Anthony Dobranski Online

Category: essay

  • Excerpt – Chapter 8

    In this excerpt from The Demon in Business Class, Gabriel and his boss try to recruit a criminal with a secret hobby, and a special talent…

    from Chapter 8 – San Francisco

    In the silent dim gray, the limousine’s facing benches seemed less car than train. Gabriel remembered long rides in Russia, bundled up in the cold cheap seats. The memory grew immediate, the start of a dream he shook off. The limousine had stopped.

    Gabriel followed Thorn out to face a bluer brighter sky above a boarded-up building that stank of urine and rat. The rest of the street looked like anyplace: market, laundry, nail salon, carry-out Chinese, bank. As they walked Gabriel oriented himself. Van Ness behind them. The bar where he’d met Gita was only a few blocks away. Gita would find all this exciting.

    Thorn led him to the nail salon. “It’s downstairs. All I know is we’ll get in.”

    Keep reading – or listen to the audiobook!

  • Excerpt – Chapter 12

    In this excerpt from The Demon in Business Class, in a hotel bar in Aberdeen, Scotland, two people meet cute … not so cute.

    Chapter 12 — Aberdeen

    Gosh she was pretty.

    “The bartender comes and goes,” Gabriel told her. “He helps in the kitchen.” Her face was a tangram of sharp ellipses: pointed chin, long nose, tall forehead, wide mouth. He smelled cucumber from the hotel soap, lemongrass shampoo, old smoke. “Shame about the weather.”

    “Yep.” The bartender returned. In glasses and a gray mustache, he looked like a squirrel. “White rum?” Zarabeth asked. “Diet cola. Stiff, please. With a lime.”

    “On my tab, please,” Gabriel told the bartender.

    “Thank you, Gabriel.” She slid off her barstool gingerly, walked around him and took the stool to his right, at the end of the bar. Her scent rust and clay, dry dust of dead leaves. “My first night, here and in Scotland. You?”

    Keep reading – or listen to the audiobook!

  • A playlist for The Demon in Business Class

    I created this playlist for a blog tour — if you want to start listening, here it is on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4tR8uHsFCla94vEFZnwz8c

    It was a fun project, sort of a soundtrack with backstory.

    Some of these songs were specific influences, though unnamed, on certain scenes. Other songs evoke its moods.

    The project also put me in touch with my younger self, who long ago spent many hours making mix tapes — on cassettes — that then took me across the United States and back, not unlike Gabriel’s own journey late in Demon.

    Enjoy! Songs are listed Title – Artist, with notes after each.

    Part of the Process – Morcheeba

    This track evokes the uncertain, down-but-not-out place Zarabeth finds herself at the novel’s start. On my own visit to Aberdeen, Scotland to research the novel, I bought Morcheeba’s album Big Calm in a record store bargain bin. I think it’s the last actual compact disk I ever bought!

    Opium Dreams – Rithma

    Don’t read into the title. This song is here for its smooth groove, punctuated by the unsettling party laughter, both evoking when we meet Gabriel at a party that really isn’t fun.

    Cirrus – Bonobo

    This propulsive yet pretty track, known for its amazing video, is all for mood, launching Zarabeth and Gabriel down their respective rabbit holes.

    The Marriage of Coyote Woman – All Them Witches

    A slow, psychedelic blues, with an opening line that works in business class – “I never met a salesman like you before” – and a mood that fits Walt’s as he kicks himself back into the world.

    Season of the Witch – Lana Del Rey

    This breathy take on the 60’s pop classic brings out Missy’s seductiveness, and the turmoil behind it.

    All That We Perceive – Thievery Corporation

    A song about picking up more than other people do, and the difference between knowledge and understanding, an issue even for those paranormally gifted.

    My Girls – Animal Collective

    Sunny, but also manic, this track is from the album Gabriel plays for Zarabeth on their first drive together. It’s a hope for simplicity that Gabriel will not find.

    Atlas – Part 1: Personal Climate: Travel Dream Song – Meredith Monk

    This minimalist, haunting opera about modern travel is what Gabriel is listening to when Zarabeth comes to visit him in his Aberdeen hotel room. Zarabeth thinks it sounds like DNA.

    Example #22 – Laurie Anderson

    A fun nod to Gabriel’s uneasy trip to Hamburg, seemingly sung by Zarabeth working her way into his dreams. “What are paranormal voices?”

    Policy of Truth – Depeche Mode

    At a house party of deaf grad students, Zarabeth taps into her wild magic while dancing. This naughty, world-weary ode to lying was on repeat while I wrote the scene.

    Just Like Heaven – Katie Melua

    A gentle, sad take on The Cure’s story of lost love. We’re at the halfway point. It gets darker from here.

    Revenge – XXXTENTACION

    Like Zarabeth’s own feelings, this track is small and dense, a seed for careful growing.

    Chce Se Mi Spát (I Want to Sleep) – Psí vojáci

    One of the major voices of Prague’s Velvet Revolution, Psi Vojáci (Dog Soldiers) evoke Zarabeth’s fatigue, and the insincerity and disconnection in a world of surveillance.

    等著你回來 (Waiting for You) – 白光 (Bai Guang)

    1940s singer and actor Bai Guang was the sultriest of what have become known as the Shanghai Divas, and is still known across Asia. I went with the original to evoke Zarabeth’s bitter desire in Hong Kong, but you can find updated remixes on the album Shanghai Lounge Divas.

    Furious Angels – Rob Dougan

    Some will recognize the instrumental version, used in The Matrix Reloaded during Neo’s opening fight sequence (“Upgrades.”) For burning blue Zarabeth and hot desperate Gabriel outrunning angry angels, I opted for the full melodrama of Rob Dougan’s original.

    Hessel, Raymond K. – The Dust Brothers

    This heavy, spacy drum and bass track evokes the Las Vegas cult ritual where the wrong god shows up, to Zarabeth’s benefit… and no one else’s. Originally from the Fight Club soundtrack.

    Thirteen – Johnny Cash

    Gabriel crosses the American West, trying to find an answer to his love and the hurt he caused her. Johnny Cash knows about that.

    Wolf Like Me – TV On The Radio

    Missy and Walt just hope to settle down, but there’s a reckoning ahead with Missy’s family and coven — and TV On The Radio’s tale of horror and hunger speaks to Missy’s reaction.

    Cheap Thrills – Sia

    My editor Vivian Caethe told me to add a chapter about Zarabeth after Las Vegas, lest she seem to be “waiting by the phone.” Laying low in Lincoln, Nebraska let Zarabeth tie up some loose ends. To get back in her head, I had this song on repeat as I wrote the chapter.

    IKAZUCHI (Thunder) – Tom H@ck – Yoshida Brothers

    During my own work in Tokyo, I was introduced to the spare, bluegrassy music of the banjo-like shamisen — just before Yoshida Brothers took it international by mixing in drums and synth. This track is for modern Japan, land of quiet beauty, bullet trains, and much that is not spoken but that you need to know.

    Regret – St. Vincent

    Wouldn’t it be nice if love stories just ended well forever? St. Vincent doesn’t think that happens, and maybe Zarabeth and Gabriel agree, sometimes.

    Demons Are A Girl’s Best Friend – Powerwolf

    A little heavy metal, and maybe a renewed love triangle, to close out this stormy ride!

    Thanks for listening!

  • An interview with Zarabeth

    AD: Hi! I’m Anthony Dobranski, author of the modern fantasy novel The Demon in Business Class. Today we’re talking to Zarabeth Battrie, the main character, about her life and her story. Zarabeth, welcome!

    ZB: Hi. Thanks for having me. Also, writing me. For the most part. You could have left a few things out.

    AD: I wanted the audience to share the whole experience. Before we get into the novel, tell us a little about yourself. What do you like to do when you’re not the main character of a novel? Any interests, any hobbies?

    ZB: Causing trouble.

    AD: Seriously.

    ZB: Seriously! I don’t read, I don’t watch movies. Some TV if I’m bored, but that gets boring fast. A few drinks out, a little clubbing. More weed than I probably should.

    I like to work. I like to make things happen. I don’t socialize but I love to collaborate, if that makes sense. I love travel but hate vacations. If there’s nothing to do, I get into trouble. I cause trouble. I’m a trouble magnet.

    AD: Which is good in a main character! Did you like being the main character?

    ZB: Hmm. Sort of. I’m more a behind-the-scenes person, honestly. Also, it was intense! I’m not complaining. Given that I start out the book pretty sure I’m going to be fired from my job —

    AD: Downsized.

    ZB: Not a lot of difference, in the job market of 2008.

    AD: 2020’s worse, actually.

    ZB: Not my problem. Anyway. Given where I start the book, international travel and shady conspiracies was a good outcome. As was, I have to say, being taken seriously again. That mattered a lot to me.

    AD: Even if it was by a villain using you to start a war?

    ZB: At least I flew business class! OK, fine, I’m being flippant. As people will learn, I didn’t have a lot growing up. My dad died when I was young, and my mom … well, people can read about that. In the book I learn a few new things about my past, as it turns out —

    AD: No spoilers!

    ZB: Sorry. As I was saying, respect for my abilities isn’t something I’m used to. So it’s compelling when someone finally appreciates me. I think we all want that, and the chance to earn it. Not a free ride, not a participation trophy. Just, a shot. A chance to shine.

    ZB: As it happened, my shining time came with a demon that let me speak all languages.

    AD: I am jealous of that.

    ZB: It’s not all upside. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s amazing! To go all around this big world, and be… well, not at home exactly, but enabled, connected, able to take part. I can speak Italian. Chinese. Russian. Arabic. I can speak sign language. It’s incredible. Especially in your time, with everyone stuck at home — you have to read it. It’s a wild journey. And with me, you’re in the front seat.

    AD: Your perspective starts and ends the novel, but you share your story with Gabriel Archer. What can you tell me about him?

    ZB: What can I — after all we go through… Wow. I’m not sure. Which is why it works, maybe. If Gabriel were easy, if I could have gamed how it would play out… it would be a very different book, wouldn’t it? On the surface it seems straightforward. Girl meets boy, in a hotel bar. Of course I have a pet demon, but, I don’t need that to interest a guy.

    Except Gabriel’s not at all what I expect. He has a story as strange as mine. Repressed psychic powers? Recruited to work for a guy who dreams future events? That’s original. No surprise, he’s got issues.

    AD: Is that all right?

    ZB: It’s not boring! The trick of it is, neither one of us is perfect. Way far from that. People talk about feeling connected, about completion, about matching. Gabriel and I connect … like Velcro. It shouldn’t work. But it does, stronger than either of us are prepared for. Sometimes it’s enough to be with another person who is also way far from perfect, and knows it. So long as we both respect what we are and what we have. Which is hard for me, and hard for him. When it works … Like I said about my demon: to feel connected, to share, to take part.

    AD: The three of you must have been happy together.

    ZB: Gabriel and the demon? No. Ha. Sigh. No. That’s the second half of the book, when it gets really complicated. A lot of that was hard to go through. I know people reading and listening will find it one heck of a ride.

    AD: Along with Gabriel and your demon, you also have a friend, Missy Devereaux —

    ZB: I’m not supposed to talk about her being a witch.

    AD: I was going to ask about your friendship.

    ZB: Oh! Oops. Yes, we’re friends. She’s very different from me. Wealthy, educated, and she got plenty of that respect thing. She has every advantage. Turns out, despite all that, she still has to prove herself. Or maybe because of it. That’s why Missy and I get along. We’re very different but we both want more. Neither one of us is a sidekick. Maybe you should write a book about her.

    AD: Not a bad idea!

    ZB: Are you writing a book about her?

    AD: No…

    ZB: You sure?

    AD: You sound jealous.

    ZB: I do not.

    AD: Moving on. One last question. In the novel, you often take a look ahead, as it were, with a special Tarot deck.

    ZB: My deck is really cool! It’s called Business Class Tarot. It’s focused on work and professional issues, and it looks like modern life, with representation for all people. Of course it’s still a Tarot, and totally woo-woo. But it works for me.

    So, we done?

    AD: Um… yeah, I guess.

    ZB: Good. I have problems to cause. Nice chatting. Bye!

    AD: Wait! I — OK. Well. I probably should have expected that. Even though she ditched me, you can enjoy more of Zarabeth’s intense adventures in my novel, The Demon in Business Class!

  • I grieve for my beloved Hong Kong

    It has bad air. I was still a smoker when I worked there, and I joked it was protective. It’s impossibly expensive, though plenty of people live there cheaply. It’s a culture clash, crash, and fusion — Chinese and Anglo, old and new, rich and poor, metropolitan and tropical, high-pressure and laid-back. It’s fast, so fast. After you leave, for a long time, everyplace else feels slow.

    Of course I set part of my first novel there, the most raw part, the true climax. That romantic imagined life was my consolation prize. Had my parents been younger when I left my corporate life, I would have moved back there.

    I love Hong Kong.

    Hong Kong’s Lion Rock lit up as protesters gathered at its peak. Photo: Tyrone Siu/Reuters

    I swore a while back not to write about politics, but this is more. Unique places are an endangered species. Hong Kong is its own strange ecosystem, married to change but in love with constancy. I admire its people. They are courageous and vivacious and more honest than most, except when haggling. I fear for them.

    I’ve feared for them since the handover from British rule to Chinese rule, 22 years ago. I was happy for my Hong Kong friends after the handover — there was a pride then, akin to what African Americans felt with Obama’s election. Still, my parents fled Soviet rule. I saw this conflict coming — honestly, I expected it sooner.

    It’s not the same, of course — unique is like that. It’s not left-right, not occupier-colony, not exactly rich-poor. For a shorthand, maybe old-new. Hong Kong is decades older than Communist China, but far younger at heart.

    Call it this, now: One country, two incompatible hungers.

    I’ve never lifted a billion people out of poverty. I do know something about the rare and the special. They are easy to milk and maddening to sustain — but if you don’t sustain them, if you don’t help them thrive, they dry up. There is no more special, and others know you for a fool.

    China made a big deal, the biggest deal, about adopting this shining child, and then refused to understand it. Maybe it was jealous. Maybe it felt threatened. Maybe it wanted a trophy. Maybe it was just indifferent. Hunger, like justice, is blind.

    China risks being a fool now. Soon, I fear, it will risk worse.

  • On being good at sales

    I’m still not totally comfortable with being really good at sales.

    Because, I am. I’m a sales machine. At large comic-cons, my single-title sales are on par with best-selling writers — which is good, because I still only have a single title. (Working on it.)

    Other writers tell me I am good at sales, a complex compliment inside our introverted guild. It helps that, if a reader doesn’t want what I am selling, I will send them to another’s work with equal enthusiasm. I’m good in the booth.

    I have made money in sales, covering all my bills during my year as a ski-bum in Lake Tahoe with a part-time telemarketing job. One of my most treasured compliments was from my manager there, who told me, “You give good phone.”

    I am a fierce fan of my stuff. It’s not for everyone, but it’s for more than might initially see themselves buying it. I see my book becoming ever more relevant to the world outside it. I want the world to know so my subset of it will find me.

    I don’t presuppose any strengths or weaknesses. I say what I have, strongly.

    In a teen-focused genre, I write mature work. At cons and festivals, I say “10 o’clock shows, not 8 o’clock shows.” It’s a happy expression because it’s a fact they differ, it’s not an apology, and it hints at earned privilege, an adult’s welcome relief from explanation or euphemism.

    Demon is a standalone novel. No sequels, except for a Tarot. “A big book, but one and done.” Maybe a fifth of people don’t find that appealing — Vayan con Dios. Most are at least fine if not happy to hear it. We talk about the joys of a certain ending, a lack of commitment, an amuse-bouche while awaiting GRRM.

    While I can spot aligned styles — if you cosplay Death from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, I will sell you a book — even at cons I can’t know my readers on sight, especially since I am winning a few over right there. I assume all bipeds are in play until they make it clear they’re not.

    That said, I know the wrong audience. 1-star reviews never go away, and a good way of avoiding them is keeping your work out of inappropriate hands — or, disappointed hands. I use horror as a flavor, but if you want it as a main course, that’s not my Demon. For action, I have some fisticuffs, but only one drawn gun in the whole book. I have bone-dry acidic wit, but no chuckles.

    I say these things and people buy my books, people of all kinds, in very good numbers for the venue. I don’t know why it worries me, as opposed to the superpower that it really is. Maybe it’s impostor’s syndrome, that I am somehow more appealing than my work.

    Maybe it’s not impostor’s syndrome but honesty, of a kind. My sales self also expresses qualities of my work: unassuming but distinctive, unflinching not crude, erudite not highfaluting, seeking clarity but understanding about the muddle.

    It makes me nervous because it is not sales. It is an art, an ethic — like this blog post, a form of my writing. I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter, because it only works when it does matter.

    Then I’m a sales machine.

  • The safe bummer of legal marijuana

    In the small clear-plastic cube on the counter were two shelves of smoking accessories. On the top shelf, clear glass pipes printed with silhouette men and women having sex; on the bottom shelf, blister packages of metal pipe and grinder combos, in Jamaican flag colors, with a Bob-Marley-ish face in the grinder. The gear was less surprising than the store selling it: a gas station in Merrifield, Virginia, where I had taken my father’s old truck for its state inspection.

    Virginia is not a state with legal marijuana. It wasn’t long ago that the few record stores and novelty stores that also sold bongs and pipes had to sticker them with notices that they were intended for tobacco use. We Americans have all grown used to these fig-leafs being lifted, and to the eventual likelihood of its pan-state (if not national) legalization.

    Still, it disappoints me. Not that I want it recriminalized. I just want it to be illicit.

    The legalization of something already widely accessible is an end to hypocrisy, a chance to research and understand its real effects, and a huge boon to the poorest and least privileged among us, too many of whom still sit in jails for an ever-more legal act. Back when I was an illegal pot smoker — as all American pot smokers older than 30 once were — I certainly would not have wanted to go to jail.

    But, it was thrilling to be illegal, for an hour here and there, and be unscathed. Thrilling, and maybe necessary.

    Criminality is a form of puzzle-solving. You are not supposed to do something, but you find a way to do it, with no great consequence and possible great benefit. It uses the same skill-sets that get salespeople good commissions, that got my father through nine months in a Nazi POW camp.

    I know, in head and heart, that no crime is victimless. Someone suffers. The Buddha reminds us we all suffer regardless.

    So I will just say it aloud for once. I miss the risk and the seediness of being a pothead, the odd skill it took to know whether it was good or not, the randomness of the available product, the curious investigations tracking it down in new places. I miss making bongs out of foil ashtrays and Pringles cans. I miss not explaining that the good wood I sought in hardware store scrap piles was for whittling pipes. I miss scoring my weed instead of shopping for it.

    Samuel R. Delany, a great writer and greatly carnal man, laments the transformation of his youth’s Times Square from dangerous and cheaply decadent to Disney-fied and casual-dining. Breaking Bad‘s murderous, enslaving white supremacists lament helmet laws. I lament legal pot.

    I am grateful that my children, should they choose to use pot when they are adults, will never have to risk prison to get it. I alas feel this safety as a loss. Sometimes I wonder if our anxious populace clamors for CBD because we’ve taken away the risk of getting THC.

    In the way of stopped clocks, do the desperate and the horrid have a valid point about the over-management of modern human life?

    It’s an irresponsible question, but not an idle one. Even the optimists behind Star Trek had to admit, through the invention of Section 31, that society needs those willing to violate the Prime Directive on more than a captain’s whim, and with a very different sense of the greater good. The Devil’s Advocate was a real job in Vatican canonization trials. He kept the unworthy out of the ranks of the saints, and performed penance when he lost. Since John Paul II diminished the office, one could argue we’ve had saint inflation. (Someone should tell The Good Place.)

    The CIA might want to leave the Ivy League to corporate recruiters. The children of today’s Dreamers may be America’s best future spies.

  • Science-fiction is neither cyberpunk nor broken

    In his new Slate essay, Lee Konstantinou opines that Something is Broken in Our Science Fiction.
    He isn’t really talking about science-fiction, so much as its subgenre of cyberpunk, which certainly still influences science-fiction subgenre naming, from steampunk to hopepunk. I’m not sure that cyberpunk has more influence than that these days – but let’s talk cyberpunk, for now.
    Konstantinou calls cyberpunk a genre where the “hacker hero (or his magic-wielding counterpart) faces a huge system of power, overcomes long odds, and finally makes the world marginally better—but not so much better that the author can’t write a sequel.”
    Never mind that this is the story of many novels in many genres. It’s a poor fit to cyberpunk, which usually sweeps its anti-heroes into situations where they are fitfully, perhaps only for a moment, masters of their fate. Usually, cyberpunk contents itself with not letting things get even worse. Its antecedent is the bitter Sisyphean resignation of Philip K. Dick. It’s telling that the book Konstantinou calls a parody of cyberpunk, Snow Crash, is one of the few that really embrace his straw-man of story concept in a funny and self-aware way — though, without a sequel.
    According to Wikipedia, I am twelve years older than Konstantinou. I am fifty-three, so doing the math will show those were a significant twelve years. When he was a kid, he had the hammering-down of the Berlin Wall. When I was a kid, nuclear war, waged across that wall’s spiked concrete, was such a certainty that the network ABC made a prime-time movie about it.
    In that light, cyberpunk was hopeful. Ecodeath and corporate control notwithstanding, we still had a world, and satellite casinos too. To state baldly, as Konstantinou does, that “cyberpunk is arguably a kind of fiction unable to imagine a future very different from its present” ignores that the present got more hopeful after the fiction. In its day it was a vast imagining, counter to both the militarized and the utopian strains of science-fiction, and more realistically human than either.
    Konstantinou also dismisses style, which is a big part of cyberpunk. It’s like faulting Edgar Allan Poe for brooding. Even in our days of smartwatches, the scene in Neuromancer where the AI Wintermute chases after Case by ringing pay-phone after pay-phone is still powerful — BBC’s recent Sherlock steals it to introduce Watson to Mycroft Holmes.
    Konstantinou’s biggest error, of course, is to conflate cyberpunk with the whole of science-fiction. In this century, most good and well-regarded science-fiction books are not cyberpunk, in either setting or style. Now that so much reality has come to resemble cyberpunk, in its technofetishism and anarchic capitalism, we do need new imaginings.
    Thing is, we’re getting them. There’s lots of good sci-fi, and most of it owes its predecessors. No one would call N K Jemisin cyberpunk, nor Ann Leckie, nor Cixin Liu. All of them work in older traditions, and also do many things new.
    So what does Konstantinou want? For his Twitter feed to be less full of optimism and fads, it seems.
    Maybe the problem is less in science-fiction than on Twitter?

  • Thoughts on Eden while mowing my lawn

    In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil on the serpent’s advice, “know their nakedness,” and are thrown from the garden to a life of toil and want – the original sin that in Christianity, Christ died to forgive.
    This sin of the apple is such a tortured and joyless reading of the story that I (nominally atheist, though also not) had to wonder how it has taken hold. Perhaps because we learn it as children, when banishment seems impossibly hard, when knowing nakedness only connotes embarrassment.
    If you let go of this reading, the story is a much better message for adults than for children. It’s an obvious metaphor for adulthood, and of the need to separate from any parent – if you’re gonna have sex under My roof, God tells His creation, time to get your own roof.
    If you are anthropologically minded, it represents the transition from the hunter-gatherer life to stabler but more labor-intensive agricultural life. A fall from grace, perhaps, but with the planet’s grace, hewing our own structures and spaces out of it, using ever more of it, removing ourselves from it with the flaming swords of burning wells.
    Eden is garden, always a garden. Gardens are safe. You don’t worry about running through thorn bushes from lionesses in a garden, but you can still pick a strawberry. We take this idea into our names for safe child spaces, real or imaginary – kindergarten, A Child’s Garden of Verses.
    A garden is a managed space. Adam and Eve don’t mow their lawns or trim the verge – who does? Maybe this is why the angels rebelled.
    To a gnostic, of course, the serpent is the true good in Eden, the pirate message from outside the garden, warning the garden is unreal and pernicious. Think of the clones in Never Let Me Go, or Neo in The Matrix. They know something’s not right in their managed world. The serpent is the path out, and a reassurance that maybe what is beyond isn’t nearly as terrifying as they tell you.
    Maybe you don’t need forgiveness for wanting to leave. Maybe you just grew up. Those flaming swords keeping you from that past? They’re just time.

  • Recovering technophiliac

    I use a MacBook Air 2012, second version of the Air line and model for all that follow. It’s a perfect size for serious work, with a screen that usefully shows a half-dozen apps in a single desktop space. It’s substantial yet light, easily portable, fine in a lap or a desk. It has local storage so no need of wifi for work on the go, and cloud backup the moment it connects.
    At my desk, it runs two HD+ monitors, a backup drive, and any peripheral I need. Home and away, from apps to settings to bookmarks to the structure of the folders, everything is the same on it, wherever I take it. It’s the most useful thing ever.
    Drives me crazy.
    I have an addiction. I like new computing gear. I like to get better gear that does new stuff. A perfect computer can do everything – but that.
    Every other year, I spend good money on e-trash, some quirky machine with a clever feature like a touch screen or small size. Each time, the affair is short-lived, and soon the device ends up housed in a cabinet, so backlogged with updates that I fear to turn it on. My last one went three days from unboxing to reboxing.
    It’s as if I drive a McLaren sports car, every day, but I keep buying new Cadillacs for the bigger cupholders.
    It started out innocently enough. I got into computers as a teen, as a writer, at the dawn of word-processing, still a hobbyist’s preserve but even then superior to typewriters. My then-rare comfort with the technology dovetailed with the dawn of online connectivity as a consumer business. I was rewarded with a prestigious international career.
    If you bought your winning ticket for the mega-lottery at the liquor store, how would that affect your alcohol abuse?
    The same for my success and my need to poke at new gear – even in this new career where (from a gear perspective) I merely key words in empty spaces, and there’s no more technology to master.
    Meanwhile my MacBook Air just works. It’s got another four years at least. Four more years of perfection, of comfort and familiarity and a natural flow.
    Maybe longer.
    The itch is stressful. I am trying to realign it with better pursuits, like the ambulance-chasing lawyer in Banks’s The Sweet Hereafter, proud to have a good use for his anger. When my dad’s old desktop needed its final backup, I taught my son the basics of computer architecture. We rebuilt it at modest cost with new drives, cards, and memory. We did such a good job my dad demanded it back.
    Of course, I spent two afternoons after thinking through and researching how to build powerful desktop machines for different uses from parts at low cost.
    But I didn’t buy anything.
    That’s something.