Originally ran 2/2002
Editor's Note: DRO’s resident Gonzo Chris Martin is taking a small sabbatical from the drudgery of writing his monthly column. I received a collect call from him supposedly from a resort in Baja, Mexico. All I could hear in the background was men shouting what seemed sounded like military orders. Anyway, Martin asked that we wire him a three-month cash advance to the luxury hotel front desk in care of the firm of Eie, Bailem and Fixum. He told me he should be back in business in about 90 days, or just in time for the Pro Stock Super bowl at Las Vegas or the IHRA opener in Texas. In the meantime we are going to run a few of what I think were his best chronicles that have appeared here over the last seven years.
RAGING AGAINST THE MACHINE
here are some of us who have made the adjustment to the future easier than others. Today when you do your laundry, you don't use clothes pins. If something big is breaking out, you don't rush to the newspaper; you go to the TV or the computer.
Ahhh, the computer. There's the rub, matey.
Several million people, dare I say billion people, have adjusted their lives in the last two decades or so to include the computer in them. It's as much a part of existence today as toilet paper. You run out of TP, brother you have problems right here in River City. And that's what I did, speaking somewhat symbolically.
I was going to tell you guys about a major drag racing merger that involves millions of dollars and some very high-test people, but my inability to get along with the computer decided to pick this weekend to hit me with a truckload of Mafia cement. So I'm gonna put it all on hold for the moment, while I RANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!against the machine.
Yes, word processors, computers, whatever you call them are irreplaceable now in this modern world. But they damn near, and in fact, are replaceable this weekend at my crib.
Lemme back track a sec.
Burk and I have a deal worked out that on or around the 15th and 30th of every month, Ipunch out some articles for him. Sliding into the 15th of March, I was at home and decided that evening to get with the program. And I did. Or I tried to "did."
I sat down in front of something called an E Machine monitor and got myself in shape to write. A carafe of the house wine, some Rangoon crepes, some Jamaican Purple, and a some Thai temple balls seemed to do the trick. I hit all the right switches and noticed something funny, as in weird, about the monitor. It was as blank as Tom Ridge's face. Nothing, not a pulse, not a beep.
"Hey, what's the deal?
I slapped the side of the box a few times, and nothing. I had been cut off from the world, or at least DRO Headquarters in O'Fallon, MO. In two words: No story.
It took no time at all for me to realize that I was in over my head. My old pals at NHRA would tell you that me and the computer are like a marriage to Roseanne. Very shaky, indeed. I know nothing about these bastards. So I called my more technically advanced brother Mike.
He would be free in two days.
I could here that little drunken voice in me, you know the one that hassled Tom
Selleck for eight years as "Magnum," say "Chris, you poor pathetic bastard, you won't leave this room before you've set aside a few more ounces of your quickly fading sanity.
Mike came over in two days. The verdict? Monitor is dead.