A dork replies

I like Stephen Fry. I don't know him personally, but I enjoy his writing, his blethering, his somewhat awkward sense of style. Not being a stalker-fan, I wasn't aware that he was a gadget-freak until his recent outing. Like I said, not a stalker-fan.

That said, I take great umbrage at one sentiment in his latest post about his adoration of all things dorky:

So, believe me, a love of gizmos doesn’t make me averse to paper, leather and wood, old-fashioned Christmases, Preston Sturges films and country walks. Nor does it automatically mean I read Terry Pratchett, breathe only through my mouth and bring my head slightly too close to the bowl when I eat soup.

I was in complete agreement with him apart from that. What exactly is wrong with pTerry's books? And is his loose sentence construction describing Terry Pratchett readers as being mouth-breathers and head-lowerers? I was appalled. Then chastened. It's true. Every word.

Incidentally, probably apart from the lack of Discworld book ownership, Stephen Fry has described the majority of computer users. I'm not talking about those who just use Microsoft Office for work, but those of us who use them to organise our photos, music, movies, lives, work, and perhaps even interact with others socially¹. Most of us who couldn't care less which OS you run on what machine built by whom². And yes, not everyone's on World of Warcraft (although I would if I had the time).

¹ Or anti-socially in the case of trolls.
² Unless you're a jealous and spiteful git. What's with Windows users mocking me on my Mac over here anyway? I was a very early cross-OS user with a MacintoshII in my early childhood (oh SAM...), an IBM running MS-DOS followed by Windows 3.1 in my early teens was the home PC, and I built myself a series of cheap desktops since then running the whole range of Windows OS until XP, when I moved over to experiment with some of the free Linux OS. A power-board death of my last Fedora-running laptop left me stranded in LA without a home computer, hence the purchase of a Powerbook, which incidentally, is very cheap on this side of the pond. I've loved and hated aspects of ALL the systems I've made and bought in my short lifetime. I just like my Powerbook right now. It does the job quite nicely. Rant? Me? No... I just get constantly ridiculed about my Mac. It seems almost personal. Finally, a "PC" way to stigmatise somebody. They can't make fun of my Scottish accent on a Chinese face, but they can mock my choice of OS. And my dog. They mock my ownership of a dog too.
³ Fark. That was a rant, wasn't it? Sorry....