Three Years, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #156

November 29, 2011 Arthur Tebbel 5 Comments

Hey everyone,

I’m going to take a break from the archive run this week (which, if you’re keeping track, means I’m taking a break from taking a break from my usual format) to commemorate two important milestones for Pop Art.

First, this column marks the end of my third year writing this column every week.  Well I took that week off last month but I also waited an extra week to celebrate the anniversary so I think it evens out.  It’s been a pleasure bringing this column to you all every week.  Even those weeks where it seems like nothing new has happened and I end up finding something particularly tenuous to write about.  I think I’ve answered letters from the weather more than once.  Thanks for sticking those out.  I would also like to thank Herman Cain who seems to know about my current events hiatus and seems willing to drag this sexual harassment thing on long enough to give me time to get back to it.  It’s awfully sporting of him.

This also marks a major milestone for this column.  The overwhelming majority of these columns have been written on one computer, my trusty late-2008 MacBook Pro.  A couple were written on Chris’ computer early on until I realized we disagreed wildly about appropriate comma use and that all came to an end.  That has all changed this week.  I come to you now from a late-2011 MacBook Pro.  The old computer was chugging along and struggling to access things on the hard drive and I decided it was time to put it out to pasture before it had a chance to get worse.

The terrible thing is realizing that my relationships with my computers are deeper than my relationships with most people.  I can tell you a lot about my old computer.  The uneven wear pattern on the case from the way I sat on my old couch.  The way it struggled with Flash content way more than any other Mac I’ve heard anecdotal evidence about.  It isn’t just that computer either.  I remember the dent on my college computer from where it fell off the couch in Brooklyn.  I imagine the emotional distress I felt when it was in the shop for a broken optical drive is about how parents feel when their child is in the hospital.  That would make finding out there was just a nickel caught in the drive finding out that said child’s measles are actually just a bunch of nickels stuck to their skin.

Thanks for letting me do this for three years everybody and I sincerely hope all my jokes weren’t somehow tied to that one computer.  See you next week.