Black Metal Tower

Last night's tweets;

I bought a big box of broken metal.
Steel tabs flutter within like a snow globe.
There's nowhere for a hard drive to settle.
Now I want to drill through my frontal lobe.

I received a package yesterday containing the new motherboard, processor, and video card for my new computer. I get most of my packages delivered to my parents house, so I brought it back here in the afternoon, and just as I was getting it out of my car I heard, "Mew, mew, mew, mew . . ." steadily increasing in volume and turned to see Snow the Cat running towards me across the driveway. I'd never seen him so passionately solicit my attention, and later I wondered if he was in fact warning me to stay inside the rest of the day.

I called Tim to ask him if he could help put together the new computer. He came over with Windows 7 and some RAM and just as we were going through all the components, we discovered that the tower case I'd bought at Fry's last week has several missing screws and broken off pieces of it scattered about the inside. The case was a return and, like many things returned to Fry's, the employees hadn't inspected it. Several years ago, the first time I bought Elvis Costello's Armed Forces was from Fry's. It was one of the Rhino editions with the bonus disk. When I opened the case upon returning to my car I found that it only contained a bonus disk.

So yesterday was the last day I had free time scheduled for putting together a computer, though obviously to-day I'm going to have to return the case as I figure returns should always be made ASAP. When I got home last night from the grocery store last night, I decided to have another bottle of Strongbow. I always used a drawer handle in the kitchen to open beer-like bottle caps and last night the drawer handle snapped. Then, like I was in a Three Stooges short, I tried opening the bottle on another drawer handle which also snapped. Genius. When I finally did get the bottle open, I couldn't even enjoy it.

At midnight I did the rough drawings of the next Venia's Travels, something I suspected I ought to've done instead of doing anything else yesterday. At 3:30am I decided to play some chess, and I eventually lost a complicated game that took an hour and a half. It was particularly joyless as the guy I was playing against was using a computer programme to generate his moves for him--well, I don't technically know that he does, but while I generally lose to everyone I play lately I always get a sense of a personality on the other end. People have favourite pieces, opening techniques, and there's just an indefinable sense of a person. Even the best players make mistakes now and then, but only a computer is invariably flawless, as this guy is. But I play against him anyway, since playing against a computer is playing, anyhow.

I had trouble getting to sleep and when I did I had a dream about an enormous, pink and lavender mountain at Disneyland which I climbed with Patton Oswalt. We found a cave which led to a dark and fiery, Mordor-like interior. We looked from a precipice at an enormous black tower in the centre of the apparently hollow mountain. It had glowing orange windows and was sort of burnished with orange glow, giving the impression of a photo negative. The precipice was a walkway that led to other rooms, and a woman in exercise spandex jogged by. I asked her if she lived there and she said she did.

"I suppose you get food from Disneyland's restaurants and shops," I said.

"No," she said, "we have all the food we need in here!"

"What food could you have in this place?"

"Tuna! Lots and lots of tuna!"

Oswalt and I continued exploring the place. Eventually we ended up in a gleaming white laboratory and Oswalt was singing to distract the doctors in the room while I searched through the file cabinets.

I was woken thirty minutes before the time I'd set my alarm to go off by my phone ringing. It turned out to be a travel agent looking for "Cretin Marshall". He irritably informed me that I'd filled out forms of some kind and didn't seem to believe me when I told him several times that I'm not Cretin Marshall. This is the fifth wrong number I've gotten for Cretin Marshall.

Of course, I couldn't get back to sleep. Now, let's see, I need to return a computer case, see if I can replace the drawer handles in the kitchen, and draw, ink, and colour a page of comic. And I feel like shit. Tally-ho!