Digital Tedium

I’ve been having “issues” with the computer. This has made anything remotely to do with this rickety old machine tedious at best, and like banging my head against a brick wall.

(No, dear, I wasn’t talking about you when I said “this rickety old machine.” You’re a good computer and I would never call you rickety. There there.)

Don’t tell the creaky one but there will soon be a sleek and sexy new machine in my life. I am counting the days (five). Flush with the giddiness of making our last car payment, we decided to throw caution to the wind and buy a new computer. High speed internet follows. I can’t wait. But I will have to.

(No, dear, you’re not creaky either. I was talking about my, um—chair. Yes. My chair.)

I will try to get caught up on all of the fascinating blogs I’ve been planning to write. While you wait, with what I’m sure is baited breath, I’ll tell you what’s been bouncing around in my brain.

—Harry Poppins
—Minor League Baseball
—Doing Things the Hard Way
—Reading Magic
—My new attitude toward my children’s germs
—My charmingly ironic partner
—The cultural significance of Oscar the Grouch
—Squirrel Fest
—Wind, wind, windy, wind, wind

Let’s start with Oscar, shall we?

NaNo Technology

I remember in a class once, we discussed the history and development of the novel at length. I forget what we were reading, but we discussed letter-writing habits in the nineteenth century. Paper wasn’t particularly cheap, and apparently it wasn’t uncommon to reply to a letter by turning the paper sideways and writing a new letter right on top of the old. This was also a common practice for a variety of texts in earlier periods in which parchment was even more dear. This could, I recall, go on for several layers of script, creating a complicated palimpsest, a tangled treasure chest of words and meaning. Imagine the care of writing, the care of the letter or book as an important object, the care of deciphering the layers of words. Better than TV. And they used the heck out of those pieces of paper and parchment.

So today, I sit here in front of my computer, undoubtedly reusing electrons that have been used and reused many times in the storage of various data on my hard drive. There is a stack of newspapers under the table, which will be set out for recycling this week unless they are snatched up first by someone to fold or tear or smush into some other creation.

I wonder about the NaNo Novel I’m planning for this year. I’m tempted to shun these little electrons, and pen my NaNo07 long hand on old newspapers to make a point about waste and reuse. Of course, in order for it to count, the NaNo will still have to be transcribed into bits and bytes to upload. And would my newspaper scribbles be more precious to me somehow? Or more frustrating? Would I even be able to read it? Would my hands fail me in the scribbling?

Does the act of NaNo, the intense and sometimes frenzied pouring out of words in the moments between our responsibilities, invest the words with some special meaning no matter how they’re marked out? Perhaps not the same way that a cherished scrap of parchment or heavily reread and rewritten packet of letters might be.

I’m sure there was something interesting I was going to say here.

What? What’s that you say? You say tomorrow is NaNo Day? I guess I’ll go out and play.