Blogatron

Two Thousand, Six Hundred, Twenty-Two Dollar and Forty-Five Cent Cat

When you sit down at your desk to eat breakfast and check your e-mail, and the cat jumps up there because he is always curious about what you're doing, and you try to push him off like you always do because "No!" doesn't work and you don't want him to get in the habit of walking all over your stuff, but this time, a noise scares him, and instead of going backwards away from your hand, he goes forward, over your hand, across your laptop, knocking your full mug of hot tea over right onto it, direct hit, there are several things you can do.

You can shout "Fuck! fuck! fuck!" over and over while grabbing for anything absorbent, including your bathrobe.

You can lift up your Titanium Powerbook G4 and realize that there is tea pouring out of it. It is considered appropriate to whimper at this time.

You can hand off your computer with the thirty-gig hard drive and the 667 MHz processor and the 512MB of RAM to your boyfriend, and stand there helplessly and watch him take off the keyboard and mop up the liquid inside. It would not be out of line to shed a few stressed-out tears here.

You can see your two thousand, six hundred and twenty-two dollar, forty-five cent computer, which contains nearly all your creative and professional ideas and endeavors from the past two years or so, propped up in the dish drainer with its guts hanging out, and have a wee breakdown.

You can think about your two thousand, six hundred and twenty-two dollar, forty-five cent cat.

You can think about a two thousand, six hundred and twenty-two dollar, forty-five cent cat skin rug. But you would never, ever do that.

You can shut the cat in the bedroom, where he will be safer.

You can take your computer to the Apple Store to see what they have to say about it. On the way, you can prepare defensive responses to their imagined derision: "You don't have Apple Care? You were drinking liquids while computing? This is why I'm a dog person."

You can do this on the day that the Apple Store is broadcasting MacWorld Expo live from San Francisco. You can stand amongst the walking stereotype computer geeks and listen to the restless fidgeting of seventy-five people who are unused to standing up for this long. You can watch the unveiling of the new, scrumptious, moisture-free 17" Powerbooks. You can look down at your poor unconscious sticky sullen machine and pet it gently.

You can wait your turn at the Genius Bar, where they will not scold you but will very sympathetically tell you that your computer will likely need a thousand-dollar repair to function again.

You can say, "It's only money. At least no one died." You can think, "Yet."

You can ask if your hard drive can be salvaged. It most likely can, but of course you cannot find that out today and of course you cannot feel all right until you know for sure that all your 1s and 0s are intact.

You can have a very gray ride home on the T. You can walk through your door and say, "Hello, two thousand, six hundred and twenty-two dollar, forty-five cent cat. Let's be friends again, because now you are an investment."
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So, friends and readers, that is my sad tale. Special thanks to Josh for lots of hand-holding and talking to people at the Apple Store while I was in a fugue state. Updates may be sporadic for awhile. On the other hand, I may crawl into a bottle of gin and live at Kinko's and post constant rambling pleas and cries of woe like an Internet Blanche DuBois. In all likelihood, my current machine is gone for good, but my data can be recovered. And hey, I might have no money but I sure do have credit, baby. So really, I'm just a big whomping hunk of debt away from everything being all right again! Woohoo!

Uh...where's that gin at?

Posted by hilatron at January 7, 2003 07:23 PM