I’ve spent the past couple of days rassling various techno-gators in my undrained swamp of a media landscape and that gaudy championship belt remains elusive.
Most of the hitches in the gitalong of the latest Radio Free Dogpatch revival we have already examined, save one: The 2014 MacBook Pro I use as a podcast editor is not only long in the tooth, it’s short in the stomach, which is to say that its 121 GB SSD is about 3 GB short of full.
So over the weekend I sez to myself I sez, “Maybe it’s time I finally installed that 1 TB SSD that’s been gathering dust around here for the better part of quite some time.”
Well, sir, before a fella does that he wants to back that internal sumbitch up to an external drive. Which my backup software decided it didn’t wanna do, it being the Lord’s day and all.
So I emailed tech support, which was Johnny on the spot, especially considering that even the Deity takes Sundays off. And we got that issue resolved and the backup created after a couple of false starts and a promise to download the latest software update “for security reasons,” which “for not-in-the-mood reasons” I postponed until some later date.
Because by then it was time for a bike ride, and then a shower, and finally dinner with a bit of TV, which the day before required a bit of Kentucky windage because some streaming services are getting pissy about shared user accounts, the oinking capitalist swine.
And this morning I decided the MacBook Pro upgrade could wait a while because I wanted to address some other issues, this time with a email/website-hosting outfit (not WordPress) whose company has changed hands and/or names about eleventy-se’m times in the last year or so, and holy hell did that ever turn into an A.I./ESL/Subcontinental clusterfuck of epic proportions.
About which the less said, the better, because I don’t want to stroke out before His Excremency, who from the look of him lately might just oblige us tomorrow by exploding in a pinkish-gray, shrieking shit-mist of curdled Mickey D’s grease, aspartame, and prescription drugs during the State of the Union, one of the many things about which he knows exactly jack shit. I won’t be watching, of course, but someone’s bound to post the video online.
Anyway, when I’m struggling to get all my kazoos, whoopie cushions, and aaaooogah horns to play from the same sheet of music, I think of Beth in “Diner,” as Shrevie is berating her for failing to shelve his records properly.
“It’s too complicated, Shrevie. You see, every time I pull out a record, there’s this whole procedure I have to go through. I just want to hear the music, that’s all.”
For reals. Makes me long for the days of typewritten underground newspapers and CB radio.
Mad Blog Media 
Your writing style reminds me of a kindler, gentler Hunter S. Thompson. If he had adopted your healthier lifestyle, he would still be around to help you tag team today’s villains, elected or not.
Wow. High praise indeed.And thank you. I’ve read a ton of the Good Doktor’s works — I can see nine of his books from my desk — and when he was firing on at least six of his eight cylinders he was worth every penny you could spend on him. “Buy the ticket, take the ride,” as he often said.
But his deep immersion in those pieces blurred the line between writing the story and becoming it. He made Hunter S. Thompson an impossible act to follow, even for himself. His later works weren’t up to the high standards he set for himself, and he knew it.
Ah, dammit, I wish he’d done as you suggest, taken a break from himself to see if he could do The Work without the drink and drugs. I think I lost a step or two by getting sober — a light hand on the substances throttle can take you places you might not otherwise go in your right mind — but that, too, is a fine line, and crossed too often can be the end of you.
If only we had HST, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, P.J. O’Rourke, John Belushi, and a few others to help us muddle through this long dark night in America.
No pleasant snowstorms in my neck of the woods but lots of typical PNW rain, so any ride has been moved off a few days. But thanks to POB’s posting the other day regarding Mr. Duvall’s passing, I rounded up copy of Phenomenon and watched that last evening. It was a refreshing movie in our troubling times. If only a large portion of the voting constituency would not think that all strange occurrences were due to some conspiracy theory.
It’s good to hear that you are now a TB or so wiser. If only I had the power to click on a similar memory switch or upgrade to a special individual I have around me.
It seems my six year old Macbook Air has hit the software wall. I was running Tahoe, but my Intel chipped Macbook can’t deal with the latest iteration of Tahoe. So back to Sequoia until they quit supporting. Then I will buy a new one.
AI my ass. Uf the AI folks want to impress me, they need to use it to kill all spam e mail.
If Trumple Foreskin blows up the HAZMAT folks will have a hell of a cleanup.