What the hell is THIS?! Intimations of fun?? Something very weird is going on!
Actually, that’s not true. It’s not weird at all, except for someone like me. My wife noticed it immediately and said she suddenly knew I was going to be able to write my book. It’s like I’ve been in jail all my life, the purpose (you might say) of that being so I could experience what it’s like to bust out. The book, which she describes as telling my story “with fireworks,” is already written, spread across years of blog posts, columns, emails, and songs. It already has a title — I always start with titles, even when writing a single blog post — and some of you know what it is. I’ve been beating around the bush for decades, waiting for truth, justice, and the American way; waiting for people to die, waiting for the sun… (The son??) So that’s cool.
Also, I’m not as sick now, in the contemporary time frame. I actually slept a couple of hours this morning, despite not being able to breathe. My sinuses feel like someone injected them full of epoxy, I can’t hear a thing, and every now and then I cough up pure evil, but I think I’m over the hump. A good thing, too, because the only thing worse than what I’ve gone through over the last few weeks of making my dentist rich, post-root canal infections, and the worst head cold in the history of Western civilization was my hernia repair surgery two years ago, or was it three? (THAT was like being impaled on a telephone pole.)
There’s a new computer in my future, too. For almost two weeks I’ve had a shopping cart all filled up at Apple.com waiting for me to click the “Check out” button. Just a few minutes ago I went back to the page, let the cursor hover for a long moment over the fateful link, and then stepped back one more time from the $3,000 decision. But it won’t be long! I’m going to get a 24-inch iMac with the ATI graphics processor, a new printer, and maybe a few other things. When I first put the BTO (build-to-order) Mac together, there was a six week shipping delay. Now it’s down to 7-10 days, and the temptation is all but overwhelming. The last Mac I bought for myself was the original tangerine iBook back in ‘99 — the three I’ve had since, including the very fine original white MacBook I’m typing on now, have all been gifts, can you believe it? Who GIVES someone a brand-new Mac laptop? Well, someone did, and it was an astonishing thing to do.
It was a beautiful day today, and we have flowers blooming.
(Tomorrow night, three inches of SNOW!)
UPDATE: Very unusual weather today… mostly overcast, cold, raw, occasional drizzle interspersed with heavy showers of wet snow. East Coast weather! — or is it just April in the Rockies? You can count the number of overcast days in most years here on your fingers, so it’s unusual weather for el Norte, anyway.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I still think your tooth and this new “illness” stem from your self-beatings. First one, and now, the other.
I think you should see an energy worker. You have blockages in your chi.
Open up, baby!!!
Glad you’re doing better, and I hope the snow stays tolerable.
Clancy: Hey man, I agree with you!
I’ve been going at this through Jungian analysis: creative energy blocked by a crippled anima, lack of love, etc. Energy work would be a good complement now. And would you believe it, I’ve never had a massage in my entire life? I’m a blockage master. They oughta put me in a blockage museum.
“Open up, baby,” indeed. I need to pay someone to yell that at me 20 times a day.
Richard: much appreciated, thank you. I even slept a few hours last night.
If you feel your chi is really blocked, and it sounds as if it may be, I suggest you find a certified advanced rolfer…I was rolfed when we lived in Texas, and it released all the nasties making my life miserable. It just might change your life.
Glad you are feeling better John. However – how did you get people to keep giving you Macs? That is quite an accomplishment, and one I need to mimic.
David: I was once a very active Mac writer. In fact, before the dot-com bust, I was on the road to a nice middle-class income writing for Mac sites, which is how my wife and I thought I could support us out here. Hohohoho.The gifted Macs all came as a result (one way or the other) of these old connections.
The publisher of one of the sites I wrote for (Applelinks.com) at one point gave me his used TiBook (450 Mhz?), which my wife still uses today. Later a former Mac writing colleague and friend (also an astrophysicist and OS expert) gave me his old Blue & White G3, which I used for quite some time. It’s still fine — as far as it goes — sitting in the storage unit here in Taos, waiting for me to rip the hard drives out and dump it at the recycling center. Two years ago, the publisher of another site I do still occasionally write for (unpaid) was given two new MacBooks by an reseller advertiser and passed one on to me, which finally allowed me to use currrent software. That last one was a BIG surprise, because it just showed up one day, brand-new, at my front door.
I bought the tangerine iBook in ‘99 right after we moved here. Before that, in ‘98 I think it was, I’d purchased a PowerMac 8600 (wonderful machine) which is still being used by a businesswoman here in Taos.
So it’s really been close to a dozen years since I’ve bought a new desktop system. I really love this MacBook, but building websites on a 13″ screen is a bit of a pain, and I’d like to try producing some loony videos…well, some more loony videos… and I want the power of that new iMac. The test scores on that thing are just a little bit under those for the Mac Pro, in fact, especially with 4 GB of RAM.
I have zero cash reserves and already owe Mr. Visa more than the cost of a good late model used car, but I’m also sick of going even more into debt just to pay dentists, so I’m about ready to jump…
Jan: I’m scared of rolfing!
But I’m also living in the perfect place to find someone to do it.
Try some Tylenol Sinus (the generic, of course — way cheaper). Works wonders.
Hope you’re feeling much better soon!
Ah, got it. Sounds like it was a sweet arrangement! I have a new MacBook and a 1 year old Mac Pro with a 26 inch widescreen Dell monitor. I use the laptop most of the time, but when coding I need the big monitor. So I feel your pain!
Besides, it’s only money…right?
David: You must write software! If I had ever gotten into that, I’d be living on my own island now… I haven’t had a decent monitor for years and don’t need the oomph of the Mac Pro, so the iMac is looking pretty good to me — this would be the top of the line, 3+GHz, with 4 gigs of RAM and the pricier graphics processor. I would love to get the current MacBook, too, as I’m sure I’ll still use the one I have now for most everything that doesn’t require a big screen.
BTW, I have a pair of M-Audio AV40s sitting on my desk here. If you need speakers for your rig, I vote for those. I don’t miss not having a stereo with these babies. PLENTY loud even for a house party, if we ever did that any more!