Learning to Mac

I needed to buy a new laptop, and it had to be good with media files. Now, you have to understand, I’m a PC person. You can’t get more PC than me. I actually love my PC – I understand its little personality quirks and I’m not fazed by its hissy fits. I can take it apart and put it back, just as it was. We have a loving relationship where I am more or less in control of things. I am powered by knowledge! Mwahahaha!

But. I also like XP. I really like XP. XP is my friend. I don’t want to make friends with Vista. I’m suspicious of the new kid on the block, and I don’t like being forced to make friends with it. Plus, everybody says Vista doesn’t behave well and is hard to stay friendly with. And there’s this whole working with audio and video thing…so I talked to lots of people, did some research, and my conclusions were succinctly summarized by the assistant at the local electronica chain store: “With your needs, you’d be extremely foolish to buy anything but a Mac”. Yeah, I know, I know.

So I swallowed my PCego, soothed my wallet with deceitful platitudes, logged into the Apple Store and made The Switch.

I got my MacBook Pro today, and I’m covetous. Of my own computer. It’s beautiful, you see? Sleek and silver and slim and all shiny and it doesn’t look scary…

But I’m terrified. It’s not just buying a new computer or adjusting to another platform. It’s a whole new mode of existence. I mean, you’re vegetarian, then you’re recycling, then you buy a Mac, and before you know it you’ve moved to California and you’re living in the East Bay talking about how such-and-such multinational company is a patriarchal, capitalist oppressor and is destroying the world as we know it and setting the whole thing to unfortunate music on your brand-new Fender…you know what I’m saying?

I can’t afford that life – but baby, I want it. I’ve been drawn to the dark side, quaking in ignorance and terror, unable to leave out of necessity (and a sinful lust for my new computer). So maybe I can’t open it up and take it to pieces, but by God I shall be ruler of my personal computing planet.

(You can’t see me now, but I’ve raised one trembling fist and am attempting to uncurl out of the fetal position into which I seem to have frozen).

This book stinks!

Quite literally. I’m in a bit of a quandary here. I’m reading this really good book, see, but the person who read it before me (it’s a library book) infused it with the smell of stale cigarettes. Now the book stinks. Everytime I turn the page I get a huge whiff of stale ciggie stench. And my hands began to stink. So I put the book away. I really want to finish it, but I’m having trouble with the smell.

I’ve seen some suggestions online for getting the smell out of books (kitty litter, newspapers, mint…) but they all take a few weeks. My library won’t be too pleased with me if I do that!

I might just return the book unread. I was hoping to put it out in the sun today to deodorize it a bit, but the weather has decided to be fickle. It’s been gloriously sunny the last couple of days, but today is a nasty day. Sigh. I might just return the book unfinished, which would really annoy me.

So smokers – look after library books and dammit, don’t smoke while you read them.

What’s in your Vegetable Thins?

I was eating a box of Vegetable Thins, and I looked at the ingredients. Here’s what’s in them:

1. Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine, mononitrate [Vit. B1], Riboflavin [B2], folic acid)

2. Canola and/or soybean and/or palm and/or palm kernel and/or partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil

3. Dehydrated vegetable “blend” (carrots, onions, celery, red bell pepper, cabbage, tomato, parsley)

4. Sugar

5. Salt

7. Leavening (monocalcium phosphate, baking soda)

8. Dextrose

9. High fructose corn syrup

10. Onion powder

11. Hydrolyzed soy and wheat protein

12. MSG

13. “Natural flavor”

14. “Artificial color”

15. Disodium guanylate

Fun, huh?

Here are some questions and comments:

1. Why does a product that is ostensibly salty contain three different kinds of sugars, one of which is the ridiculous high fructose corn syrup?

2. What are the “artificial colors” used? Because if it’s the beetlejuice red, I’d like to know.

3. Wikipedia, the source of all wisdom, says Disodium guanylate comes from dried fish or dried seaweed. Yech. Never eating this stuff again.

4. According to Soy Info Online (and I have no idea of the veracity of my sources), hydrolyzed soy protein is baaaaad. Oh, and it also has MSG, so that’s a big load of that stuff we’re getting, and MSG is pretty bad for you anyway. Check it out: http://www.soyinfo.com/soydefs.shtml

5. As for the oils – alright, guys, which is it? ‘Nuff with this and/or business. I’m sure you know which oil you’re using, and none of them sound good. Well, maybe the Canola, but not the rest.

So net result? I’m swearing off the veggie thins. I confess, it was the dried fish that did it. Really. Yuck.

A walk in the park

We went for a walk in the park near our house today. It’s really a lovely park – big, for a neighborhood park, and cornfields on three sides. I think there are some patches of prairie restoration – I took some pictures, thought I’d share.

Blowing up Buddhas

Who will protect archaeological remains?

Nobody, it seems. Too many of them are being destroyed by so-called religious fundamentalists, hate-mongers who have no sense of the value of either culture or religion.

The Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas as the world watched. Now, in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, reports come in of people trying to destroy a carved Buddha that dates from about the sixth century (I’ve read conflicting dates). It’s unclear if the Pakistani government is even attempting to do anything, as the same people go back time and again to the Buddha and keep trying to blow it up.

In December of 1992, frenzied “Hindu”fundamentalists tore down the Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque supposedly constructed by Babar, because it had the gall to stand on the “birthplace of Rama”.

History, peace, and knowledge, it seems, must always lose to hate and myth. All these monuments were elements of material culture that taught us a lot about world history. However, they were also symbols of otherness on which the strategically created hatred of a small group of people (pretending to represent a majority) was focused.

Destruction of such monuments is a crime, a desecration.

Who will protect archaeological remains?