Wednesday, November 26, 2003

Multiple Excuses & Macintosh Abuses

Ok, here we go again…
I seem to have cracked the code and have made the necessary changes but I’ll have to open a couple of more documents to be absolutely certain… Note To Self: Make sure formatting changes have stuck to the…
Oh shit, sorry, didn’t know you were there. Just tapping away here on my new… Okay, you’ve seen it now haven’t you. Okay, well just don’t judge me until I’ve had a chance to explain.

See, I’ve been busy these past months, there’s a perfectly normal explanation why I would write back in August that I was gonna do something interesting with the Blog over the next few weeks, doing the ‘ol Momento bit with my Canadian gambol, and even going ahead and starting the write the damn thing and then, Whoooosh, I vanish for, what is it now, close to three months?
The reason is because, see, I don’t give a rat’s ass.
I’ve been busy.
The sun was in my eyes.
The geckos ate my homework.
I shot a man in Starbucks just to watch him die.
I joined the French Foreign Legion.
I got sick.
I died (… bit farfetched perhaps but I got better in the end).
I’d rather watch ‘Croc marathons on NatGeo channel.
I was playing Civilization.
I was on a spiritual retreat in Andaluccia.
Indonesia banned the Internet.
Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso decided to put a statue of me inside the deer enclosure at Monas and I’ve been locked inside a bronze mold since August.
I got embarrassed about not having posted anything and couldn’t figure a tactful way of backing back into it so I just let it go and then it got worse because I was tormented about the fact that I was such a weak-assed bitch and so became so mentally constipated that I couldn’t pull the damn trigger and let rip on a decent Blog and just get on with it. And so with each passing day and each passing week it became harder and harder to take the first step and why oh why is this such a familiar feeling?
I got married to a nice girl, had three lovely kids and settled down on western Vancouver island to fish and grow dope.
Did a three year stay for fishing without a licence. With dynamite. Damn coppers.
I’ve been working on my car/bike/boat/axle-grind/tan.
I’ve been teaching.
I’ve been learning.
I wrote a song.
I wrote a play.
I wrote a book.
I wrote a letter to my aunt and uncle in Scotland (true).
I was ripping CDs onto my PC’s hard drive to be transferred to my MP3 player.
Are you lookin’ at me? Well, I don’t see anyone else…
I was playing with the cats.
I was breaking boards with my bare hands.
I was washing my hair. One at a time.
I stepped into a rift in the space-time continuum and so, “Hello, I must be going”.

So in a fit of Grinch-inspired genius I decided to create the environment within which I can start Blogging once again, which is to say that, “Yes, I finally went out and dropped $3000S on that 15” turbo-charged G4 Powerbook last week in Singapore and I’m reveling in its un/familiar lines.”
You see, I’m one of the original Apple-seeds, the binary equivalent of the Kiss Army: I got my first Mac shortly after the release of Destroyer, with its seminal God Of Thunder and Detroit Rock City. It got me through college and much later, university. The first reunion tour post-Peter Chris coincided with my purchase of the PB150, once state of the art.
Later, when money got particularly tight I sold out. I wrapped myself in flash, in a thing called the built-in CD-ROM, and oodles of disk space. Yes, I went PC.
It was a phase. I did what I had to do to put food on the table and money in my pocket. See, there were things you could do with PCs, they were compliant, eager to please. Less demanding. Cheaper. And it was good too. It hurt the first few times but you get used to it and start to enjoy yourself.
I’m not proud of my behavior but equally, I’m not embarrassed. I was a young man with issues. It wasn’t the only relationship to suffer: During those complicated, exhilarating years I experimented with Mazdas and Volvos, a Subaru or two and a saucy chromed up Yamaha.
But, in the end of course, you can’t escape who you are, what you are. You can grow up, move away, alter your name, explore a different OS, find a whole new life but in the end, you can’t deny what tug back to the familiar.
So, I’ve struck a deal with myself, one you’ll all have to get used to. I’ve gone back to Mac as my basic computer platform, but I’m going to continue to use a PC every now and then. It just feels right this way. More honest. Each has its advantages and I just think that if people were a little bit more open to different experiences, that the world would be a much better place.
All I’m asking is that you’ll accept me for who I am and that you’ll continue to check the blog and not be enslaved by what some magazines and closed-minded techno-geeks out there might think.