I mean seriously people it’s friggin 2007 and you still need to be some kind of wiener brain nerd just to get a home WiFi network up and running. WTF with all the constant little breakdowns and flakiness? And God help if you need tech support. You end up hunting around on Google trying to find out how to do some simple thing. Jesus. And yeah, I know, I’m the supreme being of all computing, but I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea how to configure these goddamn things. 192.168.1.1, and then what? Some goddamn butt-ugly screen full of choices that make no sense. “Oh it just works.” Yeah right. I end up having Apple’s IT director send a guy over to my house to straighten things out. I know exactly what the prick is thinking: “Big Mr. Steve Jobs can’t figure out how to choose the settings on his Airport Extreme router, wow, what a genius, no wonder you’re worth five billion bucks and I’m working in the IT shop of your company … blah blah.” Fair enough. It’s embarrassing. Except not really because why should I apologize for the fact that their product blows? Oh wait. Never mind.

Fair enough, it’s embarrassing. I know his Mindfreak act is stupid and totally fake. But if you’re high enough some of the tricks are pretty cool. Plus I like checking out all the elements of my act that Criss Angel has incorporated into his own shtick. The eyes, mostly. But also the use of misdirection. Larry says I should sue the guy. “This spray-tanned punk has just ripped off your act, note for note,” he says. “He’s like a mix of you and Joe Perry.” My feeling is that we’re in such different industries that it’s not a threat. Now if Criss Angel decided to start selling consumer electronics and claiming they possessed magical powers and quasi-religious significance, well, then we’d have a fight on our hands. As long as he sticks to fake levitation and fake sawing people in half, we’re cool. Whether Joe Perry wants to sue is up to him.

Let’s be honest. It wasn’t that good. I know it and you know it. I’m not going to spin it or lie to you. I’ve done better. Way better. But what can I do with the material I’m given? Okay, fair enough, maybe I raised everyone’s expectations with all that pre-keynote smack talk about how I was going to blow minds. I should have just kept quiet. But that’s not in my nature. Worse yet, I’m starting to look a little bit like John McEnroe and that worries me.

Not for everything, but lately it’s for most of my browsing. At first I just downloaded it to try it out. Mostly I just dabbled. Then I started adding some bookmarks. Now it’s my primary browser. I know I’m supposed to use Safari. I also know that some of our software guys are pissed about me using Firefox. I told them, Go make Safari better and I’ll start using it again. I also told them I was going to use my blog to seek input from readers about this. So. Any ideas on what Safari needs?

It’s true. The whole vegetarian Buddhist Taoist thing is an act. I eat meat. Always have. The only person who knows is Larry. It’s like a secret addiction. I’m like one of those people who seems totally normal but spends weekends snorting heroin. Only in my case it’s meat. And I don’t snort it, I eat it, but whatever. You understand. Not even my wife knows. I use a fake name and send away for those Omaha Steaks over the Internet and have them shipped to Larry’s house. They come packed in dry ice. Larry keeps them in his freezer till I’m ready for them. I eat them over at his house. My favorite is the filet mignon wrapped in bacon. Jesus. I’m ashamed of myself. But I feel better now that I’ve admitted it.

I can’t say for sure. But I just get this feeling that they’ve never accepted me as one of their own. I’ll walk into a room and everyone gets quiet, like they’ve just been talking about me. Or I’ll be walking down the hall and I’ll hear people laughing. I don’t know. It’s just weird. And you know what? It hurts.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned but I’m sorry, a lot of this stuff makes me sick. Ordinary (single) pierced ears on a woman, okay. A small ear piercing on a dude, okay. Even a tongue piercing on a hot chick can be okay if only because it says that giving head is so incredibly central to her existence that she’s willing to have a hole drilled through her friggin tongue and have a mini barbell placed there and put up with excruciating pain and speak with a lisp just so she can be a tiny bit better at hoovering a johnson. Okay. Daddy likes that. But these other things? Like the twenty piercings in a single ear? Or the chin or lip or eyebrow? Or nose rings? Stop. Belly button piercing on a cute girl, maybe — but only if you have a hot belly, and that is a very important if. Put it this way, if you have to ask your friends if they think you can pull it off, you can’t. The rest of these things people do, like nipples and genitalia? No. Full stop.

The worst one of all and the one I’m seeing all the time lately is this one (above) where idiots put a giant ring in their earlobe and stretch it out. Honestly, it makes me want to puke. I actually get dizzy when I see it. Maybe you hate your dad because he didn’t love you enough, or you hate yourself because you work at a coffee bar and live in a shitty apartment and your life hasn’t turned out to be as awesome as you’d hoped and you’re thinking that maybe if you just do something really fucked up to your body it will make you feel better about yourself. Listen to me: It won’t. You’ll just end up old and gray with ears like a basset hound. Okay? Now be like all the other mental cases and go see a shrink.