Okay, so normally I’d bury this post where it really belongs, somewhere in the reply section of Saturday’s original rant about all things technically attractive and attractively technical.

However, there was something about Darren Saturday’s post that demanded a little extra attention. Maybe it was the implied threats? Maybe it was the explicit threats?

Or maybe it had something to do with how amazingly wrong he was.

No conversation I ever wanted to be a part of has ever started with…

“I had to do it,” Saturday says, laughing his snuffly laugh.

I wince. I know this laugh. I’ve heard it before. This is Saturday’s laugh when he thinks he’s just committed some minor act of bastardry and that he’s also pretty certain he can talk his way out of it. This is the laugh that says, “Everyone is going to find this funny, eheh heh heh, except for maybe you. Heh heh heh.”

“What did you do?” I ask in a resigned tone. Experience has taught me that there’s no point approaching this conversation any other way.

He chortles some more and then adds the deathblow sentence. “Just promise me you won’t take it personally.”

***

Here’s the thing. No conversation I ever wanted to be a part of has ever started with the words, “Don’t take this personally.”

***

The revolution, one pretty gadget at a time

Turns out, Saturday was actually ‘fessing up to some pretty harmless thing or another. In a post about how he envies me for having a more up-to-date iPod, he mentioned how he fantasises about stabbing me in the eye with a pencil.

His iPod is newer and cooler. Sometimes I fantasy about poking him in the eye with a pencil. Sometimes. But I don’t.

The funny thing is, I know exactly what he’s talking about. Not so much with the stabbing-in-the-eye-with-a-pencil thing [1], but certainly I understand the gadget-envy thing.

Pardon me boy…

Every weekday my morning begins with the same ritual. Somewhere around 8am — a little before or a little after, depending on the time I make it to the station — I cram myself onto an overcrowded train bound for the city.

These morning train rides were already unpleasant enough, but not too long back Queensland Rail added to the joy by cutting the number of trains stopping at my station, and then in a sort of Orwellian exercise spent a lot of money telling we clueless passengers about how amazingly improved the new timetable has become.

Of course, maybe I’m just being an ungrateful sod, complaining about overcrowding while having my face pushed into some guy’s armpit-of-questionable-hygiene, but the overcrowding isn’t the only unpleasant thing about catching the train.

Serenity now… now… now… please now…?

Funny thing being, I originally bought the techno-lust-inducing iPod I own because I was certain I was going to go stark raving bonkers on the train one morning and either harm myself or a number of my fellow passengers, or both.

Seriously, Lady-sitting-across-the-aisle-from-me, I don’t want to hear about who your best friend Jenny ‘got with’ 3 weeks ago and how he’s a love-rat because you ‘got with’ him 2 weeks before that. And 16-year-old-kid-with-the-fucked-up-haircut? If you fondle your crotch in that ’sup, dog?’ way one more time I’m going to throw up on your school uniform. Oh, and Dude-who-thinks-he’s-in-the- Matrix-with-his -Zen-Raybans-and-heavy-Neo- coat-in- the-middle-of-fucking-summer… I don’t know where to start with you, I really don’t. Suffice it to say that I have occasionally wondered how you’d react if I maliciously tweaked your nose. Also, I know you work part-time at my local Blockbuster video store, so maybe a little less of the intense ninja stare, if you don’t mind.

These are just a few members of the intense sea of humanity I have to deal with every morning; and let it not be forgotten that these people also have to deal with me. That can’t be pleasant.

So, we sit and pretend we’re somewhere else, and shoot passive-aggressive glances at the people having loud mobile phone conversations, and parents with screaming babies, and at the school kids who fill the carriages with a solid wall of sound, and at the evil twin sisters who never speak but who glare down their noses at everyone for everything [2].

And the only tool I have at my disposal with which to defend myself from this daily psychologic barrage is my pair of Skullcandy earphones combined with something relaxing from one of my carefully maintained iPod playlists [3].

Armed with these I close my eyes and hope I can make it into the city just one more time without going out of my tiny, tiny mind.

I’ve got a great idea for a new reality show — let’s call it “Temptation Carriage”

But there’s another reason why I force myself to mentally check out when I’m commuting on the train.

You see, just like Darren Saturday I’m a filthy early adopter as well. Or at least, I would be if I could afford any of it. I crave almost every piece of new technology I encounter, and a long time ago I forced myself to come to terms with the fact that I’d never earn enough money to buy even a small percentage of the gadgets I covet.

Sadly, for some reason this has done absolutely nothing to reduce the actual covetousness I experience.

So, every morning on the train I do my best to ignore the surrounding plethora of laptops, portable gaming systems, Apple iTouches, miniscule mobile phones, Blackberrys, and who knows what other beautiful, gleaming devices my fellow passengers are fondling with their dirty, gadget-owning hands.

Wax on, wax off… No, you’re not doing it right.

“See, I think you’re thinking about this the wrong way,” I say. This is a different telephone call, but really it’s still the same conversation.

“What do you mean?” Saturday asks.

“Well,” I say, “let’s face it, someone is always going to own the latest cool thing, right?”

“Yeah, true,” Saturday says. And then he adds, “Maybe we could track that someone down and rough him up until he gives us all his cool things?”

I choose to ignore this. “But the point is, right, the point is that it’s not the cool thing you should be focusing on. The thing you should be focusing on is the fact that you have a superb music collection.”

“I do have a superb music collection!” Saturday says aggressively.

“I know you do. And this is where I think you’re going wrong.”

“I have a superb music collection,” he repeats.

“Right, and you’re agonising over the tool, and forgetting that the tool is really only there as a means of accessing your music collection. Forget which iPod version you own — other people should be envying you for the amazingness of the music you can listen to.”

“You know,” Darren says, “you’re absolutely right. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. But I still have one little problem.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“How do I let people know that I have an amazing music collection so they’re aware that they’re supposed to envy me instead?”

The Tao of Hardening Up, somewhere in a forest

Apparently in Tibetan Buddhism, it’s a blessing when a friend experiences good fortune. Obviously the Tibetans have become practiced at looking for blessings in unexpected places, since they could hardly count their current political landscape, for example, as being any source of blessings.

In Western society, however, when a close friend experiences good fortune, we have the time-honoured ritual of saying, “Oh, wow, isn’t that great? It plays video? Fantastic. And it stores how many songs? And the interface is updated and much cooler than the one I own? That’s… That’s just really, really, really great. Really, really.” And then we go away and privately fantasise about driving sharpened bits of stationery into our close friend’s head.

But it doesn’t always have to be like that.

Every now and then you can stop and think about the things you already have; pay attention to the trees for once, instead of always focusing on the forest.

In Saturday’s case, that might mean browsing through his extensive music collection, rediscovering old favourites, maybe giving an album a 2nd chance to grab his attention.

For me, it might mean playing with my much newer and cooler iPod, and watching video on it [4] and enjoying it so much more than I would if I had Darren’s older, much less cooler version. Also, I might say to myself, “Screw the extensive music collection, I don’t have time to listen to all the songs I already have, and my iPod is sooooo pretty,” or something similar.

Whatever the method, there’s always a way to reexamine your situation, to put your desire for something newer, better, prettier into context, and to be more genuinely satisfied with where you are in life, right now.

And then you can fantasise about stabbing your friends in the eye with a pencil.

Photo courtesy of Aaron Michael Brown.