I don’t trust computers much, never have. What I trust is longhand writing on legal pads, nice typed lines on a Remington, stuff you can pick up and look at, hold onto, cram into big boxes and put in a storage closet forever. Trouble is none of this material translates well to reaching an audience like that of The Flying Pie.
On Wednesday, after composing over 2700 words of the newest blog, Brain News, I inadvertently nudged some mystery key which caused the entire manuscript to disappear forever. Despite saving everything I type every 15 minutes, it was gone, solid gone, up in smoke, ran off with the blacksmith gone. When I was a young boy, I fell off Charlie McHenry’s back fence right onto my stomach and knocked the wind out of myself for the first time. Today’s nightmare felt just like that. Once I realized the impossibility of the situation, I knew there would be no Flying Pie this week. There is simply no way to resurrect The Lost Blog.
Harry Edwards suggested quitting Live Writer and switching to Word. Siobhan tells me that way we can protect against something like this ever happening again, which is good because without that assurance I don’t believe I’d have the appetite to continue, taking the risk of a repeat catastrophe. Even with the new Plan, I’m in no mood to write this week or next with our annual vacation crowding the schedule. I was planning to run the second episode of 1962 next week, the first having been republished during last year’s vacation. Instead, we’ll use that column this week and follow up with the third and fourth episodes in the weeks following. Maybe by the time I get back from New Mexico and Colorado, we’ll be back in business.
I don’t trust computers much and with good reason. They smile and betray you, leave you at the altar, speed by in a heated limo as you stand out in the cold. They have no heart, no soul, there’s no reasoning with them. People say, oh, no, Bill, computers are critical, we couldn’t get along without them.
Well, right now I wouldn’t mind trying.
