SYNTAX ERROR

(originally written in response to a friend of mine, who wrote a blog post about how much he liked the new Mac he had gotten)

Your blog's poster, Janet, is correct. You have a chip on your shoulder. (Methinks the chip would be of better use if you kept it in your computer.)

There once was a schizophrenic Apple computer with two Internet Protocol addresses. They were like two IP's in an iPod.

But the owner's computer also had an IP address, and it was having problems. The machine couldn't communicate with the rest of the network, and the Internet browser wouldn't connect, so the user put on a new Web browser -- namely Opera.

Unfortunately, Opera was still a rather buggy program, and it kept stopping for intermissions. It did live up to its name, in the sense that now the user could watch streaming videos of German arias being sung by robust women in Viking helmets.

But he could only get "The Threepenny Opera," and he did enjoy the orchestra's performance of the opera's famous song "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer," or "Mack the Knife." Being that this *was* the 21st century, after all, the opera was a rather modernized version, which included (ironically enough) the revisionist version of the song, "iMac the Knife."

One day, in a fit of rage, the user got rid of his computer and downgraded all the way to an Apple Lisa. As punishment for eating from the forbidden Apple (from the Tree of Knowledge of Dial-Up and Broadband), the user was expelled by God from the virtual garden he had created (using Eden, the parallel functional programming language) and was forced to spend the rest of his days operating a Windows 95 system.

Spitefully, the user one day muttered to himself, "Hmph. For a while, Macs took a bite out of the competition. Their logo started out as an apple with a bite taken out of it. Now, once again, it's Apple that bites."

Well, that was the final insult. The user had a case badge magically slapped onto his machine, and the badge reads as follows, completing -- with a twist -- the phrase "Intel inside[...]"

Now, at first everyone thought the "Intel Inside, Idiot Outside" line was the perfect insult, including to Windows users everywhere. But now, in light of the future of Macs, what can I say? Nothing, except... "The Apple doesn't fall far from the tree!"

... On second thought, regarding that subject line, maybe "syntax" is what I ought to pay for putting my readers (e.g., yourself) through this!