Here’s a post I put up on a LinkedIn discussion the other day:
“I doubt that it's possible to hide one's strongly held point of view when writing either fiction or nonfiction. Why bother to preach, which tends to alienate readers, when your opinions/feelings are apparent? Of course, I'm referring to adult readers; kids lack sophistication enough to resist brainwashing.”
Well, I wrote that before my computer was hacked. What I write now, on the same topic, conceals a LOT of my strongly held point of view, because my real feelings are guaranteed actionable. Mama didn’t raise no fool, legal-wise. Also, if I gave full vent, any kids who stumble across this site would definitely have their unsophisticated sensibilities warped.
It wasn’t a big thing, being hacked; some stuff went out in my name that might apply to a “consumer” of a certain age and social class. I’m not a consumer; I’m a picky customer. People who actually know me, and that’s most of my contacts, know I’m also a superannuated, opinionated, geriatric, penurious and mostly easy-going slob. Once aware of the hack attack, I cleaned up my computer and got back to work. Oh, and I got a couple of thumbs-up about my curse: that all the hackers’ toenails come up irreversibly ingrown.
Now, that’s the nature of my complaint today in a nutshell. I don’t know exactly whom to be mad at. It’s an anonymous crime. To use a phrase from the lawbooks, there’s no relief. So I ask you, one and all: is the internet worth giving up one’s identity to some faceless group of consumer-slurping money-grubbing nose-picking losers?
Me, I keep that computer open for the internet only. And I use a different computer and a generic thumb drive for my real work. Guess the hacker couldn’t tell that.
Here’s the next installment of Dead on Dutcher’s Mountain. That Voerst; he’s such slime!
Seven
Gunderson lagged grimly behind the others on the way to the picnic; thus Karl Voerst was unaware that he was being watched. A sword fern slapped Gun's face as he passed the transport van; distracted, he brushed at it well after he passed it by.
The trail was steep, but easing toward a sunny meadow which fronted a patch of azaleas. Huge trees were everywhere else, soaking up much of the light.
Eight years before, Robin VenLoo had strung Gunderson to a timber support in Gunderson’s own mine. The big man had delicately carved the tendons of Gunderson’s hand from the bones in the wrist. Robin VenLoo had then used his victim’s rectum, repeatedly, for loud sex. The bastard had earned every hell an eager, inventive, angry man could devise. As he trailed the party of chattering visitors, Gunderson’s imagination was fully engaged in devising those hells.
Trouble was, Gunderson was an honorable man; he would get his man legally. Robin VenLoo was now Karl Voerst, and he would commit the crime which would provide legal, formal revenge--if Gunderson could just hang on to his cool.
He slowed and stopped. People ahead milled around a sunny clearing which fronted a patch of azaleas. Some wandered off while cafeteria workers erected tables and unpacked food. Voerst pointed farther upslope, earnestly protesting to the busy men.
Suddenly there were faint shouts and confusion descending the shadowed trail. The sunlit tableau became a filmic montage: general rush to the upper end of the clearing, against a little bluff; Voerst lost in the knot of people, then rushing back into the clearing, his fingers helplessly fluttering toward his crotch; the pharmacist’s wife on her knees being sick, still clutching faded azaleas. Then Jones, the little chemist, clearing Webster and everyone else back into the meadow.
Gunderson thus missed the action immediately around Gail’s newly discovered corpse. He caught the important thing; Karl Voerst, Robin VenLoo, standing alone and looking fixedly ahead, an inch from a tree trunk, as if struck blind.
No comments:
Post a Comment