Sure, this is officially Friday's episode, but since we're on such a goofy schedule that it's broadcasting on Saturday morning, we'd be remiss not to pass along some fond birthday wishes to the platform that makes it all possible-- the platform that encourages us all in our endeavors, and whispers "you can" while others shout "you can't." The platform that has allowed so many to attempt the impossible, and occasionally to succeed. The platform that's always supportive, never judgmental, and opens doors when all the windows are closed. The platform that's now officially-- can you believe it?-- two decades old.

No, not José Cuervo. Sheesh. The Macintosh, you dork, the Macintosh is twenty today.

Now, we were going to do a little "looking back" sort of retrospectivish thingy that alternated between an examination of why Mac users are so fiercely loyal and that maudlin nostalgia that's all the rage these days, but we figured there are already plenty of those sorts of stories popping up all over the place without us adding one more; faithful viewer badtzmat points out that there's one at CNN, if that's the type of thing you're looking for. Personally, we just didn't think another "twenty years of the Mac" piece could really do justice to the occasion. When we turned twenty, just about the last thing we wanted was a bunch of people jawing on endlessly about the events of the first two decades of our lives.

So instead of settling for the obvious thing, we decided to do something for the Mac that it might actually like-- you know, give it a present that it would appreciate, as opposed to the squidgy photo-collage with embarrassing baby snapshots like that one of when its mom dressed it all in pink with a bow because it was "pretty enough to be a girl." When you're twenty, your past is of little to no interest; it's all about the future, baby. Well, that and taking delight in the misery of one's enemies, because let's face it, being twenty in this country means you're old enough to get drafted but not old enough to buy beer. It's an angry age, and injustice breeds contempt.

Keeping that in mind, we think we've settled on the perfect birthday gift for the Mac: faithful viewer Erik Tribou slid us an iafrica.com article about a Dell Inspiron laptop that apparently exploded all over a fifteen-year-old South African girl as she surfed the 'net for information on Macbeth. Now, granted, nobody likes to hear about an innocent teen getting second degree burns after an exploding laptop battery sets her shirt and couch on fire. We certainly wish her a full, speedy, and comfortable recovery from her ordeal. Still, if we can look past the injury to innocent bystanders, there's a certain bloodthirsty appeal to a Dell product that flat-out explodes, as opposed to those servers that just keel over in a puff of smoke.

So, Happy Birthday, Mac: this exploding Dell's for you. And when you're done with the celebrations, see if Steve will send that poor girl a get-well PowerBook; we're going to go out on a limb and assume that she's thinking about switching to something a little less combustible once she gets out of the burn ward.