Hammers

It's true, what the NRA says. If there weren't any guns, people would go around killing each other with hammers. Which is how I got into this mess.

I had that old hammer for twenty or thirty years. I can't remember exactly. Then one day, I had to nail up a board, and the handle broke. Ok, I thought, it's time to get a new hammer. So I went down to the local DIY Superstore to pick one up. Simple enough.

First off, I couldn't find the hammers. I figured it was because the DIY was so big, so I asked a salesperson.

"How can I help you?" leered the salesperson. His smile met at the back of his neck, giving an unpleasant sense that his head might fall off and go bouncing down the aisle.

"Uh, h-hammer," I stuttered. "I want to buy a hammer."

"Very good," he grinned, leading me to a bin full of funny-looking things.

"Hammers," I repeated, thinking he had misunderstood.

"These are the hammers," said the salesperson.

"They don't look like hammers," I said lamely.

"Ah, I see that we have not been keeping up with times!" said the salesperson. "These are the new, high-tech hammers! Remember how the government used to spend 435 dollars for a hammer?"

I nodded. I remembered some story like that.

"Well, these are a mere $99.99, and they are driven by a state-of-the-art Nail Insertion Management System. That's the kind of efficiency you get when you let the Free Market have its head!"

"Does this hammer have an owner's manual?" I asked fearfully. I was confused about the hammer being driven, rather than the nail, as one would expect. Also, the bit about giving the Free Market head was worrisome.

"Oh, no, no. no, no, no!" laughed my salesperson jovially. "It's all in the on-line help on the company web site! Gotta save them trees, huh? And no more mashed thumbs! This baby is so advanced, you don't even have to be in the same room to bang those nails!"

I didn't own a computer, but the guy helpfully sold me one at the same time he extracted payment for my new, high-tech hammer. Good thing, too, because the Cocking Subroutine was out of date, and I had to download the latest version. Then the Claw Driver got corrupted somehow, so that was another download.

After all of that, I found myself back at DIY a week later, my board still unnailed-up.

"Ah, I see the problem," said my helpful salesperson, still inexplicably possessed of his entire head. "You have old-fashioned nails. They're incompatible with today's hammers. Why, they don't even have any microchips! But fear not! I can sell you up-to-date, compatible nails for only $49.99 for a box of twenty."

It was a bargain. I got my board nailed up in only 1440 times the time it would have taken with my old obsolete hammer, and at only 2200 times the cost. And it looked almost as good.

The following week, I got an email from some software company I had never heard of. The next level of the handle software had been released, and they were not going to support the previous version anymore. So I got the shaft software.

Shortly thereafter, I needed to nail up another board. Ok, it was the same board, which had fallen down. The hammer wouldn't work. I went back to DIY and recited my tale of woe, with the concept of "full refund" creeping towards the front of my mind.

"Well, of course it doesn't work," chided my salesperson. "That new handle software is incompatible with the head software."

"Then I need to upgrade the head software?" I asked.

"Uh, not exactly," said the salesperson.

I didn't like the sound of that.

"You already have the current version of the head software."

"But an upgrade is in the works?" I suggested.

"Uh, ... not exactly," he repeated. "The head company and the handle company are competitors, and the head is trying to run the handle out of business by not supporting their software."

"I want my money back!" I screamed. "I want a plain, old hammer again!"

The sales guy grinned his wrap-around grin. "Neither can do," he replied with very little malice. "All sales final, and so one stocks those obsolete old thingies anymore. But don't worry! There's a work-around!"

"A work-a-what?" I babbled.

"A third party, recognizing a niche, has developed an application to make the head and the handle work together!" he crowed. "With very few bugs! You probably won't even notice most of them. And we just happen to stock that software at a very reasonable price!"

So that's how I came to be running down the middle of the mall, randomly attacking the denizens with my (pardon the expression) hammer.

But no one was injured. The human skull has no software compatible with my hammer.