The other day I was answering an email and copying a statement to use as an article starter. I will copy such onto an external hard-drive attached to my online computer, and then transfer the file to the computer that I only use for writing and posting on the back end of the site. People think this is stupid.
Well, maybe. I am a stupid man using a computer. Imagine the resentment, like an Ivy League Republican Pollster working as a dispatcher for a Nigerian taxi driver…
The computer died, as they always do, when doing something from the mail box or copying and pasting something from an online article, or clicking a history link, etc.
The only people in my life who are more computer literate than I am live in Baltimore, Oakland and Portland, and I am not there. Thankfully I did not take the advice of most people and use one computer for all of my work.
Was the computer dead?
Who knows?
If it did not die of natural causes, I slew it most cruelly.
It went blank, like they all do, eventually, after fighting off download after download of video games and online shopping adds and literally choking on Modernity’s all-invasive ether member.
This nice little HP note pad, I am told is not a computer, was given to me here, three years ago, in New Jersey, by a kind young fellow who heard about my computer woes, and who I like to think is a Creep State Agent. It served me well, protecting and filling in for more important machines.
My editor did warn me that if someone retrieved it, my passwords and financials—my vast empire of crackpot revenue—might be opened to attack.
I took it out back on the patio and beat it with a large rock.
I then ripped it in half and tore the wires and screen away from the battery and coppery stuff.
Star Trek looking squares and circuits glared at me from five panels, two being suspiciously big, with black slate pads which, in my ape’s brain, I supposed might store my information. I pried these away from the plastic housing and copper sheets with Rick’s leatherman multitool.
I put these in sandwich bags.
I took these down to the basement, placed them on the concrete floor and smashed them with a 20 lb steel dumbbell. The lady of the house said, “James, are you punching the bag?,” recalling in her mind, no doubt, my skinny arms and sunken chest and that hitting the bag hurts my eye, which she has been concerned about.
“Of course, Mary, it is too dangerous for me to hit mortal man, they might melt on contact, and I am a humanitarian after-all.”
She barked a sharp laugh, “You are such an ass! Can I get you anything at the store?”
I then drowned the victims in a bowl of hot water, soaked them, rinsed them, crushed them and threw them in the trash.
If the shadows of memories past and thoughts long passed survived that, then whoever retrieves them deserves to hack into my fortune.
Now, until Baltimore four weeks away, I have no access to the internet, which is okay. You see, I only need go on the back-end of jameslafond.com once per season, and in a single day, schedule three months worth of posts. Currently, fiction on weekends and non fiction on weekdays are scheduled out until September 7.
I am finally using strict time and motion inventory control such as I employed in Supermarket Management, in farming my own store of spent ideas. I am beginning to feel like a competent writer. This does not feel good, but appears as a haunting, a shade of dread whispering that the downside of the writing arc is a mere footfall beyond.
In July I will be able to use The Brick Mouse computer to schedule the rest of the year.
Currently, the Post folder contains:
Fiction, weekends, Ranger?: 25 posts
Nonfiction, weekdays:
Crackpot mailbox: 10 [with as many awaiting address in my forsaken email box]
History: 4
General: 3 + 1 = 4
Travel: 25
So that is 67 days of main site posting ready to go. Oh, yes, sorry, This Article, that is 68 days, including your untallied self.
Thank you all for your help and your patience. According to my Webmaster and my Slavemaster Incognegro, I am breaking all rules of online publishing courtesy by not engaging in comment banter and worse, not even reading comments sent in to the site by readers, to include, apparent viewers of Hobo History.
Sorry, there too, you deserve better.
You know, as I have to look at the creep I work for twice a day when he brushes his teeth and once when he shaves his head and combs his ill-gotton beard, I feel an empathy for the poor bastards that had to toil away pointlessly under his overseeing eye at Bel-Garden Bi-Rite, at 5950 Belair Road, from September 2006 thru July 5th 2010.
Working for this asshole is no picnic—which brings to mind, might these laptops be committing suicide?
