better late than never, eh?

Steve Jobs is dead. I know you’ve all heard about that. It was big news. Nerds cried, people who maybe didn’t even know they were nerds cried, the Onion had a headline that said “Last American Who Knew What the Fuck He Was Doing Dies” and generally, the whole thing was very sad. In what’s gotta be the most brilliant crosspurposing of a death ever, the new iPhone also just shipped, and it actually speaks to you, which, well, if you were the kind of person that thought of Steve Jobs as a father figure, there’s gotta be some sort of creepy comfort that you get from his last great gift to the world having a personality and voice. I heard Howard Stern this morning asking the new iPhone where he could get a handjob in Manhattan and the phone seemed to be happy to help him figure out where to go. That’s a good final bit of a legacy: a handjob providing, talking phone.

There’s no doubt about it, Steve Jobs was an important dude. Even if you dislike him or apple his footprint is gigantic. Ambitious people often set out to change the world, completely change an industry, and most of them don’t end up doing that at all. Steve Jobs revolutionized not only personal computing but also telecommunication, the music industry, the retail industry, publishing, turtlenecks, the whole deal. Like him or not, he was a visionary guy who shaped the world he lived in and it will likely be quite a while before someone else with that kind of vision and acumen comes along.

I have an iPhone. It’s got a broken screen. It’s kind of slow and it has, in no uncertain terms, destroyed my ability to just sit there and relax. I can’t just sit (or walk or even [and this is totally fucked up] drive or be on my computer) without having my phone right there just in case I need to check Twitter or get an email or a text or read an article or avoid doing pretty much anything that doesn’t involve staring into a tiny cracked screen. I no longer need to remember directions, phone numbers or to grab a camera, notebook, walkman, a watch or a personal gaming system (not that I fuck with video games, but you get the idea). I don’t need to talk to my friends because texting is so much more direct and requires less commitment. I’ve been in full on fights via text messaging, just because it’s less emotionally draining than talking on the phone to someone (and WAY less taxing than standing in a room together, yelling and punching walls and shit). You’ve got to imagine that the emotional numbing that these little devices provide is gonna have some twisted ramifications on humanity, right?

And that’s also the legacy of Steve Jobs. The personal phoneputer thingy that he so brilliantly put together is a marvel of human isolation. It’s also (and this is something that people tend to never discuss when they talk about the Steve Jobs legacy of invention, though it’s one of his most profitable ideas) built to break after a little while.

When the apple store in Chicago first opened I remember being shocked that they had recycling bins for ipods. Signs above the bins said something to the effect of “it’s been good to you, recycle it.” This was at a point where the oldest iPods in existence were about 2 years old. That’s fucking INSANE! I don’t want to sound like a grandpa or anything, but it used to be that if you paid hundreds of dollars for a device, that shit would last your lifetime. That was sort of WHY you paid that much for it. The notion that someone would sell you something designed to break after about two or three years (which is what iPods were [are] designed to do) so you, as an addicted consumer would have no choice but to upgrade to the newer version, is an insidiously brilliant strategy. And it’s no accident. We’re talking about a brilliant businessman and strategist and inventor. He invented disposable technology and, just to make sure that really careful people didn’t slip through the cracks, he built obsolescence into his devices as newer models appeared (changing the interface for the laptop power cable, for example).

So there you go. Before Apple, and the ipod and all these amazing, life changing devices, I believed that if I bought something for a lot of money, it would last forever. I also used to just sit there and look out the window of the bus. I don’t know if I was happier because I was just younger and more excited to exist than I am now, or if my new life full of things that are designed immerse me in a culture of information overload and ultimately to just up and break is just a darker, slightly sadder place, but one thing’s for sure. Things done changed. And until the Chuds come out of the sewers and/or the earth cleanses humans from its skin and we’re reduced to nomadic cannibal tribes (and that’s gonna suck balls), this is the life we got.

Wooooohooo.

aye Chihuahuas!

Ladies and gentlemen, it pleases me greatly to announce that I’m going to be heading to mexico tomorrow and I’m going to be gone for exactly one week. What in the world will I do while I’m there, you may ask? Well, that’s simple. I’m going to kill some female factory workers, take down the police department, terrorize innocents and post-apocalyptically turn my black market system into the dominant force in the nation. Then, I’ll play mariachi music, eat some burritos, fuck a donkey, and sneak over the border (and back) in the gas tank of a Chevy pickup truck. At that point, I’m going to watch soccer and after that, I’ll get drunk and stab someone and get thrown through a window, all while wearing a cowboy hat. I’ll drink some tequila and show my tits to an entrepreneurial group of young men with video cameras. I’ll overact in a televised melodrama. I’ll eat the worm. I’ll be tragically injured by a parasailing obese man from Nebraska and finally, I’ll become the richest man in the world.

Yeah, it’s gonna be a busy trip. I’m also gonna try to find a little time to be a gorgeous woman, a very old woman who makes lots of things by hand, a bunch of unwashed children selling chicklets, a ridiculously wealthy businessman with amazing hair and a booming voice, a teenager that loves Morrissey and of course, a happy go lucky 20 something who’s in charge of activities at the pool that loves listening to stories about the grandchildren of strangers. I’m gonna be poor, but with a wealth of family and love that can’t be measured in things like pesos and pairs of snakeskin boots. I’m also going to be exceedingly wealthy and blonde and look surprisingly german. Did I mention I’m going to have the best hair of anyone in the world? Because I am.

The whole thing is gonna be very Leaves of Grass, but maybe in reverse, or inverted, because frankly, I never really could pay too much attention to Walt Whitman or take the time to understand what he was really getting at. So, I guess technically, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not gonna be Walt Whitman at all. Maybe it’s gonna be more like Hemmingway. I’ll be curt and evasive, talking about certain things to let the negative space of what I’m not mentioning chip away at your soul. If that’s the case, I’m also gonna have to eat some big steaks and fuck a ton of broads, which sounds like it could be okay, but I’m kind of thinking the whole thing’s gonna leave me feeling empty, repulsive and on the run from myself, you know, spiritually. So fuck that. Plus, really if we’re being honest, Hemmingway has had too large of an influence on modern writing for me to truly be able to enjoy him anymore. This is a topic for another time, but (short version) it’s kinda like listening to the Kinks. They invented distortion, and I can appreciate that the first time anyone ever heard the distorted guitar riff of “all day and all of the night” it was probably a face melting experience, but it’s never been that way for me because it had such a humongous influence that by the time I came along, distortion had evolved to a point where that original bit was no longer cool or interesting to my ears. But I’m getting off the subject and talking WAY too much about Hemmingway and the Kinks, which are two things that I like in theory, but not in practice.

Maybe I’m going about this Mexico thing all wrong. Maybe what I should do is go down there with my screaming, wiggly baby and my screaming wiggly toddler and my screaming exhausted wife and just do my best to drink margaritas and relax while everyone else attempts to fall into the pool and drown, or cram a zillion death-march-like activities into our days.

Nah, for real, what I’m gonna do is have a lovely week with my family where I do my best to forget all my troubles, forget all my cares and maybe go downtown once or twice to the lovely city of Bucerias. It’s a cool zone. I like the small, dusty, droopy eyed awesomeness of it. Besides, last time I was there I ended up in a wrecked mansion playing chess on a board that was drawn in pen on the inside of a cheerios box with a dude with tattoos on his face (he whipped my ass ten times out of ten) and having a great time. I also kind of think I got kicked out of a bar on superbowl Sunday. Or maybe I just had to take a dump. I don’t know. It’s been a few years and I can’t be expected to keep track of all my wheelings and dealings. I know I saw a really shitty hippy band play a song or two and it was infuriating. Anyway…

Anyone up for the Garfield Park Conservatory? Good. See you there. Otherwise, see you in a week!

Toodles.