For two weeks now, my laptop has been acting like it belongs in a retirement community. Slow moving, unresponsive, can’t stand to play videos or music (“It’s all just NOISE.”). So I was faced with the prospect of buying a new one, having to run Windows Vista and replacing what has become an extension of myself (I know there are geekier people out there who can say Amen.) with something either flashy and expensive, or shabbily assembled. (An aside to Toshiba: Whoever thought of making every surface of your laptops glossy, including the keyboard, should be out of a job. My thoughts are dirty enough; I don’t need to work on a laptop that shows every smudge and fingerprint.)
Luckily, we still have a retail computer store in Chicago, and one of the salesman casually mentioned that my problem sounded like a defective hard drive. If I wanted to get all Handy Andy, I could buy a new one for $80, and if it didn’t work, I could apply that cost to a new computer.
Hey, you don’t have to ask me twice. It took me more time to watch a handheld video of a teenager replacing the HD in his VAIO with one hand than it did to install. How’s that for DIY geekery? Small potatoes, I realize, but it’s the kind of thing our thrifty forefathers would’ve appreciated.
Now I’ve regained the power to waste half my day watching videos and browsing websites about the election. Can it really be only 19 days away?? Say it ain’t so! What will we do without it? Where else can we find so much self-generating entertainment? The desperation, the slander, the anger, the schadenfreude–it’s going to be a long, lonely winter when Obama wins and we have nothing left to look forward to except rebuilding the economy of the world (let alone Iraq and Afghanistan).
I’ll accept that outcome, of course, even though I predict it will be slim pickins for comedians and satirists in an Obama administration. Sober, thoughtful and level-headed–looks like a arid wasteland to me. Better start working on comic light verse. Oh wait, I already am. Oh well, the local political scene is a complete dog’s breakfast, so there’s that consolation.
I don’t put much credence in polls, especially this year. I’m certain more people have been saying they’ll vote for Obama than actually will, but not enough to tip things toward McCain. My guess is Obama will take 55-60% of the vote, and will have a momentous victory in the Electoral College. I have never thought of attending a party for election night coverage, but this year, it’s tempting. It will be as close to a landslide as I’ll probably see in my lifetime. And justifiably so. After eight years of the Bush Administration (don’t think back to it–it will boggle your mind), we need to purge our systems of the fear, the hate, the culture warfare, the dessication of the economy, the complete and utter failure of everything W and his henchmen have touched. Remember Ford’s phrase, “Our long national nightmare is over”? Well, almost, Gerry, but October’s only half over. Still plenty of time for Bush to declare martial law because Iceland’s attacking.
But the campaign? I’ll miss it. It’s been such a joy to watch the Republicans and the conservative movement flail and sputter and wallow in the shit they’ve been cultivating for so long. Obama has actually turned into a colossal bore, but how could he keep up with the McCain-Palin Show? Come January, the right-wing screeds will have all the substance of sea foam. Truthiness will recede, but not disappear. Obama’s plans will be derided as socialism, as if the economic bailout endorsed by both parties isn’t. We won’t have the money to enact most of his plans anyway. Expect dim job growth, melting ice caps, deteriorating infrastructure–and from the right, a lot of screaming about gay test tube babies and marauding Mexican zombies.
Comic high notes like the Couric-Palin interview? We’ll have to savor them like a Frank Sinatra song, because we won’t see the likes of them again.