Insert Keyboard Here

Everone knows that there isn't much choice when it comes to a computer operating system - if you're an average bloke and you're buying a computer for your home you're highly likely to end up with a PC, complete with the latest POS (that's not a technical term) software from Microsoft on it. Now I can understand how any operating system might have its limitations when in the hands of some super-geek technophile who's going to push it to the limits, but most of us just want it to do basic stuff, like let us surf the web, download videos, fuck about a bit on Photoshop, e-mail and Skype people. If I can use an automotive analogy here, I might expect Windows to exhibit some flaws in the hands of an electronic boy-racer, who's doing the equivalent of handbrake turns, timed 0-60s and skid-pan testing, but I just want to go from electronic A to B, so why do parts of it exhibit the annoyingly frequent tendency to stop working for no apparent reason?

I swear, if I had a dollar for every time I was asked if I wanted to send the fucking error report to Microsoft I'd have enough money to hire someone to shove my keyboard sideways up Steve Ballmer's arse.

I'm not telling you anything you don't know though. And, to be fair, automobiles have gliches too - this is why the automakers periodically issue recalls, so you bring your car back and they fix, for free, whatever problem they've discovered. Microsoft does this too - except that they discover problems with such mind-buggering frequency that they have a rolling system of automatic fixes that are downloaded to your PC. You can always opt out of these, but then your computer will be plagued with whatever myriad problems and security risks they missed during development. On the other hand, if you allow the regular updates you're putting your computer in the hands of people whose accountability and commitment to keeping your PC working can best be described as "Non-Fucking-Existent".

Case in point: we return from vacation and fire up the PC. It doesn't work. Blue screen of death, and some error message that is completely meaningless to normal people, and designed to convey one simple concept: You're Fucked. The PC has been unplugged the whole time, so there have been no surge issues; it worked fine a minute before we left, and now it's become essentially a giant desk ornament. We could ask someone to fix it but that would almost certainly cost more than another PC, and we wouldn't know if it was properly fixed or not - neither of us speak Klingon, so communication with the technician would be pointless.

So we fall back on the tried and tested trick of restoring the PC to a prior date. No luck. We try a couple of earlier dates, and eventually - more miraculous than a sodding vision at Lourdes - it comes back to life. We had had to restore the machine to a point in time before one of these "Windows updates", which had presumably not fucked the PC in the meantime because it was never turned off, only hibernated.

This is the equivalent of taking your car in for a manufacturer recall, being given the keys back and then finding, when you try to drive it away, that nothing happens when you turn the key. With an automobile you'd turn right around and walk back into the dealer. You'd point out that your (fucking) car didn't (fucking) work any more and then the dealer would fix it. Maybe they'd leave greasy fingermarks on your door handles, but you'd eventually drive away.

With the PC you're now buggered. Doesn't work any more? Not Microsoft's fault is it? Try calling them up and saying "My PC stopped working since you sent an update - can you send someone out to fix it please?" Yeah, right. So why do they get away with it? Can you imagine people standing by the roadside all over the country, lifting up the hood of their car and gazing in complete bewilderment at the engine, wondering how they're going to get home, and who's going to fix the problem that caused it to just stop working for no apparent reason? There'd be a riot.

And just what are all these electronic recalls anyway? Apart from the security fixes (and I only have Microsoft's word that they made me safer) I have never experienced one single instance of an update making anything better. I'm guessing they're all aimed at the hardcore users who want the electronic equivalent of low profile alloy wheels, custom engine management chips, hi-lift cams and nitro boost. For us "A to B" users they're irrelevant. Worse than irrelevant, since they cause your PC to curl up its toes and die.

One day we may have access to software that comes with support - let's face it, you have about as much chance of getting by without your computer these days as without your car. In the meantime, I'll just keep restoring and hoping. Oh, and if Steve Ballmer is reading this, I suggest you make room "back there" for a keyboard pretty soon - Explorer just crashed again.


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Captain Bailout

So the whole country is on the edge of its seat, waiting to see if the credit crisis can be averted by an $800 billion government sponsored bailout. Well, I say "the whole country" but let's face it, half the population can't even spell "bailout" and wouldn't notice a financial market meltdown unless it disrupted their retarded viewing of "Deal Or No Deal". It's fascinating that we have become so accustomed to being able to look to someone else to bail us out of all of our problems that even the government seems to believe that Captain Bailout is out there, ready to come to our assistance every time we screw up.

A tropical storm hits the coast and, to everyone's surprise, people with houses built below sea level experience flooding. No insurance? No problem! Why bother to buy flood insurance when Captain Bailout can be relied upon to buy you a new house? And new furniture, to replace all that crap you had before. We get heavy rain in St.Louis and some houses flood. No insurance? Just wait for the city or the sewer district to buy you out - no need to take precautions or exercise prudence.

You borrow money you don't have, at interest rates you can't afford, to buy a house that you don't deserve, and you run out of money. It's not your fault - it's never your fault. It must be the evil lenders who forced you to sign the loan documents. Let's call Captain Bailout so you don't have to repay your debt and you can stay in your (unearned) house, at someone else's expense.

You didn't pay attention at school. Instead you bummed around and skipped out to shoplift at the mall. On no! No-one will give you a job. Well it's not your fault - you must be the victim of unfair trade practices in China, or racial discrimination, or lack of investment in training. It can't possibly be because you're a lazy, useless, untrustworthy minor criminal. Let's call Captain Bailout and get you a "stimulus rebate" from taxes you never paid in the first place so you can buy more cigarettes and beer. You have eight kids by six different fathers? You're a "victim" of an "unjust society" and other people must be made to "support you". Call Captain Bailout so you can feed your colossal fat arse and watch daytime TV without ever having to get a job.

You work at an American car company. Your union has bled the company dry for decades with inflated wage and benefit demands, extorting ridiculous concessions from companies that can't afford to say no. Now your employer is close to bankruptcy because other car companies can make cars just as good for thousands less. They don't have legions of retirees on gold-plated, feather-bed packages to keep in Chitos and beer for thirty years. No! This can't be right! Call Captain Bailout and get a $25 billion loan guarantee package from the taxpayer so we can "protect American jobs". Why should you have to suffer the effects of your actions?

You drove your SUV home while drunk, ran off the road and rolled it. Now you're in a wheelchair. It's all the fault of the car company! Let's call Captain Bailout and his ambulance-chasing cockmunch attorney so they can get you $20 million from the automaker. It's not your fault you were driving while drunk - SUVs should be bullet-proof, right? And tree-proof too. Didn't fasten your seatbelt? Not your fault - Captain Bailout will make someone else pay.

People enter this world with options and choices. They raise their kids with the opportunity to teach them common sense and good judgment, or to let them fuck around and leech off other people. It seems that every time people fuck up it's expected that someone else will pay to protect them from the consequences of their actions. Bullshit! There are plenty of unfortunate deserving cases but they're buried in a seethig mass of lazy wasters who made bad choices and now want someone else to bail them out. Poor lazy wasters who didn't bother to finish school and rich greedy dickheads who lent money to people with no income and were someohow amazed when they didn't pay it back.

No worries. There's always the rest of us to pick up the tab. We can be taxed so that other poeple can have their mistakes fixed. Right up until we figure out that in Obama's socialist state you're better off not working and just collecting. Yeah, time to get Captain Bailout on speed-dial.


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

For Beta Or Worse

I don't want to start a "porn theme" or give the impression that this subject occupies an unhealthy portion of the typical male brain (as opposed to, say, a moderate 5-10%) but yesterday's porn diatribe got me reminiscing about the first genuine hardcore porn video I ever obtained. Everyone remembers this moment - it's the equivalent of knowing where you were when Kennedy was shot, except more important, and more relevant to those of us who hadn't even been fertilized back then. I mean, presidents come and go, but the memory of your first high quality skin flick will stay with you for decades. And when I say "high quality" I mean "obscene beyond belief".

Sure, I'd seen soft porn before - as I may have mentioned, we had a mate called Fergie who used to get them on his Dad's video card so we could watch them during school lunch break - but the real thing was unknown to us. It was rumored to exist but none of us had actually seen it, kind of like the Loch Ness monster, or Bigfoot. But one day Paul showed up with the real deal. Paul was a nice boy who worked in the post office, having already left school. All the old ladies liked him, and he was like the "grandson they all wished they had" when they came to collect their pensions. However, behind that granny-friendly exterior beat the heart of a red-blooded teenage male, and he had managed to obtain this video from a bloke who'd been to Holland.

It was a minor miracle that I could even attempt to watch the video. You see, I had one of those fathers that really bought into the idea that Betamax was a better format than VHS. He'd read all about it and very carefully chosen the Beta VCR over the "lower picture quality" VHS, with absolutely no concern for his son's later inability to watch illicit porn. No-one had porn on Beta; if hardcore porn was like Bigfoot then hardcore porn on Beta was like Bigfoot's distant cousin from Mars - not just hard to find but fucking pointless even contemplating.

And yet good old Paul found it. Probably got it cheap from the only poor bastard who'd launched a range of porn on Betamax format in the whole of Holland, and who was presumably having a going out of business sale before drowning himself in a canal somewhere. Paul was obviously kind enough to leave it with me and fuck off, but he did tell me that the first of the various scenarios depicted on the tape was hilarious as it involved a giant plastic dick mounted on a piston and attached to a small engine, which was used to service a woman lying on a table. It was called "The Fuckologist" and the basic premise was that this Fuckologist doctor-bloke would help a woman who was a bit "tight" to loosen up, using this machine. Unfortunately the actress in question had, as I recall, the kind of bucket-clunge that you could have used as a vase for two dozen roses, which detracted from the otherwise compelling realism of the set-up, but otherwise I'd have to give high marks for originality. I've certainly never seen anything like it since.

Tempting as it was to leave the video in the machine as alternative family viewing, I returned it to Paul and it duly made its rounds of the kids in the area. The important thing to remember is that a bit of porn never did anyone any harm. Well, it never did me any harm; to be honest I don't know what happened to most of the kids I knew back then. I think a lot of them grew up with an unhealthy interest in engines. But we all learned an important lesson: never rule out the possibility that Bigfoot exists. There's stranger stuff out there than you could possibly imagine.


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Play By The Rules

Who makes up the rules of porn, that's what I want to know. I've never actually watched porn myself, you understand, but I heard all about it from a man I never met before, in a pub that I can't remember the name of, and there are very definitely rules. It seems a bit odd, in a medium like that, to have such rigid formulae for the product, especially since most people never get past the first ten minutes. Let's face it, after that you could pretty much show anything and no-one would notice. They're all too busy trying to wipe the spooge off the arm of the La-Z-Boy. Let's be clear about this - people only watch porn in order to masturbate. That's a perfectly understandable thing; what would clearly not make any sense whatsoever would be watching it for any other reason. Never trust any bloke who says he only watches porn "for a laugh" - he's a liar. You should probably think twice about shaking his hand, too.

So, what's with the rigid adherence to the principles of pornographic video then? Let's start with the end: why is it so important that we see the bloke blow his muck all over his female co-star? (I'm assuming this isn't girl-on-girl porn, of course, which I have to say is always preferred by the man in the pub on the simple basis that strange tattooed blokes and stray wieners do not enrich the viewing experience.) I get that this was probably a sign of "genuine-ness" back in the day when a lot of this stuff was faked, but in the twenty-first century, where you can instantaneously download anything you want, and many things you don't, up to and including a man fucking a chicken, it hardly seems necessary to prove that the bloke really emptied his tanks.

That's not the end, though. The girl then has to - how do I put this tactfully? - lick the end clean, all the while (and this appears to be very important) looking like this is the most fun she's ever had, and a better taste experience than Haagen-Dasz. Why? In a creative porn world we would see all manner of weird things like this, but why does my mate in the pub see the same cliches played over and over again? I'm sure sociologists would have plenty of explanations as to why these scenes exist, why they're motifs for all sorts of hidden psychological triggers, such as the desire for a totally submissive partner, but I've never really trusted sociologists, especially ones who could watch porn purely for research. I get the impression those fuckers just make stuff up as they go along.

The other thing that aways forms an integral part of the action is the reverse cowgirl shot, where the woman sits astride the bloke, facing away from him, and bounces up and down on his dick. Now I don't know about you, but my mate down the pub can't watch this shot without wondering is she's going to break it off at any moment, seeing as how she's riding it like a sodding spacehopper (UK cultural reference only, I'm afraid). This is especially the case in the reverse anal cowgirl. Don't make the mistake of thinking those things are unbreakable, even fortified with the horse-sized dose of Viagra that I have to assume is standard preparation for the modern-day porn stud. (Why leave wood to chance?)

The female center of attention is very likely to be a slightly rough looking bird, with large plastic breasts, who for some unaccountable reason will get totally naked in five seconds but will never take her shoes off. So there's some club-bouncer type dressed as a plumber shooting his wad on her artificial chest while she simultaneously moans, grins and licks his bell-end. There's no plot, no eroticism and the highlight is her bouncing up and down on his knob with her stilettos in the air and him quietly praying that she doesn't snap his love-truncheon clean off.

My main question is this: who buys porn anymore? There's apparently a huge fucking industry centered in the San Fernando valley turning this stuff out, and they even have their own awards ceremony (best anal newcomer, anyone?). Who's the customer? It's clearly not me, and I'm assuming it's not you either. Porn movies are something out of the seventies, like digital watches or G-Plan furniture. They're something you seek out when you're fourteen and one of your mates has one that his older brother brought back from Amsterdam. They're a rite of passage, a necessary phase, but you don't want to be one of those sad wankers who's actually ordering the stuff and paying for it. If you get to the point where you actually know the actors by name it's time to hang it up, mate.

I'll probably never know the answer. You can't ask the bloke in the pub because blokes don't talk about porn any more than they talk about their feelings, or a scrotal infection. It's just one of life's many mysteries, like why it is that the La-Z-Boy in your cheap hotel room has that strange crusty texture...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

A Nice Bird

I know, it's been a whole week, and you're all just dying to know how things worked out with the new parakeet. Did it drop dead after a day? Did it continue to live? How could you bear the suspense? I don't want to turn into one of those people who write endless crap about how their dog/cat/parrot/iguana (insert animal here) just did this really neat trick, which was just so cute, and I'm perfectly aware that the entertainment value of a parakeet diminishes considerably when you're just reading about someone else's, but I could hardly not post a follow-up to the purchase.

The first evening this little yellow thing just sat there on its perch, hardly daring to move. It didn't seem to want to eat or drink, but fortunately the internet is full of similar stories from other people so we didn't worry too much. By Sunday it had progressed to taking food from Bison Daughter's hand and allowing itself to be stroked. On Monday Mrs Bison played it some parakeet sounds she found on the web, and it chirped its little heart out. Unfortunately this made us feel bad, since the recorded sounds didn't answer back, and so on Monday I decided that it needed a little friend to keep it company.

So on Monday evening I stopped at the pet store on the way home and bought the little blue and white one which had been Bison Daughter's second choice the previous Saturday. This necessitated more interaction with the fabulous green-eyed girl at the store. She invited me into the back room to see some newly arrived parakeets that were not able to be sold for another week. (I guess the store wants to be sure they'll survive the journey from the breeder and not drop dead in a day.) I followed her into the small, cozy room, where she started to unbutton her blouse. (No, not really, but it would have made a great story, wouldn't it?) She did show me the new parakeets though, but I decided to stick with the one Bison Daughter had liked. There was a wonderful green parrot in the stock room as well, which squawked loudly at us when we walked in, and I was a bit tempted to get that as well. Mrs Bison would have loved that...

Half an hour later I slipped the new bird into the cage as a surprise for Bison Daughter, earning myself some extra Dad Points in the process. The new bird just sat in a corner to start with, but later that night, when we turned out the lights, there was a barrage of sqawking, lots of fluttering around the cage, and feathers flying everywhere. We turned on the light and rushed in, to find the birds sitting there like small children, busted for mucking around when they were supposed to be sleeping. They settled down after that and have become inseparable.

After just a week the birds will come out of the cage and sit nicely on your finger. One of them can fly, since its wings weren't clipped as much, but they're very tame. Apart from Bison Daughter's room becoming a speckled festival of parakeet turds there really is no downside to these things as pets, at least as far as I can tell.

Well, there you go. I promise not to bore everyone shitless with touching stories of new parakeet tricks. And if I do end up getting to see the petshop girl's boobs, I swear you'll be the first to know.


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Not The Paris Hilton

I had to spend last night in a hotel in Paris, since my meeting there finished too late for me to fly back to the US until today. Sounds romantic doesn’t it? A night in Paris! Well, let me tell you, it was shit. For a start I wasn’t actually in any part of Paris that mattered – it was a characterless brick hotel on the outskirts of Charles De Gaulle airport. Plus you can forget all those illusions of great food, pavement bistros dispensing wine while you sit in a cloud of Gitane smoke, and sultry Parisienne women. That’s all bollocks. Food in France is overrated, except when it’s in a really good restaurant, where it is hideously expensive. You’d get better service at a soup kitchen, and I didn’t see one girl I’d put in the same class as the one who sold me a parakeet last week.

Plus, I’m not one of those people who will, when stuck in a strange place by themselves, step out on a Bill Bryson-esque exploration of the locale. Remember, he gets paid for that stuff. When he ends up stranded in a miserable part of the city, with no money because he was pickpocketed, and a three hour walk to the hotel whose name he has forgotten, he turns all that into a funny story and sells it to us as a book. I get to write it all in a blog that no-one reads, which is why I didn’t jump on a bus to downtown Paris last night with a full wallet and a sense of adventure. Fuck that.

My options were therefore somewhat limited. Having already explored the full potential of the bar at the hotel (chili con carne a la microwave avec un coke light s’il vous plait) I repaired to my room. The US was (and still is, I understand) seven hours behind, so I could still call people and work for a while. I could also call home and remind myself how shit Friday night is in a shit hotel in a shit city when your family is getting ready to sit down to stir-fry chicken with a home-made peanut sauce.

The TV was no help. In Belgium you get a couple of British channels in your hotel, plus a couple of American ones, some sports, and a few artsy European channels where there’s a chance some girl will get her boobs out around 11pm. In this French hotel there were zero English or American channels, and the only sport was on a channel that kept flickering and buzzing. Everything else was irredeemable shite, or should I say “merde”.

Around 1am my body (still on US time, since I had only arrived that morning) was convinced that I should feed it. I went to the mini-bar and opened the wooden cabinet door. Behind it, where there should have been a mini-bar, there was instead a great big hole with wires hanging out. A small, scuffed white label on the door stated that the mini-bar was “not in use”. How about “not in existence” dickheads? I found two tiny packets of biscuits along with the “tea and coffee making facilities”, which had probably been there for three years, and certainly tasted that way. I was lucky to get those – I’d been upgraded to the “mini-suite” room when I’d pointed out that my first room had no functioning air conditioner or TV. It also had no tea and coffee, the importance of which was not apparent to me at that stage.

Eventually I must have fallen asleep because I was woken by the alarm this morning and staggered down deserted corridors to a breakfast room that seemed to have been ravaged by hordes of Asian flight attendants who were at that point milling around in the foyer. The tables were uncleared, the food was sparse, cold and crap, and the fat-arsed lazy waitress didn’t even bring coffee round. (By the way, if you ever get a chance to stop over at the Millennium Hotel in Paris you may just want to bear this in mind).

The shuttle bus to the airport was on a milk-run round local hotels, and jammed solid. Typical of French efficiency, this Terminal 2 bus was half the size of the Terminal 1 bus which had arrived (and departed) completely empty. No wonder the Germans keep waltzing over France like its soldiery was non-existent. In addition to being pussies the French clearly couldn’t organize the proverbial in a brewery.

This is why I’ll never be Bill Bryson. He’d probably find some gently humorous way to reflect on the hidden delights of Paris in the midst of his gloomy travel experience. Me? I just don’t want to come back again. Ever. Unfortunately I’ll be here in two weeks. I can hardly fucking wait…


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Feathered Friend

I had a good run - ten years I've avoided buying Bison Daughter a pet. For ten years she's made do with whatever multi-legged crawly thing or slimy beast she could capture in our garden and sentence to temporary incarceration in an unsuitable habitat of her own creation. As she got older she became less inclined to settle for frogs, woodlice and fireflies, but at the same time I was in no way persuaded to get a dog, and be myself sentenced to picking up its excrement from other people's gardens for the next fourteen years, while paying exhorbitant kennel fees, innoculation fees, veterinary bills and food costs. Man's best friend, my arse.

I was long prepared to compromise with a snake - they hardly need any care (a frozen rodent dropped in every so often and that's about it) and you never have to walk them - but Mrs Bison was not to be convinced. Finally, however, we settled on an acceptable pet - a budgie. (For some reason my US friends have no idea what a budgie is, since over here they call it a parakeet, but I always thought a parakeet was one of those bigger birds that could take your finger off if you put it through the bars of the cage. Oh well - just shows how much I know.)

I sent Bison Daughter off to the internet to research how to care for the little feathered bastards, with Mrs Bison checking that the search for "buying a budgie" didn't throw up links to sites with "triple penetration and cum shots". This accomplished I had no remaining excuse not to go to the pet store and get a bird. Note to potential budgie purchasers: the bird cost about $20; the cage, food, toys, perches and other stuff cost seven times that amount. Still cheaper than the first visit to the vet with your new puppy though, and at $20 budgies are eminently replaceable.

In the pet store I picked out a cage and then sought help from one of the staff, a delightful girl-next-door type who was at that moment engaged in stroking a lizard. (For real - not a euphemism.) She apparently had her own bird (in addition to cat, ferret, and God knows what else) so was well qualified to tell us what we needed. This included an abrasive perch so that the bird could wear down its claws and beak.

That always reminds me of the James Herriott story where he gets called out to look at an old geezer's budgie which no longer sings. He discovers that its beak has become overgrown so he tells the old boy that he just has to trim it. Well of course once he gets it out of the cage it dies of fright in his hand, so he quickly tells the old bloke that he has to take it back to the surgery and instead runs round to the local pet shop where he finds a similar colored bird, which he brings back in its place. The oldster is delighted that his old friend is now singing his heart out again. (If I got the story wrong, tough shit - I'm not going to research it!)

So, having gathered a ton of accessories, cut to the point where Bison Daughter picks out a small yellow budgie and the girl gets it out of the cage with a net and clips its wings. It, of course, escapes, and flies around the small caged-in area for about five minutes while she tries to capture it, and I'm convinced that its little heart will give out and we'll have to take the light blue one that was Bison Daughter's second choice. The process eventually ends and we get all sorts of helpful advice from the girl who's assisting us, who I can't help noticing has fabulous green eyes and a really nice smile. There's something about pretty girls who are kind to animals that draws me to them - maybe it's a subconscious realization that a woman who could love a ferret might have just the kind of standards in a man that I could meet. I have momentary thoughts about her letting me stroke her ferret, before the need to go and pay for everything brings me back to reality.

Now we're at home; the budgie is in its cage and clearly still terrified. Hopefully it will survive the night, although another visit to the pet store wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to me...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison