Rasputin stands behind the lectern, thrusting his arms in the air, making obscure metaphysical statements in the drawl of his Czar era Russian. The audience in front of him indulges in the anonymity afforded them by the light, which renders them nothing but silhouettes to his squinting eyes.

His audience is composed of "The Departed," a society of earth-shakers who, as legend has it, have learned the Name of God, have cursed themselves in defiance of Sheol, and have stolen from St. Peter's grasp the Key to Heaven. Each of them, having faked their deaths or simply disappeared, take comfort in the shadows. Their chairman, an inky blackness in the far corner of the room, would be entirely invisible were it not for the cherry of his cigar, which never seems to burn down.

Each of them sits in shadows, and each of them stands in turn to approach the crystal lectern. According to the docket, Moses is slated to speak next and to deliver a speech entitled "The Backside of God."

Rasputin emits a wheezing cough, takes a sip of water, and then commences to sing the Russian imperial anthem in his grainy voice, as is his custom at the end of his speeches. A whooshing sound is heard above the audience's head, and they all look up. What looks like a heavy mace flies cartwheeling through the air, landing forcefully upon Rasputin's head. A fountain of tissue and brain matter shoots up, and then proceeds to fall wetly like chunks of Baklava onto the heads and laps of the audience.

"Charlemagne you horse's ass!" whines a high pitched nasal voice. Rasputin's headless body wanders aimlessly around the stage. "You know you cannot kill him!" The voice is immediately identifiable as belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte, and his shadow is shaking a fist at a shadow behind him. Several other shadows stand and join in raucous protest, and by this time, Rasputin's body has tumbled stump-first off of the stage.

A voice as deep as the ocean booms in laughter, and the all the shadows hush and turn to watch the cigar cherry bounce up and down with each guffaw. The chairman has his laugh, Rasputin flails in vain, and the shadows slowly sit, one by one. None of them make a sound.

soap turd:
miniscule
unusable
half bar
left frothy
to dry
to be looked at
dejectedly
next morning
to be dropped
more often
than actually applied.

I walk in this morning and log into my pretty user interface. I am greeted with a pacifying Windows Vista sound, and though I hear some unusual thrashing coming from my hard drive, I think relatively nothing of it. As is my usual routine, I start up iTunes and Outlook, getting ready to quickly knock out some emails and to settle into my daily routine by listening to the calming sounds of Don Peris's guitar.

I'm half-way through my first email response, when hark! BSD (blue screen of death) hell descends on me: my computer locks up, a blank blue screen rears it's ugly head, and my computer shuts itself off.

Great. My email is gone, and now I have to wait for the stupid thing to boot back up. My morning ritual has been defiled, and my already stressful day has received a sharp pinch.

The computer boots up without complaints, and I log in again, somewhat more cautiously going about my routine. I literally reach for my mouse to hit the Send button on the email I have finally composed, when BSD comes back with a vengeance. You can imagine the strength of will it took not to embed my mouse into the ceiling tile above me.

Repeat this scenario no less than FOUR TIMES. I finally am able to boot up long enough to check the system event log. Lo and behold, the USB drive I have been using as a ReadyBoost device has been throwing no less than 753 drive errors. Vista has taken my perfectly good $40 1GB USB drive and has destroyed it. I can't even get it to format on a different (XP) machine. It is now a worthless piece of plastic.

Sure. I'm upset that Windows has overestimated the ability of USB drives to be used to hold paging files. But I'm even more upset that my computer actually registered the fact that my drive was throwing errors, and yet PROCEEDED TO USE IT as RAM.

Perhaps as an isolated incident this would be an acceptable "oversight." And as a programmer, I understand the frustrations that change inevitably brings with constantly changing technologies. What I don't understand is how Microsoft spent 5 years to develop an Operating System less stable than Windows 95, and then forced all of their partners (like Dell) to sell their new machines with Vista pre-installed. What are we as consumers supposed to do? Just wait two years for Microsoft to get its act together before purchasing a new machine? I am a private contractor who develops ASP.NET applications which require Microsoft's shiny new resource hogging VS2005. Two years is not an option for this developer.

Microsoft, I am ashamed that I recently spent my tax return on purchasing a new PC laptop which came pre-installed with Vista. I am embarrassed for having defended you all these years to the Macintosh community. I hereby declare never to develop another ASP.NET web project. I hereby declare that my next computer (which unfortunately will be several years from now) will run Linux or Macintosh. You have lost another customer due to your foibles.

This is Bryan Tarpley, formally reputed to be a private ASP.NET gun-for-hire, signing off. Can you say PHP? I can. All day long.

The Arcade Fire has released the best album I've heard in 5+ years. I don't possess the kind of language or knowledge to legitimately critique an album in print. I do, however, have ears and sensibilities, and this album resonates with me on so many levels.

For those of you interested in the progress of my root canal, here's a reductive update:

I have discovered that I have the strength to conquer sin. It is a lie that man is incapable of resisting. No one is perfect, but each of us, by virtue of being made in the image of God, has been given the strength to resist temptation. This is why we are held accountable for sin (why Christ's gift on the cross was necessary).

I have discovered that my life is riddled with sin. I once made a list of the "big" sins in my life. I said "man, if I could just beat that, I would have it made." Now that I'm on the other side of that list, I can laugh at myself, because I'm looking at a whole new ballgame. I'm looking at sins that are much more embedded and harder to uproot. Things like losing my temper, laziness, etc.

I have discovered that I am gifted. I take pride in the gifts God has gifted me with. I design webpages. I write code. I write poetry. I write short-stories. I write academic papers. I write music. I talk about God. I teach. I do all these well.

I have discovered that I am wasteful. I throw away the gifts I've been given on goofy things because I am lazy.

I am afraid of prayer. The throneroom of God scares me. I approach him reluctantly. I feel filthy and unworthy in His presence. I'm also lazy.

That's it mostly. If any of you have advice for dealing with any of the issues I've mentioned, hook me up.