A few weeks ago, we took a look at TotalFinder, a collection of add-ons to the Mac OS X Finder that fixes some of its shortcomings, adds some welcome features, and in all, makes it a little more pleasant to use. We’ve got three free copies of TotalFinder to hand out, so read on to find out how you can win one!
It’s the start of the new year, we’re all recovering from our various new years’ eve obligations, and we’re sad we all have to go to work again tomorrow (well, except for me – I work from home). To extend the holiday spirit a for just a little longer, we’re giving away three copies of TotalFinder for the Mac. The copies are provided by BinaryAge, the company behind TotalFinder and several other Mac OS X tools.
So, what do you have to do to get your hands on a free copy? Simple, really: write a very short story, and post it in the comments. Because this is OSNews, and because I just thought of this contest like 56 seconds ago, it does have a few crazy twists. For your short story to be eligible, it needs to be about at least the following things:
- Unicorns (obviously)
- Glitter
- Fiona Apple
- Mac OS X
- TotalFinder/Finder
A few sentences is enough; this isn’t about length, it’s about absurdism. Make it as absurd and surreal as possible. Go all-out. It doesn’t matter. No limits, no bounds, no rules. You can troll, you can butter up, you can beat OSNews and its team senseless with words.
Unlike contests at a lot of other websites, this one is not limited to the US – wherever you live, you’re eligible. To set some sort of a cut-off point, your comment has to be posted within 24 hours from this contest going live (see date/time atop the teaser). Winners will be announced and re-posted on OSNews’ front page, and I’ll email the license and download location to your address (so be sure there’s a valid email address in your profile!).
Happy absurd writing!
OS X users, at least the iOS variety discovered an Easter Egg which allowed them to sleep through their alarms set on any device running iOS 4+. Apple claims this was a carefully planned ‘feature‘ and not a ‘bug‘. Seems Steve has been taking lessons from Bill!
Hi,
Just wanted to ask, would Fiona Apple be able to run TotalFinder/Finder while riding a Unicorn and covered in Glitter, if she doesn’t have a copy of Mac OS X?
– Brendan
One day while playing with the Unicorns and discovering the wonders of Total Finder and the great things it does to Finder, it started to rain glitter from the sky. Much to our amazement, the glitter was bought on by the presence of Fiona Apple. In my shock, I awoke from my dream only to find out it wasn’t real and was all created on a Mac, running OS X of course!
I’m just happy that it’s OS X software (and useful)!
Maybe we can get a copy of Photoshop for everyone next time 😉
That would be cool as well, but why not a few copies of some of those hobbyist operating systems or virtualization tools out there that aren’t free, along with anything else that promotes interest and use of alternative operating systems. Anyone can grab a BSD or Linux distro, virtualbox, and so on, but why not ecomstation, vmware workstation, parallels, or other goodies…
The site IS called OSNews afterall…
Upon Samba shares it came, when ubernerd known for it’s fame, Apple Fiona was her name, had Finder problems she tried to solve … much in vein. A cloud of glitter she then farted, which turned in a unicorn that started, to work on a fix, using TotalFinder on Mac OSX!
+1 (but I already commented)
Just wanted to get back from the bar, but my last bus was long gone. It passed on 23:30 and I was about a half an hour late. I was getting ready for walking home to Brussels but a unicorn passed. I hopped on for the ride ’cause it just went in the right direction.
On my way to Brussels I passed a beautiful girl. I thought, why not invite her for the ride. She wouldn’t ride along! She started blabing about how it’s not ok to use animals for transport and she would tell it to Fiona Apple. Whatever! I got home, logged in to my mac so I could check the (os)news. I noticed that there was a contest for a free copy of TotalFinder for mac OS X. Wait, why am I writing this? For glitter and fame!
Edited 2011-01-02 23:57 UTC
One day, Thom Holwerda invited Fiona Apple for a ride on his unicorn… But first, Fiona insisted on him using McAfee for protection, since her name was indeed Fiona Apple McAfee Maggart. “Outrageous!” he screamed, because his flavour of choice was Glitter.
“Glitter?” she blinked, “I’ve never heard of Glitter.” “… I will show you”, Thom said and started Mac OS X for a quick presentation. With a steady finger he moved the cursor over to the Finder icon on his dock with the intention of open a new window. But all of a sudden spinning beach ball of death occurred, and in dissatisfaction Fiona Apple left him for Dave DeWalt who used TotalFinder.
EOF
Finder could not raise his eyes from Fiona Apple, lurking in jacuzzi. The secret solved – farting Unicorns had nothing to do with Mac OS X!
P.S. Nor with tidal wave of Glitter.
Edited 2011-01-03 00:18 UTC
Some time ago I had a very bad stomachache. Luckily Fiona Apple came by and knew right away what I had (bad case of gas that wouldn’t come out) then she performed some sort of Heimlich maneuver on me (think Dr. Garrigan and Idi Amin in Last King of Scotland and you get the picture). I released my pressure in one big fart but strangely enough it smelled like roses and unicorns came out of my butt.
I was relieved and Fiona was happy because she was looking for sounds for her new iOS fart app.
Then something even more strange happened: The unicorns started sprinkling glitter on Fiona and she turned into a beautiful Macbook Air.
I thought “what the heck†and I might just install Linux on the thing when a thought came to my mind that changing the software too much might mess with Fionas brains if the enchantment can be reversed. So I stuck with Mac OS X but because I cannot stand Finder I installed TotalFinder.
And before you ask: Yes, I tried kissing the thing but it won’t change back (and trust me, I try numerous times each day)
I was having issues with my new windows 7 laptop so I called tech support. A woman named Fiona answered and asked what was wrong. I informed her that my new laptop refused run Viva Media’s “The Enchanted Unicorn” when the Microsoft windows 7 compatibility specifically states that it will work without any problems. I even emailed her the proof – see below. She was baffled. I informed her that I knew my friend’s Apple Mac runs it just fine even in a parallels install. Why can’t my laptop run it native? She informed me that my laptop was lacking the new glitter expansion unit. The glitter expansion? What is this? She went on to inform me that I needed to purchase a large quantity of glitter from the local Wal*Mart and pour it into my DVD drive. Ok. I was very hesitant at first but I bit the bullet and purchased the glitter, poured it into my DVD drive, and voila, my Windows 7 laptop transformed into a TotalFinder running Mac. Now I can use Finder and run my treasured “The Enchanted Unicorn” game!
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/Deta…
* TotalFinder/Finder
Edited 2011-01-03 00:17 UTC
I can has TotalFinder?
There Fiona Apple was, late for the concert because of the snow falling all up and down the East Coast like a teen dumping glitter on her face before the prom. With mere seconds to get on stage for her adoring fans, she powered up her laptop and logged into Mac OS X. With a mere click in TotalFinder she was able to get ichat open and send a High Priority Emergency Code Red message to her pink unicorn Sparkles, who promptly appeared and whisked her off to the concert, thus saving the day.
Twas the night before Christmas, and the posters where out
The fanboys, the haters and the trolls, beyond doubt
But something had changed, that previous day
For the princess of Glitter, had been taken away
Fiona Apple had been taken, by the evil Vizier
For see wasn’t real open, merely free as in beer
So the people of glitter, turned together to pray
For the gods of the legends, to descent if they may
And indeed they descended, with some glorious effects
And the leader amongst them, was the king OS X
He was angry but fair, the spectators would claim
As he looked at his soldiers, that he called by name
“Now Explorer! now Dolphin! now Dired and now Finder!
On Nautilus! on Konqueror! on Norton Commander!”
“We shall have our revenge”, mightily he decreed
From atop of his Unicorn, that he used as his steed
Though they tried as they might, the Vizier wouldn’t fall
For he was mighty handsome, also skinny and tall
And when everything seemed, to be pointless and lost
Then the hero of Glitter came to fight at his post
“TotalFinder” the townsfolk shouted, with a sigh of relief
“The Vizier’s evil reign, surely now will be brief”
And mistaken they weren’t, as the hero will prevail
And the people of Glitter will have a glorious Christmas Day
PS. Finder? I hardly know her! (someone had to do it)
This gets my vote!
you should write the lyrics for OpenBSD songs!!!
congrats!
Simply epic.
Glitter the Unicorn was missing, so I had to use Fiona’s Apple Mac OS X to Finder.
Because that’s what I do, and often:
Apple trees and OS fees
Make breeze burn foreign monies
Pleasen.
Firebombers and horse whistlers press horns forward.
Or else not.
Best weather for finding files of neverminding.
What I bought didn’t.
Terraformed terror and forced commander condor corps corpse eagle force.
Has it.
Breastly anger and Rikk Agnew nix Nixon and *nixen for scriptin’.
But isn’t.
Colourised Forbes and shirt tighteners give a swollen means to an end.
For is.
Once upon a brine
Fats upon a spine
Twice trestle I’m
It’s sometimes Tuesdays
Haven’ts
There is a rumor that Fiona Apple has a fundamental issue with Mac OS X, specifically the Finder. She believes that all files should be easily located based on type of meta data she calls “Glitter”, which can be applied to any file that has higher than average esthetics’s. Jobs retorted back “Fiona Apple must be crazy and flying around on Unicorns”.
I have to agree with Fiona that it would be a great feature, and thought that TotalFinder would have addressed the issue (http://www.osnews.com/story/24153/TotalFinder_Fixes_the_Finder) but unfortunately not.
Fiona Apple has signed a deal with Apple to write a replacement shell for Mac OS X called Uni-korn. Mariah Carey, the star of the movie Glitter, signed on to do the original development but gave up after initial use of the Finder proved too diffucult as she was unable to find her Xcode project.
There once was a unicorn who was bitter,
Because Mac OS X Finder sucked a big titter.
It made life so hard,
And Fiona Apple is a retard,
But TotalFinder shines like glitter.
?> perl -pe ‘s/Finder\.app/TotalFinder\.app/g’
yay ?> open /Applications/TotalFinder.app
I love this app, and will buy it if i don’t win.
A Brand new company headed by Arab billionaires wanting to diversify into IT technology courted Fiona to be their company spokesperson.
The UNIX Company will be called UNIxCORN or unicorn in short. Unicorn is said will have a revolutionary user interface likended to MAC OSx but already with search facilities almost on par with totalfind.
As part of her reward package she receives a brand new glittering gold plated tablet computer called UniTab that must accompany her on all her PR trips.
Edited 2011-01-03 02:09 UTC
“Ah, damn.”, I sighed to myself: “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken this job. It’s really wearing me thin, and I’m starting to worry about your safety..” I gently brushed my fingers over the still-sore wound on Glitter’s side and wondered to myself, silently, how amazing and resilient creatures these unicorns are. I mean, a bullet straight-on, and the damn thing doesn’t make even a peep! It was only two hours later after the fight that I even noticed the wound, and even then I noticed it only because my pants were getting soaked by it. “Yeah, I know what you mean, why give up now when we’re gotten to a good start, right?”, looking straight into her eyes and smiling my usual, sad, smile.
It started three weeks ago; I was sitting in my office at TotalFinder when this guy barges in, splintering the damn look on the door and throwing me off my chair, and starts literally screaming unintelligible words at me at speeds comparable to a god damn machine-gun. Turns out that his fiancé Fiona — a woman of superb intelligence and experience in the field of bioengineering — is missing for days now and doesn’t respond to calls. They had been working on some really important and big, something to do with way too difficult words for a simple mind like mine to comprehend, and were nearing completion. This guy, doctor OSX Apple, had gone home for the day and was expecting Fiona to come home soon after. But well, quite apparently even such a simple plan can go awry.
“Bah, need more booze and cigarettes before I can whack a few more skulls open “, I murmur, ” and a good fuck wouldn’t hurt either.”
Finder is so Unicorn that OSNews team outta have it with Cut+Paste, and Obama aproves it [¿?]
Ok, you said be absurd and random, I beleave that was pretty much both.
There once was a man named Thom, beloved of Unicorn’s one and all. Upon their backs he rode, wearing nothing but Glitter and gold. In the sun he would wondrously blaze, as he showered Finder/TotalFinder with praise. In homage of Mac OS X he sang, in a voice strong but tang. At night of Fiona Apple he dreamt, she who would rarely give but always tempt.
Unicorny the unicorn asked me yesterday, “What is Fiona Apple?”
“Why do you want to know?” I replied.
“There’s this really brilliant website that wants to give me a free copy of Total Finder for the Mac if I can write a story about myself and Fiona Apple. I know all the Apple products from Lisa to Mac and now the i-series. So I guess Fiona must be one of the older products, otherwise it’d be called iFiona.”
“Fiona isn’t an Apple product. She’s a singer.”
“What? Really? You mean there’s no Apple glitter about it except for her name?”
“What do you mean Apple glitter?”
“You know, the reality distorting glitter that Steve throws around the conference room when designing a new product.”
“No glitter, but she has some really nice songs…”
“Wow. Can I download them to my iPhone?”
“Only if you have the money, Unicorny. Only if you have the money.”
“What about using BitT******?”
“That’s an illegal word. Don’t say it otherwise the MPAA will come after us.”
“This is weird world,” said Unicorny. “I want to go back to my world with stars and dreams and Snow White.”
“What’s this about Snow White? She’s not part of your world.”
“Oops. Sorry. Forgot I said that. Snow White did not come to my world and …”
So I came across Fiona Apple having sex with a Unicorn.
While getting nailed she asked me if I use OSX.
Well yes and no, I replied. I don’t really like it but I have to test ASP.NET in it and……yes..the answer is yes…..sigh.
What don’t you like about it, she asked.
I don’t like how I have to buy an Apple computer to run it and I don’t like stoplight, the central menu bar, the dock multitasking interface, how everything is designed around single button mouse, and the lame game selection.
When it was over she was covered in Unicorn glitter but still wanted to talk about OSX, and asked me if I like using Finder.
Umm…I only run VirtualBox and a few browsers, I replied. I only use OSX for testing….I rarely have to use Finder…maybe once a month at the most.
Exhausted from being mounted by the Unicorn as she drifted off into sleep she mumbled….you should try TotalFinder…it’s neat.
Oh and I’m playing for Kawaii Gardiner.
I report this to myself as (unicorn) abuse =p
Roses are red
Violets are blue
All of my base
Are belong to TotalFinder.
(Read with a proper accent please.)
It is a widely known fact that Fiona Apple is a bad, bad girl – the criminality of her “bad” actions is, of course, among glitter farting unicorn fanatics, a topic of great debate.
What is not, however, of any significant debate, is her hatred and/or love of all things Apple. Her passion about OS X being, without a doubt, one of the least widely known details about her own belief system. Foremost among her knowledge and/or lack of knowledge of Mac OS X is the adequacy of its file manager: Finder – a name which surely stirs strong, or possibly weak, emotions among many and few, if any, among those fixated on glitter farting unicorns (you know who you are).
But coming to save the day, and assuage the anguish of the suffering user, while eschewing the desires of Ms. Apple (or potentially bringing great delight), is TotalFinder – bringing with it a cornucopia of tabs and, potentially, a multitude of other really, really great things – about which much could be said, but won’t be said, primarily as not to offend glitter farting unicorn enthusiasts.
Once upon a time when unicorns roamed the Earth, there was this little gay unicorn, named Unicorny, who was a big fan of Fiona Apple. One day he heard from one of his unicorn friends that she was going to have a concert nearby. Oh, how happy was the little unicorn. Now all he had to do was leave early from work, put on his glittery “I love Fiona Apple” tshirt and catch the 5 o’clock rainbow to the concert hall.
But, the horror … Unicorny had a lot of work to do before leaving. His boss asked him to clean-up his computer, and unfortunately for our little unicorn he was a pig when it came to file-management. But the worst of all – he used Mac OS X.
Unicorny searched high and low for a proper way to do this job … he tried MuCommander, but it crashed too often, he tried PathFinder, but it was too complicated for his little unicorn brain and he even tried to use the terminal, but his hooves were too big for the aluminium keyboard.
“If only Finder were not so retarded”, thought Unicorny to himself. As a tear raced from his left eye the room became filled with light and on his desk the Software Fairy appeared.
“I should lay of the pot”, said Unicorny and tried to stomp the little creature. “Wait! Stop!” cried the fairy. “I’m the Software Fairy, you little dipshit! Stop trying to kill me and I’ll grant you one wish”.
Unicorny looked at the little fairy and said with a timid hopeful voice “I want proper file-management on OS X, with all the latest innovations like Cut and Folders first!”.
“What you asked is no small feat”, said the fairy, “but I have to write an article for OSNews.com latter tonight and I don’t have time to hear you whine. Here, have a copy of Total Finder and you’ll be done in no time”.
“Thank you Mister Fairy” said Unicorny. “You can call me Thom” replied the Fairy and vanished in a cloud of glitter.
Said and done. Unicorny did all his work in time and saw Fiona Apple’s concert. That night a little gay unicorn cried tears of joy thanks to Total Finder. The End.
Edited 2011-01-03 08:39 UTC
I love it! It’s a shame I can’t vote you up several times.
I am perfectly satisfied with hogging all my screen real estate using several finder windows for doing simple things like moving a file and operations like it.
Fiona approves of this message.
=D
Almost the same with me.
Well, I have muCommander — a pure Java tool similar to TotalCommander — installed. But I rather seldom use it.
pica
Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, vast herds of unicorns soared through the skies, roaming freely throughout the world. Until one day, the dark lord Ball-Mehr rained death upon the unicorns and the Great Migration began. There, at the end of each day, the twilight was filled with glitter, as Fiona Apple – the Chosen One – led the herd towards the promised land of Cupertino. In this holy sanctuary, far from the vicissitudes of mediocre operating systems, the herd would rejoice and proliferate. There, they would update their Mac OSX’s to the latest version and dreamed of a more complete Finder… a TotalFinder, capable of banishing the cruel priest of the black religion to the depths of the oceans and return to their beloved clouds and tradewinds, high above the pillar’s of the earth.
Spock had these highly irrational thoughts of Fiona Apple’s heinie since 73 hours 37 minutes and 21 seconds now. He was simultaneously disturbed and fascinated by this phenomenon: normally the impression of female fanny only crossed his mind every seven years, always in glittering colors, riding wild unicorns on the endless fields of Vulcan.
Not this time though, not since Fiona was assimilated by the Borg. Suddenly Spock felt an urge to seek out the Borg at once and join their collective himself, thus merging with the mind-numbing non-glittering heinie forever. And felt an even more pressing craving: he wanted to finally use the much dreaded TotalFinder of the Borg. He showed no sign of it, but he always wanted folders first in his standard issue Finder. He found the factory settings illogical and lacking. Not to mention tabs. He was really digging Mac OS X though.
In the end he never ever found or joined the borg and it is unknown if he continued to see his dream cheeks for the rest of his conscious days. Or even if the cheeks told him something of a fairy tale.
Edited 2011-01-03 11:49 UTC
¡uÊop Çpısdn ɹÇpuıɟlÉʇoʇ puÉ x so É”Éɯ ‘ÇlddÉ Éuoıɟ ‘ɹÇʇʇılƃ ‘suɹoɔıun ƃuıllÇds ʇnoqÉ ÆƒuıɥʇʎuÉ pıÉs Çuoou
“So who is this Fiona Apple broad that we have to write about?”
“Who cares, dude, just google her.”
“Hmm, not bad. Wonder if I can get pictures of her on alt.pictures.nude.celebrities.”
“You still on Usenet?”
“Nah, that was a rhetorical point. Usenet’s full of commercial crap these days and there’s no good client for Mac OS X anyway. But hey, it would be good to see, you know, provoke the old unicorn effect.”
“Yeah, dude, I get it. Do you think she has a daughter?”
“Who are you, Gary Glitter?”
“Never mind that. Show me that picture you just downloaded.”
“Sure … Oh, sorry, Finder’s frozen again. If only someone would totally rewrite this POS. You know, they could call it TotalFinder or something.”
“Yeah, dream on, dude.”
Edited 2011-01-03 13:59 UTC
In spite of what most people would think, being a unicorn rancher is a rather dull and dreary job. Sure, the initial sight of your first unicorn, with its flowing mane of luminescent glitter, will never leave you, but, frankly, once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. They’re really just sparkly horses with that stupid horn on their foreheads, after all. Mutants, really. And dumb as a box of rocks, too, but that’s another story for another time.
Anyway, as I was saying, my life as a unicorn rancher is a rather dull and dreary job. Most days anyway. However, the morning when Fiona Apple and her entourage arrived at my doorstep to do a photo shoot with the horned buggers, well, that was quite a day I can tell you. The photo shoot was for her fourth album, Lancelot in Faeries, or some such thing, I don’t really recall to tell you the truth, but her production manager had gotten wind of my unique little ranch and decided that pictures of Fiona riding a unicorn would be just the thing for the album cover.
Oh what a day that was of barely controlled chaos that was! There were costumes galore and, of course, I had to help wrangle the right unicorns for each shot. See, unicorns don’t like to be ridden, unless, of course you offer the right inducements. And for most unicorns, that inducement is fruitcake. They love their fruitcake. If you can get a unicorn to chew on a piece of year old fruitcake, the older the better, you can do whatever you want with them. Why, you can even dress them up in 19th century ball gowns and assorted soldier uniforms and stage your own barn dance, but that’s another story for another time.
Did I mention that being a unicorn rancher was dull?
So after a few photos of Fiona riding on the backs of Glimmer, Headcase and Frenchy, it came time to settle accounts. Now, I’m not big into any of that computer mumbo-jumbo. My cousin from the city, the one who used to work for one of them fancy New York banks, tried to get me to use a computer once before. It was a Wista or Pista or some darn thing. All I know is that it pissed me off and I threw it off a cliff after Frolic and I went for a nice, moonlit ride down by the canyon. Well, these Fiona folks were using these Mac OS Ten computers and they were able to pay me directly into my bank account. What shiny gadgets these things were! When I made a comment about my old computer, they showed me all their tools, like iTunes and TotalFinder and the like. Pretty impressive stuff! It’s still not my thing, I mean, I’m not made of money, but still pretty darn nice.
So that’s my Fiona Apple story. I hope you enjoyed it. Now I’m gonna go out to the fold and take Backsider out for a ride. G’day.
In the bleak world of the distant future, the entire society is run with ruthless efficiency by an extraordinary machine known only as the APPLE. Everyone worships the APPLE. Anyone opposing them was hunted down and re-educated. Nonetheless, one group chooses to fight back: the Resistance. Their plan, years in the making, is about to begin.
* * *
January 5th, 2000 AD. Time: 9:00am.
An unconscious businessman lies sprawled out on the floor. Beside him, an identical-looking businessman stands speaking to a man wearing an odd mismatch of clothing seemingly taken from a time-lost thrift store.
“Are you aware of your mission?”, the man says to the businessman.
“YES, CREATOR. I WILL SLOWLY DESTROY THE CORPORATION KNOWN AS APPLE, SO THAT YOUR FUTURE SHALL NOT COME TO PASS.”
* * *
Time: 12:00pm.
“I AM NO LONGER AN INTERIM CEO. *I AM* THE CEO.” shouts the robotic businessman from the Expo’s keynote address. “FURTHERMORE, OUR COMPANY HAS CREATED A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM. ONE WHICH SHALL ALLOW US TO DESTROY OUR COMPETITORS. I CALL IT MAC OS X.”
As the robot demonstrates how one can “delete insubordinate files” by simply using the “Finder” to “drag them to the trash”, the time traveller grows concerned.
“That’s odd,” the time traveller thinks. “The robot shouldn’t be–”
Suddenly, everything goes black. He tried to struggle, but his unseen assailant proved too strong. Then, he felt the familiar sensation of traveling through time.
* * *
The prison is dark, metallic, and lit by colored neon lights. The prisoner, still wearing a mismatch of clothing from various eras, had been there for several days. A guard slammed on the cell door.
“‘EY YOU! IT’S TIME FOR YOUR DAILY BEATING!”, after which the guard entered. He shut his eyes in preparation for the coming beating, but it never came. Looking up, he saw that the guard had removed her visor, and was a member of the Resistance.
“We’re here to help you! We can go through these air ducts directly to the mainframe control unit! Go as fast as you can!”
As they crawled through the air duct, the resistance member explains the plan. “It seems our time-travel plan failed! A lifetime of planning, wasted! We need to find out why! And if we can’t stop that APPLE from being created, we can stop it now! We’ll need to hack it! The only way is to journey inside the machine’s consciousness itself!”
“But wait,” said the former prisoner, “how will traveling into the machine’s consciousness help?”
“Easy,” said the first. Your job will be to distract it, while I’ll implant our backup plan: the UNIversal COmputational Responsiveness Neutralizer virus. Once UNICORN is active, we have only 5 minutes to get out before the facility self destructs!”
As silently as possible, the two Resistance members exited the air duct at the mainframe’s core.
“Hello, ” said a strangely disembodied voice. “The time has come for you to sleep…to dream.”
* * *
The bright sun lit a verdant landscape under a deep blue sky. An intense double rainbow spanned all the way across the sky. Sunflowers, daises, and other flora seemed almost to be smiling.
“Wait…”, thought the man. “They don’t just look like they’re smiling….they ARE smiling! Where is this acid-induced fantasy land?”
A strangely familiar voice rang out across the hills.
“A poorly-phrased question. A question to ask would be: Whom is this land?”
“All right, whom is it, then?” shouted the increasingly weirded-out man.
“You are within my consciousness. I, APPLE, the ruler of your pathetic world. I have, of course, been expecting you.”
“Why?”
“I wish…to thank you. If it weren’t for your pathetic *resistance*, I wouldn’t even be here!”
“I knew it! That robotic Steve Jobs we implanted, it turned evil! Blast!”
“No, no. You see, the robotic Steve Jobs, while an unusual CEO, to say the least, functioned perfectly as you had designed him. Until…we…met. Back then…they called me….Fiona.”
“Fiona Apple!? The singer/songwriter!?”
“Yes. For you see, I was able to hack Steve Jobs’s consciousness and merge with him, thus creating…a better version of me!”
“That–that’s impossible!”
At that moment, a one-horned horse creature trotted happily across the landscape. “Well, hello there! What is your name?”, the voice called to the creature. The creature stared. Suddenly, its eyes turned to red, and it began to glow a blinding white.
(“She must have managed to implant the virus successfully”, he thought.)
Suddenly, the woman who had planted the virus ran into the scene, grabbing the other resistance member by the wrist.
“We’ve got to get going! This place will–”
The disembodied computer’s voice rang out once again, with a distinct note of concern in its voice. “What—what is happening!!!??”
“We’ve left you a little….parting gift!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”, shouted the voice, as it progressively became lower in pitch, then higher, as the world shattered into glittery fragments around them!
* * *
The two awoke once again in the computer core room, now lit with a red glow indicating the impending destruction of the facility.
As they cleared the final hallway, the building exploded spectacularly behind them!
The man turned to the other resistance member, saying, “I hope this wasn’t…a mistake.”
I’ve hidden 6 Fiona Apple song titles in the story! Collect them all!
A voice calls out “and that’s a wrap!”
“This is harder work than I though,” echoed through Fiona’s mind. The sweat beaded on her brow, as she checked to make sure the unicorn’s vigor hadn’t shed the glitter from her hair. Her next scene was coming up as soon they finished reviewing the last one and she wouldn’t have time to get her make-up redone.
The director and producer huddled around the MacBook Air reviewing the last set of takes in Final Cut. “I remember when had to have reels and reels of film and a whole room of editors to piece these scenes together” remarked one of them. “Yeah OS X and these tools have helped us to come a long way and keep costs down” said the producer.
Fiona walked over the her chair, and took a long drink of water. She never expected she’d end up doing unicorn porn. “Its all because of that damn Ke$ha” she fumed silently. “If I hadn’t lost celebrity idol to her, people would still take me seriously”.
Edited 2011-01-03 17:41 UTC
The very first thing I’ve discovered when I started using OSX was the absurd absence of the cut and paste feature in Finder.
I’m a professional developer and when I started learning how to code the first thing I was taught was DON’T DO COPY AND PASTE IN YOUR CODE!
Maybe someone in Apple misunderstood this good advice, and took it a little too literally!
I was watching tv with two friends drinking some young girls blood, when came a very funny spot: the Big Leopard of Mac Os X was riding a wonderful unicorn, heading a herd of Unicorns! We were totally surprised about this glitter spot, appeared in a night of a Pale September in Cupertino.
We didn’t have the time to restart out brains frizzed by this wonderful sensations of images and sounds that a girl with two deep blue eyes and an attractive smile screamed outside, running a green unicorn! Incredible!! We were astonished, and we couldn’t believe how she could manage such a long and heavy blade, forged by programer elves that develop the Total Finder weapon!
And with this sad bloody sun, Fiona Apple run away with her green unicorn dressed only with brown bra and slip…
Today in Helsinki a scientific breakthrough has occurred. Fiona Apple has discovered that Unicorn poo, which as we all know is made up mostly of glitter, can be used as a geek anti-achne facial cream. Her discovery is quite astonishing due to the fact that her outdated Mac OSX computer was not running Total Finder/Finder at the time making her efforts at cross pollination of various file folders nearly impossible. Geeks everywhere would be rejoicing if they could be pried away from their screens long enough to look in the mirror establishing the need for this treatment.
Fiona calls to me, wanton and compressed. Boundaries fail and banks erupt like an icon of sweet and sour privilege across sweaty orchards pixelated with cream-cheese and empty delusions.
“What have you, good Sir?†as I step between discarded desktops and idealized interfaces, presented only to induce my perpendicular abandon. But I have no ears for such empty sets. My memory is left but to expand and refresh with abandon, I long only for my Fiona, somewhere in the upper-left corner of my experience.
I toggle her, begging for forgiveness and ease for my pain. I yearn to glitter in response to her zesty tapioca pudding. But lo! I am denied. A voice descends upon me, speaks:
“What you see! What you get!â€
“But I must have more!†I scream back, pounding my fists, searching in vain for relief. Fiona! She is X now, a shadow of her former self. She is lost to me, aloft somewhere like a unicorn in a sheep-dip, and I yearn to tell her so.
I step once again to the bar, precipitating through menus to drown myself in lost infinities, seeking salvation but all is but fraught with frustration and broken dreams. My icons speak back to me and bleed sweet tears but grab nothing. Another voice calls, creeping toward me from seven discolored windows, wooing me with sweet promises and complex commitments. But my reality retorts with rage.
“Fiona is all I seek, the Apple of my arterial cortex,†but I cannot find her.
“Find her!†I scream. “Find her useless Finder that but fined her for leaving unreferenced memories in my soul!†But my plea falls in an empty abyss, leaving me in totality with my craving.
“X! OS X! What you get!†the voice thunders, pitilessly, and I collapse in a gooey mass of longing for a more. Total. Finder.
Edited 2011-01-04 03:53 UTC
an unicorn thought to himself what’s 4 point 2 divided by a glitter box filled to the brim with the emptiness of fiona’s apple
to which the mac os x replied i certainly would but im afraid i cant afford the finder’s fee