In the spirit of Mr. Martin Luther King’s Day coming up, I had a dream. I’ve always wanted to be a cyborg. I want all my joints that have ever felt pain to be replaced by metal. I wanted metal arms, metal knees, metal back. Yesterday, as I was going through a real amount of pain in my heart, I realized that maybe I have been a cyborg all along and I just didn’t know it.
I have a smartphone that. while not permanent, is attached to my hand almost all times of the day. With its GPS, it gives me directions where to go when I am lost. When I can’t figure out the name of the actor in that one movie, I hit the IMDB app and in moments I am nutrionally enhanced with more useless knowledge. When I want to stalk someone on Facebook, my phone sets me up. If I want to share an idiotic picture with seven other people, I slap it on Instagram and I can immediately be ignored. It may not be attached to my hand, but it might as well be a metal piece surgically implanted in my hand.
I also have cyboric ears. When I workout (just kidding) I have a pair of Beats by Dre. They attach my ears through way of Ipod to almost an endless amount of music, television shows, movies and even podcasts. Another way to allow my ears to hear what I want to hear and tune out people, places and things I don’t want to hear. Though they aren’t permanently attached to me, someone might as well get a shop class to hammer that metal directly to my ears as much access as I have to it. And if it were attached, then I would really have an excuse to ignore people.
At work, my back and backside are almost melded to a chair made of metal. My chairback gives me almost no movement except in a small area inside my cubilce. It attaches my fingers to the keyboard that is typing all kinds of important things. Things like how to order this, how to organize that, how to credit the other thing and how to let everyone know that I did something. The most important thing it does, is what it is doing right now and that is typing this blog to you. It is also crying out for someone to come and PLEASE SAVE ME!
My other hand is attached to my Nintendo 3DS. It gives me strength to make it through times of boredom, when my phone battery is dead, or wi-fi isn’t available or data is used up for the month. It also links directly with the imagination portion of my brain and gives me thoughts and ideas, vast worlds to conquer, or save if I want to, but you know which I will do. Payback, revenge, destroy, smite.
The most important metal part of me though is my bitter heart. My laptop. My MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It is my central nervous center, my bitter beating heart, my memory, my brain. All sources of information go through my laptop. Without it, my functions aren’t complete. Sure my phone can check stats and even write a blog post on WordPress, but doing so only invites disaster, when typing on such a small screen. My headphones can connect to my Ipod for music, movies and television shows, but only on a tiny screen, not in Retina display colors and sound. My desktop computers at home and at work, can do all the same work my laptop can do, but I can’t take them on vacation, or to the library, or to the beach (just kidding. I don’t want my heart to get saltwater in it.)
Yesterday, my bitter heart broke. On Sunday, as I was writing an email to my father, the screen turned black. I thought it was just the screensaver going on, so I restarted it. Still nothing. I decided to move on and just give my heart a rest for the night and hooked it up to the power. I slept unsoundly hoping that my bitter heart would start beating again in the morning. No luck. When I decided to take my bitter cybernetic heart to a specialist to see if they could fix it, I waited nervously for a hopeful answer. Hope that it could be fixed for under a certain amount of affordable money and I could soon have my heart and brain back. When I called and got the information that it would cost about $750 to fix my metalic heart, I panicked. What does this mean? How many monies is that? How is it possible? My brain can’t process all this information without my metallic brain! I needed to know how to react, but it wasn’t there to tell me. Someone had to tell me that my heart was too expensive to fix.
I will no longer know the cool feeling of my metal legs in the morning, when it first wakes up. I no longer know the warmth of the metal on my legs when inspiration sparks and all kinds of processing goes on. I will no longer be able to see the world through my Retina Displays. I will no longer know the joy of blogging, or watching YouTube or answering emails from the library. I will no longer have a place to store all my ideas, pictures and memories in one central place. I will be scattered and I will be lost. I will be more robotic and emotionless than ever before. I will know only permanent bitterness, and anger and regret that I didn’t get Apple Care. I am nothing without my heart, my soul, my bitter beating metal heart.
I will miss you, old friend. May we someday meet again in a cold, hard metallic afterlife.
Bitterly yours and ARRRRRRGGGGGGH,
Bitter Cyborgian Ben
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I can relate “The Great Computer Crash of 2014”
http://jaeatwitsend.com/2015/01/02/the-great-computer-crash-of-2014/
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I am still in the midst of it and it makes me bitter just thinking about when the repair guy said, “Yeah, I’ve never seen a motherboard go out on such a new computer before.”
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So . . . yeah.
I totally have a half-finished text for you on my phone. It was exclaiming again about the money it’s going to cost to get your computer fixed, which just blows my mind.
I wish I could remember what I was doing that I got pulled away mid-text. Maybe I was watching the game or eating. Probably one of the two. I dunno.
Sorry.
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I sure hope it was the game. Which is obviously way more important.
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Sorry that happened. Are you going to get a new bitter heart?
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I don’t know right now. Right now, I’m going through my mourning period and not quite ready to move on yet.
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Well mourning will soon turn to bitterness.
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It’s already there.
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Good now you can enjoy life again in a bitter sort of way
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I’ll keep on bittering.
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Make sure you bitter with butter
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You batter believe it.
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Ben’s Bitter Butter
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Will be on shelves soon.
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A bitter woot!
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I’m not even sure what a woot is, but okay. A bitter woot back to you?
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Now you have the hang of it! Bitter woot!
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Meh.
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No, no Meh. Bitter Woot or Bitter woot meh
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aHH.
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Are you off your game today?
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Nope, bitter as ever.
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Well that’s a bitter relief!
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There should be some bitter medicine to help you get bitter relief.
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I guess that is what happens to electronics!
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Yes, we mourn when they are no longer with us.
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I share your dream of being a cyborg one day, and sometimes wonder if I’m already there. But then I realize I don’t have the power to crush my coworkers into a fine powder. Maybe someday…until then, it’s just wishful dreaming.
I do feel your pain in regards to the beating heart. When that technological unit ceases to function it really causes a lot of grief and misery. Strange how we’ve become so dependent on these little units of hopelessness.
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I hope to at least get a bionic arms and some metal in my shoddy knees someday. Kind of jealous of my father who is getting knee surgery today. Soon his knees will be better than mine.
I feel like a piece of my metal heart is missing. I don’t know what to do with my legs and night now.
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I’m convinced that some sort of cybernetic virus is going around, because everyone i know is having technology problems. Conspiracy theory? I think yes
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I know. Now my freaking phone is acting up. Is it too much to ask that they attack our work computers and phone instead of the stuff we actually pay money for?
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I don’t know. I haven’t been having any problems with my computers or zwormbnobble cromnip fli renkl; accrumnel$ though.
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Well, just a hint, but the comments on my blog are usually the first signs that things are ready to go.
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I feel for you. My second laptop did exactly the same whilst I was sitting there, working on files. I cried! Can ya get anuvver one?
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I’m so bitter because it was only two years old. The guy at the repair place told me he’d never seen a laptop so new peter out so soon. I wanted to bitterly cry.
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They don’t last long, do they. Mine wwas 6 months older than that. I seem never to get beyond two and a half years. Surely they should last longer!
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I was told that these things would last about 5 years and they would get outdated before you had to get rid of them. Bitterly that isn’t the case with mine.
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When will the mini-series be out? Maybe you could reap enough cold, hard cash from the series to purchase a brand new friend.
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You mean the soap opera? As long as I get to play the Cyborg, it’s on.
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Well, OK, if you must have a soap opera about yourself rather than a mini-series, go right ahead. It might make more money in the long run…
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Yeah, since soap operas last light 50 years or longer if the actors are bad enough.
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Do I detect a bit of sentimentality in the bitter heart today, Ben?
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No, what you detect is complete bitterness that I will no longer have my laptop and the quality of my already terrible blog posts is going in the tank even further.
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Yes, feed the bitterness. I love it!
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Kind of like those ads about feeding the pig except much bitter.
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Don’t feed The Ben.
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Yes, feed the Ben. Pizza especially. With pepperoni.
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Oh boy…Look what I started.
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Luckily, I have the power to end it. Riggggghhhhhht now.
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