(try the rollover - this caption is right near my lips! Pretty fucking hillarious eh? Ok. I'll admit it's late...)

-->AAAAAAAiiiiiiiigggghhhh!!!
- M.Gabrys, Denver CO. 08/26/1999

Rodney O. Lain, a former university English and journalism instructor, works full-time as a software developer and works part-time at a local CompUSA Apple Store Within A Store. A card-carrying member of the local Macintosh User Group Mini'app'les, Rodney writes this column exclusively for theimac.com. His greatest desire is to become an African-American Guy Kawasaki.

That's the offical data as worded from http://www.theimac.com/news/excl/237.shtml as highlighted by ADC BBBS (the extra "B" is for "bullshit") researcher "Mac_Realist". Here's what has been noted by T.E.M.P. so far:

Rodney is a very scary person. Not because he's working part time at a CompUSA - with an underutilized degree (or any retail location that sells Macs - did I mention he "used" to work at Best Buy before they stopped carrying them?) just so Apple computers are presented in the best possible light with the general public, but because he lives, breathes and eats Apple Inc. His mission has progressed to the point of "wanting to become a black Guy Kawasaski". Odd enough to want to pattern your life based on someone else's job title of "evangelist" - but it's even wierder when the person he's parodying is no longer doing that job in the first place but has gone on to do other and better things (hint - he's got a life now - outside of Apple).

Still that's no match for obsession compulsion gone wrong, and when it comes to marketing and advertising hooks - Rodney O Lain is the catch of the day - nay - the millenium. Where else but at the close of the 20th century can you take marketing drivel about a product, create a lifestyle around it - devote every waking hour of your life commitited to your lifestyle, and then put those fixations on the web? Well - Rodney sure can - and he does it like nobody else. Me? Well, although it's fun to consider a person following the dellusions of another group of bizzare people - but that's pretty much what sociologists do. I was one hour away from getting a dual degree in art AND Sociology - so I regress to crowd watching from time to time. In sociology you don't watch the crazy person - but the crazy people.

Rodney is a person - one of many who own Macs - who can't shut the fuck up about them.

Newsflash - I am typing this on a lime green iMac w/a 333 Power PC processor with an Apple logo staring right at me.

Did that sound off-track? Hell yes - because it's not important. It's not important for me to spout off what brand computer I use with every living being on the planet and why everyone else on the planet is beneath contempt for not buying the "right" computer. Because what I use is a tool - nothing more nothing less. the Thinkpad in the study that I type on during smoke breaks in there also is a tool. The NeXTstation and the Ataris in the closet are also tools. The iMac is now the fastest tool in the apartment - but that's pretty much "it". If you say that to the usual grouping of MacJihad - you'd be strung up for heresy.

If you said it in front of Rodney O Lain - he's probably return any gifts that he'd gotten from you during the time you'd known him because they'd been tainted by those who are devoting "their" hours worshiping Bill Gates. The point is - the malady of the MacJihad IS interresting. To hell with the company or the computers. Apple the company was interresting until they pulled out of their nose dive and began schlepping the same marketing gimicks ad-nauseum. The user base on the other hand has not only become bizzare but has it's own brand of celebrety psychosis running amok.

Rodney O. Lain is not only a prolific writer - but is emailing himself twice a week to anyone who will listen to how Apple is run - why you should buy an Apple, and why Microsoft is bad. He's also a crazy batshit loonball who has taken a pile of crap from my previous professional incarnation in advertising and ran with it faster than a quarterback through a gauntlet of offensive linemen. As a person who has produced such pap - I recognize it for what it is. Seeing someone create a wholesale lifestyle around such muck is pretty much the same scary vibe I'd get from someone devoted to "evangelizing" about NIKE footwear. Scary - but also facinating in the same way that most car wrecks are. I'll be providing the towing services along the way - enjoy the show.

exerpts by -Montgomery (Monty) Gabrys - who is very much aware that Rodney is just one of - many - very - scary - people out there.


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