No sooner do we get Patty’s car back than our shiny new Windows 11 computer goes belly-up and dies, and all we’ve got left is the old Windows 7 laptop.
This year is killing us. First the hernia, then the refrigerator, then the car, and now the [censored] computer. All we’re missing is a plague of skinwalkers.
I will try my best to do my work today.
But first we’ve got to go to the store. *Sigh*
We woke up this morning to discover our main computer doesn’t work, no Internet, wrong numbers on the modem, etc., etc. We are hoping Adam the tech can get here and put it right: fumfering around on the phone all morning didn’t help.
The accursed thing–brand new, by the way!–was functioning normally when we went to bed last night.
So we are way behind on everything, we need to get our groceries for the week, it’s all up in the air…
I hope some of you will visit the Archives today. In case I don’t get the chance to write anything.
We ordered some $70 worth of groceries from Whole Foods the other day. In due course, the order was delivered. End of story–well, no. More like the beginning.
Shortly after we’d put away our groceries, we got an email from amazon.com telling us “We were unable to deliver your order”–and therefore we are refunding your payment.
Somebody made a mistake. The order was delivered, all shipshape. Somebody got the address mixed up or something.
Well, you wouldn’t believe how hard we had to work to set it right. Phone this number, phone that one, talk to robots, and to the occasional human being who happened to be present. It took two days to give these people their money back! We hope that goal has finally been achieved. Maybe there’ll be another error somewhere and the bailiffs will break down our door and drag us off to Camp Biden. For a time there we felt like characters in M.R. James’ Casting the Runes: maybe whoever winds up with that money will regret it.
“Hi, there! Wanna see me make mincemeat of your day?”
Okay, we’ve got our new refrigerator; and wonder of wonders, it fits in our kitchen and we can open its door! (Meanwhile, the blasted computer won’t let me post illustrations!)
Now what we have to do is get the stove reconnected and put back in the kitchen. So we are sitting around waiting.
(Why can’t I post pictures? This happened suddenly today.)
We do not know when the stove will be reconnected. Can’t cook a supper without it.
Y’know, we take these things for granted–stoves, refrigerators, computers–but when we’re suddenly deprived of them, it’s a Three Stooges pie-fight.
(I want my freakin’ pictures!)
You’ll have to take my word for it that I don’t have preternaturally large feet and flop around like Donald Duck. I have perfectly normal adult male feet.
And I can’t get any [whole strong of expletives] slippers that fit!
Third try, this morning: from Land’s End, a full size larger than what I normally wear. It still doesn’t &^%$%$ fit! Oh, they’re long enough, all right. But the [censored] toes are all squinched up; it’s like they think I have some kind of insect feet.
We used to have shoe stores. Every last one of them is gone, kaput, extinct. How long can I hold my cheap China Walmart slippers together with duct tape?
Why can’t a grown man find slippers that fit? Oh, but that’s a trick question! Much better is THIS QUESTION, courtesy of the Google search page:
How do you know if slippers are too small?
Wow! I dunno! Consult an oracle? Go back to college for a degree in Slipper Studies and hope you’ll learn something?
The question has taxed my faculties. I must lie down.
Footwear doesn’t work anymore, either.
My dirt-cheap made-in-China slippers have given up the ghost and I need a new pair. I was going to go to Walmart and try to find one–because every shoe store you ever heard of, where you could try something on before buying it, no longer exists. Thom McCann, Florsheim, Marmax, Pay-Less… all gone, all part of a lost world. A world where things actually worked.
But Patty wanted to order me a pair, via amazon.com. All right. Wait some days, slippers finally arrive–and there’s just no way they fit. Way too narrow.
(Can I say “dagnabbit”? Or “dudburnit”?)
So we sent it back and she ordered a pair from somewhere else. Got those yesterday. Again, not even close to fitting. It says Size 10 on the label… but you know how they lie. Famous name-brand slippers: ideal for the feet of giant insects.
Today she has ordered from yet another name-brand company. She specified “wide.” I wonder if they understand what that word means. “Wide compared to a strand of linguini”? “Wide” if you think you’re looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope? Frankly, I’ll be amazed if this pair fits.
Break out the duct tape and try to get a few more weeks out of the old broken-down cheap slippers.
We live in The Age Of Nothing Works. Can’t even get a pair of slippers.
I’m supposed to write a Newswithviews piece today [cue hysterical laughter]. I have no idea how that’s going to get done.
Last month, see, we made a slight error in filling out our tax forms, which has led to us being embroiled with the IRS. My wife corrected the error, but we need to have that acknowledged.
On Friday we were supposed to get a letter from the IRS. So said the official email from the Postal Service. But of course we didn’t get it, we don’t know what the IRS wants, you can’t get through to them by phone, the post office disclaims all knowledge of anything except for how to run a national election, they’re cool with that, and the sage advice I got from the clerk was, “Wait till it comes.” What is this–Bleak House?
Yeah, wait. Wait till the marshals show up with handcuffs.
See, here we have two government agencies involved, the IRS and the Postal Service–doubling the chances for the whole thing to go wrong. We are in the Age of Nothing Works.
Maybe if I sit outside and smoke a cigar, I can think of something to write about.
One thing you can hardly help learning from a study of art history: what passes for art today is pure crapola.
Here’s proof (if any were needed).
In the Age of Nothing Works, why should we expect the arts to fare any better than the rest of our poor, wretched, failing civilization? It’s too bad: there are still great artists out there. But you won’t find them in the art galleries, selling pretentious twaddle to airheads with more money than they need.
I’d be much obliged if a few of you would go to Newswithviews.com, open it to my column, and go down to the bottom and click the link that’s supposed to take you directly to my blog. I want to see if that link works–because it’s been about two months since I got a single referral from there. It works when I do it, but the site doesn’t bother to track anything I do myself.
The picture of the collared lizard is provided as a bonus. Pretty little beggars, aren’t they? Known as “the mountain boomer” in some parts of its range, this lizard actually has no voice. It doesn’t really boom.
Maybe we ought to check that, too. This is, after all, the Age of Nothing Works.
