Change it to the butterflies
From the archives. Original blog entry publish date: November 21, 2007
For the past couple of months or so, my mom has been nagging me to buy her a computer - when my parents split, my dad moved out of the house and got a new laptop and DSL service, leaving my mother with an old computer running Windows 2000, a hand-me-down keyboard and one of those fucked-up boxy CRT monitors that you only see when television news crews do stories on public libraries and elementary schools. (Well, actually, my dad got a new laptop and new DSL service and bought a new condo and a new SUV. But that’s not the focus of this blog post.)
Mom: I want a new computer. With a big monitor. BIG MONITOR.
Ernie: What are you going to use the computer for, mom?
Mom: I want to check my e-mail.
I know full well that buying a new computer and Internet service for my mother is a lose-lose situation: if my mother doesn’t use the computer at all, I essentially have bought her a very expensive paperweight.
But if my mother learns to use the Internet too well, my mother suddenly has access to everything I’ve ever published over the World Wide Web.
EVERYTHING.
Thankfully, “the future” has let us down on many things - Chinese-to-English machine translation being one of them - so I push on with my plan to purchase my mother an early Christmas present: a 2007 iMac.
A $1,600 dollar, 20-inch, 2007 iMac.
The iMac isn’t so much a computer as it is a big shiny white version of modern technology; a computer that was so different from the previous six-year-old desktop computer that it would be a symbol that her technically adept son does care about her, even through consumerist means.
And it has a big monitor. Mom likes big monitors.
I could just walk into the Apple Store, buy a computer, set it up for her with a dial-up service, and that would be that, right?
Wrong.
Buying the computer is easy enough. The nice geek in the Apple shirt swipes your credit card, goes to the stockroom and hands you a thirty pound box. You then carry the thirty pound box half a mile to the parking garage, then an additional mile to the other parking garage when you realize that your mother has guided you to the wrong parking garage. (OPEN NOTE TO VALLEY FAIR MALL, SAN JOSE CA: WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE TWO MACYs ON OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE MALL? SERIOUSLY, FIND YOUR MALL DESIGNER AND SHAKE HIM FOR ME. <3, ERNIE)
Purchasing dial-up Internet service is surprisingly difficult nowadays, especially when you're sitting in a house that doesn't have Internet service, and your mom is looking over your shoulder baffled as to why she can't get her e-mail, while the giant-monitor computer is plainly in front of her. Gone are the days of AOL CDs, and the one time I want a desktop icon of a stick figure to install dial-up Internet service for my mom, there was none. I end up being up-sold at a local Best Buy and end up buying a DSL Modem for my mother. Which requires DSL service, which takes up to four days for the telephone company to install. Which means I have to come back to my mother's house again in a week.
Once the DSL finally works, I sit my mother down, set the mouse pointer and font sizes annoyingly large, and load up Safari. My mother is finally ready to drive on the Information Superhighway. God knows that she's going to be a crazy old Asian lady about it and drive hella slow and piss everyone off.
Ernie: And here you go. Look, it even has Yahoo! Taiwan on the front page! You don’t even have to type anything.
Mom: But I don’t want Yahoo!. I want the one with the butterflies.
When saying “the one with the butterflies,” Mom is referring to MSN.com, the service she had when my parents were on dial-up.
Ernie: But Mom, I work for Yahoo!. You know that, right? That I work for Yahoo!? See that link to your left? Mom, I WORKED ON THAT PAGE. Mom: Yes, I know. But the butterflies, they are so colorful.
Ernie: Seriously? The site is in English! MSN Taiwan doesn’t even look right on Safari with big fonts. Are you going to be using the page at all—
Mom: Change it. To the butterflies. Please.
(Some time passes.)
Ernie: Okay, we’re ready to set up your e-mail. What’s your e-mail address?
Mom: …what are you talking about? I don’t have an email address.
Ernie: I thought you were going to use this to “check your e-mail.”
Mom: Eventually. Someday. How would I be able to write emails anyway? How would I be able to learn? You barely know how to write in Chinese!
Ernie: I’m going out for a cigarette.
Mom: I thought you quit smo-
Ernie: I SAID I’M GOING OUT FOR A CIGARETTE.
So yeah. With my hard-earned time and money, I just invested in a very nice computer for my mother. That she’ll probably won’t use. On the flip side, she probably doesn’t know that I’m writing about her on the Internet.
I’m making a long bet that she won’t know how to type my full English name into a search engine.
If there’s a God in Heaven, He’ll keep her from typing my name in a search engine.