Ruminations From a Tortured Mind

I’m so pissed about my computer – I was supposed to bring it to the computer guy Monday. I called him first to make sure he was going to be there, and I happened to ask him, since we are of the feeling now that it’s the video card (which I had told him before I brought it in the first time), “Hey – do you have a video card there?” No, no he didn’t, but he sure would order one now that I reminded him!

I asked him how long that should take – to get one in the shop – and he said “Oh, no more than a week!” Which means that if I did bring the computer to him on Monday, that it would be until next Monday before he even had a video card there, and then at least another week to put it in the computer because, you know, that’s how long most shit takes.

So I told him to call me when the video card came in, and I would bring the computer to him then. In the meantime, I can use it sporadically. I run it until it stops, then switch to the laptop, then wait an hour or so and switch back to the main computer, until it goes down, lather, rinse, repeat.

But it’s beginning to piss me off. It’s easier to compose posts for the blog on the main computer – where I have my pictures, Live Writer, Front Page, and all the snippets of posts I have archived. But I’ll be in the middle of writing and Crash! the computer goes down – taking all my work with it. Fucking thing.

The only good thing about it is that I’ve spent less time on the computer – it’s too aggravating to deal with sometimes – and more time sewing and entertaining.

Yes, I had the zombie lady over yesterday.

The old lady across the street instigated it. Her Home Health Aide came by and when she got out of her car she noticed an odd gas smell and asked the old lady across the street if there was a gas leak in the neighborhood. Since the old lady across the street hadn’t seen zombie lady for a while, she called me and told me the gas smell was quite powerful and asked if I had seen zombie lady. I told her I hadn’t since Thanksgiving, but that I would go over and check on her.

So I did. I went and knocked on her door, after navigating through the porch that is also the “treasure room”. Zombie lady has an enclosed porch – the walls are some kind of fiberboard or plywood – and she has hung all sorts of things that she finds wonderful on the walls – things like 64 count boxes of crayons, knit gardening gloves, pencils with pinwheels on the top, an Oscar the Grouch furry fun purse, and books – lots of books.

There was no answer when I knocked on the door, and I got up on my tiptoes to look through the three staggered little windows that line the top of the door. Usually I can peek in here and see if she is in the kitchen or somewhere in sight, but this time I couldn’t because the three windows were frosted over with ice on the inside.

But she never did answer. I had no idea where she was, or what she was doing, and I didn’t know if she was in there fucking dead somewhere. I just decided to come back later or the next day and if I still couldn’t raise her, I would (again) call the police to do a safety check.

So I went back over the next day and knocked, and this time she answered the door. She said she was “cleaning up” so that she could take a couple of days and go to the “city” to get her mail, talk to someone at her bank about some issues she was having there and go shopping.

And cleaning was a challenge – the entire living room is covered knee deep in garbage. Remember, she has lived there over a year and never has had a garbage pickup or even put anything into garbage bags. The floor is covered in newspapers, boxes, empty cartons, papers, receipts, cans, bottles, and every other kind of trash you can think of. I glanced around at some of the stuff she was putting into piles and noticed that most of the newspapers had comments and notes and other writing in the margins. I said “Oh, yeah, the newspapers have notes on them – you don’t want to throw those away.” And she responded with “Yes, these people, they are spies, no? They make comments to me so that I will come forward, but this I will not do. I answer them and then they see this.”

Oh, well, that explains that, loony fucking toon.

I told her that if she had a minute and wanted a hot cup of coffee, that she could take a break and come over and I would be happy to make coffee for her. She very eagerly accepted, and I told her “well, good, grab some books or something to do and you can read and watch a little TV, too, while you have some coffee, and I will just putter around and do some sewing and some knitting. So she grabbed a few books and followed me home.

As she drank the coffee I made and ate the egg salad sandwich I gave her, she dropped a few little pearls of wisdom and some observations of her own that I thought I would share with you. So, straight from the zombie lady herself, here are “Ruminations from a Tortured Mind”

• According to the zombie lady, I have a “sexy voice”. She asked me to read some passages from the books she had brought with her. Well, not really passages, but old clichés. Why? Because “when you read, you hear the voice in your head in your own voice. The words have much more meaning and impact when you hear someone else ready them.” So I read a few of the passages that she pointed out – one was something like “Failure is not an option in America – but it is the only place where you can fail and then ultimately succeed.” Yeah, what the fuck ever.
• Lifetime Channel would more accurately be called “Rape Channel”
• UFO’s and Aliens are totally the brainchild of the American Government and is so much propaganda to fool the American people. In the 1950’s, when the government wanted to beat the Russians into space, they did not have a lot of support from the American people. So, the government made up these lies of UFO’s and Aliens and “little green men” so that the American public would believe that space was worth exploring. They also promoted the idea that aliens and “little green men” were hostile, this way space exploration could be justified as “going to war”. There is nothing that American people like more than a good war, so it was easier to convince the American public that space exploration was necessary. Now, whenever the government needs to justify an increase in NASA funding, they promote and back a blockbuster movie about aliens, preferably hostile aliens, and this is to subliminally convince the American people that space programs are necessary. And it works.
• Eddie Rickenbacker is the greatest American hero ever. He was one of the first innovators of commercial airlines, he designed cars that have influenced auto design for generations, and he predicted that women would one day buy their fashions on a monitor.
• Tattoos are BAD. When you get a tattoo, there is the possibility that the person drawing the tattoo will use the “special ink” that can be tracked. Many inks are tracked and when you go through scanners or security devices, the ink in the tattoo can be identified and your privacy can be compromised.

When she *does* go to “the city” to get her mail and stuff, I am going to go over to her house and take pictures of the “treasure porch” and post them for you to see. Only because it has to be seen to be appreciated.