I made the mistake of going into an iStudio shop yesterday and sitting in front of a lesser version of this Uber-computer I could buy for half price, which is so sophisticated the iStudio staff not only didn’t have one, they found it hard to believe that Apple had let one escape into the wild. Never mind, even the lesser version, with its acres of screen space, the entire computer built into the monitor’s frame, already had me thinking. 
But I’m just a wordsmith. What I do is I string words one after the other, and then switch them around this way and that till I get tired of it. Another friend, S. Tsow, a fellow writer, tells me I don’t really need anything more advanced than a pencil. Unless, of course, I need to put a man on Pluto.
On the other hand, Sara has tumbled to just how big and bright and hi-rez the monitor really is, and how spiffy movies would look on it; and she points out, not for the first time, I’m such a chintzer I won’t buy a giant flatscreen TV or even hook up the antique we already own to a cable or anything, and what about the World Cup? And Wimbledon? And so on. Never mind I say the next World Cup lies four years down the road, Wimbledon a whole year.
Anyway, opinion is divided regarding how smart I’d have to be to buy this thing. Fortunately I’m a grown man, worldly even, and I recognize total silliness when I encounter it.
But this machine has a 27-inch screen. Can you imagine? Even Sunday mornings at a range of five paces I could still write on it.
“And this is useful?” Sara asks.
Did you get a job working for Apple? Or are you experiencing Maughamesque Rain Syndrome? Or just putting off writing about fun stuff like Thai politics?
And when will you start listening to Sara, for crying out loud?
Maughamesque Rain Syndrom. That gets my vote. (What is it, exactly?) Thai politics is Thai politics. This post begins an exploration of the modern human psyche, questions of free will and determinism, questions of whether Sara is smarter than I am, whether we can refer to a value system other than that of consumerism, whether it is nobler in the mind to blog one’s life away or whether one should instead write tormented novels that no one will ever read. Stuff like that, eh? (Have you noticed I’m starting to say “eh?” a lot? I lost the habit in England years ago, but now I’m in search of my Canadian roots.