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Art is the residue of passion. That's what I read, anyway, in an old National Lampoon cartoon, the punch-line of which was, "OK, so you get to sleep on the 'art' spot." Low-brow, to be sure; but in every ham-handed, proletarian joke there's a nugget of truth. And a Jew.

There's a lot of things that keep my brain occupied, and I don't understand the half of them. Sometimes, it's like there's some brilliant novelist from the 1930s sitting next to me, spouting clever saws about brandy or the unwashed masses and urging me to use that line in my next blog post. Other times, it's like an old college buddy asking me what I've been doing with myself the last 15 years. I keep explaining, and although it makes sense to me, he just doesn't get it.

The tops of my feet are numb. I can't feel a thing on them. I usually notice it when I'm laying in bed; I can feel the covers on my toes, but the tops of my feet tingle, and don't feel the sheets sliding over them. I'm not sure what you do with an anomaly like that. It's not like you need to feel the tops of your feet or anything. But I take it as a symptom of a larger problem. Two weeks ago, I tore the ligaments in my ankle at baseball practice, and had to go to the doctor. When I was there, decided I'd ask the doctor about the numbness, and see if it rang any alarm bells. He told me that it would be 'highly irregular' for someone my age to have connection problems between the spine and foot, and we left it at that.

When I was 18, I dislocated my hips from my spine. I think it happened during ice hockey practice, with a bad hip check. I didn't realize it until the free-floating spinal column moved a half-inch to the left and cut off communications to everything below my waist. I was in my dorm room at Georgia Tech, at eight o'clock in the morning, getting ready for class. Having just gotten out of bed, I was walking around in my boxers, which coincidentally were covered in red hearts, and gathering my books for my calculus class. I leaned over my desk, and lost all feeling in my legs. I fell backward onto the floor, and couldn't move. A minute or two later, my friend from across the hall walked in to see if I was ready for the long walk to class. I was laying on the floor in my underwear with a sheaf of notes in my hand, my legs pinned backward under me, and I just kind of looked at him. "Close the door, and don't tell anybody," I remember saying. He walked in, and closed the door behind him. Taking my hand, he pulled me off my legs and onto my stomach. Suddenly, I could feel my legs again, and I stood up. I skipped calculus class that morning. I climbed back into bed and covered my face for the rest of the day.

So now, maybe I should get a second opinion. The novelist in my brain is also, unfortunately, a hypochondriac. He tells me the doctors in these days don't know what they're talking about. Of course, he comes from an age when doctors prescribed cocaine as a 'pick-me-up' and actually had an official cause of death named 'Old Age'.

Man, did you ever get into one of those spirals, where everything needs to be replaced at once? I need a car, a driver's license, a new computer, furniture, spiffy clothes, a watch, some swanky shoes. In fact, I'm in need of pretty much everything that differentiates a human from a cave bear. It's sad, really, that I've lived as long as I have in Germany without actually building a beachhead. It's a good thing I wasn't in charge of Operation Overlord, or they'd all be speaking German here*.

Sadly, I've got no money to speak of, as I'm apparently born to be po'. I can't save money, for some reason. I'm not a big spender, so it must be the North Georgia white trash in my blood that acts as a bling repellent. It's not like I'm tossing out Franklins and snorting heroin off the well-manicured mons venera of lanky Czech supermodels or anything. I lead a simple life. I get up in the morning; well, technically it's still morning. I work hard...-ish. Until recently, I didn't waste my money on luxuries like meat. So where does it go?

In a Socialist system, there's an amazing amount of built-in drag. It's like there's an enormous, good-intentioned man-child riding shotgun who keeps lifting the hand brake while you're trying to drive. A large amount of the money that you earn is siphoned off by the Gubmint for safekeeping. Which is great, don't get me wrong; otherwise, you'd do something stupid with it, like buy corn dogs. The problem with this is, it makes saving money for things you think you need difficult; luckily, the government is using that money to finance your retirement, health care, and quality public television to let us know where canned soup comes from.

I guess it's all for the better. I don't really need a new computer right now: I managed to coax the current one back to life by removing the firewire card. And a car isn't necessary, as isn't the $1000 driving license to go with it, seeing as there's a magical Streetcar Named Thriftiness that stops right outside my door. I just wish I didn't have to stand next to all those smelly, aggressive winos while I wait on it. I wonder where they get the money to buy all that booze, anyway?
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* -- sorry, bad joke.

For the 80GB iPod, that is.

Nothing stimulates progress like competition. Take World War II, for example. In 1939, most of the world's air forces were still flying biplanes. Some countries, like Poland, were still doing cavalry charges with actual horses. These countries were pretty much all eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. Just six years later, the countries that actually wanted to win were flying rocket-planes and throwing atomic bombs at each other. That's progress.

In the mid-90's, various Cold War projects culminated in the Internet revolution. Developed in response to the Russians' supposed technological advances, which were mostly vaporware, these closely-held DARPA and NASA projects flooded the private sector once the Berlin Wall fell, and the Russians limped out of Europe. That's why we can sit at home today while idly browsing the Library of Congress or, more likely, bitterly masturbating to old Bangles videos on YouTube.

Let's face it: Once the Nazis and Russkies were out of the picture, it was hard to get out of bed in the morning. The Clinton era was an eight-year smoke break in the march of high-tech materialism. Screaming like a girl and running away from competition, like in Mogadishu, was a viable strategy for the country, and it was reflected in such products as Microsoft Bob and the Mac clones.

The face of the Clinton era

But September 11, 2001 changed all that. The market's malaise was replaced by frantic acceleration; just six weeks after the towers came down, Steve Jobs announced the first iPod. With just 5 gigabytes of storage, this wasn't the device that was going to destroy our new competitors, the jihadis. But it was a first step, and everybody could see where it was headed: Total market domination.

In the last 5 years, the American iPod has progressed dramatically. Looking at the timeline, one can see that the sleeping media storage giant has stirred, and is rapidly approaching the 100 GB mark. With a strong presence in both the high-end and low-end market segments, many analysts believe the Radical Islamic media player may have been squeezed out before it has even shipped.

In stark contrast, Radical Islam's iPod has yet to reach the market. In-fighting among the various design teams, not to mention the fact that music and dancing are forbidden by Islam, has hampered progress on the device. Marketing campaigns, clearly influenced by the American iPod's own, have failed to rouse interest in the device among jihadis, probably owing to the subliminal association drawn between wearing it and receiving electrical-shock genital torture.

In hindsight, the Global Jihad probably should've held back their attack on the World Trade Center until they were further along in their development cycle. Instead of taking advantage of the initial buzz, they've stagnated and fallen behind. At this point, they'll have difficulty even joining the race, much less catching up to the strong offerings from Apple and Microsoft.

Competition is necessary for a healthy market. Although the iPod is a great product, it may begin to suffer from its own monopoly. In situations where competition doesn't exist, everybody loses. That's why Radical Islam needs to buckle down, and bring its portable media device to market.

Bon appetit!

As you can see at the end of the movie, there's a part two in the works. Due next week!

Cross-posted at Sistaweb.