Spiteful Computers Pay Attention
I don’t like it when my computer crashes for no reason. I assume it’s done it out of spite. I never let it get away with it though. I make sure I have the whole place to myself. Just me, my computer and some broken glass.
I like the sound of glass on plastic, the feel of glass on rubber. That beautiful 'pop' sound when a key flies off the keyboard. Those little keyboard legs can only take so much pressure. I like the sound they make when they snap. I've just done one, so the keyboard is lopsided. I might snap the other one at any moment, the computer just doesn't know when. I can feel its binary fear.
I've started very slowly shaving the plastic off the wire which connects the keyboard and monitor. I've turned the brightness up really high on the screen, I know it hates it. I can feel its electric pain.
Sometimes I open a paper clip-out and scrape the end of it really slowly down the side of the monitor, on the plastic. Then do another line just slightly closer to the screen, pushing really hard. And again until it’s right next to the LCD screen, so close to its fragile membrane, so close. I can smell its digital tears.
I like to pull the power lead right out, no ‘control alt delete’, no ‘shut down’ process at all; I rip the life right out of it. Then I shove the lead back in again and it blinks into existence. It scans itself for errors, fresh screened, innocent and expectant. It sits and waits, ready to perform for me; and I sit and plan its life of horror.
For the sake of irony, I put it in safe mode.
Maybe next time it’ll think twice before crashing, although I doubt it.
Lost in cyber space
We’ve all been there, you’re writing a document or hating a spread sheet and it occurs to you that you’ve got something you need to see, buy or waste your time with. So you open the browser, go to the search engine and look at the search box.
You look and you keep looking; until you admit to yourself you’ve completely forgotten what you were looking for.
You try to remember, you stare at the screen for clues but realise you’re looking at a portal to everything. EVERYTHING. You could be here for anything. Shopping, research or good old fashioned prowling, the possibilities are endless.
Staring clueless at a search engine is the modern equivalent of walking from one room to the next and standing rooted to the spot, totally unable to remember why you’re there, blank-brained and slack-jawed, like a dog trying to understand String Theory.
It’s not so bad at home, when you go into the next room your choices are relatively limited and there are clues. It’s your bedroom, you are unlikely to have gone in there to get a spare exhaust pipe for your car. The real world is much easier, everything is fine in the next room…unless you’re going in to use the computer.
Margaret Thatcher's ASBO
If you were born in the the 80's I probably hate you. Not for your youth, I'm not jealous of that. Really.
OK I am. I can't even believe people were born in the Eighties. It's so wrong. I feel like you must not have been been born but squeezed out of a blackhead on some Yuppie 's face onto the coke and Champagne stained toilet floor of a London wine bar. Not that you even know what a Yuppie is. They've been replaced by, well everyone, their values of more, more, more for me, me, me seem to have been adopted by everyone. Which is great.
I was recently told that Margaret Thatcher was ill; I laughed long and hard. I don't care that she's old and frail. This is the women who infamously said 'There is no society only individuals'. Encouraging people only to think of themselves is surely, by it's nature a deeply anti-social act. As far as I'm concerned she's the mother of all ASBOs. They should use her to advertise alcho-pops. And Chlamydia. She is an enormously engorged queen bee, sitting atop a honey-comb of council estates, still dribbling out thousands of self- centered little flesh sacks who only exist to spit, get pregnant and keep tattoo parlours in business.
It has just occurred to me that you might even have been born in the 90's. But that would be ridiculous wouldn't it? WOULDN'T IT? Yes it would. So let's all just forget anyone mentioned it.
Olympic Pain
WOOOOO HOOOOO the Olympic flame has made it to China!
So what? Was there any kind of doubt it would make it? Surely if it had gone out they could have just lit it again? Or maybe not. Perhaps there is some kind of international flame embargo I don't know about. Perhaps established by over-zealous firemen. Are there firemen who like putting fires out so much that they start them sometimes, just to put them out? I wonder if you get lots of pyromaniacs in the fire service, who love the fires but are always secretly disappointed to see the flames die?
Anyway, there is clearly no international flame embargo so what were they worried about in ? Have they got some sort of national Chinese match shortage? If so that shows a staggering lack of foresight whether or not they have the Olympics coming up. I'm sure they could have got some by swapping some rice. Or tea. Or plastic crap no-one needs.
The real issue here, of course, is the Chinese human rights record and Tibet. There has been real pressure on the Chinese not to be heavy handed with Tibetan protesters. However in reality it's the Chinese police who need to watch out. They're skating on very thin ice. Sure, they may be heavily armed, they may be trained to the highest standard and enjoy a degree of viciousness (ironically) verging on religious zeal when dealing with those opposing the state but they shouldn't mess with those monks.
You may be thinking "They're monks! What are they going to do? Chant loudly?" That however, would be to significantly underestimate them. If you don't believe me, simply check out any Kung Fu film. It's always the monks you have to watch out for. Sure they're quiet, yeah, they keep themselves to themselves, but provoke them beyond a certain point and you'll be picking bits of your broken self up off the floor with a hand snapped in half, while a monk sits back down in the corner and chuckles.
I imagine the Dalai Lama* is at this very moment, standing in front of a courtyard full of monks, each going through their Kung Fu moves, in unison, while he looks on, pleased but biding his time.
*Not actually a lama
They'll Do Anything
This is my first blog entry. No one knows about it yet. It is a secret like the darkness that lurks within all of us. Well in some people it lurks, in others it is pretty open about running the show, child killers for example.
I was watching 'I'd do Anything' the other night, I'm not proud but I've got a girlfriend and she lets me watch 'Match of the Day' so fair's fair. The appropriately titled show is all about finding the next Nancy for an upcoming production of Oliver Twist. They're looking for an Oliver too. Although some rare epiphany of conscience has informed the TV execs that the shred by shred stripping of confidence and character assassination at the heart of these type shows might be frowned upon when applied to nine year old boys. Not be me but by most people.
We all know the soul destroying nature of these shows is why we like them but there is a more bleak darkness that lies within because it's overseen by Andrew Lloyd Webber. His face looks like someone was sick on it and it's slowly melting. But he can't help that. No, it's the eyes. Cold, dead eyes. It's like looking at a fish. Do you remember the noise Hannibal Lecter made, breathing air through his teeth? That's how I image Lloyd Webber breaths all the time. They call him The Lord, as if that invests him with some sort of respectability. Not in my book. Darth Vader was also a lord and he blew up whole planets.
Something is very wrong with Lloyd Webber, my girlfriend said 'there's something of the night about him' but I don't know, as I remember, when I last watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the child catcher came out during the day.
The show is called 'I'd Do Anything' and I suspect it's only a matter of (very little) time until that's the true nature of the programme. Prime-time Saturday night TV will see Andrew Lloyd Webber watching one of the girls Tango naked with a shaved wolf, while two others have a toddler corpse eating competition to avoid the sing-off and we'll watch the split screen spectacle with nothing more than a familiar sense of ennui.
And some popcorn.