Dyer's Howl!

Near the end of Shakespeare's King Lear, the eponymous ex-ruler enters bearing the body of his dear daughter Cordelia. He cries ...

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so
That heaven's vault should crack. (5.3)

Sidebar: Not too many years ago in Stratford, Ontario, we saw a production of Lear that featured Lear actually saying "Howl, howl, howl, howl"--pronouncing the words carefully. Usually, the King just, well, howls during that entrance--as he did at the past summer's Lear starring Colm Feore in the title role (see photo).

Lots of folks, of course, know about Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl, a work that involves a different kind of rage and sorrow.

I now propose another reason to howl--though I do not wish in any way intend to imply that my Howl is at all equivalent to Lear's--or Ginsberg's.

No, Dyer's Howl is for a computer system that totally fails--the second time in the past few weeks. Yes, Monday morning, nothing would load or execute properly, so I took it over to the local computer rescue place here in Hudson and am waiting to hear from them about what's going on.

I suspect it's my fault. I've been experimenting with various video editing software (I'm preparing a short, simple video for an event in a couple of weeks), and I'm pretty sure I must have downloaded something rich with viruses--or some malware disguising itself as a reputable program. I knew I shouldn't download and install something I'm not positive about--but, hey, I'm King Lear, right? What could go wrong?

Plenty.

I'm not working with my previous laptop (recently repaired for malware invasions--or, probably, invitations), a machine I'd "given" to Joyce as a back-up and for travel (she uses a desktop). It works fine.

And I am grateful that I've been backing up files like a paranoid, though, now, I'm pretty sure I'm not a paranoid: People out there really are out to get me (and you). So, I've got flash drives, an external hard drive, and a commitment to upload many key files to OneDrive, where they float in a "cloud" until I need them. Which seems to be quite often.

Meanwhile, I've learned a sad lesson (which I thought I'd learned a couple of weeks ago). And I've also resolved that if I were a young man beginning his profession, I might elect to become a hitman specializing in operations against hackers, and virus- and malware-creators. I would make a fortune!

Howl, howl, howl, howl!

PS--They called. Viruses. Malware. $$$$$