Itjaw

I’ve got a new computer.

It’s very shiny.

I say it, but I’ve already personified it and sorry but it has to be a man. I think it’s man because:

a)Although very cool looking I would not classify it as beautiful or elegant or pretty… and those are things that I associate with women.

b) I think making it a woman would be weird. I guess this is my form of sexism coming out, I just think that my computer doesn’t get to do anything that it wants it has to do what I tell it to and nothing else. So I think what I’m saying is that I’d rather have a man serving me than a woman. Mostly to avoid the feeling that I’m sexist. But that desire in itself makes me sexist…. Values are confusing….

c) I don’t think many things get named after men. Boats, cars, golf clubs, guns, planes and many other things are usually named after women. I can already tell that my computer is a bit of a rebel, so I think it should buck that trend too.

So from now on I will not refer to my computer as it, as it is now he.

Now to name him.

I suck at naming things. I’m truly terrible. So I got someone to help me, and like the wonderful person that they are they gave me loads of ideas.

One was Desmond.

I like the name Desmond. I would never name a person that because it sounds like someone born in the 1950’s, and the only time that I will get to name someone will be when I have child and that wont happen in the 1950’s… Did that make sense? no… no it didn’t. Oh well…

I also dislike it as a name for a person because it sounds like the name of a butler and that as a general rule is not a good thing. Like Alfred that’s a bad name too.

BUT my computer is not a person, I’m fairly sure. When I was a child I’d watch those shows that would say that we’d all live on the moon and have robot butlers. I didn’t really care about the moon thing but the idea of a robot butler appealed to me. Wow lots of reasons this post. The reason that a robot butler appealed to me was because I am an exceedingly lazy person. Which is why I liked the idea of a butler. I had several problems with the butler idea though.

Firstly, I didn’t like some random person going through my stuff because I know that inside they’d be judging me. I don’t like it when people judge me, even when they’re right.

Secondly, the main reason I disliked the idea was because I don’t like people serving me. I often feel very guilty and I’m not very good at showing that I’m grateful. I really didn’t like the thought of someone doing all this stuff for me and me not being able to show my thanks, and then they would hate me.

Plus there’s the whole thing where we don’t like the class above us and true to form I don’t. I think having a butler would place me well and truly into a class above my current one, then to avoid becoming hypocritical I would have to hate myself.  I certainly don’t like myself but I’ve developed a certain apathy towards myself.

But having a robot butler gets rid of all those problems! So I thought: “Yes! I can still have my butler and I wont feel bad because it’ll be a robot so It wont have feelings and it wont judge me and this show reckons everyone will have one! That takes care of all my problems, unless it turns out that the robot does actually have feelings but that’s a debate for another time.” I didn’t actually think that, I was young what I actually thought was: “I want one.”  But the sentiment was still the same.

It’s now ten years later, and I’m older slightly wiser and a lot more cynical. I now realise that the chances of me getting a robot butler are fairly slim.

The fact is the closest I will get to a robot butler is my computer. Which I am yet to name. At this point, with all the information I’ve given you at this stage, I think it is fairly easy to follow my train of thought when I decided to name my computer Desmond.

Quite a complicated train of thought for such a simple thing like picking a name but still… If you’re gonna do something you should always do it in a really complicated way. That’s how the saying goes isn’t it?

Itjaw

p.s. when I wrote Itjaw I was tempted to write about how I came up with that name… But I don’t really like that story, so it will have to remain with the 5 or 6 people who know already.

p.s.s I put this in the Celebrate! categories because he is really quite a nice computer.