As a person who is wasting the best years of her life hunched over a
keyboard, growing more and more pale of face and wide of butt, I figure
what would do me more good than anything is a rigorous exercise routine.
Jessica Burgess
Clearly Unedited
No, just kidding! What I really need is a laptop computer.
Everyone has one but me. It breaks my heart. Just step inside a
Starbucks and you'll see how pitifully deprived I am.
Never mind that Stephen King wrote a best seller by balancing a
typewriter on his thighs in the laundry room of his trailer home. Forget
that George Orwell wrote his first book just after a stint as a homeless
person.
My muse has a delicate disposition, and to coax her into the sun I need
something with 1.6 gigahertz processing speed, at least a gig of memory,
and by God, a CD/DVD/RW drive.
Oh, and WiFi. My muse gets antsy if she can't read The Onion online (she
LOVES Dan Savage).
And there are a thousand other compelling reasons to buy a laptop. Here
is a sampling:
•No. 14: Desktop computers are soooo 2002.
•No. 237: Heaving a laptop around will give me strong, muscular
shoulders – and the self-confidence to stand up to bullies.
•No. 946: I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT ARGHAFISDA;SFAS;DF
Obviously, this is a mature, well thought-out decision.
But where to buy? I really dislike paying arbitrary amounts such as
"retail" or "what the item is worth."
Luckily, there is a somewhat popular online auction site out there. Some
of you may have heard of it, so to protect its identity I will call it
by an alias: xBay. I figured that xBay was my best shot at scoring a
cheap computer.
With a little searching, I spotted the machine I wanted. But I didn't
bid yet. Oh no. To really win the xBay game, you must be wily. You must
watch, and wait, and then, right before the auction ends, you pounce!
Like a cat! A cat that is up at 4 a.m., staring fixedly into a computer
screen, her paw twitching spastically on the mouse.
So I won my computer, sent off payment, and am now eagerly scanning the
horizon for the UPS truck.
When it comes, the first thing I'll do is take my new laptop to
Starbucks. My muse is a big fan of those caramel apple ciders. Which may
explain the widening butt.
Jessica feels certain that George Orwell bought a laptop as soon as
he made it big. E-mail her at jburgess@quickdfw.com.
