Bzzt

My laptop has spent the last couple of weeks living a comfortable existence on the footstool which matches my new sofa. I've been curled up on its dunkelgrau splendiferousness with a couple of lambskins while I pluck jute-rug shedding from around the Macbook. I moved it today -- people for dinner, you know. Uncool to be sporting the laptop nestled among the soft furnishings. I lined it up in its nominal real home in the study, and later, full of trulli carbonara and bonhomie, I pressed the on-switch.

Idiot, thought I, into the deafening silence. You haven't even plugged it in. (Because, mais bien sur, its ability to draw power from the battery is long since a memory). I looked over the side of the desk and then I looked at the power cord firmly slotted into the wall. Then I looked at it some more. I looked at the laptop's irrevocable plugged-in-ness for a while. Then, because apparently our reptilian brains are unable to resist these dead-end impulses, I pressed the on-switch again.

I realise that laying my hands on a replacement power supply can't be a peak-scaling enterprise. And mercifully I am not cut off entirely -- I mean, I'm posting from my iPhone. How bad can things be? But looking at the dark once-glowed-friendly-and-green power lamp in my magnasafe powercord, I hear a small voice with nonetheless excellent projection saying,

Why must everything be broken?