Blessed be the taxman

Blessed be the taxman for he bringeth us our refund. We shout and holler praise for the almighty deductions. Huzzah!

Yes, I know this money is actually nothing more than the piddly remains of what I've already forked out to the government and gotten back in the form of a check, but so what? If we didn't pay our taxes to the United States, who would fund the weapons of mass destruction? And then if there were no weapons of mass destruction, how could we justify the weapons of mass destruction destruction? And then hard working Americans would be out of a job now wouldn't they?

Our checks, both from the state and George W., came and went. No sooner were they in our mitts than they were rushed off to our credit union for deposit. No sooner were they deposited than they were spent. Thanks to a great tax guy and a thousand-dollar procreation credit our family has two more toys to boot.

And there was much rejoicing.

One toy is the notebook computer upon which I am typing to you now. It is a Compaq Presario XYZ-LMNOP or something like that. Does anyone else remember back when we called these things laptops? Remember Y2K compliance? Those were the days, my friend.

This computer replaces the seven-year old doorstop of a laptop I've been working on for the past . . . well . . . seven years. Actually, I won't throw out the old computer. It still works provided I'm willing to sit through the five-minute bootup . It also has writings and other creative endeavors of yours truly dating back to ye olde college days.

I don't know why I keep those papers, but whenever I get a new computer, I always transfer over old documents for which I have absolutely no use. I once wrote an essay comparing a novel by late Senegalese author, Mariama Bâ, to French philosopher Prévost's Manon Lescaut. The long title for the latter is actually Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut.

Does anyone really care about the title, much less to read my sophomoric literary opinions on the subject in pisspoor French? Then why has this oeuvre survived now for six or seven hard drives?

Explain your answer.

My new computer is pretty sweet, especially considering I only spent $480 on it after the $30 rebate. I'll keep you informed, gentle reader, as to whether or not I ever receive the rebate. Oh yes, I will keep you informed. Hopefully Staples will pull through though. Signing up for the rebate on their website couldn't have been easier.

I also am playing on Windows Vista which, for all practical purposes is semi-somewhat better than XP. I guess. I haven't taken the bundled cyber tour of what all new features I can expect from this new operating system, but I'm sure it's chocked full of user-friendly features I will never use.

One annoyance is the pop-up program called the HP Total Care Advisor slash PC Health and Security. I really haven't figured out what all this does that benefits me as a person. I have learned from other innerwebbers that the program actually slows down my system performance considerably and it contains an equally annoying innerweb search window down in the taskbar. Again, I'm not sure what good any of this does me. I'm a big believer in if-it-ain't-broke-don't-eff-with-it, and furthermore why is the program called what it is? It sounds like it was installed by Kaiser Permanente or some other health care provider.

And that's another thing? Have computers and their minions usurped the term health care the same way they did viruses? Are we now going to have to distinguish between human health and computer health?

I also recently purchased a Sharp Notevision projector and let me just tell you that this thing rocks in all caps. Why anyone would spend thousands on a large-screen TV when they could get one of these for under $700 is beyond me. You hook it up to your DVD player, notebook computer or whatever and project whatever you wanna watch up on to your wall. The image quality is stupendous. It's like being at the movies only the drinks are cheaper and you can still here the film when you're in the bathroom.

Even cooler is that we plug up the audio to the wireless speakers so we can easily listen to surround-sound. And since the speakers are wireless, we could easily take the whole thing outside and host a neighborhood movie night up against the garage door.

I know that sounds naughty but it's really not.

Anyway, deductions plus good tax guy plus impulse equals toys. And that's what it's all about.