Punchable Monitor

I recently acquired a new computer. It’s a hell of a lot faster than my old machine (which was, basically, just one small step above an abacus): it also has more memory, more hard-drive space, better sound and graphics cards – in short, it’s a quantum leap forward from my old hunk of junk. But it does have one fatal flaw. Every so often, with no prior warning or apparent cause, a wee window pops up telling me that “(whatever-program-I’m-running) has generated unknown errors and will be shut down”. So informative. Sometimes it lets me click on the very helpful “Cancel” button and then makes me wait for a minute or so before the program is shut down (presumably to let me contemplate the amount of work that I’m actually losing by my computer’s fit of pique), and sometimes it just skips that nicety entirely, and in a split second I suddenly find myself staring bemusedly at my desktop again, wondering where the application and the thing I have been working on has vanished to. And then there are the times when the damned machine just instantly decides to restart all of its own accord, paying no heed to whatever I might be doing at the time. I had thought that machines were supposed to be our faithful servants – only now do I find that they have minds of their own. And evil ones at that.

So, in order to calm the blood vessel now throbbing in my head which I previously never knew I had, I’d like someone to make a punchable monitor. Perhaps an inch or two of some kind of transparent gel in front of the screen would suffice. I don’t want to break my monitor (or my hand), I just feel the need to register my displeasure in an explosive, physically satisfying way.

In an ideal world, there would be sensors at the edges of the flat gel bag in front of the screen, which would register any significant impact and then cause the monitor to spin round through at least 720 degrees, look down and shake itself from side to side slightly (like cartoon characters do after a blow to the head) and then shamefully raise itself back to its former elevation, almost as if it’s afraid to look you in the eye again. Sheepish desktop image and “rblubllublubella” (sp?) noise as it comes back to it’s senses would be optional extras.

P.S. If anyone knows what might be causing my new computer’s recalcitrance, please let me know. You may even save me having a premature stroke.