Free the Shively Volvo

Jews aren't really big on Satan. Actually, since nobody is really big on Satan, let me rephrase that. Satan does not loom large in the Jewish consciousness. In the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament), Satan is actually called HaSatan (rhymes with Anne) and is usually seen as something akin to a district attorney who lays out the charges against you before God, not as the horned man with a pitchfork of later Christian imagination. Many Jews, myself included, really don't believe in Satan at all, seeing him largely as an allegorical figure.

I tend to be pretty staunch in that theological position except at times like today when my computer suddenly goes on the fritz. Then I feel compelled to believe it must be the work of demonic spirits or even of Ole Lucifer himself. How else can I explain my computer's propensity to encounter these problems at such amazingly bad times?

Or is it amazingly good times? I'm returning to America in two days, after all, which means I won't need to repeat the scene I described in a December post (see: http://fareastsideminyan.blogspot.com/2008/12/remont-strating.html). As luck has it, I'll be staying at the home of a couple of very close friends, one of whom, I suspect, would run her own computer repair shop if God had not called on her to run a non-profit assisting the Jews of Uganda (yes, Virginia, there are Jews in Uganda). I can probably get her to take a look at it and at least tell me what is wrong.

On the other hand, since I turned in my company-provided cell phone a couple days ago, and the phone in our flat is not working, I am temporarily completely incommunicado. If anyone needs to reach me over the next couple of days, do send an e-mail: I will be checking my e-mail at my school starting Monday. Until then, there's nothing I can really do.

More to the point, as readers of my December post will recall, this is not the first computer-related drama I've had in Russia. I've bought a total of not one, not two, but FOUR power cords since I've been here. Two of them spontaneously died--one after it fried the insides of my machine. The third worked fine but had a socket attachment that eventually started to wobble and wiggle and generally refuse to stay in place. After that, I was forced to go back to the incompetent computer chain that sold me the first two, wrong power cords and buy my fourth one, which I suspect has something to do with this latest computer "issue".

All of this started last night, when my computer started rebooting itself for no apparent reason. At first I thought I had hit something somewhere, but after the second or third time it happened I got messages telling me to run some kind of automatic screening system before loading Windows. Then today, it wouldn't come on properly at all--similar to what happened when my processor got fried the last time.

Dealing with computer repairs--or car repairs, or any other kind of repair--tends to make most people feel incompetent and helpless even when they're in their own country and can communicate about repairs in their own language. Doing it abroad tends to triple or quadruple the chances of being fleeced, flim-flammed, or being just-plain-wrong advice. I'm glad I'm not going to have to go through this one more time.

It's sort of fitting that this is happening to me just as I'm gearing up to go home and am starting to think of various things--necessities and otherwise--I intend to purchase once I'm back. Close to the top of my list is Designing Women, which is finally being released in DVD season-sets after years of apparently ugly wrangling over music rights. In one memorable episode, I recall the Sugarbaker gals deciding, after seeing the sweatshop where their curtains are sewn by women paid by the piece, to strike a blow for all women everywhere by picketing the garage where Mary Jo Shively's car is being held hostage by price-gouging mechanics. As the lights fade out and the ending credits appear onscreen, we hear the women screaming, "Free the Shively Volvo! Free the Shively Volvo!"

Will someone please free my Volvo?