the yachtsman recommends

It's true, it's time once again for a yachtsman recommends, and I am pleased to tell you that today's recommendation is facilitating the recommendation itself. I come to you today to recommend a truly magical and revolutionary device, the thing the geeks call the Jesus tablet. That's right, I'm here to recommend the iPad.

Having purchased my iPad several nights ago, I am now able to unashamedly recommend it to the readers of GFD. Now I know what you are thinking: What would I ever do with an iPad? The truth is, after 48 hours with the thing, I have no fucking idea. All I can tell you is that the thing is magical. Why and how it's magical are not clear to me, and I truly have no idea what you are supposed to do with it. But damn it's cool. What I can say is that Gruel for Dinner never looked better than when I pulled up it up on the iPad browser. For that matter, every website I've surfed to with the device looks magical.

Now, will it replace my smartphone? No. Will it replace my laptop? No, in fact you have to have a computer to sync it with. [Ed.: Will it replace his wife? I'm nervous.] So does it do anything my other devices don't? No. In fact, any website that relies on Flash won't display, you can't multitask, and if I want to use it on the 3G network I need to cough up another $25 to AT&T on top of the other $100 a month I give them for my iPhone. But, 48 hours into this, I can't imagine life without it.

So, I recommend you buy an iPad. And please don't ask to see mine, because I don't want your dirty fingerprints all over my nice, shiny screen.

Until next time,
The Yachtsman

Sent from my iPad

the mall

Chris and I went to the mall the other night (our first mistake) to go the AT&T store (our second mistake), which was like walking through the insane asylum to buy a phone at the freak show.

I saw three different people at the mall wearing slippers, and it wasn't like I stumbled into the middle of a gang of slipper-wearers: These were three separate slipper-wearing individuals. Admittedly I'm not in a position to judge, given the fact that I walk around my building (and sometimes the park across the street from my house) in my couch Jedi outfit. And yet I do judge. Even I put on shoes to go to the depressing, fluorescently lit wasteland that is the Burlington Square Mall! Granted, I don't brush my hair or teeth, and I think it's perfectly acceptable to wear pajama bottoms that bear a passing resemblance to pants. But c'mon now. No shirt, no shoes, no shuffling around the mall.

But the greater mall was nothing compared to the AT&T store, which was PACKED, mostly with stoned fifteen-year-old boys using the web-enabled phones to check their e-mail, listen to music, and look at porn. There was also a long line of unruly customers and only two employees, so we had to wait for quite some time, during which I kept sneaking out of the store and curling into the fetal position behind a massive fake potted plant. Chris, apparently thinking I was trying to get a game of hide-n-seek going, kept finding me.

Other visitors to the store included a prepubescent girl wearing an adorable pink teeshirt that said "SLUT" in sparkly letters, a toothless pregnant man, and a woman with knee-high, spiked-heeled boots and peroxide-orange hair who came in and immediately started yelling to the employees, both of whom were helping other people, that one of her "clients" had stolen her phone. I of course assumed she was a prostitute, but it turns out she was a hairdresser, which I know because she could not stop talking loudly to herself about her misfortunes while walking in tight little (probably cocaine-induced) circles.

All of which is to say that I have a new phone.