La Guera's Mailbag

Item the First: Iphone owners who purchased their precious in the first wave of sales are outraged, outraged that Steve Jobs suffered an inexplicable fit of decency and dropped the price to $399. Well, guess what? Them's the breaks of your pathological need to be first in line and first with the trendy toy. No one made you fork over that ridiculous amount. You made that foolhardy decision, and now you're suffering the consequence of choice. Ain't free will grand?

Item the Second: As ever, I'm impressed by the Internet's ability to expose me to people with a different ethical rubric than mine. For instance, I've been taught that you never, ever ask people for things. You either acquire them on your own, or you do without. Yet, all over the Internet, including my flist, I see people panhandling. Not for food, or to recover after a disaster, but for luxuries like DVDs and computer software. I'm not referring to swaplists like Freecycle or Craigslist, either; people just put out their hands and say, "I want this, and because you are my virtual friend, you should buy it for me."

Um, what? If it's not food, clothing, shelter, or medicine, you don't need it, and if you insist on having it, then find a way to get it yourself. Offer to trade or get a job. Sell pencils on the street. Type term papers. Donate blood or blood plasma. Don't squat in cyberspace with your hand out. If you can spend hours on a high-speed Internet connection and go to cons, you're not that hard up.

Item the Third: A few questions answered:

death_ofme asked which horror director I preferred-Craven or Carpenter. Carpenter by far. Halloween, The Fog(the original, not the hideous Tom Welling remake I was stupid enough to buy), and Assault on Precinct 13 are all good, spooky movies. Craven, on the other hand, got lucky with A Nightmare on Elm Street and pounded that success into the ground. He never repeated it. Red Eye was good because of the actors involved, who overcame his hamfisted directing.

niamh_sage asked what I want to be when I grow up, and the truthful answer is, I don't want to grow up. I want to be Peter Pan in Wendy's body, a child forever, and freed of an adult's responsibilities. Why shouldn't I be if I'm denied an adult's rights? However, I wouldn't mind being a professor's assistant, organizing lecture notes, ordering his books, and keeping track of his appointments and engagements.

maccaj asked what I thought of The Poisonwood Bible. I'm not quite finished, but thusfar, I loathe Nathan Price and the spoiled, bigoted idiot, Rachel Price, and Leah and Orleanna Price are a close second in the Loser Sweepstakes. Adah, on the other hand... The wordplay and skewed perspective are brilliant.

Item the Fourth: I need to make serious hay on Et Tu.

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