Dud Lust

Charles Macfarlane

Increasingly exasperated by endless printing errors from my Epson 740 Stylus and it taking longer both to warm up and shut down than actually print anything, my patience finally snapped today.  Not having an axe adequately to express my thirst for revenge, I dropped it from the spare bedroom window onto a concrete path.  Could have done with the axe, it didn't break into nearly enough pieces to satisfy my anger, but, on the bright side, that made less work to clear it up for recycling.

Looking at it dispassionately, I would have preferred to give it working to a suitable IT recycling charity, but I don't know of any collecting in this area.  Anyway, as long as the only person affected is oneself, anyone exasperated by the poor reliability and built-in obsolescence of modern technology should be allowed an occasional moment of dud-lust  -  it preserves one's humanity in our technobabble cyberspace ruled only by a Hitchhiker's version of Moore's Law, where the useful life of a new product halves every decade.

We're used to premature expiration in the IT industry (but why should we be?), so, for balance, something completely different: fan-heaters.  In the 1960s, my mother had two or three, each of which lasted the best part of ten years.  I bought three or four in the 80s, none of which lasted even two.

I propose a secret inquisition to combat the technological heresy of our times: Squalidity Control.  Its coat of arms shall be a Grim Reaper with an Axe Rampant splitting open a Lemon, its motto will be "Per citrarius ad nauseam", its website will be www.holyblender.com, its passphrase will be "squeezetheb*stards".

2004

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