Matt Elliott’s Online

Spending Money, Buying Dreams

Today I bought an Apple iMac. You’d already know this if you followed me on twitter, which is your go-to source for all your Matt Elliott news, live as it breaks.

I’ve been considering this for a while, but kept finding reasons not to pull the trigger. I’ve essentially been a man-without-a-computer for the last year or so, as my old iBook has seen better days and chokes if used for anything more than a glorified jukebox. I managed to scoop a laptop — a MacBook — from work last summer which has essentially become my primary machine, but it felt weird not to really have a computer I could call “mine.”

This will be my first desktop machine in six years or so and I’m pretty jazzed about it. I’m not expecting that I’ll spend all my time actually sitting in front of it — I’ll probably still spend a chunk of time on the couch with the laptop — but it’ll be nice to have something permanent, where I can store data and back that data up, and maybe even play Spore if I ever get the urge to give my entire life over to a game again.

I bought from the Refurbished section at the Apple store, which is an awesome source for great deals on Apple hardware. Comes in the same packaging as a new model, with the same warranty. You really can’t lose.

So now I’ve spent a chunk of money, throwing my couple of months of fiscal conservatism into shambles. I blame the Democrats.

Obligatory Cat Post

So I’ve got these cats, right…

ASIDE: Posting about your cats on the internet is LAME. It’s borderline stupid. It’s just so goddamned cliché. It’s like posting about how much you hate your parents or why you’re a giant atheist. It’s not that you probably don’t have good reasons or intentions, but just that there is very little chance anyone will actually care. This also applies to poetry.

So, these cats. One is a male cat named Sebastian. The other is a girl cat named Viola. They are both black with white faces and paws. Initially they looked identical. Now, Sebastian is like twice the size of Viola so they’re more distinguishable.

ASIDE: I just described the cats instead of posting a picture because, again, people who post pictures of their cats are going down a bad road. It’s like posting a picture of your desktop wallpaper or, worse, a picture of a sunset you ran through a bunch of photoshop filters. All of these things are needless and uninspired.

Viola does the craziest thing. Normally she’s nowhere near as sociable as her brother, but sometimes she just demands attention. And it’s to the point where it’s impossible to deny her, because she will sit on your head if she has to. She will not take no for an answer.

ASIDE: Oh god, what am I doing here? I’m posting about my cats. I’m seriously doing that. I’m posting about my cats and the cute things that they do. That I’m self-aware is no excuse. That’s like being a criminal who is entirely aware of the immorality of his actions. I’m a murderer who is stabbing a guy in the neck, knowing fully well that the man I am stabbing is a perfectly nice man, who also sponsors a child in Africa. There is no excuse for that. None.

So she does this thing, where I will be petting her with one hand and she will be purring and looking happy. But then she’ll start eyeing my other hand with suspicion. Suspicion quickly turns to disdain. “Why aren’t you petting me too?” I imagine her saying, as if cats could talk.

ASIDE: Seriously. The dude gave up a cup of coffee a day to sponsor a starving child and what am I doing? I am stabbing him. In the neck. I’m pathetic. A waste of time and space. Cats! Really.

I’m thinking she doesn’t understand that my hands are actually two parts of a whole. Instead, she sees them as independent beings, both of which are responsible for lavishing upon her indiscriminate attention whenever she determines it necessary.

ASIDE: I’m not even sure where I’m going with this. What’s the goal here? To get people to laugh? To make them say ‘aww’? To amuse and delight? With my stories of cat ownership? What is this? Cat Fancy Magazine? What am I, a sell-out? A sixty-five-year-old woman? A murderer of noble men? I don’t know.

I guess it’s true what they say: you think you’ll just be owning cats, but they end up owning you.

ASIDE: Seriously. Fucking Cat Fucking Fancy Fucking Maga- Fucking -Zine. Fuck.

Driving Rain

Drove to Guelph today. Had to take the long way (up, and over the top of the city) because a truck spilled a bunch of copper tubing all over the highway. One person was killed and several more were injured. It’s a tragedy both for them and for the orphans who today are all without the soothing nourishment that comes from copper tubing.

I went to Guelph because I had a meeting. I am very good at meetings. Some people spend hours, even days, in meetings. I can have a meeting in ten minutes. When I was younger I did not ever foresee myself being the type to “get down to brass tacks” but now, today, I precisely that type. I get down. Down to brass tacks.

While driving to Guelph I listened to This American Life. This American Life is probably the best podcast ever made in the history of the world. And I mean that not only figuratively and literally, but hypothetically as well. As in, if famous historical types like Humphrey Bogart or the Marquis de Sade or that hot chick from The Odyssey (Who am I kidding? They were all hot chicks in The Odyssey.) had a podcast, This American Life would still be way better than all of them.

The show I listened to was about the election, and was recorded previous to the election. Erin had told me it was an awesome episode, and I believed her. But I didn’t really want to listen to it before the result of the election was assured. I couldn’t handle that kind of stress.

So, yes, let’s talk about the election. The defeated elephant in the room. Sometimes Americans get all indignant when non-Americans talk about their elections, which doesn’t make any sense to me. There is absolutely nowhere on this earth that is insulated from the American president’s reach. For better or worse, it affects us all.

But whatever – let’s put politics aside. (I actually probably said this more eloquently — definitely more concisely — last night at yworking.) As glad as the liberal in me is happy that McCain lost and Obama won, what really inspires me about America’s election is that, for the first time in a long time — and, indeed, maybe the only time in my life — idealism worked.

We’ve been trained to be so cynical. That bad and corrupt people can still succeed in the face of good. That the only real course to getting anything done is a pragmatic one, littered with compromise. That generally, in politics, you hold your nose.

But, last night, people got together and elected a black man with a muslim name to the highest elected office in the world.

That still hasn’t quite set in.

I drove to Guelph today. I took the long route because someone spilled copper tubing on the highway. Made it out okay, though. Me, I mean — not the copper tubing.

There’s more eloquent things to say about today, I think.