Resistentialissimus

Last week our big projection television lost its electronic mind and began showing pictures in strange colors, and also breaking the images into streaks and blotches, while making a noise like something inside was whirling around furiously losing pieces, and getting ready to explode. We turned it off and moved a back-up television from my office into the living room. We seldom leave the house and television is our main form of entertainment, and I didn’t really need to watch TV while working on the computer, did I?

On Sunday the microwave committed seppuku. My husband and I could see a fire blazing away through the screen that vents the works inside the oven . The fire stopped when we opened the door, so it wasn’t actually on fire, but it was sparking something fierce, and the smell of singed wiring and plastic was terrific. Whew. We removed the microwave from service.

I’ve been cooking everything on the stove all week, remembering how I prepared food for the first 20 years of my adulthood and kind of enjoying it, but there were rumblings among the tribe about the inconvenience of not having a microwave for, say, warming up cold coffee, or heating corn dogs. We had to wait 45 minutes for a chicken pot pie to be done. Oh, the humanity! Today I bought a new microwave.

The washing machine has been making an ugly grinding noise at certain parts of its cycles for months now, and the repairman who fixed our dryer last year predicted the washer would go down sometime this year. I looked at it and said, "What? It’s only ten years old!" The repairman informed us that front loading washing machines are not constructed in such a way that this particular problem can be repaired. The gears are permanently sealed inside a container that is welded shut. Bad engineering, I say, but good for re-sales, I suppose, if you think ten years is a long time for a washer to last, and have the money to get another one.

When the kids were infants I had an avocado green Kenmore washer, a top loader, that I bought at a garage sale. It soldiered on through the diaper years and beyond without complaint. I think it lasted about ten years for me – but it was several years old when I bought it. I guess they don’t make ‘em like that anymore. I cruise craigslist and VashonAll in preparation for when the day of washer doom arrives. Not yet. The noise is aggravating, but the machine still works.

Machines can go on like machines, but they do eventually wear out. It seems a little strange when several things go down at once, though. One time, years ago, something broke down and I complained of it to my husband.

"Ah," he said, "Resistentialissimus."

"Say what?" I asked.

"The hostility of machines toward human beings," he replied.

If you look it up online, it comes up as "resistentialism: a jocular theory in which inanimate objects display hostile desires towards human beings." Jocular to the machines, maybe.

Once a machine stops working, whether it’s worn out or hates its human masters, there is a new problem: how to get rid of it. I went online, and told my husband, "I found out that King County has a place where we can drop off the television and the microwave."

He asked, "How far can we drop them?"

I looked at him, and he said, "I’m a guy. We want to know these things."

Last night my netbook died abruptly. A little investigation showed that it was not quite plugged in, and the battery had run down. Once I adjusted the cord and plug, it started right up again. It shook me up until I figured it out, though.

I’m starting to look at all my helpful electronic devices and wondering if they are biding their time, waiting for that perfect moment to jam, leak, blow up, break down, or catch on fire.

Eh, it’s all right. Better them than me.