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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
(Program Note: Yesterday’s writing love went over to Bugs & Cranks, in the form of Fenway Park, Chronicled.
It’s a post. It’s a book review. It’s a personal journey. Look, up in the sky; tall buildings; speeding bullets; yadda yadda yadda. You get the idea.)
(Program Note Concerning the Program Note: I’ve decided these ‘program notes’ about posts elsewhere are getting in the way of business here. As I mentioned somewhere recently, I’m writing every day — but not always here. If I’m writing for some other site, I’ve been linking it over in my next post, but that’s after the fact. And now every third post or so begins with this parenthetical italicized monstrosity that’s completely unrelated to whatever it is I’m babbling about at the moment.
That seems less than ideal. I’m in no danger of staying on one topic, but I’m not such a fan of losing my train of thought before I’ve even had my ticket stamped aboard the damned thing.
For these reasons, I’ve decided to forgo the manual updates and — as nature intended — let shiftless stupid animals do my work for me. In this case, the Twitter bird, with tweets about everything I’m posting [and a few extra bits of nonsense] now available over on the sidebar. If you don’t see new words here, you can simply look over there and see whether I’ve contributed elsewhere, or I’m just late with a post, or I’ve been eaten by rabid coyotes on the back streets of Boston and no one’s come forward to eulogize the goofy blogging bastard yet.
[I realize some of the three of you reading this may be subscribed to an RSS feed, or getting the text through some other kind of whiz-bang newfangled text gizmo — like Kindle, anyone? Henh? Henh? KINDLE? — and may therefore not have a sidebar where Twitter might reside.
You have one of three options, as best I can tell: you’re more than welcome to follow me directly on Twitter, for all the latest nonsense. Or you can do whatever it is that you do in life between posts, patiently waiting out the next batch of fluff to be spewed. Or you can refresh the site obsessively every eighteen seconds, hoping that some riotous nugget of hilarity has just made its way to the page.
That’s what I do. One of these days, maybe it’ll work.]
Embedding Twitter this way should keep things more straightforward in the posts, frees a bit of manual labor off my plate, and gives me more time for writing consistent topics, for baring my embarrassing inner realm for all to recoil from, and for wandering the neighborhood at dusk wondering who taped the ‘FREE COYOTE LUNCH’ sign to my back.
In short, you won’t see these ‘Program Notes’ about posts in other places going forward. So we’ve got that going for us.)
(Program Note About the Previous Program Note About the First Program Note: Sorry. I know we’ve got a post to get to. This’ll just take a second.
I only wanted to mention that it’s possible that we’ll still have the occasional ‘Program Note’, for one reason or another. I wrote a piece last week, for instance, for submission to a humor collection that’s going to be published. On paper — from real live, honest-to-goodness trees.
[Well, maybe not live trees. But real trees. I thought paper was just for TPS reports and bathroom tissue these days. Who knew the printing industry still existed?]
Anyway, until I find a way to hyperlink from Twitter to a copy of some small-batch self-published volume sitting on the back shelf of my local bookstore, then I’ll have to reserve the option of an occasional ‘Program Note’ to crow about those sorts of things.
If I make the cut. Which I haven’t yet. So no crowing. Or tweeting. Or anything else birds do, like singing outside my window at six o’clock in the effing morning, or taking turns shit-bombing my car in the parking lot, or getting sucked into jet engine air intakes. I’ll get to all those things later, if the time comes.)
(Program Note to Slightly Amend the Last Program Note: You know, it just occurred to me — that essay collection has a website. So if my piece does make it in, I can just tweet a link to that. Much easier.
I probably didn’t need another ‘Program Note’ for this. I just figured, you know — while we were here and all, ‘on the line’ as it were.
It’s no biggie, really. I’ll post now. You’re right; it’s time. I’m on this thing.)
(Program Note Unrelated to the Preceding Program Notes: See, here’s the thing about that, though.
I’ve got this quota on how many characters to cram into a post. I don’t know the ins and outs of it — something about the ISP and bandwidth limitations, and paying by the byte for drivel over the alloted amount, and some sort of fee for excessive smartassery. I don’t know. It’s in the contract, or so I’m told. TL; DR, as the kiddies say.
Anyway, the point is, I don’t have the space left now to squeeze my whole post for tonight in, so I’ll do what the bigwig networks do and send you back to the action ‘already in progress’.
Which in this case means ‘almost to the closing credits’. Sorry. That quota’s a hard cap, and these ‘Program Notes’ are a real bitch. Just be glad this wasn’t a ‘State of the Union’ speech. You could lose a whole prime-time lineup to one of those. I’m just sayin’.
But now, without further ado — back to the post. In, as they say, progress.)
“Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced ‘pap schmear‘.”
…so then the girl behind the bakery counter says, “Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced ‘pap schmear‘.”
And that, long story short, is why we were all out of bagels this morning.
You’ve been a great audience — g’night, folks!
(Program Note Postscript: You know, that ended up so short, I could have totally just tweeted that. Would’ve saved us both a whole bunch of effort. Damn.
Meh. Next time.)
Permalink | 2 Comments(With apologies in advance to the fans of one Theodore Geisel.)
If I ran the mall (a mall not so small),
I’d pack the crowds in — short and thin, big and tall.
They’d gape at the storefronts, stacked nine stories high.
Frantically scrambling for goodies to buy.
But when they arrive, and park snug in the lot,
They’ll discover the difference that my mall has got.
For the stores that you find in a bland shopping plaza
Are not the emporiums with which I would baza.
My mall will be tops, the biggest, the bomb!
So I’m picking out shops with savvy aplomb.
Stores where men want to shop, not the usual schmooze —
Where girls have their hair done and pick over shooze.
No, my place will be different — a male mall paradise;
And here’s a few of the stores that’ll make it so nice:
You’ll think booze and a haircut sounds mighty cool;
Our staff are all grads of barber-tending school.
But if your cutter downs one, to ‘steady his hand’,
Keep a sober eye peeled at the StuporCuts stand.
If you’ve got someone special who’s picky with drinks,
Who tends toward the girly umbrellas and pinks —
Now let her know that life offers much more;
Expand her brew-rizons at the Build-A-Beer store.
Our Foot Licker store stocks all the best sneakers.
But the line out the door’s packed with horny thrill-seekers.
The honeys who work there get quite a barrage;
For each purchase includes a free toe tongue massage.
Have an ex with a birthday coming up ’round the bend?
You’ve got to shell out, but don’t know what to send?
And does she still curse you, and spit at your name;
Or let you know daily you’re solely to blame?
She’ll surely destroy a gift coming from you —
Smash it or burn it or flush down the loo.
If it’s destined to wind up all broken or embered,
Buy her cheap flimsy trinkets from Things, Dismembered.
In our food court, we’ll tell you that staring’s not rude —
Not at our next store, where they cook in the nude.
The clothes may come off, but the baking won’t stop;
They glaze buns all day at the Skinnabon shop.
Need a place to unwind, to let loose and curse —
Without funding the ‘swear jar’ inside your wife’s purse?
Then use our ‘dressing-down’ rooms, and save a few bucks;
We guarantee you’ll feel better at Mens’ Swearhouse and Tux.
Ever wish that your girlfriend was a bit more ‘endowed’?
This next store’s service will leave you both wowed.
Their ‘Gawk Squad’ will ensure the install’s a success;
Visit Bust Buy for bazooms that’re sure to impress.
(I don’t dare to describe our big flagship store,
Lest the ‘decency cops’ show up at at my door.
So while I’m not eager to gloss o’er any facts,
I can’t tell you what happens inside BJ Maxx.)
Yes, I’ll weed the stores down to the creams of the crops;
To the best of the best of the most ship-shape shops.
Only boffo bro-tiques make the cut on my list.
(Though some, it would seem, do not yet exist.)
No matter — I’ll wait til these stores are invented,
And open my doors when all kiosks are rented.
With excellence oozing from every last stall;
That’s just how I’ll do it… when I run the mall.
Permalink | No CommentsIt’s been a while since I felt something, publicly.
(Not that I’m feeling things, privately, when you’re not looking. Don’t try and distract me.)
I’ve felt things in the past, sure. Shared my personal opinions on subjects as varied as pirates, pinatas, hippos, orthodontists, libraries and marshmallows.
That’s quite a list. You might think it’s plenty enough already. You would be sadly mistaken.
How on earth would you know how to feel about things unless I spell it out for you? Silly sadly mistaken goose.
And so, for your further edificationary benefit, I now present:
How I Feel About… Spaghetti
Spaghetti is BAD because most of the American-bastardized homemade “spaghetti” I ate growing up consisted of limp soggy noodles in a thin tomato sauce — and tasted like limp soggy newspaper in a diluted ketchup mist. For most of my childhood, I thought that’s what all Italian food tasted like. I just assumed that those Roman guys who subjugated half of Western civilization a few centuries back were just trying to conquer a place that had decent meals for a change.
Spaghetti is GOOD because ghetto bastardized spaghetti really makes you appreciate authentic Italian food when you finally get around to tasting it. There’s a whole other world of spices and herbs and flavors in there. Of course, it does make the Romans seem like a bunch of empire-grubbing assholes again. But enough basil and garlic will make you forgive anything.
“You don’t see other foods mangled in this way — there’s no such thing as “Cheeri-Es” or pizza sliced into Qs, or sometimes-Y-shaped bread sticks.”
Spaghetti is BAD because the most heinous crime to all of fooddom is based on spaghetti: the Spaghetti-O. Never mind that it’s canned, or made from flavored sawdust and pig sphincters, or that it has the nutritional value of… well, flavored sawdust and pig sphincters, I suppose. My objection is purely typographical. Spaghetti noodles are long skinny strings; O’s are big honking circles — the very antithesis of spaghetti’s natural form. You don’t see other foods mangled in this way — there’s no such thing as “Cheeri-Es” or pizza sliced into Qs, or sometimes-Y-shaped bread sticks. I could live with Spaghetti-Is, The Os make zero sense.
Spaghetti is GOOD because to test whether spaghetti noodles have finished cooking, you can throw one against the wall to see if it sticks. To my knowledge, this is the only food on the planet where we determine its doneness by winging it across the kitchen. It certainly doesn’t work with three-alarm chili. Not again, anyway. My wife has been very emphatic on that point.
Spaghetti is BAD because there’s an ‘h’ in the middle of the word that’s completely unnecessary. I think of it as silent — just a poor mute letter that wandered into the wrong word at the wrong time. But no. That ‘h’ is somehow non-verbally expressed by Italians, which means no matter what I do I’m not saying the word correctly. Listen to an Italian say ‘spaghetti’, and the ‘h’ is there. You can’t hear it, but it comes across — in a gesture, or a nod, or a quintessential Italian shrug. Fuggedaboutit — spaghetti! Me, I say ‘SPAY-getty’. And there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it.
Spaghetti is GOOD because the flying spaghetti monster is made from spaghetti. And if you’re worshiping a deity that doesn’t come slathered in bolognese with a side of meatballs, then I’m not sure what to tell you. Your spiritual experience is simply not as delicious as it might otherwise be.
Spaghetti is BAD because it should be dead simple to cook. But I’ve tried, and I can either make long rigid pasta splinters or I can make something with the approximate shape and consistency of gummy worm turds, but I fail in all cases to make ‘spaghetti’. Or even ‘SPAY-getti’. It’s not even my fault. Even Wikipedia seems confused: “Spaghetti is cooked in a large pot of salted, boiling water… which is brought to boiling. Then one or two spoons of salt are added and after a minute or so the pasta is added.” So I boil salted water, then boil it, then salt it, and then add the pasta? No wonder I’ve been screwing it up. I bet the Department of Redundancy Department cafeteria gets it perfect al dente every time.
Spaghetti is BAD because it inspired the name ‘spaghetti squash’, which is just terribly confusing to a culinary midget like me. I bought a spaghetti squash once, and they don’t even look like spaghetti. Like a big fat jaundiced Spaghetti-O, maybe. And I dropped it in a pot of double-boiled, twice-salted water like I was told, but it never softened up — no matter how many times I took it out and chucked it at the wall. I ended up eating a whole bottle of Ragu by itself, because this ‘spaghetti squash’ concept is so ill-conceived. You don’t call cantaloupes ‘chicken parmesan melons’, for no good reason. Why toy with my brain about this stupid squash?
So, spaghetti is BAD. And ‘SPAY-getti‘ is REALLY BAD. Real authentic spaghetti is probably pretty good, but I can’t say spaghhhhhetti properly, so I end up sucking down cardboard and stupid chewy little pork ass Os. So my spaghetti is bad. Your spaghetti may vary. Particularly if you’re Roman, or walk around with an extra ‘H’ or two stuffed in your pockets.
And that’s how I feel about spaghetti.
Permalink | 3 Comments(Yesterday — or early this morning, but who’s counting? — was for ZuGging, as the latest shopping romp Zolton Does Amazon: WILL Get Fooled Again went live.
Check it out, if a little pre-April foolishness is your thing. Weirdo. Meanwhile…)
It’s often difficult to distinguish whether a person is ‘dumb’ or just ‘lazy’.
Sure, with enough information — sleep habits, IQ tests, how often they play the lottery, whether they watch Jersey Shore or Cops non-ironically — you can make a pretty clear call. But it’s a rare luxury to have that kind of research at hand. Mostly, we get little snippets of interaction, and judge based on incomplete data.
Take my high school math teacher, for instance. We had class at eight in the morning. I’m barely capable of breathing without a diagram and detailed instructions at 8 A.M., much less solving fractions or differential equations or getting the train from Omaha to meet the one from Topeka in the middle of a goddamned corn field twelve stops into their trip with their speeds given in metric units and a conductor who stops for a ten-minute quickie every fourth platform.
(Also, word problems based on train travel are the most diabolically pointless possible. I’m grown up now and forgotten ninety percent of the math I ever knew, but I know when the train is going to reach the stop I’m waiting at: Twenty minutes and three other-trains-that-I-can’t-take after I most desperately need it to be there.
That’s just how trains work. Either the people running the things are ruthlessly screwing with us, or there are a lot more conductors getting ten-minute quickies between stops these days. Either way — math? Pssssh.)
So from this guy’s perspective, was I ‘lazy’ because I came in tardy a lot, wore pajamas to most classes, and asked if we could institute ‘Snuggie Tuesdays’?
Or was I ‘dumb’, since my homework and test answers were less math and mostly doodles of awesome ninja robots fighting flying lizards with gamma ray lasers that came out of their fricking teeth?
(He asked for the volume of a torus; I gave him War of the Worlds meets Battlefield Earth, without the overwhelming suck.
Just for sheer service to humanity alone, I think that deserved more than a D-. He tended to disagree.)
My point is, I spent two full semesters sleeping in that guy’s classroom. And was I ‘lazy’ or ‘dumb’? He probably never made up his mind. What chance do the rest of us, bumping into each other for three or five or ten minutes at a time, possibly have to decide?
I mention this because I actually was able to make a clear decision about someone yesterday — though I spent a scant few minutes interacting with them, never spoke and never met them. How? Was it magic? ESP? Scary juju voodoo? No.
“It was either online phone Scrabble, or sign up for World of Warcraft. And studded chain armor makes me look all pudgy and bloated.”
It was the awesome power of nerdliness. I’ll explain.
I play Scrabble — off-brand ghetto almost-Scrabble, actually — on my phone, against people on the internet.
(Why? My doctor said I wasn’t getting enough ‘social misfit geekazoid’ in my diet. It was either online phone Scrabble, or sign up for World of Warcraft. And studded chain armor makes me look all pudgy and bloated. So Scrabble it is.
If you’re an Android type, by the way, look me up for a game sometime under hatton98. It’s a challenge not being able to use words that I make up myself, but otherwise I get by all right.)
So, I played a game last night with some guy — or girl — from who knows where. Might have been a three-year-old, might have been my grandma, might have been the Pillsbury Dough Boy for all I know.
(Although tapping out all those little buttons seems pretty tough for a toddler. And the person never tried to spell ‘hoo-hooo!‘ for points, so I’m guessing Poppinfresh is out of the question.
Also, their screen name included the phrase ’69lover’. Does that rule out grandma? I’m going to say yes, just for the sake of being able to sleep at night. Some questions weren’t meant to be probed.)
Anyway, this game played out — and it was a tough one. This was one smart cookie — well, relative smart cookie, at least, in comparison to me. So they had, what — at least a fourth-grade education. Or equivalency. Or the wolves they were raised by were particularly astute. Something good like that.
We were neck-and-vocabularial-neck (note: ‘vocabularial’ — so not a word) for most of the way. Then I had a couple of tiles fall in my favor — a handy ‘X’ here, a blank there, and I was able to sweat out a close win. As I heaved a sigh of relief (read: pumped my fist at no one in particular in victory over an anonymous internet stranger who might, in fact, be a barely-sentient toaster oven), I saw a chat message come across the wire.
My worthy opponent was sending a short missive — in congratulations, perhaps, or a threat to ‘get you next time’. Maybe a haiku or sonnet to commemorate the game — these word-loving folks tend to get flowery in their verbiage sometimes. And with the words this cat had been spelling — real fifty-centers and spelling bee fare — I wondered what it was he had to say. So I opened the chat message, which read in full:
‘ur pretty gud lol gg‘
Honestly? From a person who just crapped EPHEBI onto a triple-word score and yanked SAPAJOU out of their ass to take a lead, and this is how we’re going to converse? Like some kind of lobotomized drooling e.e. cummings twins?
Unh-uh. Logophile don’t play that.
I didn’t even respond. After a back-and-forth battle — fought with words, fer crissakes — I couldn’t find a way to reply. I could have used actual, whole dictionary-approved words — but the note didn’t really deserve them. I could have replied in kind — ‘ya gg!!!1eleventy!!‘ — but what’s the point in that? I’ll be senile and functionally illiterate soon enough, anyway. I’m not anxious to speed that process any faster than the ravages of time and several thousand gallons of beer will allow.
So I found someone who’s clearly not dumb, but — in at least one instance — incredibly lazy. Maybe I should let my old math teacher know. He can plug this new data into some statistical formula and determine at a ninety-eight percent confidence level whether I slept through his class because I was stupid at the maths, or just plain shiftless.
My bet is on both. And that if he takes a train here to tell me so, he’ll be at least an hour late. No heavy trigonometrical lifting needed on either count, thanks so much.
Permalink | 1 CommentToday was a quintessential Monday. I arrived at work to find our group’s main server offline, and proceeded throughout the day to discover that it was unresponsive, unrebootable, and unrelentingly fubar’ed. Could be a fried motherboard, or a frazzled power supply. Could be something else. Could be karma. Could be time to update my resume. Don’t know.
I spent most of my afternoon rocking back and forth under my desk, trying to convince myself in turn that it hadn’t actually happened, that someone else would fix it, or that no one would notice and come looking for me.
I alternated these fruitless wishings by moaning softly and making vague stabby gestures at the hordes of people who did, in fact, come to look for me. Because it had happened. And no one else was going to fix it.
“I spent most of my afternoon rocking back and forth under my desk, trying to convince myself in turn that it hadn’t actually happened, that someone else would fix it, or that no one would notice and come looking for me.”
With that drama sucking the life from me today, this seems as good a time as any to share with you a piece I wrote a while back for an essay collection project that now — two-plus years later — seems destined never to see the light of day. It’s about another time — one of the many, many other times — when a computer has smacked me around and digitally pantsed my psyche. Because that’s what they do.
This tale also features the ‘Tech Gods’, who you may notice sound and behave an awful lot like the Computer Gods who made an appearance a couple of weeks ago, and the BlogGods introduced in the very first post here on the site. There’s a good reason for that.
(It’s inbreeding. Where these gods find the time to ‘intermingle’ all the damned time, I have no idea. You’d think omnipotence would come with the ability to keep it in your pants once in a while. But no.
Horny little bastards, the deities. All of ’em.)
So without further ado, here’s an homage to the Tech Gods, and all of the computers in their purview. Can this please be considered enough of a ‘holy offering’ to have one of the fricking things work as expected, for once?
No? I figured as much. It’s more cross-wired cables and exploding hard drives for me tomorrow, then. Outstanding. Meanwhile, enjoy:
The Tech God Two-Step
I’m not what you’d call ‘technically inclined’.
Oh, I’m not entirely without electronical skills, mind you. I can operate a toaster, barely. I successfully withdrew cash from an ATM machine once. And my digital wristwatch hasn’t electrocuted, singed or throttled me yet, though I have had a few close calls. Also, the battery has been dead for the last three years, so at this point it’s really more of a shiny Casio-brand man bracelet.
I am, however, eternally optimistic, which is why I decided recently to tempt the wrath of the Tech Gods by buying a new PC one component at a time and assembling it myself. I’d heard that setting up a machine this way can save some cash. And I figured I could put together a computer with just the features I wanted, without all of the buggy bloatware, dysfunctional doodads and complimentary crocheted keyboard cozies you get in those overpriced ‘superstore’ models.
Also, it seemed like a good test for my blossoming technical skills. I’ve seen a couple of those ‘Borg’ episodes on Star Trek, and skimmed a few of the pretty pictures in Popular Mechanics. How hard could it be, really?
(Yes, I hear you laughing. So did my wife.
For that matter, so did the toaster. Where’s the digital love?)
The first phase of my computorial odyssey was buying the components, and if I do say so myself, things started out swimmingly. I may not know a transistor from a Taiwanese teabag or an ampere from a watt-chamacallit, but I can read a spec sheet and choose a set of computer bits that will jigsaw together, more or less, without requiring the use of a claw hammer or a jar of Elmer’s Glue to make them stay put. On component ordering day, the Tech Gods were smiling on me. They said:
‘Dumdum no buy hard drive from Apple IIc, or ‘RAM’ made by Dodge. Maybe hope for him yet.’
A week later, and the packages poured in. I got the latest in whizbang video cards; it was practically spilling polygons out the box when I opened it. The CPU showed up in a fancy case with a big dangly metal thing called a ‘heat sink’. Looked more like some kind of kinky codpiece from the movie Tron to me, but I didn’t judge. And still there was more — a mobo, and sound card, and RAM. (Oh, my!)
I uncrated my goodies on the kitchen table and prepared for the assembly. First, the proper tools: A good screwdriver. A static-discharging wrist doohickey. Plenty of Band-Aids. A fire extinguisher. And a cordless phone nearby, with Poison Control on the speed dial. You can never be too careful, when there’s delicate equipment and a doofus like me involved.
Also, I grabbed a claw hammer and a jar of Elmer’s Glue. Just in case. The Tech Gods texted chuckles to each other on their smartphones.
Fully prepared, I tucked into my task on a lazy Saturday morning. I had the whole weekend blocked off, with nothing to distract me for two full days. Even the phones were unplugged — except the one in the kitchen with the Mr. Yuk sticker, of course. Safety first.
That was in October. By Thanksgiving, I felt I was making real progress, as evidenced by the fact that I’d run out of Band-Aids, hadn’t broken anything completely in half, and had only used the claw hammer once. On the anti-static strap. It just wouldn’t stay out of my way; I’m pretty sure it was in cahoots with the wristwatch.
By mid-December, the assembly was complete. The motherboard bone was connected to the CPU bone, the CPU bone was connected to the dangly Tron codpiece bone, the video and sound cards were nestled snugly in their slots, the RAM was in the RAM-hole, the speakers plugged into the speaker cave, and the monitor cable was firmly nailed and sealed with glue into some crevasse or other on the back of the case. Everything in its place. With a swell of pride surely matching Edison or the Wright brothers or possibly Dr. Frankenstein, I plugged the beast in, pushed the power switch and…
Nothing. Not a circuit was whirring, not even the mouse. From their Segways on high, the Tech Gods mocked me:
‘Foolish mortal. You actually believe labels on motherboard wiring diagram? What you think this is? Computer kindergarten?’
Days passed. Wires were unplugged, replugged, and unplugged again. Christmas neared. Wires were switched up, crossed over, and tested anew. Christmas sped by, and the claw hammer was fingered ominously. Finally, wires were yanked out, jumbled up, jammed into random holes, and the power switch punched.
A low, steady hum enamated from the case as the computer booted up. Those Tech Gods are a twisted bunch of bastards.
Seconds later, the low hum rose to a raw shrieking crescendo, a sound much like fingernails being scraped on a blackboard — assuming the person attached to the fingernails was also being fed through a wood chipper at the time. I desperately jabbed at the power switch, concerned as much for my delicate eardrums as for the machinery. Again, the Tech Gods jeered:
‘You know, that what happen when you no use thermal grease on heat sink. Maybe you should hire professional for this. Or trained orangutan. Big improvement.’
Thermal grease? I don’t remember any thermal grease coming with that heat sink.
I did wonder why Amazon was shipping a tube of hair gel with computer parts, though. I just figured they wanted their nerdier customers to look fabulous in their cubicles and parents’ basements.
Luckily, I had a bit of the gunk left that I’d been saving for a hot anniversary dinner. So I took the machine apart yet again, applied the goo to the proper surfaces, triple-checked the stupid wires, reassembled the damned thing, and powered up.
Again, the low hum. Only this time, it didn’t climax in an unearthly rhinoceros-giving-birth-in-a-wind-tunnel roar. It simply hummed. And then beeped once, and spat out onto the monitor screen:
INSERT BOOT DISK AND PRESS ANY KEY
Oh, hallelujah. I sacrificed a Palm Pilot to the Tech Gods in a show of thanks.
Not that I’m completely ‘finished’ here, exactly. I don’t actually have a boot disk, as it turns out.
But I figure all I have to do now is buy one of those, convince the box to boot from CD, install an operating system, configure preferences, patch it, update it, add software, set up a firewall, lock down any open ports, create a backup disk, set a system password and hook it up to our wireless network, and I’ll be all set. I can do that by summer, maybe fall of next year max. How hard could it be, really?
Right. Already, I hear the Tech Gods:
‘Oh, silly human. We just wait til you finish, then we corrupt a driver or two. Fun for eons! Muah hah ha!!’
That’s it. I give up on this newfangled tech stuff. Just drop a typewriter on my desk and choke me with the Casio. I’m cooked.
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