The question I have been asked most often since I took over writing this online “log” from Robert Holland in May is “Hippy, why can’t you just interface your thoughts with the cloud? Why do we have to wait days, or even weeks between entries? Why can’t we enjoy a ten minute read of new stuff every evening with our tincture of laudanum?” To which I respond (after going over my answer with Michel and Meredith) that, first of all, laudanum is a tincture of opium, and as far as I know you can’t have a tincture of a tincture, and second of all, what was the question again?

From where I’m lying the problem is that people like Steve Jobs (and to a lesser extent anymore, Bill Gates) are paid tremendous amounts of money to function (as long as their health holds) as shunts or resistors between what could be built and what is actually built and marketed to you, the gorging, lazy schlock of whiney consumers who stand in line to buy a new I-phone because it has an “app” that makes it feel like your finger is being nibbled by a virtual Koy when you touch the pretty picture on the screen. Forget that you can’t get reception if you are holding the device in the bottom left-hand corner . . . what do you think it is, a phone or something?

Let me tell you a little story. In August of 1996, I was sitting at home playing solitaire on the brand new, top-of-the-line computer (this badboy had a one gig hard drive!) my mother had bought me for Christmas when the phone rang. It was a Mr.Chang, and he asked me if my roommate Daryl Habberstad was in. When I told him, “no” he left a message to the effect that he had gotten his company together and wanted Daryl to come out to San Francisco, along with their other MIT dropout buddies and get to “chopping wood”. When Daryl came home after a long hard evening of waiting tables at Bones restaurant I beckoned him out onto our patio, shared a smoke with him, and then gave him the message. We then spoke about how ridiculous it was that your television, telephone and internet were three different things.

When I woke up he was gone . . . as in, on a one-way plane to California. He left his clothes, books, records, pets, girlfriends, respirator, everything. Anyway, the possibility-timeline for phone/internet/TV was 1998 at the latest (I fucking thought of it and believe you me I am no genius) but where did that leave all the snails actually making stuff? Comcast, Bellsouth (at the time) etc? In the ensuing years they made billions of dollars off high def, highspeed cable, and now the grand finale of your raping . . . 3-D TV. Had I taken a fifteen year technological hiatus then, I would be coming out of it now with the ideas I had in 1996 only a year in the future. Brilliantly they foresaw that and made having a cell-phone as important as having a driver’s license.

And now for something completely different, for those of you on a spiritual quest. Shortly after Daryl going off to San Francisco, I was moving into a house that was under construction. I ordered a salad to be delivered from Savage Pizza. When it arrived they had no silverware, and, after tipping the delivery person handsomely, I asked for some. He had none. I asked if maybe on his next run he could bring me a set. I was told no. Fast forward 15 years. Into the Yacht Club comes a harried young man. “I am on a delivery for Savage Pizza, and I don’t have any to-go silverware, can I get some from you?” “Of course you can!” I don’t know what instant means, but I know what karma is. (And no it wasn’t the same delivery person . . . sheesh) C’mon people, act right! Be nice! Don’t be a mopey pathetic loser who will swear that their obsessive compulsive actions dictated that the barrel of the pistol be placed in their mouth just so.

In summary (and it turns out that a summary is from the Latin Sum which means everything but was most specifically used by Plato and Socrates to mean “here is what I would have said in plain words if I hadn’t been beating around the bush trying to make palatable something that I knew you were going to choke on) to paraphrase Sponge Bob, “Hold your peanuts! I have come to reveal . . . the truth! They say that truth and honesty will be rewarded by trust and forgiveness. Well, I’m here to prune the branches of deception from the tree of life . . . to shave away the unkempt sideburns of deceit from the face of truth! Mother of pearl!!!”

Starting on July 19th there will be available a knuckle crableg plate! For $5 you can get one crab leg and all the bread you can eat! WOOT!!! Now go spank yourselves and say ten Hail Marys.