When Alexius was Emperor, and the foreign and infidel hordes that had migrated through the Roman Empire were being pacified’ and the bold Normans who had voyaged thither had been beaten and dispersed, certain citizens of the city of Bari, moved by a divine inspiration, purposed to sail in their merchant ships to Antioch, a city situated in Coele, in Syria. This they undertook not for selfish profit, but for a laudable and praiseworthy work – a work worthy of mention, O the marvel of it! For it delights my heart and what I have to say will soar aloft on lightsome wing. For they had the intention – and bless them for their prudence, bless them for their good choice! – instead of pursuing mercantile and selfish interests, to cast anchor at Myra and remove the manna-receiving and fragrant remains of our blessed, thrice-happy and inspired Father, and so, this accomplished, to possess and take pride in him as in a great fortune and inseparable treasure. Now, this was, as a matter of fact, the purpose of our Venetian brothers also, even though the deed had been accomplished by the men of Bari. For blessed is not he who begins a thing and does not finish it, but blessed is he who says and does and accomplishes good. In such wise it was, then, that they who heard of the plan of the Venetians were the first to attain the favor. For though the Venetians were bent on taking that goodly treasure and bringing it back to their homeland, the good God did not allow it so to be accomplished, but their plan and its fulfillment was given to the men of Bari, while the conception of the Venetians developed unaccomplished and unactuated .

My iPhone is a camera, a phone, an iPod, a movie player, an RSS reader, an ebook reader, gaming platform, and blogging device. The problem mostly being that it’s hard to not want to do all of these things at once. Listen to a song, play solitaire. Reading a book, quick, switch to look at Twitter. Oh! An email just arrived!

Instead of reading books, I tend to read wikipedia articles at night, or play solitaire in the bathroom. (No jokes about that! I swear! Literally the game of solitaire!)

So I’m seriously considering getting an iPod again. I have a digital camera. While lugging these things around is a pain, I also miss reading whole books in big chunks. I haven’t stayed up late to finish a book in quite a while, and I find I’m missing it.

It’s not a technology issue, it’s a usability issue. I read whole books on my old Sony Reader PRS-500. It was convenient to carry, and the interface was pretty nice. And that was pretty much it. No constantly checking the news.

I might get a cheap, refurbed netbook, more because I think they’re cute than anything else. Also, my computer collection demands it. Refurbs can be found for less than $200, so sale of the iPhone would probably cover it. And I’m thinking of getting a shuffle or something for music.

I thought the internet was killing my reading habits, and it is. I just hadn’t realized that it was my iPhone that was doing it.

Not that we North Americans are too much better. I’m still morally convinced that in two hundred years every white man and woman will be convinced that they’re ‘Cherokee’ and that the ‘American people’ have lived on these lands since the beginning of time. Read any American history or literature textbook and tell me I’m wrong.

But it’s not always the case that Deep Sociological Insight is the sole thing to be found when reading about the influence of modern nationalism on historical consciousness. Sometimes you just get pure fun like this man from Bulgaria who

…claims to be an expert in linguistics, cryptography and transcendental analysis…

[From Gradeshnitsa tablets - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

If you want more backstory, read on and follow the many links for a quick explanation. But really, I’d just like to savor the words transcendental analysis.

I also learned that I should never, ever, try to write a webcomic.

There is also a one page ‘Origin of Angerman’ that may, at some point, be transfered from paper to glorious digital quality. Which is highly unlikely since these days I adventure under the name ‘Apathy-man’.

I also got AppleCare, which keeps the thing covered for three years. If anything goes kaput, I can walk a couple of blocks to the Mac Store, or hop on a bus and go to the Apple Store at University Village. Not that there’s been anything wrong with it. It’s worked great form day one, unless I did something to it that made it not want to start up. Which is why I’m picking up a cheapie little laptop from the ancient pile at a used PC place to play with some Linux. Because I like to play. But I don’t feel like messing up my nice shiny computer to play.

I’ve even bought an Apple brand keyboard to go with. I also have a first generation iPhone. But I’m not Mr. Apple yet, since I’m still using the same computer speakers I’ve had for the last ten years. I’m gonna ditch them eventually, but they’ll go to a good home whenever I get my hands on something nicer. They’re warriors, those speakers.

Also, I couldn’t see myself spending $300-400 on an external monitor from Apple. Bought a cheap no name with a hardware protection plan. It works fine, as does my Belkin USB hub.

So I don’t want you to think I’m some sort of secretly paid Apple shill who goes around pushing their products. I’m not one more sale away from that toaster oven or the shiny gold star Steve Jobs gives to the undercover agents who generate the most sales. There are things with Apple I don’t like. The DRM I can do without, and even though it is pretty easy to get around using it (don’t buy anything that has it), it still feels a little icky, especially that new display port on the new MacBooks. I don’t really like the way the App Store for the iPhone is being run, and it’s bizarre double standards.

BUT the one thing I don’t doubt is the quality of the hardware. Even though I feel like a schmuck for not going without a computer for six months until the new, all metal MacBooks came out this fall (I guess not having a computer would have really sucked, and not being a psychic made it hard to predict). But even the plastic (excuse me, polycarbonate) MacBook is still a better machine than a lot of PCs. My Mom’s old Toshiba laptop died because it flexed too much in the middle, and it broke a wire. Although I have lusted over Panasonic’s Toughbook more than once, but I’m not a miner or firefighter, so it’d probably be over kill. Probably. I am a bit clumsy.

And having had a used iBook for about two months, and having the bastard thing DIE ON ME, there have been times when Apple have produced substandard work. Granted, though, I have heard of people who are still using their iBooks, and mine was just beat to shit.

BUT ALL THAT SAID: I recently acquired an original iMac, one of the bondi-blue all-in-one computers from the late nineties that I first encountered in the one office job I ever worked. It’s ten years old, or close to it, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell to do with it. I have a laptop of similar age and specifications that I installed Linux on, and every time I even tried to listen to music or god forbid, browse the web, it would choke and die, and I would have to give it mouth to mouth, which is an embarrassing thing to have to do to a computer in public.

What I finally did was try to install Apple’s slightly older version of OS X, 10.4 Tiger. I have 10.5 Leopard installed on my MacBook, and I thought that maybe Tiger had a better chance, since it was made with slightly older machines in mind.

Not that I could just install it, mind you. No, I had to trick it, because officially Apple doesn’t support the old iMacs anymore. So using a program called XPostfacto, I pointed at something shiny that distracted the installation CD and pushed it into the hole, and waited to see if it would be able to crawl out.

And goddamn, it did.

Don’t get me wrong. I open one program at a time. Maybe two really lightweight ones. It will play audio, but it just chokes on video. But I can check my email and browse the web, write a text document, and listen to the music from the computer in the living room in my bedroom. Because I have two rooms, and dammit, they should both have computers. Is that so wrong?

But I’m absolutely mind-boggled that the iMac is running at all. And although I don’t plan on using the same hardware ten years from now, it pleases me to no end that I probably could keep using it, provided I take care of it. At the very least, when AppleCare runs out in two and a half years, I should still get a decent re-sale value for my by then old laptop.

Maybe then I’ll get one of those fancy aluminum Macbooks… Dammit, I still wish I was psychic…

At least 19 other states, including California, have slashed court budgets and other government services as their economies have tanked, said Daniel Hall, vice president of the National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit in Williamsburg, Va. [From Economic Crisis Hits State Court Systems]

An interesting but novel way to curb civil liberties, eh? Not that I’m suggesting that’s what’s going on here. This is definitely a budget crunch thing. Just sort of a possibility I’d never considered for a dystopian future. Civil liberties cost money, and we’re just short of cash, sorry. Please get in this unmarked van, it’s a police van, but we couldn’t afford to get it painted. Really.

But I’ve finally decided to reverse that decision, and now hereby call for the repeal of Roe v. Wade. As was explained by the Archangel Gabriel to me last night in a dream, while eating at a Dunkin’ Donuts, aborting a fetus before birth is reserved for God and God alone. For does it not say in the Gospel of Luke that the Lord “knew you even while you were in the womb?” For you are a person at conception, regardless of the opinions of certain Satanic jurists. And when God, in his total omnipotence, looks at you and lets you come forth from the womb and into the arms of your mother, it is God saying, “Alright, you’re cool.”

Or at least, it used to be. Now, having usurped God’s role, plucking fetus from womb like Eve plucking the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, God has turned his back on us. God is no longer watching the door to Club Earth, people. They’re just letting anyone in now.

And this was abundantly clear to me yesterday, when I watched Paris Hilton show Ellen around her house. And in Paris Hilton’s house*, there is a picture of Paris Hilton. And it is made of thousands of little pictures of Paris Hilton.

How many Paris Hiltons will it take for you Godless bastards to let God cull the crowd with miscarriages again? You heartless sons of bitches, recant, recant of your Godlessness!

*A ‘house’ in the same way that the Mississippi is merely a ‘river’.

Note: Yes, I’m talking about miscarriage, which I realize can be an emotional subject. Paris Hilton makes me angry enough that I don’t care.

Yves Rossy aimed to reach speeds of 125mph[From BBC NEWS | UK | Pilot completes jetpack challenge]