Totally Blowing Stuff Up Tuesdays: Technological Destruction

Last week was not so good for me.

As you may recall, the old blog broke. Yes, it came back, but it wasn't an easy battle, exorcising all those demons in there. That, unfortunately, was only the beginning of my woeful travails.

On Monday of last week, my computer at work was infected with spyware. *gasp* Yeah, who knew that surfing around on the internet would lead to such a thing! Not I. I swear! Anyway, I got the one where the wallpaper is replaced with a big black box with red letters that reads "Warning! Do not use this computer. It is infected with spyware. You're a very dirty pervert, and you should be punished. This is only a small way of atoning for your sins, you filthy, filthy man. Buy our product, and we'll completely clean up all this here spyware for you. Convenient, no?"

I may have paraphrased that a tiny bit. However, you get the point.

So, not wanting to pay for their product (which would, undoubtedly, put more Chinese espionage programs spyware on the machine), I decided to run a sweep on my own. The computer already had spybot on it, so I ran that. The program did it's duty and I erased a couple hundred dozen things, and I figured things would be good. Only thing was...the spyware warning wallpaper was still there.

I didn't think much of it. I went home Tuesday night, logging off, hoping that it would be fixed when I logged back on. Maybe it needed that switch in order for the spyware to no longer be there. Except, it was still there Tuesday morning. So, Tuesday when I went home, I shut the whole system down. Maybe that would do the trick.

Wednesday...I couldn't log in to the computer. At all. Well, I take that back. I would log into the computer, and the computer would immediately log me right back out. Uh, not good.

Top that off with a phone that wasn't answering when I would pick up the receiver and would randomly cut off and hang up during the middle of a conversation, and I had one dysfunctional desk. I had to call IT and get them to fix me up, which meant reformatting my computer (but it also came with a memory upgrade--nice!). I was more than happy to hand it over for the day, especially if it meant the computer would run faster.

I had all that going for me last week. Along with getting this site up and running so that I could make the switch as seamlessly as possible (thanks, everyone, for understanding and joining me over here), I was getting a little stressed over the amount of gremlins that were plaguing my life.

But, it doesn't stop there.

Moments after Santa squeezed his fat ass back up my chimney, my dryer, overloaded with Holiday Cheer, up and died. Kaput. This dryer is no more. It was not pining for the fjords.

That, I could deal with. A trip to Lowes and the very next day, one large man and two gremlin apprentices carted off my old dryer (after I, alone, unhooked the broken one and hauled it out onto the deck, by myself!!!) and installed the new one. Runs like a top. Dries clothes. Everything you could possibly want from a dryer.

Not one to be upstaged by dryers or HTML code or computers and telephones, my television has decided to start blinking. At first, it was a short, momentary thing, where the picture would blink down into a tiny, dancing ball of phosphers in the middle of the screen. Now, it's doing it more often, so much so that it's no longer a blink but more like a short nap. Interested in finding out where the picture has gone, the sound is now following it.

This could be the straw on the dromedary's back. On one hand, I have the combined President's Day and Super Bowl deals that I can take advantage of. On the other hand, I really wasn't looking to spend $400-$500 on a new television right now. We were planning on replacing the television later in the year, perhaps as a Christmas present, but now...how can I possibly make it through a day without my daily dose of smug Canadian elitism without viewing Jeopardy? How, dammit, how???

So, I present you this: the cathartic end to a parade of technological wonders kicking me in the nuts and stealing the money out of my wallet--blowing up a computer.

I'm not sure which amuses me more, the epic mullet hanging off the back of the camouflage kid's skull or the dude on the bicycle casually cruising along in the background whilst a bunch of hooligans are detonating the cpu of a computer like it's an everyday occurrence.

Being that the mullet's not nearly greasy enough, I'm going with the dude on the bike.

Pruny Fingers Do Not Fond Memories Make

So, this is the week in which Americans, living up to our cultural stereotypes, begin to prepare for days of celebrating the largesse of our agricultural endeavors in a manner most gluttonous: by eating until we want to puke, laying on a couch, putting a hand in our pants Al Bundy style, and falling asleep in front of a football game.

As much as I like to eat, you'd think that Thanksgiving would be one of my favorite holidays. This is not so. I don't hate Thanksgiving, but it's about my fifth favorite holiday, ranking behind Easter but above Memorial Day.

I realize this is about as Unamerican as you can get. Since I'm a simple creature (boobs, bacon, good!), the reason I dislike the holiday is pretty simple, as well. I fucking hate doing dishes.

Now, I'm sure I'm not the only one who did this growing up, but we would pull a multi-meal Thanksgiving. It wasn't just the Thursday that my family worked their way toward the third ring of Hell, but we took in the entire weekend to celebrate the harvest. Thanksgiving wasn't just a day to celebrate the goodness that God or whatever the hell deity was tied in with Samhain in my house. No, it was a motherfucking experience. An extravaganza of culinary delights, if you will.

On Thursday, we'd go to my grandmother's house. This would be my paternal grandmother. Now, my father suffered mightily from middle-child syndrome, and as such he was the consummate dutiful child. Since I was his oldest son, this meant that, by some sick and twisted application of the associative property, I was the dutiful grandson. Never mind that I wasn't the oldest--though I certainly was the wisest and handsomest--I was still the one roped into standing there with my father washing up the dishes from our holiday repast. *shudder* I've seen things done with gravy that are unfit to discuss in polite company.

It wasn't just the rinsing and drying and stacking and putting away of dishes that got to me. No, since my father needed to impress, I was also elected to help scrub the kitchen down. If it wasn't clean and dry enough, my father was whipped up into a Drill Sergeant-like furor. The towel would crack against my ass and I'd be back down on the floor, hands-and-knees aching, using the toothbrush to scrub up every last drop of wayward gravy.

Where was my mother during all this? In the other end of the house, discussing how awful the dinner was with my aunt. My uncle was passed out in a recliner, football flickering on the television. My cousins and brother were in the back of the house, playing board games (one thing grandma definitely had was an abundance of board games to entertain us). So, it was just me and dad, working KP.

Friday would roll around, which meant that we would have our second Thanksgiving meal, at home. After my maternal grandmother had died, we invited my grandfather to come eat with us, which he was all too happy to do. Usually, somehow, my aunt and uncle would also show up. Again, we'd sup and fill our guts full to bursting. And, after everyone was finished eating, while they were sitting around the table, still licking the sauces from their fingers and smacking their lips in fully congratulatory style, celebrating that they were, in fact, better than the potatoes and dressing that they had just devoured, my father would begin gathering up the dishes. Since I was the oldest child, I got drafted into helping. *sigh*

My mother and my aunt would retire to the living room, where they would sit and talk about how great the dinner was. My grandfather would join them. My uncle would pass out in a recliner, football on the television, another hapless victim of tryptophan's vicious soporific effects. My brother and cousin were off playing video games.

This left me and my father to do the dishes. Our kitchen was tiny, and so we had no dishwasher. And, after all, we were gracious hosts. Make some coffee, pour some wine, and clean these dishes up. While everyone else celebrated and enjoyed themselves, I stood in the kitchen, a damp towel over my shoulder, my fingers slowly absorbing the scalding hot water which I used to rinse the soapy dishes. I'd stack them in the drying rack until it was full, and then I'd wipe them off and put them away. My father still scraping and scrubbing the dishes clean in the sink to my right, I would look out the window and wonder just what part of the holiday was supposed to be happy.

You better damned well believe that, when my wife and I were looking for places to live, we found one with a dishwasher. That way I could load it up after the dinner was finished and go pass out in front of the television while football flickered at me, fully reveling in the over-indulgence of the day. More importantly, my fingers weren't all pruned up. Now, that's a happy holiday in my book.

Just Twist That Knife a Few More Times before Pulling It Out, Please

As I fancy myself one of those writing types, I subscribe to the online version of of Poets & Writers magazine. And by subscribe, I mean "sign up for their free monthly newsletter", because if it's free, it's probably good, right? Except for sex with Tara Reid. I like my big, fake breasts to not have Frankenstein-esque stitch marks on them, thankyouverymuch.

So, yesterday, I got the newest version of the newsletter. Being that everyone was so gushingly praising of the little fiction story I put together last week for Pearl's scary story Thursday game, I've toyed with the thought of maybe submitting it to one or two of these writing contests. Because, if I won, that would be full-frontal awesome, right? Right.

With that in mind, I actually took the time to peruse this month's newsletter in order to glean whatever important information I could find therein. So, what to my wandering eyes should appear, but this:



Et tu, Iohanni?

Surely, there must be more than one Jonathan Karp in the world, though, right? Because, you'd think, a stand-up, great guy like Jon would have lent me some advice on how to get some of this shit I've written published, maybe even offered to pass it along to someone in the biz that he knows. Right? I mean, Karp is a very common and popular last name?

Because I couldn't believe the Jon would ignore me like an internet stalker, I went ahead and read the article to make sure it wasn't him. And the verdict is, well...I'll copy and paste some of the article here so that you can read it and draw your own conclusions. I think my mind is made up...

Why don't you tell us about how you got your start?

Well, I grew up in Boston, and if you're from Boston, then you love the Sawx. And if you don't, then why do you hate America so much? Being that they were always robbed of a World Series title, I had a pretty disappointing childhood. When I decided it was time to select a career, I figured I would enjoy working in a field where the rejection and disappointment that I felt as a child would actually help me excel. The publishing industry seemed like a natural fit, and man do I love writing up some rejection letters!

What do you look for in a manuscript when you decide to try and publish it?

I have a rabbit problem in my yard here at Humble Karp Acres in Bawlmore, so I like to see any book that focuses on killing rabbits. I hate those little fuckers. So, if you want to get on my good side, write a story with lots of rabbit death in it. Hell, write it in rabbit blood for a nice touch. That way, if I don't like it, I can give it to my dog, Brady, to tear up while I'm gleefully typing out your rejection letter.

Do you have any advice for someone trying to get their foot into the door of the publishing industry?

Try to focus on the important topics at hand today, like how awesome Tom Brady is. In fact, it would help if you were Tom Brady. I mean, seriously, he threw five touchdowns in one quarter against Tennessee and he goes home and gets some good goal-line penetration with Gisele Bundchen. If that's not a best-seller, then I don't know what is. If you're not Tom Brady, then you better be Jonathan Papelbon, otherwise you're 80% of the way to the rejection pile. Have I mentioned how much I love writing rejection letters? It's almost as great as my award-winning fantasy football team, but not quite. But, seriously, try to be more like Tom Brady. Start by not sucking.

What books really speak to you?

Faithful is probably the best book I've ever read, but I've also got a soft spot in my heart for The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, not that Gordon was all that, but the cover art is awesome. Oh, and I can't forget Then Belichick Said to Brady. That's a classic. Also, Twilight.

Is there anything that puts an author straight on the rejection pile?

Being a motherfucking Yankees fan. You don't need to write a book if you're one of those assholes. Just buy another ring. You've got enough money. You don't need to be clogging up the shelves with your bullshit. I don't like people who use "r"s at the end of their words. Learn how to talk and how to spell, people! Also, if you can't pronounce "Worchester", then you should just be put on an island somewhere with a hairdryer and a bathtub full of water.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case...