Tom Shales

Age of modern miracles, huh? Yeah right. I would estimate based on my past 20 years of usage that one out of 10 amazing gadgets actually does, satisfactorily, what it's alleged to do—without returning it to the factory, pleading for help at the store or kicking the living excrement out of it.

I write this having just had the last word over a so-called "all-in-one" printer and fax machine made by a company whose first initial is "h" and last initial is "p" and I shan't disclose what letters if any go in between. The piece of junk hasn't worked since the day it came into the house, and after one final negotiating session today, Katie Day (Sept. 5, of course), I hurled it to the floor and smashed its guts to bits, an exhilarating instant of conquest over not just one monster-machine but, symbolically, over all the monster-machines that have taken over the world.

What really sets me boiling is when the machine tells you a bold-faced or even mild-faced lie, and repeats it over and over until it becomes a matter of either tearing your hair out or assailing the beastly contrivance—i.e., one of us is going down. "Paper too narrow" for printing or faxing, the Model 2200 kept saying. Too narrow? Narrow??? It was standard 8 1/2 by 11-inch copy and fax paper. There was no way to "widen" it. In fact there was only one practical alternative: destroy the machine, then go out and buy a new one.

That's what "they" depend on, the evil forces that foist this stuff on us all, and it's the greatest job of foisting since the industrial revolution was one day old.
My DVD recorder from a major four-letter named brand? A nearly useless, trouble-prone clunker. The fabulous video game I bought my godson? Unreliable at best, and only able to accommodate one player instead of the advertised two. The pod things all my godchildren wear like charms around their necks? Charmless and only occasionally functioning. Downloaded songs, no matter how legal, are often distorted and fuzzy.

My home PC is ready for the scrap heap after maybe four years of service one could hardly call "faithful." It just stops working, on a whim, and taunts me with lies and red herrings. Its days are numbered, I assure you.

As for cell phones, don't even get me started.

There is but one wonder that still seems wonderful, that has a fairly tolerable failure rate and rarely disappoints me: My HDTV, a rear-projection LCD whopper. Such gorgeous pictures that I get lost in them. The other night I found myself watching a documentary about excavating Outer Mongolia. No bull! It sure wasn't edgy, but it sure was beautiful.

One problem: over-the-air HD signals are extremely sensitive to climatological fluctuations. In other words, when it rains, the picture's all pores. Or high-definition snow or faithfully rendered darkness. But otherwise Dave looks better, Jay looks better, my local news on Gannett-owned WUSA looks better, and by golly, maybe life looks a little better—when some piece of gadgetry actually does what it is supposed to do.

Gee, I wonder how KATIE will look? She may not be HD, but she'll at least be digital. Oooh boy, better get busy cleaning my glasses. Oh but wait—something's beeping. One of my gadgets. Just beeping as if lonely, or wanting attention. It'll get attention, all right, all right.

All right!