downstairs three years prior, she had to admit she missed the sound of flipping pages as he read Rimbaud each night before bed. Oh well. For herself, she had the complete works of Christopher Marlow to keep her warm at night, and you can believe that Faust’s dealings with the devil was enough to keep anyone company!

When her lids finally felt sufficiently heavy, she dimmed the lights and pulled her satin night mask down over her placid eyes, and, as the sound of heavy rain drowsily continued the rhythms of classical music into the night, she slipped into slumber.

But then: pitter patter pitter patter… “Mommy?”

“Janie? What happened honey? Did the thunder frighten you?”

“No, but the lightening is really bright, mommy. I can’t sleep.”

“Do you want to crawl into bed with me?”

“Okay.” Pitter patter pitter patter…rustle rustle…

“Are you good, Janie hon?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Love you, Janie Wanie.”

“Love you, mommy.”

“You’re okay?”

“I think so.” And so the minutes ticked by. Now Gail was awake again, fully. Her mind began to race over the little events in her life, present and future. She had to host this month’s book club meeting. She thought she would have it in the garden. The baby blue eyes should be in bloom, not yet killed by the torturous summer heat. A little white wine and some cucumber sandwiches would be perfect. It should be darling, as long as Lilly finds it in her heart to keep her goddamned eyes in her head and off Gail’s cleavage. Honestly. It was a privilege to have a lesbian in the group—in fact it was a social goldmine—but was it worth it to be ogled in that manner? Still, Lilly IS a very beautiful and strong woman. Sometimes Gail would catch her mind wandering about her…Peter never thanked her for the nutritious meal she had prepared tonight. Gail knew that sprouts and bean curd was not his favorite dish, but she had worked very hard on the cream fennel sauce—he could have said SOMETHING. Gail thought she could hear him breathing, even all the way downstairs.

Wide awake now. Shit. She nudged Janie with her foot. Janie moaned, half asleep. Gail nudged her again, harder. “Janie, honey, are you awake?”

“No.”

“You must be excited for your classmate’s birthday party Saturday. Is she going to be nine years old now? Already?”

“Mommy, I’m sleepy.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so.”

Gail knew there was nothing for it. If she was going to rest, she was going to have to put Janie to work. She’s old enough to pay her keep now, thought Gail, so she can help me sleep. “Do you want to nurse, honey?”

“Okay, mommy. Yummy.”

And as Janie rolled into her mother’s breast and curled into the fetal position, ready to suckle, Gail could already feel peace overtake her. Darkness overtook her mind.

At that moment, the incredibly intelligent race of aliens parked on the far side of Saturn blew up the entire planet Earth, having finally grown weary of the experiment they had begun so many billions of years ago. The whole thing was fucked anyway.

We here in the Political Crow’s Nest at Jose el Retardo are far from being members of the Rudy Giuliani fan club, but we must send him sympathy as he deals with the Asshole Cardinal Egan.

Rumor has it that the Cardinal is getting on Rudy’s case for receiving the Eucharist (known as communion to laymen like you and me) during the recent Big Bad Pope-A-Dope visit. It seems that in 2000, when Egan became the head of the Archdiocese of New York, he made Rudy promise to never take communion again because of Rudy’s abortion beliefs (read more about it here).

You must be joking. Lest we all forget, Egan got into hot water back in 2003 for concealing the names of a bunch of child-molesting priests. He’s been found on lists for being one of the most complicit Cardinals in the whole cover-up of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. So which one of these men has it in for kids? It seems bizarre that Egan would want children born just to sit back and let them be traumatized by the very men he has ordered them to respect.

Giuliani is far from an angel. He made it difficult for kids in New York City to get decent education or healthcare during his term as Mayor. However, at least you can say this for him: he didn’t aid in their molestation. He didn’t have to. We have Cardinal Egan for that.

Thank you, Cardinal Egan, for being such an ass-biting jerk. You make my job easy.

Lorraine P, a long time, loyal supporter of the dreadfully necessary mission we are so committed to here at Jose el Retardo, informed us of a website where you—the loyal reader—have the ability to create your OWN Jackson Pollock style painting. Is that CRAZY, or what? It seems that the interesting people over at jacksonpollock.org (where you go to make your drunken splatter-fest, btw) have the same feeling as we do here in the editorial offices of Retardo about Pollock’s work—that is to say, he kinda sucked and just about anybody can do it. You can find the original post by clicking here.

And above, you will find my Pollock painting. One staff member here at Jose el Retardo has said he likes my work better than any of Pollock’s. Take that, you stupid art snob jerk ass knee-biter fool head shit-pants.

I applaud the staff of jacksonpollock.org for coming out against the talentless raging alcoholic that is Jackson Pollock. Thanks guys. Keep fighting the good fight.

I will never forget the moment I saw it: I was wandering the top floor of the Museum of Modern Art somewhat aimlessly. I could sense the encroaching, restless feeling one gets after spending enough time in a museum to become bored—but not long enough for others to proclaim it an “enriching experience”—creeping in around the corners of my brain as I gazed at a life-size installation of a dishwasher interior stacked with brightly colored plastic dishes and plaster crumbs affixed; a penis replica constructed from broken egg shells and dyed with bald eagle sperm; a canvas depicting four large dots, all black, but with varying shades of gray for their backgrounds. I was finding it all rather underwhelming, but had not yet become outraged at any particular pretense…and then…there it was, lurking in prominence. Red Square, Slightly Rounded. I don’t remember the name of the (and I use this term VERY loosely) artist, nor can I locate it on the internet, but the painting has burned itself into an unflattering subdivision of my memory, and I have placed an approximation of the painting (which took me all of about four minutes to make, btw) to the left of this article. Look at its sad retardedness. How I hate it.

I was incensed to find such useless trickery in one of the world’s most established and respected museums. Just what the hell was MoMA playing at, anyway? Were they TRYING to make me feel stupid? Was it purposeful resentment of the normal man that made them hang in a position of high repute a painting that has no relative merit to the untrained eye? Of course, several friends who think themselves very erudite tried to repeatedly explain to me how, even though I might not see the genius, it is extraordinarily important that someone had painted this painting, even if its actual artistic merit is meager. In other words, to be clever enough to point out that this can be art is more important than it being “good” art. I guess then that we could say, by comparison, that although we might hate discovering the nutritionally-impaired Hot Pocket in our grocer’s freezer, it is nonetheless important to our society that somebody somewhere decided to manufacture it, and then market these pastry-covered floor sweepings into our mouths. Well, god bless you, Nestlé! Thank the heavens for you!

I think it’s all a scam, and the artist in this instance scoffed all the way to the bank as he cashed the check given to him by the MoMA man in the hounds tooth-jacket, with his hand on his chin, stroking his moustache, squinting his eyes, and saying over and over, “Hmmmm…” and “Ahhhh…” and “Oh, yes, yes, of course, of course”!

Such is the struggle that the average person has with Modern Art. Shame on you, average person! Don’t you realize how much of an asshole Jackson Pollock was? That means he was good! Artist + Asshole = Oh, yes, yes, of course, of course! Get it straight, you lousy world full of simpletons.

Jackson Pollock. Are you as confused about this cat as me? Look, I get what all of you knowledgeable bad asses are saying. I’m not completely daft. The guy did his dribbling shits thing all over the canvas with some vague shapes occasionally barfed out for the sporadic “wow!” factor, and it’s all about the textures, and it was oh so stream-of-consciousness, and sure, it might look great above your couch as long as the colors don’t clash abhorrently, but why are we giving such a small achievement any more than footnote status in the world of American art? And the critics will of course drag the Norman Rockwell’s down off the wall, snap them in two, pull down their critic drawers and basically crap all over them—and what do I know except that my Grandma freaking LOVED Norman’s work—but hey, at least he was DOING something, right? He could create something that we cannot perform ourselves—and a lot of it was cheesy, but much of it was not, and at least it varied, and had content, and could make me think—even if the thought was simply, “wow, boy scouts are fucking DUMB”.

But as far as I can tell, much of Jackson Pollock’s work is merely a lot of drunken repetition. There is more to the world than simply colors and shapes. There is also love, hate, pain, hope, and ideas—and Pollock seems to come up short in all that kind of crap. With this in mind, doesn’t his jazzy dribble seem overly cynical? This much I do know: the world has always loved a guy that drinks too much, smokes too much, and fucks too much.

Click here to see some much cooler shit than Pollock ever dreamed of.

PS and BTW—Saw this quote in the Times today, and it made me wants ta’ barf. It’s the whole reason behind today’s topic, as a matter of fact:

He flashed a slide of Ellsworth Kelly’s “Study for Colors for a Large Wall” on the screen, and the audience couldn’t help but perk to attention. The checkerboard painting of 64 black, white and colored squares was so whimsically subtle, so poised and propulsive. We drank it in greedily, we scanned every part of it, we loved it, we owned it…

Gross. Read the whole article by clicking here. It’s about something.

Today, dear readers, the entire staff here at Jose el Retardo have suffered a bitter slap to the face: after many months of faithful attention to the blog Freakonomics.com, I have been told by one of the authors of the site to DROP DEAD.

It begins simply. Morning. Travel. Coffee. A day unusually unfettered with the many trivial bondages (sexy word alert) that usually exert themselves upon me in the early hours of the day. My feet propped on my desk nonchalantly, I breathe in the rich aroma of my French Roast—just a touch of skim added, which is something new for this man of black coffee—and I contemplate my life through a lens less tainted from the haze of frantic cacophony. Maybe I’ll get things right this time, I tell myself. Today feels like the kind of day that a man can turn to his favor; can take the spare moment to find the bit of enrichment that tips the scale, finally. Yes. Why not me?

So I pop open my internet browser, and I check the ole’ Google Reader, just to see if any of my regular iHaunts (I am coining a phrase as we speak, people) have anything new to spout. As usual, there are about 50 new posts on Freakonomics, so I begin to sift through it all, looking for anything interesting. Finding nothing truly fantastic, I settled for the mildly appealing. I read. I was not moved, per se, but I was engaged, and so decided to leave some comments behind. I often participate in the comment side of the blog world when I have the time, because hey, that’s one of the perks that make it more interesting than standard print—not to mention that I like to speak my opinion regardless of whether or not anyone is actually listening to what I have to say. I guess the fact that I slave my days away in a cubicle at the offices of Jose el Retardo is proof enough of that.

Great. I learn a few things, I speak my mind a touch, and now time to work. My comments haven’t appeared on the Freakonomics site yet, but I’m sure it will only take time. I know that the guys over there must have a rod shoved pretty fucking far up their tight, over-educated ASSES, because they reserve the right to approve EVERY GODDAMNED COMMENT that passes through their precious opinion page. Whatever, it’s their prerogative, they can do what they want to do, cause what they’re doing, they do for you. Sing.

HOWEVER, soon enough I receive in my inbox an email from none other than the so very important and so deeply intellectual Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics. Hey, wow, I think. Maybe he saw my url in my comments and wants to congratulate me on my hard work, and to let me know that if I just hang in there, I’m gonna break through, that I’ll see the dollars and cents eventually because my kind of writing is BOUND to find an audience. Maybe he’ll even get some of his own friends to see and love my site! Maybe this is the breakthrough I needed! Holy shit.

I tremble slightly as I open the email.

Stephen J. Dubner has written to me:

why are you spamming freakonomics.com? i sure would like it if you stopped

Huh. Even though I am alone at my desk, I feel slightly awkward, as if I just insulted half the table at a dinner party but I’m not sure what it was I said to cause the hurt. And then, as I usually do, I become immediately indignant. What the fuck? What did I do wrong? Nothing! Well, hell. I don’t have to take that from him. I write back:

I was simply reading your site and leaving comments. I don’t usually have the time in the morning to leave the comments, but today I did. I have enjoyed your blog in the past, sent my own readers your way when something really caught my eye, and have a subscription to your feed. I’m not sure how any of this amounts to spamming, but rest assured, it will all cease today.

I waited for his reply, knowing that this alone would surely cause him to apologize and approve my comments and let us all get on with being humans on this god-forsaken earth.

And reply Stephen J. Dubner, friend to the literate, does:

if i am mistaken, forgive me. but if you don’t know the difference between a comment and spam, then it’s on you. but, back to no. 1, if i am mistaken, forgive me.

best, sjd

Oh dear Lord. No. Come ON. Are you KIDDING me, dude?!? Is that the best you can come up with? Dear reader, I implore you, have you ever heard such a back-handed apology in your life? Basically, the guy said this: “Hey, sorry about that—unless I’m right, which I am, so fuck you, you fucking dickweed. Otherwise, sorry, and fuck off”.

I mean, who IS this rat bastard Stephen J. Dubner from Freakonmics anyway? He writes a couple of books that I am willing to bet a thousand of my hard-earned dollars that less than one-sixteenth of you have read, writes some articles here and there, has a blog—and like, really, who DOESN’T have a fucking blog these days—and he’s so good he can just shit on a regular reader like this? Well, so freaking SORRY, Lord Stephen. Forgive me for wasting your precious time. I responded:

The only thing I can think of is that I used my url as my signature (a very common practice, as I’m sure you know), which, in all actuality, makes me far more answerable for my comments than the people who simply sign off with an anonymous handle. It allowed you to reach me and question my actions, no? Aside from this far-from-abnormal behavior, I cannot see how my four comments to your site were any more or less useless than any of the countless others.

The blogging community depends on us reading each other’s work. If you feel you are above this ethic, then maybe you should stick to “straight” journalism and leave the blogging to those of us who have an interest in each other.

As of this moment I’ve heard nothing back, but either way I’m done reading Freakonomics.com. The rest of you can return, if you feel like shitting on me even more than Lord Stephen the Demon has already done. Whatever. Fuck you, Stephen J. Dubner, the consummate douche.

I have been perusing a crazy blog lately that most of you have probably seen and spent a large amount of time reading (http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com), and through it I stumbled upon an article from the New York Times website about young, affluent urbanites going out to farms and getting elbow deep in pig shit in order to show the rest of us how we might make a better world. Here is the link to the Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/fashion/16farmer.html?scp=1&sq=Trucker+Hat&st=nyt

I suppose I should give credit to people who put their money where their mouths are and do the dirty work they always felt was so noble—but I just can’t seem to rise above. When I hear about Williamsburg hipsters, who were raised on the east side of Manhattan, heading upstate to start their own organic produce farms, it makes my eye twitch. Have they any idea how badly the kids who were raised on small, struggling farms throughout the country want to get out? I know, I know, it’s their prerogative to choose such a difficult life, and their reasons for doing so are none of my business—but every single one of these crunchy ass-breaths in this article struck out to raise “organic” produce and livestock, which they will in turn sell back to the wealthy people in the urban centers they just left behind. Lower income households certainly can’t afford the kinds of prices necessary for the ex-cool kids to live in adequate quarters while “living off the land”—and here is where the whole idea of nobility starts to fall apart.

These people have the skills that so many others desire in order to live a more promising life. But they would rather move to the sticks and take jobs away from others that lack the ability or the means to find better. It is all enough to drive me freaking bugshit, and then I read a quote like this, and my blood boils in my veins:

The Billyburg scene has changed, said Annaliese Griffin, who contributes to a blog called Grocery Guy. “Having a cool cheese in your fridge has taken the place of knowing what the cool band is, or even of playing in that band,” she said. “Our rock stars are ricotta makers.”

Holy crap. Well, Annaliese, let me guarantee you this: somewhere out there a poor farmer’s son could care less about fucking goat cheese and would so love to go see a rock star one day. Can he have your old record collection, Annaliese? You PIG.

Soon enough all these new hippies will get tired of getting up at 5 AM every day, working their asses off until they feel like dropping in their well-heeled tracks, and then they will head back to the city to start up research firms, just like the old hippies did.

The last week or so has shown everyone here at the home office of Jose el Retardo just how enjoyable it can be to shit on the things people love the most—and if it feels good, do it, right? Yesterday we kicked the Beatles around a little; today, it will be the monolithic champion of the literal world; mention his name in certain circles and watch as grown men swoon like school girls: Billy Shakespeare. Here is how most English Lit/Theatre/Art History majors feel about Billy:

In all reality, “The Bard” (I felt gross just typing that) had diarrhea of the pen, and his comedies are simply not funny. In fact, the best thing to happen to Shakespeare in the last four hundred years or so is the Hollywood screenplay. Any dialogue-driven vehicle for storytelling that runs over four hundred freaking pages needs a cold-hearted bastard of a producer to cut shit out, yo. I mean, come on. I’m not crazy, right? Am I crazy? What in the fuck do you elbow-patch wearing, pipe-smoking (all cuddled up in your fisherman’s sweater with your goddamned moccasins on) mother fuckers want from me? And oh, I can hear you now, bemoaning wretchedly the loss of the author’s original intent, the integrity of the voice of history lost to the crass hands of modern man’s impatience. Crap on that. Crap ALL OVER that. The guy was long-winded and needed a good editor. End of story. Here, read this excerpt from Richard III, act 1, scene 2, and tell me why in the world it couldn’t have been said more concisely (seriously, leave it in the comments; rid me of my ignorance, genius):

LADY ANNE

Foul devil, for God’s sake, hence, and trouble us not;
For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell,
Fill’d it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.
If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,
Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.
O, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry’s wounds
Open their congeal’d mouths and bleed afresh!
Blush, Blush, thou lump of foul deformity;
For ’tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells;
Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural,
Provokes this deluge most unnatural.
O God, which this blood madest, revenge his death!
O earth, which this blood drink’st revenge his death!
Either heaven with lightning strike the murderer dead,
Or earth, gape open wide and eat him quick,
As thou dost swallow up this good king’s blood
Which his hell-govern’d arm hath butchered!

I think this chick is pissed because some guy killed her husband or something, but who can be sure? It’s so shrouded in “poetry” that a normal person has to sit in a damned classroom with twenty other people and discuss every freaking line for a half hour each in order to discern any meaning. And I can guarantee you this: fill twenty classrooms with twenty students and let them discuss the meaning of one soliloquy for twenty hours. You will end up with twenty different explanations. I promise you will. I swear it.

This being said, I do agree that, with vicious slashing, a Shakespeare drama can be entertaining and even gripping if placed in the right hands; I truly enjoyed Mel Gibson’s Hamlet (I think I just heard a scholarly head explode).

But none of the comedies are funny. None of them. Not one. And the only people who ever laugh at them are people who are afraid of what their academically militant friends will think if they DON’T laugh at this trite, vaudevillian nonsense. Every plot in Shakespeare’s desperate attempt to get people to like him (I bet back then everyone thought he was a HUGE kill-joy) seems to be the same: a girl dresses like a guy in order to achieve some goal women can’t normally attain as a female, falls in love with a guy who doesn’t know she’s a chick, and then some more corny shit happens until the end, when all the characters find out she’s a chick. It’s such a rip off of Just One of the Guys that it makes me shiver.

Here is an example of a “joke” from a Shakespeare play called The Comedy of Errors:

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,
When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme
nor reason? Well, sir, I thank you.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
Thank me, sir, for what?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Marry, sir, for this something that you gave me for nothing.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
I’ll make you amends next, to give you nothing for
something. But say, sir, is it dinner-time?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
No, sir; I think the meat wants that I have.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
In good time, sir; what’s that?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Basting.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
Well, sir, then ’twill be dry.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
If it be, sir, I pray you, eat none of it.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
Your reason?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Lest it make you choleric and purchase me another
dry basting.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
Well, sir, learn to jest in good time: there’s a
time for all things.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
I durst have denied that, before you were so choleric.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
By what rule, sir?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald
pate of father Time himself.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
Let’s hear it.

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
There’s no time for a man to recover his hair that
grows bald by nature.

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
May he not do it by fine and recovery?

DROMIO OF SYRACUSE
Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the
lost hair of another man.

Oh for the love of Christ. Forget it. I give up. I think there was supposed to be a whole slew of jokes in there, but who the fuck knows. It just goes on and on and on until you basically want to KILL SOMEBODY.

Yet the “really smart” and “droll” people of the Western World insist that he is the most brilliant writer of all time, ever. And they struggle like a tar-ridden lung to explain his greatness in words that are even more confusing than the Bard’s (shudder) own. Here is an actual quote from a hopeless asshole’s review of Richard III, pulled from Amazon.com:

Inextricably, although I by no means empathize with him even remotely, Richard somehow, despite his inordinately decadent reprobate ploys, coupled with his twisted soliloquies pleading to the audience his hopeless case, make him one entirely enigmatic, yet entirely captivating, antagonist that makes this play enticingly enjoyable — in a most devilish kind of way.

“O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!”

Jesus, dude. You can’t be serious.

Hype is defined by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary as: to promote or publicize extravagantly. While there may not be a public relations blitz to keep Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles on top of the current music hot 100 type bullshit stuff, it still makes it to the top of influential music lists compiled by dorks everywhere. I would love for somebody to tell me why. To the best of my reckoning, there are two good songs on the entire album, which according to the calculations performed by the accounting offices here at Jose el Retardo would place the album at the bottom of the Beatles pile; although it did have way cool cover art, and logistically this could have affected many listeners. I have provided to my genial readers a track listing for Sgt. Peppers below, with my Own Personal Thoughts on each song (forever to be known as Jose’s OPT scale):

Side one

1. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” – Sucks.

2. “With a Little Help from My Friends” – Blows.

3. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” – Pretty good.

4. “Getting Better” – Barely not crap.

5. “Fixing a Hole” – Eh.

6. “She’s Leaving Home” – Please.

7. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” – Pure nonsense.

Side two

1. “Within You Without You” – Oh come on. What is it even doing on this record?

2. “When I’m Sixty-Four” – Schmaltz. Kinda catchy, but pure crap.

3. “Lovely Rita” – What? I don’t get it.

4. “Good Morning Good Morning” – At least it’s short.

5. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise)” – What, again? Ugh. Kill me.

6. “A Day in the Life” – Fucking awesome. Truly.

And now, here are some Beatles albums that are at least 50 times better than the above mentioned waste of wax, in no particular order, except that the White Album is obviously the best, and anyone who disagrees has poop on their shoe:

1. The White Album

2. Abby Road

3. Magical Mystery Tour

4. Let It Be

5. Revolver

6. Rubber Soul

7. Help

8. The Early Beatles

And who knows. The rest are probably all better too, but I’ve never been a huge fan of the way early stuff. The true nail in the coffin, for me, is the awful movie Robert Stigwood made back in 1978, the premise of which is still a matter of hot debate in the circles of people that debate retarded things. The Beatles, having been long apart, never appeared in the movie, but history’s most bizarre cast of characters ever sure did: The Bee Gees, Steve Martin, Peter Frampton, George Burns, Arrowsmith, Leif Garrett, Wolfman Jack, and many other mismatched celebrities. It was universally panned. I don’t need to tell you about it, just watch this awful clip.

BTW, can anybody tell me why this old man is being allowed to walk off to destinations unknown with two young girls? Does this bother anyone besides me? Thank god that everything that lives must die, or else we’d be stuck with George Burns forever.

If there’s one thing we can ALL agree on in this tepid cesspool of a world, it’s this: there’s nothing worse than a big fucking phony. It’s even worse to take your own faults and blemishes and claim they are the actually the negative qualities of another. Steve Jobs and the good people of Apple Computers have turned these despicable attributes into—quite literally—an art form.

This is not to say that Apple does not make an array of fine products. They do. Their computers are elegant in form and just as reliable as anything else you can purchase from the other numerous assholes of the world; the iPod is popular for a reason; the ubiquitous iTunes music service changed the industry. But as soon as you begin to take a closer look into any of these wonder-gizmos, something much more sinister is found under the “gee, neat-o” veneer.

I’m not going to break it down product by product because it’s all related. And it’s all centered on one of the most diabolical creations of recent times; the most twisted and surreal of all of man’s creations; the Achilles’ heel to keep the human race out of the vast cosmic annals detailing the great civilizations of the endless galaxy: marketing. It is the way Mr. Weirdo Dad-jeans Jobs markets these products to his public of adoring suckers that really sets my teeth on edge. Take the following advertisement. I’m sure you’ve seen this, as well as the numerous others in this campaign of well made, cleverly written, and completely baseless commercials (more below):

This may—MAY—be the purest example I have ever seen of an uninformed American public being led like senseless zombies to spend their (sort of) hard-earned cash based purely on witty dialog and cool t-shirts. Most of you out there are in fact reading this on a pc-based machine—more than 90% of you, as a matter of fact. How hard was it for you to use the latest digital camera you purchased? I am willing to bet that most of you were up and running out of the box pretty quickly. Okay, now, all you Mac users out there, I’d like for you, if you have the means, to try something for me: plug any mp3 player OTHER than an iPod into your Apple computer and tell me what happens. On second thought, don’t. I don’t need you to. I’ve tried it and I know damn good and well that NOTHING happens. The Mac doesn’t even register that a device has been slid into its sexy, curvy, white, box. What a shitty date you are, Mac. A horrible lover. I hate you, Steve Jobs, you dirty bastard. You deliberately made your sensual hub resistant to any other portable music device other than the one your own damn company makes. And then you have the fucking BALLS to broadcast advertisements saying your computers are more tolerant to outside devices than those of your competitors. LIAR. ASSHOLE. Black turtle necks on men SUCK.

The fact is that Mac users as a whole tend to be older (which I assume is an income thing seeing as Macs are so god-damned expensive; so much for the bullshit stance Apple tries to take about being for the young at heart and hip). I think older people have less time and inclination to mess around under the hood, so to speak. They don’t get into the guts of a computer, so they fuck it up less. I’ve been messing up computers since I first laid my hands on one years ago—mainly because I opened up the system folders and started screwing around with all the stuff that wasn’t meant to be touched. People who mess around with the inside of computers tend to buy PCs.

So yes, I know, it’s no big shock. Marketers are liars and pigs and should try to find something more meaningful to do with their lives. However, here’s a small anecdote that, when I was first told the story by my co-worker and fellow gadget head Mark (aka zenpvnk to the cyber world), drove me to distraction; it became the basis for my ranting for at least two days. It goes a little something like this: My friend Mark recently purchased an iPod Nano for his wife. A fine gift. Very thoughtful. Mark is a sweet teddy bear of a hubby and we are all very proud of him and his accomplishments. So. If you have ever purchased a similar piece of equipment, you know that most come supplied with a cable that allows you to hook your new, fun, quality-of-life-improving device up to the blessed television, therefore allowing you to completely bore the shit out of your friends much more effectively. Not so with the iPod. The cord must be purchased separately. Fine. This isn’t all that deviant or singular of a business practice; many companies try to keep the costs of production lower by not including such niceties, and in doing so have kept Radio Shack in business for decades. Fucking Radio Shack, right?

Mark explained to me that in the past he has purchased the cords he needed for Mac products from third-party retailers for around five dollars. Apple of course sells their own cords for the devices, but charges upwards of $40. This is their prerogative. The world is about choice, right? To save money or be brand loyal is a common dilemma. However, Mark quickly discovered that Steve “The Prick” Jobs has once again fixed the game. Now the iPod device’s proprietary cords include a computer chip built in that PRECLUDES them from using any other brand! And…AND…the damned thing costs $50! FIFTY DOLLARS! Five zero dollars, people! An insult. An outrage. And Steve claims to be at the head of some kind of imaginary revolution enabling the whole fucking world to create even more intolerable, crappy, digital dance music while holed-up in their basements all night.

Steve Jobs, bite my ass.

Get it together, people. Open your eyes. Stop swallowing every load shot at you simply because you were told you have an expressive singing voice. Business people freaking LOVE Steve Jobs. They put his bearded face in nearly every PowerPoint presentation they make (a delicious irony…if he’s so smart, why aren’t these very business people using Keynote). Have you ever thought about why?

Oh, and by the way, I have never purchased an iPod for my own use. I use Creative Labs Vision M, and I can give my songs out to whoever the hell I want. Screw iTunes. Stupid freaking entertainment industry servant. Oh my god. I could go on forever, so I won’t.