by Sami Zahringer

Excepting a few lost weekends in the 1990s, yesterdays happen to me on a nearly daily basis. Today’s yesterday was notable for its high emotion and pillow-stabbing, almost the whole cause of which was modern, hi-tech convenience (apart from the part where it was my cat’s fault.)

In the course of enjoying this modern, high-tech convenience, suddenly I wasn’t. The universe conspired (*Shakes fist at Universe*) to snatch from my eager eyeballs the very internet that I rely on to read news, shamelessly snoop on my friends, and take soul-crippling quizzes about which is my spirit color.

“Where are you, BBC News?” I whined usefully at the screen, before emitting a stream of indecorous language that I am not proud of, except for one wee invective bit about the Bishop of York’s festering bottom, some cling-film, and a book called “What’s Wrong with My Snake?”

As if that weren’t enough, there were phone troubles of two sorts. The first was the disappearance of all my phone contacts caused by a system upgrade. Vamoosed! Vanished! Gone, baby, gone. The second was the disappearance, through no* fault of my own, of the entirety of my phone. Vamoosed! Vanished! … etc.

“Seems I can’t have nice things like Communication,” I muttered savagely at the cat, who was not at all acting like he was in the disgrace he, by then, was.

Well the only thing to do under such outrageous conditions was to just sit me right down and write me out a ballad. And, gosh tarnit, that’s whaten’ I done did.

The Ballad of Modern Self-Pityin’

Woke up this morning, and my cat I did rebuke

I say, I woke up this morning, and my cat I did rebuke

Cos between my toes there squirted a

Big ol’ mess of kitty puke.

Made me some muddy cawfee, soon my voice began to moan

Drank that muddy cawfee, boy, you shoulda heard me groan

I stared at my iPhone, baby

Said some words I can’t condone.

Upgrading to iOS 10 has wiped my telephonin’ list!

Lawd! Why’d I do it? I done lost my contact list!

Now all I got’s this iHusk

And it’s made me mighty pissed.

(Mercy!)

Fixin’ to kill me somebody soon here down the line

Feel like I asked for water, and all I got was gasoline

(Parched!)

Gonna kill me an Apple “genius,” man

Cop a plea and do my time.

Oh I may be a housewife, sugah, but I got the right to sing these blues

My crooked teeth qualify me for dem Hillbilly boohoohoos.

I crawled into a whisky bottle, baby

10 a.m, went on the booze.

(Later)

Mild inconvenience made me a killer. O Friends, take heed of my sad tale!

Rottin’ in a jailhouse now, and my soul is sore assailed

I shoulda killed me more, you see

It was a murderin’ iFail

If that ain’t bluesy enough, well you know what you can do

Not soul-wrenching enough? Huh? Din’t make you boo hoo hoo?

Come here and say that, mistah,

We’ll talk it through: your ass, my shoe.

Ooooooh, I got the lost contact list blues!

Me oh my! Got these squishy-toed, lost contact list blues…

(Fade to wailing….)

But then! But then! Grace saw fit to abound to the Chief of Sinners  (Thanks, Grace!) and I am no longer internetless – my modem runneth over! Also, no longer phoneless. Phoneful!

Thanks be to the Technical Sorts. Angels in hard-hats they are, having to go up ladders they probably don’t want to go up, just so people like me can have what I did perfectly well without 10 years ago. Bless them, and the happily unmurdered Apple geniuses (although it was close), and may all their tea-breaks seem thrice as long to them as they actually are.

If anyone wants me, I’ll be hugging the nearest Spectrum service box tight and making happy little whimpers until somebody kind with lovely teeth takes me away.

*Only very slightly more than 50 percent.