10 Monetary Alternatives To Purchasing An iPad

I can understand the appeal of an iPad.  It’s a plus-sized iPod Touch.  I own an iPod Touch.  Two years in and I still love tilting that sucker horizontally and scanning through my (heavily abridged) collection of album art, marveling at what great taste I have.  I occasionally find myself wishing the thing had a bigger screen for web browsing and then boom – there it is in the iPad.  The problem is this device, at least at launch, is at some weird purgatory of functionality and convenience.  Apparently videos look great, e-book reading is better than expected, and web browsing is wonderful.  That’s all fine stuff.  But Apple doesn’t seem to be marketing this as the novelty media toy it is.  They seem to be pushing it as a legit computer replacement with a straight face.

Now, there is a suite of Office-like programs but there’s no, you know, “file system” in place.  Saving files you create on an iPad is going to be some convoluted series of copy and pasting, emailing, and virgin sacrifice.  Using the iPad for any sort of serious work function is going to be more awkward than realizing your cat has been watching you masturbate for the past 3 minutes.  You realize that he can’t tell anyone, but part of you thinks deep down that he’s a reincarnated human.  And with the 64GB hard drive you’ll get(the absolute max, at 700+ dollars), you’ll be sitting somewhere in the year 1995 in terms of storage capacity.  Maybe you can buy some Zip disks and install Prodigy after Apple releases their first firmware upgrade.  There’s no multi-tasking either.  This means if you’re using a Hulu app to watch the latest Brothers and Sisters episode and you receive an email…you have to exit out of the application, open your email, and then re-open the application again afterward.  Even Justin Long is going to have a hard time making that look hip and casual.

So no multi-tasking, storage is half of that of my third most recent computer(purchased in 2002), and a fucking disaster when it comes to file saving/sharing/transferring.  Games, videos, apps, and e-books are supposed to be great.  These are what most of us consider leisure activities.  This is all fine for a glorified iPod Touch. For something marketed as “the most revolutionary, ball-draining computer replacement in the history of Natalie Portman’s mouth.  PS…Beck rocks!” or whatever Apple’s stupid ad people are saying, it’s absurd.

Here are 10 wiser, more fulfilling things to do with your $700 until Apple realizes that the iPad is simply a cool toy and shaves a couple hundred bucks off of their price:

1. Buy a laptop/netbook. You’d think this would be self-explanatory but seeing how enough people are hypnotized by clean, sleek Apple products to where they might actually believe that the iPad could replace an actual computer, I feel it deserves another mention.  Surfing the internet with a touch screen is fun.  But that fun is fleeting when compared to the lasting pleasures of typing on an actual keyboard, saving your hard work, and being able to store more than Van Halen’s discography on your portable computing device.(NOTE:  If you’re an Apple person at heart, good luck at finding a computer of theirs for $700.  You can probably put a down payment on one if you promise to let them kick you in the genitals and set you on fire upon sale.)
2. Rent a limo, have it drive through Times Square as you throw money out of it.  Make sure you sip champagne with scantily dressed women on each side of you.  The idea of recreating the grossest display of American Dream excess is far more appealing than spending the money on an iPad, and no less shameful.
3. Misogyny. Maybe you’re a “make it rain in the club” kind of guy.  Maybe throwing money at curvy women dancing in a dusty Atlanta parking lot is more your speed.  Load up on singles and make it happen.
4. Beat someone up badly and pay them for their services.  Almost every organized crime movie over the past 50 years has at least one scene of a character beating the absolute shit out of someone.  Then, once he’s calmed down and guilt has set in, he reaches in his pocket and begins throwing money at his victim.  If you don’t like physical violence, you can destroy someone’s camera or cell phone or laptop beyond repair(a la Sonny Corleone), and then throw money on the ground for the victim to take.  I’ve tried doing this but it doesn’t have the same effect with gum and jellybeans.
5. Buy as many copies of the Twilight books/DVDs you can find and burn them.  Burn the entire establishment in which you find them.  Burn it to the ground.  Burn anyone who tries to stop you.  Burn anyone who disagrees with your actions.  Burn them all.  Burn.  All.
6. Order a beer.  Leave a $696 tip.  If the bartender questions you, break eye contact and giggle hysterically.  For the next six months, show up every time that particular bartender is working and loudly remind him about that awesome tip you gave him/her.  At the end of that six months, ask if you can have it back.
7. Go to church and put $700 in the collection basket.  Laugh nervously and say, “Oh, wow.  Sorry.  I didn’t mean to do that.”  Put gum and jellybeans in the basket instead and light the $700 on fire.
8. Stand in line at the bank.  When the teller calls you, pull out the $700, count it methodically on the counter.  Act like you’re about to hand it over and begin eating it furiously.  Then laugh and run away.  Run far.
9. Pay like 50 children to dress really dirty.  Go to a central square or park in a really nice town and hide in a manhole.  When the town square gets crowded, you all emerge from the sewers and run around screaming; eating and drinking any form of sustenance you can get your hands on.  If anyone stops you, just say, “He doesn’t feed us!”.  Then run off without any further explanation.
10. Give a homeless guy $20.  Then, flush the remaining $680 down the toilet.  Because why the hell not!?  I’d say give all $700 to a homeless guy, but your parents probably told you that every homeless person “Is actually really rich!” when you were like 6 years old, so as to keep you insulated from the grim underbelly of human existence and you never stopped believing it.  My thinking is that in this case, the homeless guy at least gets SOMETHING and the rest of the money stays far away from being used in the purchase of an iPad.