POWER
14 June 2003, 01:00
Yeah, yeah. I know its been a month or two since I showed my cyber face.
But, I had a little “rest” at a… well… hospital… no spa… yeah, it was a spa… upstate.
You see, I had done lost my mind and bought a new computer. Yup. A big fat dual processor. A pretty good one, too.
I know. I think I’m up to G4 number 7 or 8.
Apparently the weight of having a thick wad of cash in my pocket was upsetting the delicate balance of what marbles I had been able to keep in my head. I couldn’t just ignore it. The wad sang to me about big shiney computers, or 50 pairs of new shoes, or a fistful of lotto tickets. I actually considered the fistful of lotto tickets – almost convinced myself that it was a golden investment opportunity that couldn’t fail. And hours of TV couldn’t drown out its call to spend. I tried. HOURS of Hollywood Squares, Babylon 5 and South Park, couldn’t shake loose the monkey I had on my back that was called EXTRA MONEY. And he was shaking his hairy fist, threatening to fling angry monkey poo at me if I didn’t switch the station to the Home Shopping Network and buy that set of Katani Swords. If that damned monkey wasn’t a hallucination, I would have pummelled it with my shoe. It is truly a curse… to have EXTRA MONEY. I quickly had to remedy that situation by sitting in front of a borrowed computer, huddled in the dark, not speaking, not moving, not bathing, for days, scanning for a computer to buy.
Now. There are two people in my head. Some would say more, but I only talk to TWO of the voices on a regular basis. One has a “tsk tsk” kind of shrill, Squeeky Frome kind of tonality, and kept saying that I must have a computer and that if I didn’t get one NOW NOW NOW, that I would be punished and possibly tied up and spanked with ethernet cable. The other one, that sounds strangely like Obi Wan Kenobi with a lisp, while agreeing with me that the spanking option was probably not a totally unpleasant sort of thing, lectured me about acting rashly and wanted me to step away from keyboard. This is the same voice that usually keeps me from taking off my top when I’ve had too many rum balls and talks me down from the roof when I am convinced I can fly if I was just high enough. The other voices usually just mumble “kill kill” or wants me to eat dog food.
Anybody who knows me, pretty much knows that trying to disuade me from doing what I really want – which is usually the Squeeky Frome stuff – knows its pretty much impossible, and the best they could hope for is to limit the collateral damage that may happen. Obi Wan, giving up on the possibility that I might just go outside to get some fresh air and maybe take a bath, settled on keeping me from making a horrendous error in judgment like, oh, say blowing 900 dollars on three G3s that I will later complain about constantly for 5 months.
He tried, god love’em, that little bit of good sense I had, but by now, he was just a scared passenger in a wild ride steered by Squeeky Frome and the Frommettes. They are two other voices that echo her, making them, I guess, Satan’s own Supremes.
Don’t get me wrong. I checked all the usual places, but couldn’t find nary a deal. Clubmac, Powermax, Smalldog – I even went to CompUSA to scope out how good the securi- uh… no how good the SELECTION was. Stealing, by the way, is WRONG WRONG WRONG. Besides. The towers are WICKED heavy and no one would believe that a pregnant woman would have a squarish, rock hard, computer shaped, stomach in ANY trimester.
So there I am. Smelly, pale and crippled by carpal tunnel, searching when I find one of these, only two hundred dollars more than I actually had. But that never matters. You should have heard the banshee wails in my head. Squeeky stomped on the accelerator, whilst Obi tried beating some sense into me with my own mouse. All the commotion caused Whahizface to come see if I was all right. Seeing me arguing with nobody, and whacking myself in the head with the puck, probably caused him to think twice about walking into the room, and he turned around, and quietly closed the door behind him.
Obi tried to convince me that buying a big ticket item in my condition was insane and akin to throwing gasoline on the fire that is my compulsive buying behavior. He yelled that I could hang on and wait until I had a little bit more fundage to buy a computer that I REALLY would be happy with. In desperation, threw out his last lifesaver from the dingy of sanity, and said I could buy a G4 450, get a car, and pay off those last three bench warrants. Suddenly, I heard a gurgle, then silence… and piercing the night, a high pitched, “THE DARK SIDE IS POWERFUL” and I bought the big assed dual. Then I had to pee.
Two things that I never do that I should: wear pants and read the stupid small print on things. After some wrangling about delivery and what sort of payment I wanted to do, and what other 15,000 hoops I had to jump through while wearing rollerskates, I finally decided that I would send a money order and pray like the dickens that the mailman wouldn’t have a heart attack on the street and then be mugged by ruffians who take my money and blow it on lap dances in Cancun. Then I was gripped with a white knuckle buyers remorse that panicked me more than if I was Britney Spears at Julliard. God, what have I done? Tomorrow, I’ll get a catalog with this computer selling for 39.95 and three coupons for creamed corn, and I will have spent a ton of money when I could have just waited. I’ll bet next week, a UPS man will mistakenly deliver a dual 1.42 to my door and then bump his head causing amnesia which makes him inexplicably burn all evidence of that computer and I will have a new FREE computer.
Two more things that I always do: bounce from extreme pessimistic paranoia to paralyzing irrational regret.
And then I read the small print. “Money Orders, Personal/Company Checks, Cashiers Checks are accepted with a 5-7 day clearance.” Reading this before hand would have kept me from falling to my knees in a catatonic stupor for the 5 days it took to get the computer. I didn’t know why Whahizface didn’t bring in a doctor or an exorcist, but I think he just enjoyed the quiet, so I was furniture for a while.
Well, it turned out that everything went well. They got mah money, and I got a spanking new dual. I’ll have pictures and a review coming up here as soon as I get my jammed finger out of one of the vent holes in front. But, I can say, with all sincerity that, it doesn’t suck having a computer, and I’ll probably, maybe, not sell it for a bigger better one, although I’ve heard rumors of new the 970s that might be coming out at the end of May. But this one has many advantages, notwithstanding the least of them is that the dronning of the fan drowns out the voices wanting a new G5.
