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22 January 2007
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(The last in my trilogy of Christmas stories for PC-Friends)
One Christmas, years ago, when my son Chris was about ten years old, I set out to buy toy cowboy guns for him. He already had boots and hats, bandanas and sheriff's badges. But they don't have holsters and guns. Without those critical components, however, you've really just got yourself a Village People costume. We've made do until now with two wooden pistols that were originally designed to shoot rubber bands. But I wanted to get him shiny cowboy guns, the kind that make a little boy's heart race, that turn a bad guy's legs to jelly, and that give a damsel in distress, that funny climbing-the-rope-in-gym-class feeling when she sees them strapped around your waist.
So I got up early, a couple days before Christmas, that year, and set out to catch Toys R Us right when they opened. This is advisable if like me you find yourself drawing hysterical conclusions about the future of civilization based on your experiences shopping in malls and driving behind school buses. If you can't find anything nice to say about your fellow man, I like to think, and then best just to avoid him.
So I walked inside the Toy Mecca in vain hopes of quickly completing my mission. In this I was working against teams of psychologists and store design specialists all bent on exactly the opposite goal, which is to keep the hapless shopper in the store for as long as there are dollars left in his wallet. I winded my way past rows of video games and Barbie paraphernalia (I think boys might benefit from owning a Barbie doll; every young man should understand what an expensive proposition it is to cohabitate with a narcissistic woman built like a stripper), past noisy electronic gizmos and remote-controlled devices.
But I couldn't find guns. I wandered up and down aisles until I spotted a salesman. "Excuse me," I said, "where can I find cowboy guns?"
Have you seen the cute Comcast TV ads lately with the turtles named the Slowkies. It typifies the smoke and deception that Comcast and the cable industry have used over the years. As usual, there is some truth to what they have to say, but there is also some fiction as well. Let’s take a look and try to sort facts from fantasy, and price from value. That is what a consumer needs to make an informed choice of broadband providers.