Paulie the Genius

It was Paulie's day off, a day that had finally come after 10 days of retail hell, the opening of the holiday season with the feral onrush of consumerism. It was for her a scene from a George Romero movie, flesh eating zombies falling off the escalator and into the fountain at the center of Glenville Mall, splashing around mindlessly to the sounds of generic pop christmas music.

She had quit smoking, but found a pack of cigarettes the other day, and hadn't thrown them out just yet. They were still there, the blah blah blan cancer death label right where she can see it. In the end it wasn't her concern of burning holes in her lungs, it was her teeth she was most concerned about. That yucky yellowness that her grandma had.

Besides, she had the Nicorette patch to keep her jammin. She actually hadn't bothered to step down to the lower dose at all. Everyday she slapped one on....sometimes more than one on those problem days. Being an Apple genius was just a title after all, it wasn't as if she was going to cure cancer, just help some poor schmuck who spilled a beer into their laptop, or dropped their iphone in the john (a public one at that....yick). It either boils down to liquids or gravity for most iphone's fatal demise.

And sometimes they lie about it. You are looking at a two month old 4G iPhone that might smell like pee if you were actually to handle it. Instead, you notice the telltale droplets of humidity in the corners, or the white marks left behind when liquid evaporated, where they at least tried to dry it out.

And they would stare straight at you and lie. Lie Lie Lie.

Ah well, today is her day off. She didn't have to be a genius at all.

So instead, it was a 24 oz diet mountain dew and her Xbox 360. She popped the lid on the acid green liquid - the most caffeinated of all diet beverages - and turned her Xbox 360 on.

And of course, it was the red ring of death. Death. Like Logan's Run, her Xbox 360's life had hit it's limit - like the flashing light on the palm of the hand - Microsoft was pulsing a message....."Hey Pookie! Time to buy the new SLIM Xbox 360."

And that was the problem with Apple she decided. Their products had to be both addictive and be programmed to fail in some ubambiguous way - no error 51, or frowny iPod - but a big red flashing screen on the iPhone - that says "I FAIL". Or if the screen is smashed, make a grating noise that makes the user want to smash it further.

Brilliant.

She opened the pack of cigarettes and fondled one. She decided, in the end, that Microsoft and Apple still had something to learn from Phillip Morris.