RazzyBlog: Blame the Geniuses

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Blame the Geniuses

So this morning you probably went to RAZZY.org looking for your usual fix of useless bullshit, and were shocked and dismayed to find a whole lot of NOTHING NEW. Why, you ask? Because I was at the so-called Genius Bar getting my MacBook fixed. Actually, I wasn't so much getting it "fixed" as I was getting it sent off somewhere for fixing. The good news is that the problem is under warranty, so it's free. The bad news is that it's going to take 5-7 business days, so expect the communiqués from me to be sparse until next week.

Luckily, I managed to avoid murdering anyone inside the Apple store, which is quite an accomplishment considering the very building itself pissed me off:

Not only did its super trendy design give me the impression of descending into the bowels of a giant iMac, but this place is apparently a fucking TOURIST ATTRACTION judging by the number of fanny pack-sporting Midwesterners oohing and aahing and photographing the various displays of iPods and iPhones and other assorted iBullshit. The store was also blasting Radiohead at full volume and inundating me with images of various Apple crap. I seriously felt like I had walked into Recall, and was about to get false memories implanted of being a secret agent married to Sharon Stone wreaking havoc with the evil dictatorship on Mars. The only thing that kept me from going on a murderous rampage was the fact that mercifully, the Apple Store DJ didn't spin any Coldplay jams.

My "genius" was also very friendly and helpful, and he was more of a regular nerd than a hipster Mac nerd, so I didn't hate him. In fact, he made some lame joke that I didn't quite catch, and when I laughed to be polite, he responded, "I see you've read Dune!"

Uhhh...he just made a joke about Dune? I haven't read that book since high school, but I vaguely remember the cheesetastic David Lynch movie. I seem to remember something about some rival feudal lords in space trying to corner the intergalactic spice market, and the main character was some kind of Messianic figure to the desert dwellers, and they rode around everywhere on these worms that were apparently the forbears of the monsters in Tremors, but that's about it.

"Oh, yeah, Dune ruled," I said, hoping that a closed-ended agreement to his Dune-worship would prompt him to start telling me about how he was going to instantly fix my MacBook. It just kept him going about Dune, though. He asked if I'd seen the miniseries (I said, "No, the only thing I watch on SciFi is--ahem--'Battlestar Galactica,'") informed me that a new version of it was being made currently, and he was adapting yet ANOTHER screenplay in his spare time since he felt that the previous efforts weren't faithful enough to Frank Herbert's masterful vision. In spite of all the annoying stories about minutiae involved in various retellings of Dune, I was relieved to have just a normal, sweet, garden-variety nerd handling my MacBook issues than some sort of Justin Long-esque Applephile yammering about the superiority of OS X. The whole process only took about 30 minutes, my blood pressure and overall rage level was considerably less than I thought I was going to be, and I didn't even have to use my (imaginary) AK. Overall, I have to say it was a good day at the Genius Bar.

Anyway, because of the primitive MacBook-free existence I have to live for the next few days, I have to humbly request your patience with me. I'll post a little hither and thither but the copious amounts of Razzification that you have come to depend upon like one of the desert people from Dune requires spice will be lacking until my baby comes back to me with a new hard drive and keyboard. Patience, my love. The precious will soon return. In the meantime, blame the Geniuses for not being smart enough to fix my MacBook on the fucking spot.

Labels: Apple sucks, computer incompetence, excuses, nerd alert