*Yes, my spell-check just about choked to death on that bit of word coinage). I sent out my laptop for repairs and then bought a new model while the old one was under the knife. I feel like how Newt Gingrich must have felt when he divorced his wife while she was in the hospital battling cancer. I feel like a deadbeat dad who skips town to avoid paying child support. I shouldn’t feel the slightest bit of guilt, I am the abused one in this human-computer relationship. I’m the one who should be calling the police, or a good lawyer, or a hit man.

But I don’t call the cops; I just keep forking over money for new computers. I have to say that even with the startling advances in technology; I get less and less excited about my new purchases. That new computer smell just isn’t doing it for me these days. I really don’t even give a shit about the money any more; I just want the damn thing to work the way it’s supposed to work. I don’t want to learn one more thing about computers.

I want to learn more about music, writing, languages, history, evolution, and a bunch of other things, but I don’t care about computers. Computers are just tools. People who dig ditches don’t have to spend a Saturday trying to figure out how their shovels work and then all day Sunday cleaning them up. Of course, you can’t download bootleg mp3’s with a shovel, but I think everyone knows what I’m trying to say.

Now that I am done bad-mouthing computers let me just say that my new laptop totally kicks ass. When I look back on my life now I shudder to think of the miserable existence I must have lead before I had a DVD burner. I’m just glad that we tend to repress our bad memories, because it must have been awful to be me before I could make a perfect copy of any DVD I put in my computer. I was living like an animal back then. Not anymore. I have clawed my way back to the top of the human dung heap and from these dizzying heights I look down on all of you folks without DVD burners with absolute contempt. Have some pride, people. What would it do to your parents if they knew that their children--who they gave every advantage in the world--were now willingly living without a DVD burner? I’ll be honest with you, it would probably kill them.

Now do you want to know the beautiful part of this whole story? Do you want to know what I am doing to exploit this marvelous new technology; a technology that would have been beyond the wildest imagination of the most brilliant scientists only a few short years ago? I took this new bit of technology that is the crowning achievement of millions of years of human development and I made copies of the movie Super Troopers for all of the women in my life who think that film is too “stupid” to bother to rent themselves. This is better than when we were little kids and we got our first tape recorder and used it to record our burps (Although that was enormously entertaining for the young Leftbanker). I’m sure my new computer can do other wonderful things besides burn copies of Super Troopers but I don’t really give a shit about those other things because I CAN BURN COPIES OF SUPER TROOPERS! What a glorious new era!