I am reminded on a daily basis that we live in a nuthouse, yet for reasons unclear to me, I never cease to be surprised by this realization.  As many of you know, I am in the process of publishing my book, DIARY OF A NAGUAL WOMAN, yet it seems that at every stage of the game, new complications arise.

Just got off the phone with the printer, and must confess to a certain amount of frustration which has me questioning if the project is even worth the effort at this point.  I should point out that I am no novice to publishing in the small press field - made a living at it for over 20 years and essentially only changed careers about 10 years back.  Guess that makes me a dinosaur.

In the good old days (she cackled with an aging, toothless, maniacal grin), I would pack up the hard copy of the book along with the cover photos, ship them off to the printer, and a few weeks later a bunch of boxes containing books would arrive on my doorstep.  Most of the time, the pages were even in the right order, and the covers weren't on upside down.  Huzzah!

Well, this morning as I was asking the printer precisely what I needed to send in order for this miracle to occur, I found myself caught in a miasma of technojargon that would have tested the patience of The Buddha Jesus T. Kirk.  "Unfortunately, we can't print from a hard copy of the cover, but will need instead a digital file saved to CD ROM in the same file format it was created - whether PSP, PPI, DDV or ARSE.  It must be no less than 300 DPI, and while it may be as much as 800 DPI, if it is less than 300 DPI the quasar guided resolution system will self destruct on the outskirts of the Dantooine System, resulting in the loss of life of all inhabitants, and the disruption of the quantum fields for precisely 37.9 megalightyears in all directions.  In addition to this, if the file was originally saved as an RGB file, it must be converted to CMYK before transferring it to disk, or else the entire religious belief systems of your planet will be laid waste due to lack of proper conversion.  Conversion, therefore, is mandatory.  Get with the program.  The program is good.  You will be absorbed.  Resistance is futile."

Eh?

I find myself in a quantum quandary, therefore.  I am but a humble writer with only a limited comprehension of all this technoschnarff which is apparently now required to get the simplest of jobs accomplished.  The pharmacist couldn't even refill my prescription at WallyWorld without something she referred to as "The Computer Tracking System," and at times it seems my cell phone can do anything but make a phone call.  Not sure, but I think I might have accidentally set off nuclear explosions on the dark side of the moon while trying to get to the main menu last week.

Point being... is all of this in any way necessary, desirable or even tolerable?  It has always been taught to me that computers were supposta make my life easier - yet clearly this is not the case.  Never has been, never will be, because in case anybody missed that chapter, we have already moved into The Matrix, and sell our souls in the form of lost time and energy to The Machine World on a daily basis.  It isn't that I'm too old or too dumb to learn the technology - it's simply that I cannot help but see it as yet one more trap of the consensual reality.  For now, instead of just packing up my humble book and sending it through the jaws of the post office to the printer, I have to learn 2 graphics programs, a word processing converter program, the algorhithms required to launch the collective defense weapons of several third world nations, and gawd only knows what else that I haven't been informed of yet.

What's wrong with this picture? 

When did it go from being just a pretty picture, to the need to be 300 DPI converted to CMYK and stored on a CD ROM with 80 MIN and 700 KB?

We live in a nuthouse and the lunatics are running the asylum.  I know, I know, I've said it before.  But sometimes it bears repeating.

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