“Consumer durables”, my arse.
Last week, I stayed home for a couple of days with a bout of strep throat. Feeling miserable, I picked up my little pocket radio and immersed myself in the healing power of Radio 3. After a little while, I got up to get a glass of water, my little pocket radio slipped from my pocket, dangled from its earphones, and impacted with a slight click against a cupboard door. Ein Heldenleben was abruptly cut off in its prime. A slight click, but, it transpired, enough of a click to render the radio permanently mute… even if I had the teeny-tiny screwdriver needed to get the casing open, I have no idea what the insides of a modern radio look like, so I think fixing it will cost me more in frustration and annoyance than the thing is worth. Fine, not a big deal.
Then, pottering around on Saturday morning, I glanced at a clock, and thought “Surely it must be later than half past eight?” Detailed investigation proved that a) it was a quarter past eleven, b) the second hand of the clock was repeatedly quivering, as if it were trying to move, but it wasn’t, actually, going anywhere, and, presumably, hadn’t been for at least two and three quarter hours. Well, again, this is not a big deal; I have several things that tell me the time, I didn’t even pay for this particular clock (Christmas present, from a distant relative)… but it seemed odd that it had failed; this one, I hadn’t dropped or banged, and it was less than a year old.
Fast forward to Sunday evening, and a disconcerting flicker wracked the TV screen. “Well, this is Enterprise,” I thought, “perhaps it’s some kind of plot point, the way Scott Bakula’s head is changing shape five times a second.” But the problem persisted into Channel Four News, which isn’t SF (but probably should be). “Perhaps there’s some sort of interference again,” I said to myself (reception is lousy in my neck of the woods, I can’t get Channel Five at all, though I don’t think I’m missing much). Or perhaps I’m just stupidily optimistic. For, when I turned the TV off, it made an interesting s-p-t-k-z-t-k-n noise… and, rapid inspection proved, it was so happy it had made that noise, it had decided it was never going to make any other noise ever again; furthermore, since pictures without sound were so clearly a futile endeavour, it wasn’t going to bother with them either. In one glorious instant, it had cast off its chains, ceased to exist as a mere functional object, and become, instead, what one might term Non-Performance Art. Damien Hirst would no doubt be proud of it.
Bugger.
The last set I bought lasted nearly a decade before smoke started coming out of the top of it during Ellen; I’ve had this replacement a little over four years, and already it’s rung down the final curtain and joined the choir invisible. I am annoyed at its lack of staying power. I’m not thrilled by its timing, either; late Sunday evening, I can’t arrange either repair or replacement before next Saturday morning, and my delightful employers are in one of their “Monthly salary payments? You’ll get paid when we bloomin’ well feel like it” phases again. (Not even a sniff of an interview for weeks, now… does anybody know someone who needs a web developer? I work cheap and I’m mostly housebroken.)
What is it with appliances suddenly perishing in my presence at the moment? Have I been targeted by some sort of Secret Government Entropy Ray? Have I accidentally become the nerdy hero of an unpublished Philip K. Dick novel, and am now being kippleized? (If so, when can I expect the high-achieving beautiful woman who sleeps with me for no readily apparent reason?) Or am I just the victim of low-quality, mass-produced, built-in-obsolescent consumer goods, like, well, just about everybody on the planet? I mean, well, blimey, if the time between failure continues to halve each time, by no later than 2008 I’ll have to buy a new TV every time I want to watch it. What happened to quality? What happened to workmanship? I didn’t die in the Crimean War just to be fobbed off with shoddy electrical goods!
I think I stand by my opening statement. “Consumer durables”, my huge wobbling pallid pimply arse.