Month: March 2026

It started with Windows, frankly – and the learned helplessness that went along with it, the notion that things just broke for no apparent reason and that an ordinary person couldn’t be expected to understand what was happening.

Then Y2K, which people reacted to not as disaster averted, but as hype for something that wasn’t a big deal, thus giving them license to say that anything that didn’t affect them wasn’t a problem.

Then Sept 11, when Republicans trained the American people to believe that no sacrifice was required and that the only necessary response to calamity was to act as if nothing had happened.

And then there was the onslaught of “reality” television, in which manipulated triviality was presented as documentary if not aspirational, feeding the conceit that everything was done for show and nothing was sincere or meaningful – everything became performative. And then it took over politics, fed by years of talk radio bigotry brushed off with irony and “what, you can’t take a joke” bullshit.

And so here we are. We have built a 21st century where nothing is real, nothing is provable, and whatever you want to believe is your own truth. It’s healthy to lie in the sun all day as long as you smear beef tallow on your face. Tanning your ballsack is the key to restoring your potency. The majority of the federal budget goes to illegal immigrants, not Social Security and the “Department of War.” And a senile, deteriorating 79 year old bigot is a viable President, not a decompensating idiot who is no longer capable of functioning as an adult, let alone as one of the leaders of the free world.

We have met the enemy, and it is everybody else.

I don’t know why I am focused on spending money. The best thing I did this year was decide that I couldn’t buy things online during Lent, which has spared me from impulse purchases and forced me to consider how much of my wanting stuff is just trying to perfect things I already have, in that eternal quest to have The One Perfect Thing. I am good on lightsabers, on computing equipment, on outerwear. So why do I still want these things?

As always, I think it goes back to wanting to need those things. I want to be somewhere I’ll need the linen blazer, or the charcoal wool Crombie coat with a custom gold lining. Somewhere I will have need of my own MacBook Neo. Somewhere I have an excuse to have a personalized lightsaber on my hip at all times. Basically I want to be able to work remotely from Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland Galway, is what it feels like.

It’s another flavor of escape. Same reason I have the “False Trip” playlist full of songs that replicate the sound of the lobby and lounge room music at the Park Lane, or the candles that approximate the smell they pump in there. Same reason I now have a purpose-acquired Yeti just for work and a separate one with a different texture that never leaves the house so that I’ll know I’m not on the job when I sip from it. I even loaded up big on the Nitro Emerald Cliffs dry stout from Athletic so i can have as many pints as I want without ruining my health.

You can’t assume the world is going to get any better. You have to accept that things will never go back to how they used to be. You just have to make the most of what there is now – whether it’s the unlikely return or regular trad to the nearest pub, or the presence of a dive bar and a cocktail lounge less than three miles away, or the walkable village, or the candles and purple light in the shed. Or the saber you have, or the family laptop (even if it doesn’t have your stickers), or your new linen blazer that can stand up to even 80 degrees. FInd a reason to need the things you have, and then use them.

The unthinkable happened today: Apple dropped a $600 laptop. The MacBook Neo is more or less what was predicted: no frills, A18 processor, only 8 GB RAM, none of your fancy Center Stage camera or MagSafe plugs or the like. It’s basically a drop-in updated replacement for the original M1 MacBook Air, or for a Chromebook that doesn’t suck, or for a mediocre Best Buy Windows laptop.

It certainly feels like a contender for the “blogger’s delight” spot first filled by the 12″ PowerBook G4 over twenty years ago. Small, cool-running, and far more useful with a keyboard and mouse than trying to make an iPad into a laptop. And thanks to a cunning discount, I could score the higher-end model for that same $600, which would give it 512 GB of storage – same as my phone, twice that of my work laptop – and the added convenience of TouchID, which has turned out to be kind of a must-have in a world of passkeys and ApplePay. Blogging, Signal, proper shopping, maybe streaming and Zoom – and more importantly, all of that stuff NOT on my work computer. There’s something to be said for making it possible to just pull out the work laptop, click “Erase All Content and Settings” and leave it on the desk.

In any event, I’ve already thought through it, so now it’s just a question of deciding whether it’s worth my while.