I finally got around to replacing
my old laptop, and it
was certainly more than time.
Manufactured during the Truman Administration, it came with a screen saver featuring Lassie and Timmy, kept flashing the error message "what is this internet anyway?" and froze up more frequently than my last girlfriend. Finally it gave out once and for all, emitting a horrid stench as if a skunk had curled up and died inside of it, which is I think pretty much what actually happened.
So the next day I went to my local computer store and purchased me a gleaming new HP Corei5. It was sleek and powerful, the ultimate technological tool to render my humor so witty and razor sharp as to induce riotous laughter even in individuals as totally devoid of a sense of humor as the writers of HBO's The Brink.
But I had not reckoned on PC Calamity Times Three.
As anyone
on the Internet knows, coffee is the beloved patron saint of all writers.
Coffee heightens alertness, unleashes the creative spirit, and propels you to
the most wonderful time you can ever hope to have in the bathroom without
anyone else being present.
So with my 16 ounce cup of Wawa java by my side, I was fast and furiously knocking out my latest comedic gem when an errant hand gesture smacked the coffee cup and sent its steaming contents sailing through the air onto the keyboard of my brand new computer. When the tirade of epithets was over, I began to type once more but some of the letters stubbornly refused to appear.
I
struggled to type out a sentence that materialized as if it were a puzzle from Wheel of Fortune several turns away from being
solved. Unless I could figure out how to write every document from now to the
end of my existence on the planet without use the letters "t, w, d, v, and
b," professional intervention would be in order.
One.
About a
week after I plunked down $200 for a new keyboard, I found myself trying to
access a website that simply would not download. I googled a possible fix for
it and fortunately quickly found a site called "Handy Fixes for Sites
that Don't Download for Naive Morons."
"Great," I said aloud, "I've solved this problem like a champ!"
Totally bypassing the curious nature of the site's frequent use of the expression "alot," I downloaded the proffered software and found myself with a strange new toolbar across the top of the screen, notable in its frequent use of the expression "alot."
Among other things, the malware I'd downloaded kept urging to me to buy a shipment of iguanas from New Guinea.
Two.
The
malware removed to the tune of $200, I was in a hurry one day to get to a
crucial meeting about "nothing important at all" when my foot caught
on a cracked and raised section of sidewalk.
Like the
contents of a steaming hot cup of java smacked by an errant hand, I went
sailing through the air onto my rear end and onto a nearby plot of grass graced
by a nearby pile of dog doo-doo.
I was
unhurt, but my PC screen now appeared half a dozen shades
darker than it was supposed to be, creating an ominous forbidding
atmosphere as if any minute a tornado was about to begin swirling across my
latest blog post about Dracula done as a modern epistolary novel, which no one
would read anyway.
Three.
All
right, I caught a break here. A new screen only cost $125.
And
that's my little tale about my PC Calamity
Times Three. Yes, I need to learn how to be more careful with such
sensitive and important equipment as my new HP Corei5, but I can take
comfort in the knowledge that bad things come in threes. So, as we all know,
nothing more can possibly.....
OMG, what's that horrid stench!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
