The Arting Life: Experiencing Technical Difficulties

Just a quick mini-rant.

I'm working on my Ghosts experiments, and these little things happen that just interfere with my work. They have nothing to do with my work. They have no justification for even being in my reality, let alone interfering with my work. They are the products of some nameless, faceless Idiot thinking they know how to do something -- anything -- right. And they just screw up what should be the simplest things and send my blood pressure skyrocketing.

Things like these affect us all, and all our blood pressure readings, every day in the modern world.

Today's culprits are:

1. Hewlett Packard, whose Photosmart C3180 All-in-One Printer/Copier/Scanner is, apparently, tragically blind. Yes, I realize it's an old model. It seems, as it ages, the vision is the first thing to go (though actually, it has always been a pain). I just spent two hours trying to scan a piece of blotted writing to show an example of paper effects, and this insane old box of wires and plastic bits has given me images of only half the blot or of the blank paper next to it, ten times so far. I'm close to introducing this "smart" appliance to Mr. Hammer, who, simple though he is, truly understands the concept of frustration.

And

2. Staples, whose store at Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass., sells fountain pen ink but not the fountain pens that go with it. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over? Seriously? Really? I asked the poor slob who worked there why, in that case, they bothered to stock erasers to go with the pencils or envelopes for the stationery. I think he was only pretending to understand what I meant.

Scanners that cannot scan. Shops that sell ink with no pen to put it in. How happen such things? Easily. We live in a stupid, stupid world. A world where the makers of scanners think a machine that can get confused qualifies as advanced. A world where it never occurs to the buyer of a stationery store that people who buy ink cartridges might also buy a pen to put them in. A world where so many of the people who make things, sell things, provide us with things, never actually use those things themselves and nor have any idea how they are supposed to work.

If you want to know why I'm trying to start my own publishing company with which I can produce my own books, stationery and other items, this is your answer, right here:

You want a job done right, do it your-freakin'-self.

Hopefully, today's Ghosts update post will be ready this weekend. (I'm so annoyed.)