In 1930 Dylan Thomas started the first of several notebooks in which he scribbled this-and-that, couple-a poems here, possible drunken rant there, and so on. It's quite nice to think that at any point, some jack the lad can pick up a pen and then, in 23 years time, they will have written something as classic as Under Milkwood. And that was how it was done at one point: the writer had to pick up a pen in order to scribble and jot until something formed. Brilliant, they would think, I have created something and now it is in my hands.
Now-a-days we have computers. I fucking hate computers. Using computers is an over-complication of a simpler form. I must record something, you used to think, so you would jot it down on paper, perhaps copy it, and send it off to someone who will go: I now have this information, for it was written down and sent to me, hurrah! But look at us, so trusting of our pieces of plastic which contain smaller, more complicated plastics inside, which we now use. They're cretinous machines, prone to disease and over-heating; who want nothing more than to ruin your life. Moses delivering the ten commandments would have been much less interesting if he had to defrag the stone tablets first.
Certainly, computers have opened up the world to us (I often talk daily to people on the other side of Wales!) and they are certainly handy little fellows to use. Hell, mine is looking after 76 pages of a novel, God knows how many short stories and poems, and three unfinished blogs that I was going to post over the next two weeks (They were about: rape jokes and why they are not funny (well, when you tell them), watermelons, and the best way to end a TV show). Only, I've invested too much trust in my little laptop.
For a while now it's been wheezing and heating up like a syphilitic whore, and I have done my best to try and improve its station in life; stopping short of actually molesting it better. (Can you molest something better?)
So now I can no longer do work on the little bugger; I often get about ten minutes into using it before it seizes up in one of its death throes. 'Don't die,' I'd whisper, 'please.'
'RrRWRrrrRW,' it would respond, doing its best impression of an asthmatic dwarf powered hand-dryer.
'Please...'
'RrwrarRrwr, bleep. Bleep, grr, whirr.'
'Wait, are you getting...'
'RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!'
'Son of a...'
Fade to black.
This is just me saying: my laptop is screwed. And I know most of you are thinking: that's not so bad.
Fuck you, 'it's not so bad'! I now find my self with, no money to get a new laptop, unable to write. Worst of all, the several or so job applications I'm filling out... on my laptop. My novel... On my laptop. Everything I have considered worth noting is... wait for it... on my laptop.
It's just frustrating to think that all of my stuff is now inside a machine that seems to have died of something akin to cot death (that's all I can think of calling it, as it came so suddenly when I was drunk and not paying attention).
Don't get me wrong, I have back-ups. Who'd be stupid enough not to? But the death of my laptop has led to a death in motivation. I can't work on my own machine ergo I won't work. This isn't the late nineties where the whole village gathered around one hazy monitor as meatspin loaded. This is the era when my phone can hold more information than a pig covered in dictionaries (to cover your pig on dictionaries you'll need a good wood glue). So why should I go back to communal pcs? Time-sharing with pedophiles and the young in libraries (I love libraries, but not THAT section)? No, thank you.
But this is what it has come to, until I can secure a new job and buy a new laptop.
Dylan Thomas's most famous poem is 'Do not go gentle into that good night' and it goes:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against...
But then his laptop died and he went down to the pub, frustrated.
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