Widgets and Geeks
Blog sounds like clag. My ranty clag will be a bin for stuff that’s not for publication. Emptied often into cyberspace.
These words to do with computing - blogs and downloads, widgets and bollocks, who coins them I wonder. Naughty boys I suppose.
And I’m not the only person in the world who can’t tell a widget from a geek and is scared of their computer and its psychotic ways.I need my computer to write my books for me. More of us now write books than read them and we’re all on the margins of publishing except for celebrities. If you’re not a celebrity you’re an oik or a mortal. Do you know publishers pay stores like Waterstones to put their chosen books in the window or front of the shop or in dump bins or even to stock titles at all. And they pay for all this 3 for 2 malarkey. Coconut Chaos got stuck under Travel to make it unfindable. Consigned to dust.
The computer screen is a mirror and microchips are now embedded in our brains. As a species we’ve evolved into narcissists. In the hallowed Apple Store in Regent Street machines rule. They are beautiful. Gurus in blue, circle to help and reassure and instruct novices like me. The place is a sanctuary of promise. Soon I’ll be as clean and cool and clever as my machine.
I take my genius MacBook down to Mill Cottage. Can’t get my email. I phone the Apple helpline. For fifteen minutes an electronic voice tells me to hold. Then the line goes dead. I try again. And again. After a lifetime of frustration a person tells me I need an external modem. My machine only understands wireless. I trudge up the lane in the rain to the farm with my machine in a backpack. I ask Annie if she’s got wireless. She says they’ve got lots and do I want one. I ask Tim. I download offload upload via Netgear and trudge back home. The power’s now down in the cottage because of the wind and the rain. I light candles and settle by the stove with a lined pad and a pencil. O perfect peace.