Our Universal Addiction

We all put so much stock in computers and barely give a thought to them being wrong, despite having evidence to the contrary from time to time. For example, yesterday 118 people in Spain read my blog. Really? Why would that be? It's either that or the statistics program in my computer that tracks my readership is totally screwed up.

My money is on the latter, since there is no reasonable explanation that anyone could dream up why Spanish readers would be drawn to yesterday's film review of Leave No Trace. I am not Spanish, don't speak Spanish, and don't even like Spanish food. I have been to Spain once, if you call the city of Barcelona "Spain." (During my brief time there everyone I met said, "This isn't really Spain.")

This morning our power went out for about 15 seconds, just long enough to miss it if you blinked. But it was enough time to totally freak out our modem, and my computer. I spent the next two hours trying to get back online, when suddenly it hit me: it doesn't matter. So I went and made some breakfast and read the paper instead, but the whole time I was upset because my computer wasn't working.

Clearly I have a new addiction, one as powerful as any other addiction but condoned by a society and culture that is also addicted. We'd all be in really big trouble if some evil genius from another galaxy figured out how to mess with our power supply.