Weblog Entry - 07/16/2003: "Jon^C gave me a blog"

God works in mysterious ways.

Mantrain gave me an account cause no one else would post, and I couldn't really think of anything to post about until I saw the "karma voting" entry option.
Two or three weeks ago, I was at tek's house. We've got a business idea, and while we were searching around on the net I found a really cheap monitor ($8.95 in american money) from thinkgeek or cyberguy somewhere like that. I'd post links, but the ctrl-shift shit doesn't work properly in Opera. Anyway, this was a super fucking deal. Shipping was $40, but for a 19 inch monitor $50 is nothing. Plus, my old monitor was going green. Playing doom was like shooting kermit the fucking frog. An offer I couldn't pass up.
Tek didn't have a credit card (at least, not when we first saw it), so I waited until the next day to talk to a neighbor of mine about using hers. I've had her order some psx games for me when I was offline and was stuck playing Final Fantasy Tactics and other shit all day during the tumor era, so I trusted her. However, she still had the problem she had last time I asked her; still paying off the credit card bills from christmas.
Then nothing for a few days. Tek and Gh0stly and I paid a visit to Mendlesons, which is a huge warehouse downtown with a bunch of electronics and surplus shit. They had a few pos monitors there for the same price, but I didn't have the money on me then. Most were the remains of what some poor sap bought with their IBM ps/2 computers back in the day anyway.
Then the Chatnet idea. Before I got on the internet back in 1998, I was a BBS whore. We had two phone lines, because one was always connected to some bbs or another and the other was used for general shit. Chatnet was/is the most popular BBS here in Dayton. Using ssheed I telnetted into it and got back to talking with old friends I haven't seen or heard from in years. After spilling my plight of the green monitor, a guy from a nearby town offered to give me one of his old unused 15inchers for free. Sounds gay but free is the key word. Problem was, he didn't deliver. I tried getting a time together where either ghost or tek could give me a ride and I pay them to get it, but conflicting schedules ruined it until I eventually lost contact with the guy who was giving it to me.
Taking another chance, I asked another guy if he could order it for me. I didn't really know him, but I had his address, so I figured that if he gyped me I'd go to his house and use my tire iron to give him a rectal exam. He said no, saying that if I couldn't trust him enough to send me an image he SWORE wasn't a penis, I shouldn't be able to trust him to use his credit card. He's probably right too.
So a week passes and Tek aim's me and says, "Hey Tobe! Still got the money? I got a credit card!" Hot dog! Hurray! Finally something going my way!
Then God parts the clouds, looks down on the earth, notices me with a smile on my face, and his face darkens. "Tobester is happy. This cannot be!" Throwing a lightning bolt down, it hits the main server of cyberguy or whatever and changes the price two minutes before we order.
Now it says $199.99. Before Shipping.
Fuck!
I told the guy from Chatnet from who I asked use of a credit card. He responded with "AHAHAHA I told you you fucking shit! It's your karma!"
"Fuck karma. God hates me."
"No dude, karma rules everything."
Fuck him. Anyway, life goes back to normal for another week or two. I get a job cleaning out another house that belongs to my landlord. Good, cause I need money for doomcon/guitar/monitor/whatever. I start cleaning, and except for a corpse hidden inside of a waterbed matress it goes uneventfully. My brother decides to jack off and go with my dad to Pennsylvania so it's just me working in the house. I don't have to listen to his shit. Life is better than normal. Normally this is where it gets bad for me. Once something good happens, God rips out the old General Electric minigun and blasts down my dreams. Cocksucker.
Instead, while working today, I'm throwing shit out into a pile behind the house and I notice that someone else has been using my trash pile as well. Some floorboards, an old paint can, a computer monitor.. a computer monitor!
Before God can send a mexican to take my treasure, I take it inside the house and hide it in the pantry. After I'm done working I take it home, and voila, it works! No more green machine! Furthermore, no more 800x600! It can comfortably handle higher resolutions and refresh rates, but I'm keeping it at 1024x768. There was a snapping sound about 5 minutes after I started it up, but it's been running for three hours now and no other bad signs. Aside from a small, barely noticeable yellow discoloration in the upper right corner and curved sides, the monitor is a gift from God.
Or is it?
I've been pondering the idea of karma lately. I've had people try to sell me on the idea of karma like a preacher tries to convert a sinner. During one of my early radiation trips to Cincinatti, we forgot to bring any money at all with us. We were also near the empty mark on gas. We were pretty strapped for ideas, and my mother, who is a buddhist, started "chanting for money". I thought she was a fucking loon, and told her so, until we parked the car outside of the university hospital. Our neighbor Lily, the driver, stepped out and felt something under her foot. She was stepping on two $20 bills.
After the treatment, the entire ride back was nothing but "Toby! If you chant your tumor will go away quicker!" and "Toby! You're so negative! You're karma is bad!". I felt like stabbing them with an X-Ray machine.
A few weeks later, my mother informs me that since we're poor and I'm not working that she's signed me up for disability. I didn't think I was going to get it. There's pretty much no way in hell someone is going to send me $552 a month for having nosebleeds. You have to be a blind paraplegic with no hands to get that. Or at least, that's what they'll say to me.
In December, I get a letter stating that I've been approved since September, and I'm going to get a $2000 check of back payments. Bullshit. Can't happen. Impossible. God is going to take a shit and it's going to fall on the truck carrying the check, and then give the guy who ok'd my application a heart attack or something.
Sure enough it comes. I buy a nice computer and some other stuff and my mom blows the rest on shit that we don't even have anymore.
I had a point in typing all of this but I can't remember any more.