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Think Different. Be Gullible.

Back in January, I decided to part with a hearty chunk of cash in exchange for a 20-inch iMac with a G5 processor. It had been 12 years since I'd hung with the Steve Jobs crowd at the cool kids' table; I'd spent -- nay, wasted, I convinced myself -- all those years wandering through life in CTRL-ALT-DEL mode, fully cognizant of the fact that at any given time, the stuff I'd been working on for the past 90 minutes could get sucked into some vacuum that even Bill Gates himself couldn't access. But 2005 would be a Mac year for me, I decided. Soon, I'd think different. After all, that's what the commercials said would happen.

Truth be told, these first few months have been pleasant. Not nearly as delightful as the Macheads would lead one to believe, but nice nonetheless. My big Mac has plenty of meaningless little features that make me smile, such as the ability to instantly turn my digital photos from Europe into a cute little slide-show with a classical-music soundtrack. Granted, that's not why I bought a new computer, and it sure isn't worth a couple of thousand bucks, but it's a nice touch.

Not as nice is the lack of availability of software. I've got a TiVo that's loaded with stuff that I'd like to toss onto a DVD -- a feature TiVo supports as long as I'm running Windows-only TiVoToGo software. I'd like to check out that Sims game that so many people rave about, but it's just being released for Mac now. The Mac version, of course, also falls way behind in terms of game features. I'm learning this is typical.

But these are just minor irritants. For the most part, the Mac had been meeting my needs -- until it damn near burst into flames Saturday morning.

I woke up early Saturday morning, as I do on all Saturday mornings so Tiersa and I can haul our behinds to San Francisco for the farmers market at the Ferry Building. This Saturday wasn't much different than any other Saturday, except:

(a) we were meeting a couple of friends at the market, and
(b) the room in which we keep the Mac smelled of burning tires

Once the full effects of the stench hit me and I realized it wasn't coming from our downstairs neighbors (who regularly treat us to a cavalcade of olfactory assaults that would blind most mere mortals), I went into full-on bloodhound mode. I sniffed the new printer we just bought last week. It was fine. I sniffed the paper shredder. No smell there. I wandered into other rooms. The wine fridge? Nope. The wall heater? Clean. The beloved-yet-passive-aggressive TiVo? Angry as always, but not emitting a foul scent.

There was only one other possible source. There sat the Mac, smiling at me. "Think different," it was saying to me. "Like, the smell of an electrical fire is something you want in your home. That would be different."

I bent down, moved my nose to about a half-inch of the air vent on the back of the Mac, and took a whiff. Bingo. The unmistakable stench of burning wires.

I powered down Ol' Smokey and moved to our Dell CroMagnon 500, the Betamax of the Jackson Computer Library. I'm lucky it still worked, because I hadn't fed the hamsters that live inside of it since the Baked Apple arrived.

After a mere 15 minutes of Googlish research, I discovered that 20-inch iMac G5s built between November 2004 and January 2005 shipped with faulty power supplies that have a tendency to overheat and melt your Mac's guts after about three-and-a-half months of life. A lot of companies would consider recalling their machines because of something like this, but Apple likes to Think Different.

Apple's technical support staff was quite helpful on Saturday, when they arranged to ship me a replacement power-supply unit. (Apple has deemed the power supply a "customer-replaceable part," so I get to play service tech once it finally arrives. It took me three years to learn how to program my last cell phone, and I haven't even begun to figure out the one I acquired five months ago. This should be fun.) "You'll have it by Tuesday morning at the latest," wrote Jennifer, the Apple Chat rep, all the way from Hyderabad.

Today, however, the fruit is singing a different tune. I called their support line to confirm that the part would ship today. The person on the other line (who yawned into the phone twice, mentioned to me in her irritating Southern accent on three separate occasions how she simply could not wait for the caffeine from her tea to kick in, and addressed me as "Hon" 10 different times -- no wonder so many of these jobs get outsourced overseas, for crying out loud) not only refused to confirm the part would ship today, but she also refused to tell me whether or not the part was even available. For all I know, since these power supplies are bursting into flames more quickly than Michael Jackson's head at a Pepsi commercial shoot, this Mac is going to be out of commission for weeks. "I can't tell you if the part is in stock or not," she reasoned, "because by the time we get off the phone it may be out of stock."

So she couldn't tell me the part was in stock because it very well may have been in stock? Now that is a fine example of thinking different. It's thinking stupid, but it's also thinking different.

I've owned three or four Dells in my day, and not once have I ever received poor technical support from them. If something goes wrong, they send a rep to my home by the next day. They've never told me a part was "customer-replaceable" in order to get out of doing work they're paid to do, and they've always been quite honest with me regarding the availability of various parts that may be needed to fix a problem. None of these parts has ever been out of stock, but I've always felt if they were indeed not available, someone at Dell would mention it to me in order to keep me from calling them every two hours.

Yeah, Windows machines crash a lot. On the other hand, I've never had one turn into an Easy-Bake Oven after only four months of use. I guess it's all about trade-offs.

Dennis Miller gets fired again

Dennis Miller has been thrown off of television again, this time by a network that fills its days with reruns of Conan O'Brien and The Contender.

In my post about Joe Scarborough the other day, I mocked Revoltin' Joe's lousy ratings -- around 336,000 lost souls tuned into the Republican Gary Condit and his burlesque-show of lies last week. Miller would have killed the chimp that co-hosted his CNBC show for those numbers. Dennis Haircut couldn't even lure 100,000 neo-conservative cult members into his lair in a typical week. CNBC, apparently deciding that static would get better ratings than a washed-up SNL alum who has been fresh out of ideas for a few years now, pulled the plug on Miller.

Remember when Dennis Miller was actually hip and funny? It sure seems like long ago. Miller had an incredible stand-up routine -- the smartest anyone had seen in decades. His version of "Weekend Update" was must-see TV, and he followed that up with a fabulously funny series on HBO that ran for several years.

Then Sept. 11 hit, and Miller got all Ron Silver on our behinds. The joking stopped, and the witch hunts began. Political opponents of George W. Bush became, in Miller's eyes, enemies of the state who didn't love America. (He used the word "pussies" more than once to describe opponents of the Iraqi invasion.) Gone were the days when all public officials, regardless of political ideology, were in Miller's crosshairs. He became the poet laureate of the neocon death cult, which is a lousy job considering few members of that audience can read -- and the ones who can only read the Bible, NASCAR magazines, and Mein Kampf.

Miller stopped being funny, and once the humor faded, so did Miller's relevance. ABC, in its quest to cram conservatives down our throats everywhere we turn, gave Miller two disastrous years in the Monday Night Football booth after failing to convince America that Rush Limbaugh's felonious, drug-addicted behind should be in there. Miller was an absolute flop in the broadcast booth; it even sounded like Al Michaels (himself a rabid right-wing jackass) and Dan Fouts could hardly tolerate him.

For some reason that only they can comprehend, CNBC gave Miller and his rapidly fading career yet another shot. Miller had a monkey on the show with him, apparently thinking that maybe people would channel surf past CNBC, see the chimp, and at least tune in until The Haircut started using five-syllable words and references from 18th-century English literature to insult anyone who opposes the Bush-DeLay Doctrine of Hate. Even that didn't work, and Miller is now out of yet another job.

One can't help but wonder how long it will take NetZero to realize that nobody cares about Dennis Miller nowadays. Who in their right mind would sign up for NetZero's version of lousy dial-up service just because they paid Dennis Miller to be their pimp?

On the other hand, maybe the shoe fits. NetZero describes to perfection the absolute worth of Miller's opinion about anything.

Scarborough Looks Up Ass, Finds Own Head

If you have no idea who Joe Scarborough is, you're not alone. Scarborough, a former congressman from that intellectual hotbed of Florida who rode to Congress spouting Rush Limbaugh's anti-Clinton diatribes in 1994, couldn't cut it in Washington and now hosts a factually challenged conservative lovefest on MSNBC. According to NBC's corporate Web site, MSNBC reaches 78 million households. The Nielsen ratings report from May 11 suggests that somewhere around 336,000 tuned in to watch Scarborough this week. In other words, somewhere around 0.43 percent of the people who can watch Joe Scarborough actually choose to do so. Using the Nielsen's as my guideline, that means there are 42 people watching JAG for every one person watching Scarborough. I don't know anyone who's ever seen an episode of JAG, and it's been on for 10 years.

Anyway, Scarborough is another one of these Bill O'Reilly clones who pretends to be a journalist while spewing false facts and biased partisan opinions as news to the few misguided viewers who watch him. Most of these vermin hosts have never met a fact they knew what to do with, mostly because they wouldn't know the difference between the factual truth and something Sean Hannity coughed up during one of his ignorant rants.

During the false Dan Rather "scandal" that was created and perpetuated by the neo-conservative cult of zealots, Scarborough could hardly contain himself. He'd invite zombie after zombie to come on his show and pile dirt on Rather and his supposed "liberal bias." You could see from the wise-ass smirk on Scarborough's face that these were his salad days, likely reminding him of how fun his stint was in Congress before his young female staffers started turning up dead. More on that later.

I mention all of this today because a couple of weeks ago, Scarborough went bonkers against Ahnuld Schwarzenegger, California's not-so-beloved gropenführer. According to the Washington Post, Scarborough ranted:

You know, this guy has been in so much trouble. He's got sagging poll numbers. He's got political groups criticizing his every move. And now the governator is making all his enemies' job easier. According to the London Evening Standard, Arnold recently went on Howard Stern's radio show and offered his theory on how to end premenstrual syndrome, saying -- quote -- 'If we get rid of the moon, womens, whose menstrual cycles are governed by the moon, will not get PMS. They will stop bitching and whining.'

Hey, Governor, way to make 50 percent of California's voting population turn frigid towards you. I don't know how it works in Austria, but let me tell you something, friend, jokes about such matters -- not laughing subjects to women in America.

Thanks for the tip, friend. But let us all tell you something. That wasn't Schwarzenegger who called Stern's program. It was a Schwarzenegger impostor who appears regularly on that show. Also, you did not read anything like this in the London Evening Standard, you douchebag. It was in the London Daily Mail, whose editors were also fooled. In fairness, they don't publish their newspaper a few blocks from where Stern broadcasts his show, so they at least have an excuse. They don't have regular access to Howard's cavalcade of comedy and lesbians. Joe, on the other hand, couldn't walk down the streets of Manhattan without hearing two New Yorkers discussing what happened on Stern that morning.

To his credit, Mr. Accuracy did apologize -- ten days after he aired his little rant and nine days after Schwarzenegger's office called MSNBC to let Joe know of his mistake. Because nobody (except one or two of Ahnuld's staffers, apparently) watches MSNBC, Revoltin' Joe didn't see any need to retract his imbecilic babbling until the Washington Post (with a circulation of over 5 million and a Web site serving up more than 7 million page views each day) picked up the story. That's when Joe decided he may want to shift into damage-control mode. Integrity only matters to Joe once reports confirming his lack of competence hit the mainstream.

MSNBC management apparently will not discipline Scarborough for using their network to distribute slanderous attacks from his amazingly low mighty high ground. After all, the way they figure it, nobody's really watching anyway. Besides, Joe apparently has plenty of friends in high places. If you don't believe me, you may want to read a little bit about Lori Klausutis and ask yourself why you never heard anything about her but at one time you couldn't go 90 seconds without hearing Chandra Levy's name. Then ask yourself if you really believe Scarborough, beacon of truth that he is, left Congress for the reasons he claims.

The Avian Community Responds

A few posts ago, I wrote that I did not agree with recent research that suggested birds were more intelligent than previously believed. As an example, I shared a story about a pair of doves attempting to construct a nest in an area that under no circumstances should support a nest. Each day, I would walk past all the twigs and branches that had fallen to the ground because these doves insisted on building their nest on a small pipe that sloped downwards on two sides, and I'd think, "Those stupid doves will apparently remain nest-free throughout eternity." Jackson had spoken.

About a week later, I noticed the doves had proven me wrong. Somehow, one of them went out and obtained an engineering degree. Practically overnight, they managed to build what appears to be a stable nest exactly where I said they couldn't. While walking past the nest that first day, I stopped for a moment to admire the fruits of their labor. "Way to go, birds," I thought to myself.

Apparently, not only were these birds smarter than I'd originally imagined, but they also must have had access to a computer with an Internet connection. They didn't care that I'd recognized their intelligence in my own mind. All they knew was that I hadn't published a retraction, so they started sending me messages that I should do so. Like, immediately.

A day or two later, while I took a break from work to call someone from the privacy of my car, a dove landed on a rail inches from where I was parked. Then a second one. Then a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. All standing on that rail, motionless, staring at me. I'd never seen this many birds hanging out in the parking garage at one time since I'd started working at Genentech, and now they united simply to lay a guilt trip on me.

When I walked back to the office, a dove -- perhaps their leader -- flew in front of me and then landed directly in my path about a foot away. I stopped to look at it. It glared back at me. I took a step towards it, then a second step. The bird did not budge. I changed my path and gave this 10-ounce bird a wide berth. I wasn't entirely certain because I don't speak bird, but I think this dove was threatening to beat me up.

The next morning while I was driving to work, another member of the winged brigade expressed its displeasure with me by leaving a souvenir on my windshield as I passed under an overpass. A big souvenir, splattered strategically at eye level so I could stare at it for the duration of my 90-minute morning commute. Another fan.

Finally, over the weekend I was driving through the town of Campbell, which is far from being a wilderness preserve, when a trio of ducks slowly crossed a busy street directly in front of my car. As the duck bringing up the rear crossed my path, it turned its head in my direction, paused for a moment, and quacked at me. At least it sounded like a quack at the time. Now that I think about it, though, the duck may have told me to "retract."

I'm not taking any chances. With the birds of the world displaying enough intelligence to follow my every move just so they can pick on me, I do believe a retraction is in order. Birds, I apologize. I meant no harm, and I am honestly impressed that two doves can build a nest that surpasses the construction quality of my apartment. I hope you both have a regular supply of hot water in the morning, because I sure as hell don't.

There, that should do it. Now, please hope for my sake they do not discover I've been eating more chicken lately.

Bipartisan poll: Bush, Frist must be nuts

There's a new bipartisan poll out today that suggests a majority of Americans, including more than one out of every three self-described Republicans, think the right-wing attack on the filibuster is a bunch of hogwash.

According to the WestHill/Hotline poll conducted last week, 53 percent of the 800 registered voters who responded (40 percent Republicans, 35 percent Democrats, 16 percent independents, and apparently 9 percent who are too confused to figure it out or just wanted to get off the phone and get back to watching "American Idol," for crying out loud) think that Senate Republicans should slowly back away from what they call "the nuclear option" -- the elimination of the filibuster that currently helps prevent bare majorities (like, say, neo-conservative fascist cultists who use fear and religion to divide our country) from cramming unqualified, radical judges down our throats. If the math-and-science-challenged NeoShrub thinks 51 percent constitutes a mandate, 53 percent must be a landslide.

What's more, only 49 percent of Republicans approve of the nuclear option, while 35 percent of it disapprove. (The other 16 percent want you to leave them the hell alone, for the love of all things holy, because "Scott Savol is on the TV right now.") Also, should the Reverand Doctor Senator William Jesus H. Frist somehow succeed in pushing the big red button on the nuclear option, a plurality of respondents (46 percent approve, 35 percent disapprove) believe the Democrats should respond by slowing down or stopping all but the most essential legislation.

I'm just guessing here, but I'd bet a majority would be thrilled to their toes if the Senate were working on all but the most essential legislation anyway. On the way to work today, I passed three gas stations that were selling their Saudi-stained nectar for more than three bucks a gallon. I take no comfort in knowing that Senate Republicans are working on eliminating judicial filibusters when gas prices are through the roof. In fact, I get pretty pissed off about it.

The poll reveals that a pretty significant majority of Americans -- 56 percent -- do not like what the NeoShrub is trying to do to our social security, and that was after his little journey into prime-time television last week. In addition, only 29 percent of respondents think there's a social security crisis; that number was 37 percent last month. Keep talking, George. You're doing just fine.

So the big lame George is going to back off and listen to the people, right? Well, if by "people" you mean "the minority faction of religious nutjob fanatics who helped elect him, or so we've been told to believe, and the large corporations that constantly get their crotches sniffed by NeoShrub himself" you'd be correct. Last night, while shamelessly whoring his social-security scheme to a group of Latino business owners, NeoShrub fibbed that his plan "functions well for a young generation of Latinos and people from all walks of life." However, he did forget to mention the serial benefit cuts he brought up on television last week -- the ones that would paralyze the middle class.

Jesse Rios, executive director of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, summed it up best. "Latinos, as they learn more ... know that cutting benefits is never a good idea, whether you're a Latino, an African American or an Anglo," he said.

Friends are bailing on DeLay

The noose apparently is continuing to tighten around the scrawny chicken neck of Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader and Federal Bug-Killing Czar.

A week after the House decided to drop the investigative rules Republicans adopted in January to protect their ethically challenged ringleader, two Republicans on the ethics committee have announced they will recuse themselves because of their ties to DeLay.

Americans concerned with justice and fairness had questioned the judgment of ethics committee members Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK). Smith and Cole, you see, have written a couple of sizable checks to The Tom DeLay Legal Defense Fund, suggesting they might be slightly less than objective in matters concerning the Bug Czar. They also wound up on the committee, coincidentally, after two Republicans who voted to admonish DeLay on three separate matters in 2004 were reassigned. Fancy that.

The idiot Cole whined that Democrats were simply attempting to "politicize the ethics process" and blamed his opponents for pursuing a partisan agenda. During his diatribe, he neglected to bring up DeLay's clear and unquestionable ties to Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist under criminal investigation for bilking six Indian tribes out of $66 million. Credit-card statements establish that Abramoff personally paid for travel junkets for DeLay and some of his staffers in the past, which is -- here we go again, Tom -- a violation of House ethics rules.

Your corporate-controlled media (and government) at work

Did you hear the big news over the weekend? That missing bride wasn't abducted or anything. She just got cold feet and ran away from Georgia to New Mexico. Oh, those silly brides.

I won't bore you with the whole story, because you've already heard it if you were anywhere near a television set this weekend. I also won't bore you with the whole story because -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- none of us should give a damn. She lied about being abducted, she blamed an imaginary Mexican for kidnapping her, and she's not dead. Done deal. All that's left is to figure out whether she should be prosecuted for diverting precious resources away from people who really needed help and towards some selfish liar who doesn't know how to act like an adult. Put it on page A16, right under the story about how birds are smarter than we thought. (By the way, they aren't.)

You see, while our national media was too busy feeding us the story of the runaway idiot, it forgot to tell us about that whole exposé that appeared in the London Times over the weekend -- the one about the newly discovered document that suggests the British and American governments secretly agreed to attack Iraq before the idea was ever floated before Congress, before it was ever mentioned before the United Nations, and before there was ever any conclusion regarding those pesky WMDs. The document also contained suggestions that Britain and America would have to create conditions to justify a war, since no real reasons to do so actually existed in the first place.

In other words, there was going to be a war whether there were reasons for it or not. There was going to be a war because George Bush and Tony Blair got a couple of bugs up their asses and decided they wanted a regime change -- an illegal regime change, as Blair was informed by British foreign secretary Jack Straw, who pointed out to Dubya's cockney lap dog that "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Worry not, Jack, because Iran is next. But that's not the point.

As of today, 1,586 American soldiers and 88 members of the British military have died in Iraq in the 775 days since troops illegally invaded that country. That's hardly a drop in the bucket compared to the number of Iraqi civilians who've died because of the military intervention -- at least 21,000 Iraqis (and perhaps as many as 24,000) have died thanks to the Bush-Blair war crime.

I don't care how bad one is at math. One ditzy adult runaway is not more important than somewhere around 25,000 casualties and proof of a conspiracy to start an unjustified war. News editors, perhaps you can let the rest of us know exactly where you've stashed your integrity, because you sure aren't carrying it with you to work.

To think Bill Clinton was impeached for ruining one blue dress, but George Bush -- barring a congressional election miracle in 2006 that sets the table for his being impeached -- is going to get away with the murder of 25,000 people.

You decide which is worse. The Republicans already have.