The Angry Exile: A message for Mac users

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday, 28 July 2011

A message for Mac users

Safari 5.1 is shithouse and Steve Jobs needs to do something about the Cupertino circle jerk that perpetuates the myth that every idea Apple shits out is automatically wonderful because it's Apple. Although it's got a couple of nice new features such as the reading list they still haven't got true tab duplication - i.e with histories, the way Opera has done for fucking ten years or more - some of my extensions don't work, one critical one work properly because 5.1 incorporates so many changes that the poor buggers that wrote are saying they've had to rewrite almost from scratch. It's also become very sluggish with more than a few tabs open, prone to beach balling, very temperamental if even one tab has any video content - which is half the content on any news site these days - and worst of all the fucking thing has fallen over on me so many times this morning I'm half tempted to check to see I didn't install a beta by mistake. This is Internet Explorer territory. If you haven't downloaded it already think carefully before you do - check every extension and plug in for compatibility, and make sure you've got a backup in case for when the problems outweigh the benefit of the new features. At the current rate of annoying things happening I'll have given up on it and gone back to 5.0 by lunchtime, and it's now a quarter past eleven.

This has been an anti-Apple rant/public service announcement. Never forget that all big companies, even ones that make some nice products, can be a shower of cunts from time to time.

UPDATE - And just under an hour later I've lost my patience entirely and gone back to the last version of 5.0.

Comments (7)

Logging you in...

Dashboard | Edit profile | Logout

Logged in as

+1 Vote up Vote down

Subrosa · 712 weeks ago

I use 5.0.6 an it still beachballs regularly. Can't find out why. Thinking of going to Lion but first I've to install Leopard - which I have but never bothered to install.

1 reply · active 712 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 712 weeks ago

You on Tiger then? Pure speculation this, but maybe Safari 5.0.6 might be beach balling because it was made with later systems in mind. If you're going to have to upgrade anyway before you can get Lion because the sneaky sods are only selling through the Mac App Store now you might find it improves on it's own. I'm quite happy to stick with Snow Leopard for a while yet. From what I've seen and read of Lion so far they can keep it. Not keen on the IOS-y style - if I wanted that I'd have a device that used IOS, and since most iPad and iPhone users are going to have Windows PCs I can't help feeling that Apple are just prostituting themselves to eat some more of the MS market share, and fuck long time Mac users. As for the Safari 5.1 problems, if that's a guide of what Lion is like I'd say they should probably have called it Dog, though to be fair I've never upgraded OS X until 10.x.2 or later apart from Snow Leopard, and that was just because it was supposedly more like a big update of Leopard.

+1 Vote up Vote down

microdave · 712 weeks ago

You should contact The Register and tell them your experiences. If they put a post up it would be guaranteed to get at least 200 replies, and start the Mac / Windows war all over again...

This is why I'm still using XP with Firefox 3.6 & Thunderbird 2. And if fucking ZoneAlarm 9.2.109 refuses to initialise one more time I'm going to reinstall v8, and just put up with the regular "nagging" popups...

The most useful folder on my machine is the one called "Softwares" - where I keep copies of older installation files.

2 replies · active 712 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 712 weeks ago

I have a similar folder containing the previous versions of everything on the computer.

Has the Mac / Windows war ever actually stopped?

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 712 weeks ago

I have a similar folder containing the previous versions of everything on the computer.

Has the Mac / Windows war ever actually stopped?

+1 Vote up Vote down

microdave · 712 weeks ago

Multiple replies - either you need to enable 3rd party cookies, or you're the REAL sixtypoundsaweekcleaner, and I claim my reward....

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Angry_Exile 90p · 712 weeks ago

Prove it. :p Actually, hands up. The first one didn't appear and I couldn't remember clicking submit so I did it again. I'm not the Sixtypoundsaweekcleaner though.

Post a new comment

Comment as a Guest, or login:

Tweet this comment

Connected as (Logout)

Email (optional)

Not displayed publicly.

Submit Comment

Subscribe to

Add insightful or amusing remarks for me to think on and respond to. Or add annoying comment spam for me to waste time deleting, in which case may your genitals turn square and fester at the corners.

Unnecessary ranting and gratuitous profanity is strictly encouraged.

NB - due to some annoying pricks comment spamming lately all comments with three or more any links go into a moderation queue. If it's not spam I will publish all comments even tenuously related to whatever I was rambling about in the post. Otherwise please refer to the comments policy.

Comments by IntenseDebate