This opinion article ran in the SF Chronicle today. Or at least, it was on the website.
Maybe they drew the line at including this much smut in the print version?
Windows Gives No Tongue
Reminder: Microsoft's bloated OS is truly terrible in the sack.
But a Mac will make you moan.
It has those beady little eyes. It has that seedy come-hither stare. It has overstretched pleather pants and million-dollar gold caps over stained teeth, through which glides that famously shrill voice that seems at once tempting and full of promise and yet also more than a little whiny, deceptive, ill.
"Aww c'mon, baby," Windows pleads, kneeling at the foot of the bed. "This time it'll be different, I promise." It coughs that familiar phlegmy hack, like a busted Dell motherboard scraped over of a lumpy C++ programmer.
More in the responses; seriously, this in NSFW, depending on where you work...
jake [email] said at 12:13 PM 07-14-2006: "I'm clean as Gates' conscience! Coding smooth as PowerPoint in pudding! No hang-ups at the moment, guaranteed. Got me all the latest precautions, baby. Just downloaded 18 more urgent patches to cover up the latest in about 115,986 severe security holes and I'm triple condomed against all those bugs that sent me into such a crazy spasm last time. Check it out!"
Before you can object, Windows yanks off its startup screen and whips out some mangled kernel code so scarred and meaty and discolored it looks like something Steve Ballmer might feed to his rabid daschunds. Or vice versa.
jake [email] said at 12:14 PM 07-14-2006: "I'll give it to you good, baby. Send you to the moon! To the stars! To the iTunes Music Store without a single sudden inexplicable freeze!"
It is, of course, the same old story, the same old come-on, Win once again acting all smooth and charming but completely unable to avoid that world-famous sheen of BS propaganda, coupled with a smell that's a disquieting cross between wet plastic and old cardboard and roughly 10 billion collected hours of lost productivity.
jake [email] said at 12:15 PM 07-14-2006: "And by the way, I sure do appreciate you dumping another $49.95 for the latest in mandatory anti-virals." A chortle emits from somewhere beneath its Recycle Bin. "Damn, that stuff is like digital Viagra! My Start button is throbbing like Tom Cruise at a Scientology rave!"
You wince. Windows, as usual, ignores it.
What can you do? There you are, longtime Windows user, splayed out, exposed and ready and always, always so eager to get it on, to make something happen. You want to roll. You want to explore. You want to click and scroll and move like hot fire through 20 unique multimedia pleasures at once. You fantasize about batch processing 300 snapshots in Photoshop while downloading the latest "Family Guy" episode on BitTorrent while still carrying on three separate IM chats as your Bluetooth cell phone automatically syncs up with your calendar software. Mmm, multitasking. Makes you quiver just thinking about it.
jake [email] said at 12:16 PM 07-14-2006: Tingles are happening. Juices are flowing. So you do what you always do when it's just you and Windows, alone: You lie. To yourself. "Maybe, just maybe this time it really will be different," you say, blocking out the one thousand previous proofs to the contrary. "What the hell. It's not like I have much choice." You close your eyes. You give in.
jake [email] said at 12:16 PM 07-14-2006: "That's it, baby," Windows coos, stroking your calves, working its way up to your hard drive. "Just relax, don't worry about a thing." Then come the magic words, the line Windows knows you secretly want to hear, the one guaranteed to send you into OS orbit: "Baby, I'll do it so good you'll think you're using a new MacBook Pro in a wireless cafe in Paris."
Oh my God. With that, you let out a huge sigh and the fantasy kicks in, allowing you to block out the fact that years of Windows seizures and viruses and malfunctions have left your nerve endings shot, your skills in the sack more sickly and atrophied than Nicole Richie at the Tanqueray factory. Not to mention how you haven't had a decent orgasm since that hot young Compaq Presario took you online at 2400K for the first time back in '88. Mmm, Mosaic.
jake [email] said at 12:17 PM 07-14-2006: Your breath comes in hot short gasps. Now it's not Windows at all. Now it's the long snake moan of a sleek silver MacBook running Apple's delicious OS X over your skin, caressing your belly, tickling your pelvic bones, kneading your flat panel.
Inhibitions vanish. Life opens. Your hips widen, your fingers roam, your imagination dances. This Mac, you know, will do anything you want, sacred to profane, Madonna to whore, with finesse and stability and zero fear of sudden viral invasion. They have mad skills down in the hot zone. Multilingual. Ambisexual. Sweet and pure on the outside and yet kinky as hell as soon as you say the word. Bonus: They don't insist on wearing old Comdex '98 baseball hats and oversized "Star Wars: Episode III" T-shirts while they get it on, like Windows. I mean, Oh my God.
Your swoon is so deep, in fact, you can ignore the fact that the thing that's actually grinding against you now is all jerky and spasmodic and jagged, traveling over your skin like a jackhammer moves over a pillow. Nothing's really inserted smoothly, random drivers all out of whack, nothing moving with anything resembling rhythm or true heat. It's just grunting, passionless tedium. It's just work.
jake [email] said at 12:18 PM 07-14-2006: You try not to care. You are imagining gobs of white space, graceful design, intuitive interfaces, completely sans fear of something suddenly stabbing you in the back or spying on your usage statistics or gutting your RAM. Hey, when it's a Mac you get to be fearless. Juicy. Thick with artistic possibility. Oh, this is good. You are close. Close to computing nirvana. Just a few more minutes ...
Suddenly, a sharp pain shoots up your thigh. You scream and sit bolt upright and open your eyes and sure enough, there's Windows, frozen, stuck, epileptic, its jagged yellow teeth lodged deep into your right quadriceps, Golem-like body convulsing as hunks of corrupt code fly everywhere and weird messages begin popping up all over its skin: system failures and file corruptions and strange come-ons for cheap home mortgages and online gambling and how you've already won a free iPod nano. Which is ironic. But only a little.
jake [email] said at 12:19 PM 07-14-2006: You sigh. All lust drains away in an instant. You feel defeated and tired and so deeply unsatisfied you might as well be Laura Bush dreaming of a hot-tub party with Colin Farrell. You reach under the bed, feel around. There it is. You grab on and yank.
The power chord pops out of the wall. Finally, Windows slumps, shuts down completely. You pry its grimy teeth from your flesh, heave its bloated body off your bed, hoping for the thousandth time that you don't have to completely re-install its entire brain while ignoring the obvious fact of its complete lack of heart. You plug it back in.
Slowly, Windows comes to. Icons pop back on, the main drive shudders once or twice, the Start button twitches, everything seems to hold steady. For now. "Hey, hot stuff!" Windows grunts, slowly registering your presence once again. "What, did I crash out again? Sorry 'bout that. Man, those viruses are a bitch!"
jake [email] said at 12:20 PM 07-14-2006: Then, once more, it gives you that famous overpriced, overrated, overcooked leer. "C'mon, baby, let's do it again," Windows oozes. "This time it'll be different, I promise."
brandon [email] said at 11:00 AM 07-15-2006: Dude men make love to or around their computers all the time. The REAL story... what's really fascinating is
The power chord pops out of the wall
I just want to hear this musical wall. And this magical box that runs on melodies and perfect 5th intervals... and dreams. I wonder if it supports LinkWraySys wireless.
