brokedown palace

I was out of town for a week. When I returned, my laptop's hard-drive decided it would be fun to pretend to die. Probably punishment for leaving it alone so long. Luckily my computer whiz b/f managed to resuscitate it long enough for me to transfer my important files to a Zip disk. Then we tried to purchase a replacement hard-drive at CompUSA, which turned out to be sheer torture. Several employees were in plain sight, but we had to wait 20 minutes for one particular representative to help us, because apparently none of the others who were standing around could do his particular task. 20 minutes behind a couple with a child that was hacking like he had black lung disease - oh and did I mention I am a huge germophobe? I was anxious to see what specialized services this man would be performing for us, after such a long wait. When the representative finally directed his attention to us, all he did was call to the back for a part, and we waited another 20 minutes for the part to make its way to the front of the store. Unfortunately, the connector was the wrong size and it would not fit. So it was a total waste of time.

Adding to the fun, our refrigerator conked out. I know, it is like our house had some kind of electromagnetic force field surrounding it! Contact the Exorcist. Of course that means we had to transfer what we could into 2 ice chests and throw the rest out. We left a voicemail with the property managers and our call went unreturned all weekend. I called first thing this morning and spoke with somebody who claimed they never received our message. Nice. They did send someone to fix the refrigerator, and it is running again (oh, better go catch it, har har) BUT even some of the stuff we tried to 'save' in the cooler went bad. The ice melted slightly and made some stuff waterlogged and generally gross. I am beyond irritated because on more than one occassion in the past I mentioned how old our refrigerator is, and how they should really consider installing a newer model before it goes kaput for good. The light and the ice machine weren't even operating when we moved in here three years ago! My mom said the owners of our unit are just hoping to sell it without having to put any more money into it, but I think that is really shitty.

I don't enjoy feeling outrage over the various ethical violations I encounter. I am sad people even behave improperly in the first place. Why can't everybody act right? But what makes me even MORE upset is when I run an offense by a normal, uninvolved person - and there is not even a smidgen of righteous indignation demonstrated on my behalf. Principles, people. Has the world misplaced its senses of justice and fairness? Society will merge into anarchy if everybody lacks morals. I'm not one of those freaks who believes the world should be Pleasantville, because I'm a realist and understand it is impossible as we are all human and make mistakes and nobody is perfect (including myself). However, I think it is pretty scary when people tolerate unacceptable behavior without question. I hope these aren't evidence of the collapse of mankind, like the way my laptop made weird clicking noises or the stuff in the freezer door started to feel a little warmer than usual were indicators shit was about to collapse.