Not OK Computer

My blog posts are going to be sporadic at best this week. The mother of all thunderstorms hit my neighborhood this past Saturday (I swear, it was so bad that if frogs and locusts rained down I wouldn't have been surprised) and a lightening bolt that struck freakishly close to my house fried a couple of the USB ports in the rear of my iMac. As a result, it's at the Apple Hospital this week getting a new kiester. A good lesson learned: never, ever leave ANYTHING plugged into your computer that is also plugged into an electrical outlet during a storm.

And it's bad, because it means I can't really post anything until I get it back later in the week. I'm trying to be discreet posting this from work.

The experience reminds me of a story I recently read online, The Machine Stops, a work by E.M. Forster that was written nearly 100 years ago. In this grim look at the future (the Brits just love this stuff, it seems), people are isolated in private rooms underground without windows that are entirely controlled by "the machine." All communication is conducted through the machine. People rarely see each face-to-face and human touch is considered repulsive and rude. Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought it was scary, too, because our society seems to be slowly headed in that direction. But then when my computer went on the fritz I must admit life as we know just wouldn't be the same without them. I tried in vain to write with a notepad - not the same without editing tools at my fingertips - and I longed to tell my friends what happened to my computer, and couldn't!

Oh, machine! I hope to be back and running with more posts soon.