MY life is on the fritz. At least all the gadgets, gizmos and electronic devices in my life are on the fritz. Losing battle in the
war of widgetsWhen one electronic device goes on the fritz, it's a bother. When all your electronic devices go on the fritz en masse, is it a sign of a massive right-wing, New World Order, revenge-of-gizmos conspiracy?
First the broiler unit in the oven stopped broiling. Fine. Who needs to broil? No broiler means no cheese toast, so I considered the death of the broiler the first step in my new health program.
Then the color went out on the big television set. I never heard of such a thing. Sure we have other televisions, but they are part of the television support staff: a small one in the kitchen, a weird one for downstairs, an old one for the bedroom, a tiny hand-held television for those television no-fly-zones between rooms. But this was the primary household television, the big Sony Trinitron. How could it lose color? I mean, it's a COLOR TELEVISION.
You can do without a broiler but you simply can't live without a 28-inch Sony. We aren't barbarians, after all.
So I muscled it carefully off the table on to a blanket. I pulled the blanket along the floor until I got to the stairs. I gingerly levered it down one step at a time. (The term "28-inch" refers to the length of the hernia tear you'd receive if you tried to lift it by yourself.) I slipped it off the last stair onto my skateboard and rolled it out to the garage. Using the secrets of Egyptian pyramid builders, I managed to get it into the back of the truck. I drove to the little television repair place. I went in and told the large, swarthy fellow behind the counter that my television had betrayed me and gone to black and white for no good reason. He told me to bring it in. I said it was too big. He said something like "Oh, jeez," walked out, picked it up as if it were nothing more than a box of Charmin' toilet paper and carried it in the store. What a show-off.
Aweek later I got the television set back after paying the internationally mandated gizmo repair unit price of $150. I asked the guy what he had done to fix it and he told me something deliberately complicated that he knew I wouldn't remember.
Two months later the color went out again and when I tried to call back, everyone in the shop had taken to speaking only Arabic. The only English phrase they knew was "Call back later," which proved remarkably effective in breaking my spirit.
Since then, the pace of the decline of modern civilization hastened. The toilet makes strange, high-pitched noises when flushed and leaks water on the floor. I've looked inside the back of the toilet and found it complex, wet and yucky. So I put a metal bowl under the drip.
The smoke alarms began to mock me with little peeping noises when my back was turned.
The toaster simply refuses to toast. It always had an attitude, but I attributed that to it being a Cuisinart toaster. I don't know why, but I unscrewed about 500 screws and removed the outside of the toaster. The innards were just as mysterious and perplexing as I knew they'd be. At least the Cuisinart doesn't look so smug anymore, scattered over the counter like a downed aircraft.
One ceiling fan has commenced to changing speeds at will and the others seem listless and tired of life.
What will happen next? It's almost like living inside a Stephen King movie. Perhaps my electric chain saw will buzz on in the middle of the night and begin to do battle with my weed-eater. I'm thinking of calling in a handyman. Or at least an exorcist. While the phones still work.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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