i’ve noticed that i have a new exclamation of aggravation and annoyance: “Come on!” i say this a lot, since it punctuates moments of annoyance and frustration with software, hardware, and anything computer-related. it extends to other objects, as well. today, for example, i could not understand why a lens cap would not stay affixed to the lens. the lens cap for the minolta portrait lens pops off constantly, and little bullshit things like this will eat my soul sooner or later. today, after the fucking lens popped off for the 40th time, i couldn’t get the rear-cap thing to thread right. i almost broke it. i shouted “COME ON!” into the still cemetery air.

the expression reminds me of an SNL skit which included an expert impersonation of Ted Koppel. at the climax of a heated argument with a guest Koppel called out the bluff, shouting “COME ON!” in a demonstrative, comedic way. there was much laughter, but i remember thinking that the actor doing the impersonation almost missed it, almost missed the laugh on account of bad timing. the audience was still laughing at a previous punch line when he yelled “COME ON!” No one in the audience seemed to hear it, but the comedian adroitly navigated the live-tv situation, waiting for the laughter to subside before repeating the “COME ON!” zinger, embodying the occasional arrogance of Ted Koppel’s interviewing style, and the laughter exploded into orgasmic thunder.

…..

godfuckalive that was annoying. i just whispered “COME ON!” yet again, this time in anger and bewilderment as this fucking keyboard/phone combination for some reason got locked on backspace, sending the cursor back over the words i’d just typed, quickly gobbling up some of the finest text matter ever pecked out. and you know, i really was proud of some of those particular word concatanations, and only moments later i find i can not remember them. fuck computers, man. my smith-corona would never have done that. i whispered “COME ON!” because i am at a public place, amongst other humans, the company of which would probably force my anger exertions into submission out of fear of embarrassment.

for this reason (among others) i thought about renting office space. somewhere in midtown, probably by the Flatiron Building, or maybe near 34th Street. the company of strangers, the heckling buzz of distraction, might do me good.

the above-referenced text-gobbling spontaneously executed by this phone reminds of the last beta software i ever tried. it was years ago when the developers of the Eudora e-mail program frequently issued beta versions for public use. somewhere in the unread fine print of these beta version was some boilerplate disclaimer that these beta versions are used at one’s own risk… one day, then, i downloaded a beta version of Eudora, hit the “Check Mail” button, and in a split-second flash of unclickable warnings Eudora announced that it would now delete all e-mail from my web server. and that is what it did. hundreds of e-mail messages, dozens of which i had not yet downloaded, were all permanently zapped. this is when i was with Panix. Panix claimed to make daily backups of all user data, but like most ISPs in those day this claim was a common lie. i wrote to the Eudora feedback address, and all they could say was the beta software is beta software. sorry.

that was probably in 1994 or 1995, and it is the last time i ever used beta software with the high-minded purpose of assisting developers in their work. of course all software is beta in some way or other. there is virtually never a final release of anything in the software realm. software development is a continuous cycle of buggy, inferior products that will be fixed in later releases.

i don’t know if any other realm of product development works quite like software.

…..

ok, then, that was annoying. you sit down to write about your fascinating life and you get intercepted by software and hardware malfunctions, prompting squalls of text in grieving aggravation at said dysfunctions.

now i can’t remember what i was going to say, what fascinations i planned to explore.