MallAise

If something sounds too good to be true it most likely is. For instance, that ominous letter on a grey Monday afternoon announcing that you are the lucky winner of $1,000,000. Winning $1,000,000 takes about 1,000,000 desperate ah-why-not moments at the check-out counter that usually result in little more than a lifetime of disappointments, as we all know.

But there are about that many other little traps we tumble into hoping that this time, just this time, we made the right investment and came out ahead of what we put in. My MacBook is such a thing.

I was promised no bugs, no crashes, and in addition to that exhilarating user-friendliness and got what I have come to treat as a rather capricious hoe. Most of the time he is either “not in the mood,” or “doesn’t like that,” or “headachy.”

And mind you, all I am asking for is mild photo editing (“Too much input hon…I am blanking!”) or burning what I meticulously organized into folders (“Uh, no! – And FYI they are called a l b u m s!!!”). Ah, yes.

But there is more, igadgets are just one in a million marketing successes that end up being flops.

Most of the time when we hold magic between our sweaty paws it all vanishes into thin air, or rather into a filthy dump, before we have even read through the unintelligible instruction manual by Mr. Sushiyoto: digital this, inflatable that. It’s all built to sell not to work.

And quite often we find out later that what we first hailed as progress such as pre-cleaned lettuce, baby wipes, TV dinners and parboiled rice is, in reality, is little more than hazardous material.

Oh brave new world.