Ask Rachel

Dear Rachel,

It’s that time of life once again: time to buy a new computer. This feels ridiculous to me every single time. I just plopped several hundred dollars on my last computer a few years ago, and without me doing anything more taxing than sending emails and listening to music, it’s stopped functioning altogether. I open a program, and then I go eat dinner, and then I come back and it’s still opening. Why do computers crap out all the time and require me to go relearn what RAM is anyway?

– Intel Outsider

Dear Reboot,

I learned everything I need to know about journalism without going to journalism school, and here’s that everything: Follow the Money. You want to know the motives behind any senseless act? Scope out who’s profiting. And the answer here is obvious. There’s only one group profiting and benefitting from your computer crapping out every few years and requiring you to go buy another one. It’s the paper industry. Because one of these times, you’ll just give up on electronics altogether. Sounds good to me, anyway.

– CTRL ALT DEL, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I’ve never been a coffee drinker because I had a middle school teacher who smelled like coffee and cigarettes, which was disgusting, and quite honestly I didn’t want to be one of those people who can’t function without coffee and who live for the next cup but now I’ve started having some high-grade coffee in the mornings and oh my god this stuff is heaven I just want to know what you recommend for a coffee newbie like me?

– Full-Bodied Flavor

Dear Coffee Beaned,

I used to think the worst thing about coffee people was all the really lame coffee humor. Empty jokes about empty mugs, “I can’t do that until I’ve had my coffee ha ha ha,” and so on. But now, I think the worst thing about coffee is how it destroys lives, wrecks families and obliterates punctuation. I might recommend you start going half-caf. Or stick with water.

– Top me off, Rachel

Dear Rachel,

I was perusing records at a local antique market the other day, and no fewer than three people browsing near me stopped to say, “Vinyl’s making a comeback, huh?” And this really annoyed me. The problem is, I’m not sure why it annoyed me. Can you shed some light into my psyche to tell me why I feel the way I do?

– Broken Record

Dear Playback,

Maybe it annoyed you because you’re not jumping on vinyl as the latest hipster revival. Maybe it annoyed you because you wanted to browse records in peace without having to talk to strangers. Maybe it annoyed you because these people were right and you didn’t want to admit that to yourself. But whatever the reason it annoyed you, at least you can rest easy knowing your turntable will last longer than that other guy’s new computer.

– Spin the black circle, Rachel