BIG STUPID BLUE AND WINDOZE 95
                    (C)1997 Alan M. Schwartz

John is my close friend who, despite overwhelming council, 
purchased an IBM Aptiva with Windows 95.  It was such a deal.  
John then sought to install his purchased copy of Netscape 
Navigator Gold 3.0.  I have for years condemned BillGates' 
Mickeysoft and Big Stupid Blue in a lighthearted cascade of 
incessant vituperation.  This has matured into murderous rage.

Aptivas are idiot-proof, so the Reset button is absent.  Windoze 
95 has a Start icon instead.  If your 32-bit multimedia 3D stereo 
surround sound software (screen saver) suddenly decides it 
doesn't like you anymore and freezes everything solid, you simply 
fire a shotgun into the hardware and return it under warranty.

John turned on the Aptiva as I arrived.  After about 20 minutes 
of pure crap cascading across the CRT - everything from ROM BIOS 
CGA script to a stereo surround sound belch - there appeared a 
screen (the Windoze 95 32-bit multimedia Desktop!) bursting with 
icons picking their noses and scratching their butts like the 
June Taylor Dancers on time-and-a-half.  In the background were 
big, medium and small IBM logos blue on blue elbowing each other 
for my retinal real estate.  With a double click John could have 
instantly registered with the Mickey$oft Network, Compu$erve, 
America Off-Line, two special automatic dialers, a networking 
matrix...  The Uninstaller has the rare property of doing 
nothing.  If you want that 40 megabytes of worthless programming 
out of your machine you need merely remove the hard drive and put 
in a new one less Windoze 95.  We reconfigured the six dozen 
cascading Desktop configuration menus to "Off."  The background 
can be any color you want if you want blue.

The Netscape CD-ROM slid into the CD-ROM drive.  There was a 
floppy A: drive, there was a single partition C: drive, and there 
was a CD-ROM drive the system assigned G:.  One assumes D:, E:, 
and F: went through Heaven's Gate and are now winging their way 
through the cosmos along with Comet Hale-Bopp.  Or they are 
vigorously decomposing after voluntarily committing suicide in a 
rented San Diego mansion or an Aptiva - your choice.

We booted Netscape Install.  Everything went swimmingly until it 
came time to enter some data.  Big Stupid Blue and Windoze 95 are 
terrifically clever:  They automatically filled in the pertinent 
data blocks, admittedly with gibberish.  I think this is the "Get 
Plugged and Play" option.  John retyped it all as we made our way 
through Netscape Registration, pausing to click "Other" on who 
recommended Netscape to him ("my proctologist").  It came time to 
pluck the magic twanger and have the modem (built into the Aptiva 
lest some fool wedge a chicken into a vacant card slot) dial up 
the Internet Service Provider interface.  We heard a dial tone, 
and a friendly 32-bit window popped up:  "Verifying password."

I looked at the nascent owner of Big Blue iron.  John said, "It 
isn't my fault!"  No argument there, gentle reader, it was a 32-
bit multimedia system fault.

Pac Bell didn't like it much.  The Aptiva modem  - possibly 
assembled by the bleeding fingers of Afgani refugee children from 
Korean swap meet parts purchased at 40% discount by a newly 
circumcised Scotsman - never got to warble.  Who would have 
thought language like that could issue from a distaff voice chip?  
The phone then farted through the speakers and a lovely 32-bit 
multimedia error window appeared.  It said there had been an 
error.

We ran through the procedure three times and three times the 
dialer crapped out, and in three different ways.  The best 32-bit 
multimedia error window explained it all.  We had violated a 
Module named "blank."  Mickeysoft reserves proprietary 
information to keep the competition from getting a leg up.

John returned the Aptiva and the Netscape CD-ROM to the dealer 
and his phalanx of certified technicians (Mexican day laborers).  
At this writing they are of the opinion that if they reinstall 
the entire hard drive and John signs up for Mickey$oft Network, 
Compu$erve, America Off-Line, two special automatic dialers, a 
networking matrix... maybe he will go away.

Along with my custom Intel clone I own an Amiga 1000 with 640K of 
RAM, two single density floppy drives, and no hard drive.  It has 
a Motorola 68000 microprocessor, now commonly found honchoing 
low-end washing machines.  My Amiga pretty much does everything 
"multimedia" the Pentium-powered 16 megabyte SDRAM, 1.2 Gbyte 
hard drive Windoze 95 Aptiva promises to do, and has a better 
voice synthesizer.  Commodore's big mistakes were doing it 
better, faster, cheaper, easier, and ten years earlier.