Free Download Of Me

Cartoon Superman (Photo credit: ssoosay) He’s pretty dumb – he still uses a phone box…

English Pen ran a competition: make up a word; use it as a title in a poem or piece of flash fiction.  I did; I didn’t win; but I was a runner-up – one of thirty, from over 400 entries.

That was some weeks ago.  I received an email with the news; then another, telling me where to access a free download of the anthology e-book, The Dictionary Of Made-Up Words.

Cue weeks of frustration.  I could NOT download that damn thing.  I can’t tell you how I struggled, trying to access it.  I have no idea how I ended up with seventeen downloads of the same document on several computers (I thought it might be something to do with the Windows package), but so it was.  It appears I could download it; I just couldn’t read it.

The email offered me a MOBI version for Kindle.  I was told I needed to download a MOBI package to access the e-book.  I was too scared to do that – I’ve heard about these exploding viruses that wipe your hard drive.  The Hub has warned me ever since I learned to switch on a computer by myself: NEVER click ‘Yes’ on an executable file if you don’t know the source.  I don’t know if it was an executable file; I don’t know who this MOBI is, but I suspect he’s a bit of a dick, so I played it safe and that is possibly why I have seventeen downloads of a file I can not access on all computers in the house and even one in Peterborough with Tory Boy.

English Pen asked us to publicise the e-book, but how could I ask you to face the same trials I was facing?

I could not.  I like you all too much to want you to stand beating your heads against a brick wall (or tin wall, for those of you who live in less traditional structures; but it’s still got to hurt).

Ma.ture Technology (Photo credit: ncomment). I think I know why this is funny but I don’t understand most of the language.  Rather like my relationship with computers, actually.

Round about the time I was ready to take a screwdriver to my laptop to see if the book was lurking about in its entrails, the Hub stepped in.

Much shouting ensued, because I was telling him how to do the thing he was doing because I didn’t know how to do it (c’mon ladies…we’ve all done it).  Here’s the gist of it:

HUB (in capitals because he’s yelling): It’s not for your computer, it’s for your Kindle!  All you’ve got to do is transfer it from your laptop to your Kindle!

ME (in capitals because I’m yelling because I’m wrong): Oohhhhhhh….

Me (in lower case because I’m an idiot): And how do I do that?

*

You know what the irony of this story is?

My poem is about my inability to use technology. 😀

*

piano hazard (Photo credit: Zemlinki!)

You can download the whole book for free (if you need a Hub to hurl abuse at you while that’s happening, mine’s available), for your Kindle, Nook or something else, here.  

They will send you an email with a couple of links.  Don’t ask me for help.

Take some time to read the comments about the winning poem.  They make the Hub and I look like we’re blissfully in love.

For those of you who don’t have an e-reader (or the technology gene), here’s my poem:

*

Techneptitude

 

The science 

of misunderstanding an appliance.

 

The groan 

accompanying a new phone.

 

The cry
as an elderly computer dies.

 

The ache
for a simpler age,
when a book had a page.

 

Techneptitude –

technological stupidity

with a hint of decrepitude.

 

 

Joke 812

Time for some Groucho Marx.  You’ve probably heard them all but they are always worth sharing again.

• No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.
• Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
• Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.
• Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well, I have others.
• A man’s only as old as the woman he feels.
• One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.
• Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse.
• From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.
• My favourite poem is the one that starts ‘Thirty days hath September’ because it actually tells you something.
• I’ve got the brain of a four year old. I’ll bet he was glad to be rid of it.
• I wish to be cremated. One tenth of my ashes shall be given to my agent, as written in our contract.
• Wives are people who feel they don’t dance enough.
• I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.
• Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.
• Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
• She got her looks from her father. He’s a plastic surgeon.
• I intend to live forever, or die trying.
• I find television very educational. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
  

From brainyquote.