Robbed

saturday night i went to a metal show in the suburbs with my roommates. we were gone for a good eight hours. when we got back, someone had gotten into our house and taken two laptops, four ipods, a camera and our xbox 360. we called the cops; they filled out a report but didn't give us much hope. they suggested we go to local pawn shops today, and when we did i discovered much of the same - nobody had our stuff, if they got it they'd call us, but don't expect much.

i try not to be materialistic. god knows i haven't had a lot of anything in my life; working two jobs for the last eight months should mean i'm well set, but i'm not. the extra money goes to support my friends, and i'm okay with that. i didn't really feel like i needed much more than what i had; a good computer that was able to run any damn thing i asked it to, and a magic box that gathered video games and netflix and goodwill all around our tv. we weren't happy, but we were content.

now we've lost that stuff. granted, it'll all get replaced - slowly - but, fuck, i thought i put in my time! i'd about run out of patience with this whole bare-bones living situation when i was gifted the laptop back in october (yeah, it wasn't even half a year old yet), and even if that didn't change the state of the house or the apocalyptic wasteland that is my financial history, it sure as hell made things more tolerable. i finally had an escape; one place where i could be sure everything ran right and would always be there, because it was mine, and mine alone.

now that's gone, and goddammit i'm getting tired of having to show the stoic face. i've watched the internet grow up - i started off unhooking our house telephone to hook into our modem to play diablo 1 with my friend across town. i watched napster and cd burning technology hit the scene together and almost annihilate the record industry. i was the last guy i knew online still using 56k, and until college never had a 'modern' pc in the house, much less to my own.

point being, i paid my dues. i don't want to have to spend four minutes waiting for webpages to load anymore. i'm tired of telling my friends, no, i can't check out your youtube link or chat with you on facebook, because my fucking computer can't handle it. i got my first ever on-the-spot photography job that night, and now i'm not going to have those pictures fixed and edited for them for a week because i don't have the patience to sit down and spend four hours on what i KNOW should be a 30-minute job. it sounds petty, but... fuck! i feel like i deserve better. my karma's not golden but i try to keep it polished anyway.

yet here i sit at 2am, waiting for craigslist to load for the tenth time today so i can plug 'qosmio' into the 'for sale' search box again, hoping against hope that mine shows up. instead, i'll just get choked up looking at the same four listings that have been there all week, listings that aren't doing me any good but reminding me of what i lost.

it's like losing a loved one, like breaking your glasses, like getting fired from your job. all at once. i wouldn't wish this on anyone.