The Evil that is I.T.

There's no need to read this. None at all.

He looked at his keyboard in dismay, not knowing what to type, next. Wasn't MyBlogLog about to close in mere days, creating a sense of urgency about the move? Did not the feed for his WritersCafe page need to be near the top of the sidebar on his MyOpera page, given the relative importance of both photography and storytelling in what he intended to do? Most importantly, had not drag and drop been a technology of such antiquity, that some of the older instructional manuals for it online still had passages that were not yet translated out of the original cuneiform? So why, he asked, why would MyOpera refuse to let their users have access to this technology, and failing to have granted them this small thing, go on to design their feed readers so that once the reader had detected an empty feed, it would proclaim the feed to be thus forever more, nay, even if the entire contents of Wikipedia, all versions, were to be entered as posts, one paragraph at a time, til the printouts from the supposedly empty feed should cover the world in a mantle of frayed paper documenting every flame posted in the course of the revert wars that would proceed until that last day, when the hard copy would tumble over and crush us all, ending all life on this troubled world?

But was best to not dwell on such dark thoughts, he decided, nor, however frustrated he might be over the difficulties he was encountering dealing with the community online and the heartless actions of sysops far and wide, to ever joke about how even in Chicago, the authorities would frown on killing sprees, at least until one had filed the proper forms and placed the usual bribes, for some humorless admin might read his words and imagining that he had been serious, call the police. He thought, not so much about being taken into custody, but about the interrogation that would follow. Having had both lawyers and psychiatrists numbered amongst his kin, he had remembered the stories, and worse, the discussions around the family table, and could imagine all to well the experience of having to deal with a small army of each, in the course of a few short days that miraculously, would manage to stretch on for an eternity, until he was even madder than the lawyers or the psychiatrists. "Nay", said he, "I shall leave no doubt in the mind of even the most clueless that the most violent thing I have done this year was to make some truly cutting remarks about a barista's choice of outfit one day, an act for which I have atoned through great acts of penitence and contrition, and on my own behalf, he did wear plaid with checks, both done in rayon so slick that were his garments to be seen in the day, they would surely outshine the sun, itself. Had he not heard of natural fibers? Had he not a girlfriend to warn him of the perils of dressing thusly, where others might see him and vainly struggle to maintain both tact and composure? And am I not but flesh and blood?"

But what was he to do, he asked, for having to manually reenter those feeds, one at a time, just to insert a new feed about almost all of the rest, would surely drive him to greater depths of insanity, than had listening to his great aunt's explanation of the role of penis envy in the development of criminal law, and knowing that he dare not ask his older brother, the prosecutor, how it had motivated him. "What am I to do?", he asked himself. "Perhaps you could write a story about the whole affair", the thought came to him. "Fictionalize it, ever so slightly, as you ponder the dismal state of your own personal affairs, while just barely grazing the ethnic stereotypes that have dogged you over many a year, doing so in an affected literary style that will signal your intent to all but those of the dullest intellect." "But would this not be the most self-indulgent act imaginable", he asked himself, reassuring himself that one wasn't truly talking to oneself, so long as one did not do so out loud, and really hoping that he wouldn't be hearing any voices of objection to this notion, for that truly would be a bad sign. "Nay", said the inner voice, "Surely, 'twould would be edgy and hip, for is not self-referentiality the most postmodern of things, so very 21st century, and in speaking in a manner that would have left thy great grandparents snickering in a corner, thou showest thy contempt for the bygone notions of fashion and progress in this, the recycled age."

"Have you not slipped from faux Victorian era into the patterns of the King James Bible, compiled centuries earlier, thus showing the dangers inherent in speaking in any voice save one's own", he asked, but only silence greeted him, for like most math majors, he was alone at the moment, and the buzz from the Jameson's had long since started to wear off. "Damn this fast metabolism", he cried, cursing the unreasonable demands of his DNA. "Surely, I could have remained well pickled at least into the second chapter? Couldn't I?" For the bottom of the bottle was now as dry as the deserts out of which his mother's Judaic ancestors had come, and the liquor stores had long since cut off his line of credit. Most wisely, too, he had to grant.

But the sun light beckoned, and a more than halfway decent iced dark roast awaited him, precious medicine for the hangover he knew would be waiting for him, and so as strong as the urge to dissect his own mistakes and probably unreadable prose had become, he decided to get on with what remained of his day, even were it fast upon evening, and post his foolish scribblings, dealing with the consequences as they came. Preferably before that accursed internal voice came back, and asked him if he had just mentioned the writing of the story in the body of the story, itself, then logically, would he have to not mention the mentioning of the story in the story, and then mention the mentioning of the mentioning of the story, and so on, remaining forever trapped in the circles of self-referential iteration, with no hope of escape?

"Best to flee while the fleeing is good", he thought, as he made his escape, the scent of caffeinated salvation upon the air even as he opened his door, though the coffeehouse was two miles away and he lived in an apartment building. "Maybe you ought to start drinking sherry, instead, or maybe even water. People have done that before and lived, you know.", came the thought from within, as he began to run, not even waiting for the elevator, taking the stairs three at a time, still typing all of the way, for he had taken his keyboard with him, and his extension cord was exceedingly long. "So long", thought he, "that even without WiFi, I'll probably be able to continue writing all of the way to ---

3tg5b6^9ffg3#    --->  signal interrupted

Author's Note

Ignore grammar problems. In fact, probably ignore the whole thing.

Reviews

[Epipsychologist]

Hahah. Yes. I'm a barista and they suck.