I’m pretty sure I have a curse.

Not that I’m personally afflicted by a curse, per se, but I carry a curse which affects things around me.

Electronic things, specifically.

Now.  I’m not one of those completely obtuse people when it comes to all things electronic.  The fact that there are wires connected to other wires connected to various pieces of equipment doesn’t scare me.  I know word processing and spreadsheets and file types and images and even a bit o’ HTML for you webpage tinkering types.  So.  While I’m no computer genius, I’m not completely oblivious, either.

They’re just machines, right?

There is no logical reason for them to succumb to my curse — to know that it’s me, not Justin, tapping away at their keyboards.

Yet somehow, they do.

It’s like I’m King Midas.  Except instead of everything I touch turning to gold (which, let’s face it, wouldn’t be all bad), every computer I touch turns to shit.  And I’m sorry I’m so addicted to swearing Mom, but there is no nicer way to put this.

Two — count ’em, two computers have turned to steaming coils of doodoo just at the touch of my hands in the past week.

Thankfully I live with an un-cursed person who’s managed to save all of my data thus far, but the computers?  They’re dropping like flies on a bug zapper.  Minus the smoke and the funky smell.  Which, frankly, wouldn’t surprise me at this point.

And this little phenomenon isn’t exactly convenient for my job — my job which involves writing and photo editing and submitting to people who run a gigantic website and simply don’t have time to listen to my sob story about fried hard drives and cold, lifeless motherboards and how I would have my piece done except I’m waiting for a full version of PhotoShop to install on a dinosaur of a laptop — a laptop which, hopefully, doesn’t yet understand that it’s doomed at my hands and will hold out long enough for me to finish my latest submission to Re-Nest.

That is, if it doesn’t crash while I’m writing this post.

And it’s things like these that make me long for the days of the simple machines — of typewriters and corded phones cassette tapes and VHS — things that didn’t scratch or crack or short a fuse when you tossed ’em around.  Back in the day, technology could take a beating.

It wasn’t all prissy and didn’t ask to be handled with silk-effing-gloves.

I know old technology had its own set of frustrations, but sometimes I just miss wrapping a coiled phone cord around my waist while standing in the kitchen talking to my friends.

So.  I have to buy a new computer now.  Preferably one that can stand up to my particular brand of curse.

Any suggestions?