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AppleCare works really fast - at least for the first part of the transaction. I filed the service claim for my iPod last Tuesday at the end of the day, and when I took in my mail on Thursday, there was already a UPS delivery notice in my mailbox (the way AppleCare works for iPods is you file a claim, they send you a special shipping box and pre-paid UPS label to return your iPod in, and then they send you a new iPod, repair your old one, and sell it on their site as refurbished goods). I was really excited, and started working out in my mind if Friday or Monday would be a better day to sit at home and wait for UPS to come back, when I noticed that it was marked "Second Notice." I thought that was a little odd, since I'd never had a first notice, but figured the driver had just made a mistake, and went about my day. Then, when I came home that night, the first delivery notice had appeared in my mailbox - apparently it had blown away on Wednesday and been found in a corner of the yard Thursday night. What this meant was that I no longer had the choice, UPS was coming one last time with that box from Apple, and they were coming Friday, and if I wasn't there to receive it, as per Apple's policy, it would be returned to them as undeliverable, my claim would be cancelled, and I would be charged for the round-trip voyage of an empty box. Damn Apple and their exceedingly fast response time.
So there I sat, Friday morning, nose pressed up to the window like a small dog waiting for its owners to come home and play with it, ears perking up and tail wagging whenever I heard a car coming, occasionally whining pathetically and barking at shadows. After a little while of that, though, I got bored (like all smart dogs do - this is when your garbage gets strewn about the house, dog owners), and decided to catch up on my reading, so I pulled out the latest issue of Vanity Fair (shut up, they do have some good essays, you just have to wade past all the ads and the other garbage to find them). I got through the surprisingly dull piece on blowjobs, the bit where we learn that Sandra Bullock is not actually Mariska Hargitay, and the part where (shock horror!) it is alleged that the Bush administration may have lied to justify a war in Iraq, and landed on page 100, where it turns out that Dan Brown is accused of having stolen most of The Da Vinci Code.
That's right, folks - it turns out that Dan Brown couldn't even come up with that crap on his own, he had to rip off someone else's crappy novel (and whether that makes him more pathetic or not is entirely up for debate). I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at a magazine article in my life - the guy stole from a book and from a website, somehow implicated his wife in the whole thing, and made her look like a raving lunatic to boot, getting her to send weird, threatening emails under a ludicrously false name to the people they stole from, and on top of it, the end result of their labour is an abortion of a novel and what is apparently also a tremendously bad movie. My laughter soon turned to horror, however, when the brave journalist who wrote the article admitted to having read both The Da Vinci Code and the earlier novel it supposedly copies from, Daughter of God, and went on to offer a comparison:
"Neither book is a work of high literature. Daughter of God is oftentimes clunky. Some sections (...) are reminiscent of the half-baked ramblings of a 19-year-old majoring in gender studies. (...) The Da Vinci Code, while featuring equally two-dimensional characters and hackneyed dialogue, is unquestioningly a more tightly crafted novel. There are fewer superfluous tangents. The backstory is more streamlined, the action more focused."
Yes, it seems as though, against all conceivable logic, not only is there a novel actually worse than The Da Vinci Code, that Dan Brown actually managed to improve upon, but some poor journalist had to read both novels, back-to-back, as part of the research on his story. I really, really hope he was very well paid for his troubles, because honestly, that would be enough to make me think twice before agreeing to do that piece. It would be enough to make me consider a change of profession. It might even be enough to make me rethink the value of the written word, and of reading as a life skill at all, really.
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Dear Smallest Cat:
I'm very sorry that you don't agree with some of my decorating choices, but until you're paying the rent here, you have no say in the matter (hang in there, that day may come sooner than you think). What did the bedroom curtains ever do to you, anyhow?
Sincerely,
The Human.
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Dear Ten-Year-Old Punk and Father:
Thanks so very much for not apologizing or even asking if I was OK after you skateboarded right into my ankle yesterday. I understand, you were totally distracted by your iPod, and had no way of knowing that you could possibly have some kind of accident by skateboarding in the middle of a crowded street sale. And Punk's Father, it's fine that you didn't make your kid apologize, or even not ride his board anymore in that crowd - I get it, you're clearly a weekend dad, and just want your kid to like you, even if that means teaching him not to take responsibility for his actions, or to have respect or compassion for others. And I totally don't mind the bump I've been intermittently icing all day, it just emphasizes the boniness of my other ankle, plus the ice is kind of soothing on all the mosquito bites I keep getting on my feet and ankles. Here's hoping it's not your kid that gets hurt next time.
Sincerely,
Jealous of America's Highly Litigious Society Right Now
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