mahiwaga

When I was in 8th grade, our English teacher would give us a prompt every day, and at least 15 minutes to write about it. This is probably the first time I thought about becoming a writer. Sadly, despite the various signs that the universe has given me, and because of my faith in the inevitable heat death of the universe and the odds that favored the outcome that I would become a mediocre writer at best, my path has turned quite bizarrely astray. But sometimes I still dream.

(edited for typos—my brain is seriously turning to mush)

Now I realize that most people find it extremely boring to read blog entries that discuss the blogger's profoundly mundane personal life, but, well, (1) I am clearly not doing this for my vast throngs of readers and (2) I find this situation sufficiently absurd as to warrant comment.

Because my roommate that I hate has skipped town and has shut off the phone and the DSL, I am informationally marooned. I don't even have dial-up, unless I'm willing to resort to using my cel-phone as a modem and spending a small fortune. I don't know what's more pathetic—the fact that I don't have regular Internet access, or the fact that I am so desperate for it.

So now I am sitting in a smoked-filled cafe (yep, that's right, because I'm not in California, it is, in fact, smoke-filled) surfing the net. I'm an addict. I clearly need professional help, but anyone who knows me knows that this is true on many levels.

But what is absurd is the fact that, while I do in fact have a laptop, it has no keyboard. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to spill some water on my laptop and I managed to render the keyboard effectively useless. While about 75% of the keys still worked post-spillage, this 75% did not include vastly useful keys such as "Escape," the letter "E," or the "Delete" key. For a while, I was trying to subsist using the Character Palette and some aggressive mousing manuevers, but this only aggravated my indolently-progressing case of RSI.

So I bought a full-sized keyboard. I admit it. I feel extraordinarily ridiculous pulling up a full-sized keyboard in a crowded cafe. It looks like I've fucking set up shop here. A guy has just looked at me incredulously, asking in amused bewilderment just what the hell happened to my keyboard.

Even more absurd is, because I didn't want to pay $120 to get a new keyboard, I decided to try my luck on E-Bay. Hilariously, the only thing I found was an iBook keyboard from Japan, complete with Kana.

I feel I am approaching the height of my geekdom.

So that's that. At least it forces me to leave the apartment in order to check my e-mail.