Susan Senator

Precious has died. Long live the Queen.

I am using B’s huge PC desktop, the one that Max built for him. I get my email at most twice a day, because it is such a pain. Twice a day! Me! Actually, it is good for me. I get an idea of what it is like to sit in the livingroom and just sit in the livingroom, sitting, just, living. In the room.

Coincidentally, I had just gotten my contract, literally (no pun intended) — the actual three copies to be signed and returned to Shambhala — and then Precious blacked out. She was just holding on until the next new phase could begin, bless her artificial soul. Ben actually cried. I got a little emotional myself. I have been through so much with that computer! I wrote MPWA on it. I began this blog on it. I developed an email obsession on it. I wrote Dirt on it. And I conceived the new book concept on it.

Now that Precious has expired, I found out that we had not been backing up all my shit on a regular basis. So, after many attempts on Max’s part to resucitate (all kinds of old Mac boxes exhumed from the third floor, a panicked call to Mac Repairs Ipswich, thick white aorta-like power cords, hook ups from one laptop to another for transfusions, and then waiting, listening in horror, while her fan roared awake to a black screen, and then a strange high-pitched moan followed.) we had to bring her in for major surgery — really more like an organ donation at the site of the death — to get her heart and some of her brain out. Her memories are full of all my important stuff: email addresses, conversations with friends, loved ones, publishers, editors, agents, kids’ teachers. Jeez. When the “genius” at the Apple Genius Bar told me that “We might not be able to get to your hard drive stuff if it is truly fried,” I felt my stomach drop. “Neddy!” I cried into my cell phone, “They might not be able to do it!!!”

“They will, Sweetie, don’t worry.” If Neddy says so, then it will be so.

As long as we pay them $150. Plus they did not give us the Educator’s discount because I was not there when he and Max bought the new MacBook. So that is like $250 that Apple screwed out of me. Apple doesn’t need that money! And I could have bought a gorgeous bag to go with the New Laptop (whom I will name when it is clear what that name should be, if anything. It seems kind of lacking a personality, so clean, so white, all the letters right there on the keys, and the screen is a horrible stretched-out rectangle rather than Precious’ pretty little square shape (she was an iBook G4, which they no longer make)!! And by the way, if they can make all those colors in an iPod, then why can’t they offer their Macs in colors? What’s so great about white, black, or God forbid, stainless (which is akin to saying your favorite color is “clear,” which is funny but also sad).

What’s their problem? Something rotten in the core there.