POETICKS

I’m in a non-functional zone again but it’s not my null zone because I feel un-null emotionally.  I’m non-functional because, I’ve now decided, I’m being “feeblitzed” by the gods or whoever is running my life (which sure ain’t me).  Latest episode: my little cat slept on top of the keyboard of my number four computer, a laptop.  When I went to use it to continue playing Civilization, the first round of it in a couple of weeks that I was winning, I found an alarming message on the screen: “Insert Boot Disk.”  When I unplugged it and rebooted, I got the same message.  Fortunately, I use the laptop for almost nothing but playing Civilization, so it was about the slightest large-scale computer disaster I could have had.  But it feeblitzed me–that is, it made me feel feeble against the fates–as, of course, my current back and lower legs make my feel about my physical future.

Oh, I discovered the problem yesterday–Sunday, of course, at 5:30 in the evening.  I called Staples to find out their hours: on Sunday, 9 AM to 6 PM.  I probably could have made it on my bike to the store before six but I’m sure I would have had to go back today to get my computer back.

So I took it in this morning and got feeblitzed again: the people there could not order my a boot disk.  I could have left my computer with them for a diagnostics test costing $70, but it seemed to me getting and trying o0ut a boot disk made much more sense.  Not that I really know enough to say, but I by then remembered that one can use the Internet and contact manufacturers when things go wrong with mechanisms like computers.  So I spent a couple of hours later getting feeblitzed on the phone with Toshiba, and on the Internet with Toshiba and other companies I kept getting sent to.  I ended finding a place here in town besides Staples that might help me, and will take my computer there.  Eventually.    –

I also had to go the the Food Pantry where I, a welfare layabout, can get free groceries once a week by standing in line for an hour or two in the morning to get a ticket, then coming back in the afternoon to stand in line for 30 to 40 minutes to go into the place to get stuff–like the 24 cupcakes I could have gotten (unsold Hallowe’en goodies) but took 12 smaller cupcakes instead because of lack of storage space for all the edibles I have in my house.  Tiring, especially now that I can’t stand for more than a half hour without wanting desperately to sit down (a real case of feeblitzery).

A final factor were the exercises I should be doing and did one set of, and felt guilty that I didn’t do more–but they may genuinely be too much for me because they are somewhat painful.  I’m probably not doing them more because they don’t seem to be doing anything for me.  I was excellent about doing the exercises I was given after my hip transplant, mainly because I felt I was up to them.  Doing, not doing, and thinking about the exercises feeblitzed me.

So, that’s why I went through all the things I have lying around my computer room for something to post here, and found this:

It’s a work of my now no longer here friend Al Ackerman who sent it to me in 2007.  I love his work–it always makes me smile or chuckle, when it doesn’t make me guffaw.  Click to see a larger image.

(Aside, I wonder if women find his work funny; I suddenly see something of the 3 Stooges in it, although I was never a big fan of theirs, however much they could at times make me laugh.  Ackerman’s brand of comicality was quite a bit higher than that of the stooges, though.  If I weren’t so feeblitzed, I could give the details  There’s a good deal of “this is something some people find funny” in it which makes superior types like me laugh at it, but some kind of hilariously absurd high idiocy, too.  And devices like contrasting . . . argot?  There’s a better term.  Anyway, here you have the cultured caption about “ruffians” contrasted with the lower-class absolute fools the word is describing.  There’s something about unabashed idiocy that I–and I believe many men but not many women–find absolutely hilarious.  Maybe because with can enjoy it vicariously, it being something we’d love to be able to do; but women fear the loss of control it involves–oh, and the physicality of most Grand Idiocy–or, more exactly, the musclaceptuality, to bring my theory of awarenesses into it.  Women probably prefer . . . well, refined humor, but I’m not sure what I mean by that.)

Oops, I forgot to mention the funniest thing about it: the idea of our constipated government ever issuing such stamps!  I wish I used a few of them, but never thought to, having always been far too little of a mail artist.

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