Block Chop 94: PCs, Apples and Shane MacGowan...

It’s probably about time I got a new computer.  The one in front of me right now, staring back at me with its freezing stuttering screen, is basically only held together with snot and moulted hair.  I refuse to spend another few hours dismantling every single part just to clean the dust out of the hobbled old fan.  There is literally not a single component that can remain in situ when completing what should be such a simple and basic task.  Directly to you, the designers of the Compaq 6735s: “Why have you stuck the fucking fan in such a stupid fucking place?”  It’s exactly like you are deliberately trying to sabotage the system.  Why not do the basic decent thing and put in a teeny tiny little access port?  You dicks.

It’s also unnecessarily heavy.  I need a laptop that is half the size and a quarter of the weight, and I need it now.  If I carry this god awful craptop around with me I quickly develop a forward stoop to counterbalance the massive weight dragging me into the ground and shortening my leg bones.  If I took it out and about more often I would soon crunch over into a full-blown hunchback.  I may even end up being able to touch my toes without bending my knees for the first time ever.  Being able to touch one’s toes isn’t exactly a grand prize, so I think I’ll just pray for a new laptop.  And when prayer doesn’t work I’ll go out and buy one.

And I won’t be buying an Apple.  The reasons for this are many and complex and not something I want to think too much about at this late hour, but suffice to say Apples are shit; even shitter than my stupid broken heavy PC.  For fuck’s sake, one mouse button! And don’t give me that shit about ‘you only need one mouse button on an Apple’.  You only need one pair of shoes, but it’s useful to have more.  Basically PCs are robust, functional, endlessly modifiable, and useful, whereas Apples are pointless overpriced toys for show-offy bell ends... perhaps I ought to get one then.

Like Shane MacGowan in his brilliant rambling autobiography A Drink With...  I seem to have made one point, and then almost immediately contradicted myself, apparently simultaneously believing two almost opposites, or simply just forgetting what I have said minutes earlier.  So what have I learned?  It seems I have learnt that PCs are brilliant... except mine, which is a piece of shit.  And Apples are shit, except I’ve never really used one.  Whenever I do get the chance to have a go I find them alien and confusing and not at all pleasant.  The idea that Apples are utterly brilliant does strike me as very obviously being complete bullshit, but I don’t really have the evidence to back this up.  I tell you what, why don’t you lend me yours.  That way I can decide once and for all whether or not they are any good.  If I don’t like it you can have it back, perhaps with a hole kicked in the screen, and if I do like it I’m fucking keeping it.  It’s mine.