Computer Hope

This is a completely off-topic vanity post. Ignore if you were looking for more self-righteous snide poli-commentary.

Part One: A Woman I Admire

There's a woman I admire. Most days I'm not like this. In fact, I intend to admire strictly women's physical forms. This is due to the tendency for women to be rather deeply unconfident about themselves. They don't necessarily have to be unconfident about their looks, or even their personalities. In fact, a lot of the time it's the future. The feeling that maybe they somehow won't have the life they've settled on having since they were 8. What if I don't marry a doctor? What if I'm not vacationing in the Mediterranian? What if I'm not one hundred percent secure in my house, family, belongings, credit, relationship, body, mind, social class, sexual life, education, status or sense of accomplishment?

I suppose this is where the man comes in. Sweeping down from the heavens on a flying horse, the man of a thousand faces lands in front of the Cinderella girl and takes her away on a magical journey; all expenses paid, Visa or Mastercard. This guy, Mr. Denzel-Cruise-Pitt- Banderas-Usher-Trudeau-Kennedy Jr. has no past. He was manifested in college. Studies, has solid grades, writes insightful essays on post-modernist social theories. Tutors calculus on the side. Majors in Health, but of course, he intends on getting an MBA.

Aside from the serious side, he loves to have fun, goes out with his invisible friends. Loves harmless things like futball or hockey or poker, gangster movies and magazines with women celebrities on the cover. Naked women celebrities. Oh sure, he can be sensitive and has to be able to listen to you for hours. But it comforts you that he has this manly side to him.

He's got to know how to dress, and how to smell, and how to fix his hair, and how to shave, how to floss and how to have a good smile. 'Course, all that's useless if the poor bloke is just plain ol' ugly. No, he's got to have great, fantastic, piercing eyes too. A lack of facial hair. Short, well-cropped hair on top. Shaves down there too. Strong jaws are great, as are clean eyebrows. Can't have ears that are too big or noses too long. Sparkling teeth, a must. I mean, nothing worse than going to bed with a guy who gives you a reeky, unclean feeling.

But this was about women.

This woman, well... it started with a cellphone call on a Wednesday afternoon while walking from Tim Hortons to my car. The day was bright but cloudy with a lack of shadows anywhere and a white-gray hue colouring everything else. I answered the call from my friend Anthony, or Tony. As he was explaining, he had been having some computer trouble and required my help to restore the device to proper working order. So I head on over.

He invites me in and we go to his bedroom where the machine has had its steel casing removed, exposing the motherboard circuits and fans inside. The computer's about 2 years old, so it's pretty much on schedule for fucking up. Tony explains that the machine is just not booting up and that when he starts it, the machine displays a message:

"Invalid system disk."

A troublesome situation. I get on down on my hands and knees and try to examine the insides for any signs of physical damage, i.e. burn or scorch marks, unplugged cables, cockaroaches... Nothing. Things seem to be alright. Tony stands a few feet away, arms crossed, an expression of concern on his face. I try to remember my youthful days fixing errors like these. Unfortunately, many of those "fixes" resulted in formatting the hard drive and thereby deleting everything that was on the computer. I volunteered the question anyway.

"Uh say Tony, you didn't happen by any chance to backup your stuff?"
"Backup?"
"Yea, like burn a CD or DVD with your important photos and documents, just in case something like this happened."
"Uh no, I didn't."
"Oh."
"Are you saying all the stuff is gone?!"
"Naw bro...um not yet at least."

He fretted and squinted his eyes a little, then arched his eyebrows.

"Hold on, let me ask my sister."

He took out his mobile phone and dialed a number. A few terse phrases were exchanged and he hung up.

"Uh no, she didn't back anything up."

"Um, this is your sister's computer then?"

"Yea."

I paused for a brief moment before turning back to the dusty innards of the machine. Thinking for a few moments, I re-evaluated the situation and decided to try a number of different options. First, I tried starting the computer and entering the BIOS mode. That didn't work, because the computer was not even getting that far ahead in its bootup process. Then, I removed the hard drive and stuck in another one that I had to get from home. Still no good. That isolated the problem to something besides hard drive failure. Unscrewing the power supply (while precariously being grounded to Tony's chrome floor lamp) and installing a new one, a process that took a good hour, didn't have any effect either. Same old "Invalid system disk."

I figured I had to take a break and reconsider my options. I went out for a smoke, taking a walk around the block with Tony keeping watch for his parents.

"So what's your sister's name?" I asked with the most innocent of intentions.
"Fay. Why?"
"I dunno. She has important stuff on it?"
"What?"
"Important stuff. Does she have important stuff on her computer?"
"Well, mostly college stuff, papers. That's all I ever see her using it for."
"Mmm."

We returned to the house. I had thought up something along the lines of using a boot disk. I took out my laptop and went on Microsoft's website to download the software necessary in order to burn a boot CD. As I burned the disk, I noticed a sound coming from my CD drive. It sounded not quite like the usual calm whirring of a CD writer but more like a harsher, grinding noise. Not a good sign. I immediately aborted the process, not caring for a worthless blank CD. No good, the software closed but the grinding noise continued. Panicking, I unplugged the laptop, but of course, it had a battery. Throwing all caution to the wind, I manually ripped out my battery and shut the whole thing down. The grinding stopped. Tony looked at me, rather emotionlessly and said:

"Dude, you just fuck up your computer?"
I replied after catching my breath, my heartbeat returning to normal.
"Nono, it's fine now."
"Uh naw man, there's smoke coming out of it."

I whipped my head towards the dead computer. Indeed, the man was right. Whisps of smoke were leaking out of the CD drive. I did my best to force the thing open. After ten minutes of sticking in pins and screwdrivers, the thing opened to reveal a melted CD and some serious phyiscal damage. I threw away the CD, cursing its creator.

"Fuck, that thing looks sort of cool," said Tony. He went and digged the melted shard of polycarbonate plastic, which had assumed the shape of an old-fashioned sour-dough donut. Like a warped oatmeal and walnut cookie with a hole in the middle. The thing still shined.

I gave my laptop a few more minutes before replacing my battery and starting it. A message came up.

"Invalid system disk."

TO BE CONTINUED.

No Decency

In the fifth year of Gulf War II, following massive upheavals and regime changes, insurgencies and surges, Saddams and Rumsfelds, Fallujahs and Hadithas, Coalition Authorities and democratically-elected parliaments, Mahdi Armies and Ba'ath loyalists, we still end up with a picture like this.

Oh for sure there are worse pictures out there for those inclined to such levels of abhorrence. And indeed, there are better. Who can forget the image of the anonymous hijab-wearing woman happily displaying her newly-stained purple fingers in a peace symbol signifying her having voted? Pvt. Jessica Lynch after being "saved" from certain death by heroic U.S. soldiers? Or the cheering men as Saddam snapped his neck in the fall from the gallows?

Much can be and indeed has been written about this defining event of the 2000s. The focus of this column is the fact that after so many years, hundreds of thousands of deaths and wounded and refugees, so much money (nearly $500,000,000,000 USD) and so much politics, n-o-t-h-i-n-g has changed.

You still can't walk around much of the country without getting shot, bombed, kidnapped, tortured, maimed, raped, disappeared or arrested. Your house and property are not safe. Your religious affiliation defines which neighborhoods you can and can't live in. You probably can't find a job, and if you do moderately well, you become a target. You've either got soldiers outside of your house or milita thugs. You can't let your children go out and do anything, less they end up like our subject up at the top of this page. If you want to send them to school, you've got to pack your own ammunition and do it yourself. That doesn't guarantee however that there won't be fighting outside of their school and that they will have to go home. Your power doesn't work because the circuit boxes have been shot up. Going to Friday prayers is riskier than cruising Queensbridge projects on a Saturday night. You and everyone you know knows people who have been killed and/or kidnapped by violence.

A couple key events that one can point to as being aggravators of the situation. One, and in my mind the primary event, was the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. A blunder of democracy if there has been one. You can blame that on John F. Kerry's incompetence and the overall fallibility of the American public. If the Democrats won in 2004, or if a competent Democratic leader had emerged, the U.S. might have ended this black comedy already.

Another key event was the dissolving of the Ba'ath party in June 2003. What is happening now in terms of the civil war and insurgency can be traced back to this event. When thousands of otherwise skilled workers not only lost their jobs but indeed were barred from future work in government, many turned towards the insurgency and became important figures in planning the campaign of violence. A month before this, the *entire* Iraqi Army of 375,000 soldiers was laid-off, providing the manpower and expertise required for the guerilla war that has drowned the country.

Other less specific factors that have lead to the current situation include the long-delayed resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, the complete and total mismanagement of intelligence before the war, and post-war planning on the part of U.S. planners. Not to mention perhaps the main non-Bush administration culprits, the American media. It is they, as much as any Shia militant or U.S. Marine, who have blood on their hands for the way they hyped up and glorified this crime of crimes.

I demand justice for this little boy, for the thousands who have died and who indeed will die in the months and years to come. This must stop. Where is the political leadership? Where are the shaykhs who sit in their mosques and make du'a? Where is the media who should be blasting the horrors of this unholy mess in all of our faces till we grow nauseous and sick from it? Where are the Arab leaders making peace? Why, O Almighty, do we have this war in the year 2007/1428 and why can not anyone seem to stop it?

=//Turnquest