Oh mighty Apple, Inc., I beseech thee! I need a sign, something to renew my faith in you. I, your humble and obedient buyer of shiny things, have been twice tested by your product’s failures. Last fall, it was the random shut down problem.
Then, today, I went to turn on your apostle, my MacBook, and it would not recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in the form of its own battery. It ran via the power cord, but the battery was like unto a rock.
I took it to the local church, Mac Station, and the tech priest there asked to confess my sins. Had I, he asked, let the battery run down?
Yes, I cried, I had. Because I thought that’s what batteries were made to do—run down.
But apparently, my fault was letting my battery go completely dead, and thus I had insulted the Holy Spirit and the battery would charge never more. This hardly seems true—the battery worked fine on Monday, but it was dead today, and that’s hard to argue with. The Apple site really skirts over this.
My apostle is under blessed warranty still, so I can have another battery sent down from the heavens, but according to the Apple warranty replacement site (which the priest allowed me to gaze upon), Apple has NO 13-inch batteries in stock. Which is not what the Apple Store says—they say 24 hours, but that’s clearly not true.
So I had to purchase another battery, for a ridiculous $180, just so I could be assured of having the power of the Holy Spirit with me at all times. (I was going to make a burning bush joke here, but in light of the recent battery recall, I think that would be a little too heretical.)
Apple, I’m willing to be your disciple, but if your iPhone doesn’t turn out to be deus ex machina I’m going to be seriously tempted to renounce thee and turn to the devil—after all, he makes wonderful promises, too.
“Almost every American I know does trade large portions of his life for entertainment, hour by weeknight hour, binge by Saturday binge, Facebook check by Facebook check. I’m one of them. In the course of writing this I’ve watched all 13 episodes of House of Cards and who knows how many more West Wing episodes, and I’ve spent any number of blurred hours falling down internet rabbit holes. All instead of reading, or writing, or working, or spending real time with people I love.”
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)