Bookmark and Share

Monday 24th October 2005

An interesting development with my flawed laptop (although my wireless access now works at home, it doesn’t work anywhere else – the computer connects to the new wireless network, but when I go into outlook or my browser, the laptop cannot connect to any site or get my emails- though interestingly I can still play poker… any ideas on how to fix this internerds?). Today I noticed a small hair on the screen – this is obviously a common problem and one that can be slightly annoying as the static electricity can make them a bugger to remove. I wasn’t too upset about this though. It’s surely not an insurmountable problem.
But as I tried to pick the hair off I encountered more of a problem. I couldnÂ’t get any kind of a grip on it at all. To begin with I blamed my chubby, nail bitten fingers, but then I realised that wasnÂ’t the cause at all. The hair I was trying to remove wasnÂ’t on the screen at all. It was inside it. It seems unlikely that a hair could have got behind there, but I suppose its not beyond the bounds of possibility. Though there is a part of me that wonders whether the hair has actually grown inside the computer, perhaps indicating that my laptop is alive and about to take over my life like HAL or that computer from off of Diagnosis Murder. I imagine that whatever living entity is in there is all gnarled and scrunched up and hairy, a bit like the unborn brainless twin that that man found growing in his stomach that time. And if I am right then this ball of super-intelligent hair and gristle only wants me to access wireless internet in the confines of my own home.
Whatever the case (and yes, itÂ’s probably the former, but there are more things in Heaven and Earth) I know that I am now doomed to have that hair stuck there for the remainder of the life of this laptop. And every morning when I turn the computer on and see it there I will momentarily forget that it is behind the screen and not on it and attempt to pick it off. And intermittently even when I have remembered that it is behind I will still attempt to pick it off, hoping that somehow it has transferred itself through the screen. I have just tried it then and it didnÂ’t work. I love the way that the human brain can refuse to believe what it knows to be the case because of how something looks.
Or maybe itÂ’s down to our belief in the power of hope. If we really believe something is different to how it appears then maybe it will come true.
Still assuming the hair is one of my own then maybe getting trapped in what is apparently an impenetrable space will be a good thing. Perhaps my DNA will survive for billions of year behind there and one day in the future aliens will re-create the human race from it, a bit like in Jurassic Park, but with humans instead of dinosaurs. And from me they will clone a whole new human race, all of whom look exactly like me, a bit like that bit in Being John Malkovich. I am not a vain person, but I think the world would be a better place if it was inhabited entirely by versions, so I hope that is what happens.
ItÂ’s been a slow day Warming Up wise huh?



Bookmark and Share



Subscribe to my Substack here
See RHLSTP on tour Guests and ticket links here
Help us make more podcasts by becoming a badger You get loads of extras if you do.
To join Richard's Substack (and get a lot of emails) visit:

richardherring.substack.com