Pages

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Death to Laptops

I've known for awhile now that I need a new battery in my laptop. When you own a laptop that is just a fact you have to face. But you see, recently, and just after the battery fully died, the power cord to said laptop also crapped it pants. I was able to fix it with duct tape, but this was only temporary. I guess duct tape can't fix everything; my world has been destroyed. This left me with no main computer and a two hundred dollar bill to get the replacement parts. Thus, I hate laptops. I have for a long time and this only reaffirms it. I don't care how convenient it is to sit with one on the couch while you watch TV. That's what the iPad is for, that and moister prevention.

You see, no matter how much money you throw down to get a laptop, eventually it will get cracked or bent or thrown off a dock in a fit of rage because the battery died just before you got in the final ebay bid on that giant William Shatner poster you always wanted. My wife wants our next computer to be another laptop and I told her she'll have to kill me in my sleep before I bring a new one of those over prices paper weights into my home. At least not before I get the shiny new iMac I want; but that's beside the point. Did I mention this is not the first time I've replaced the battery? Did I mention I've also had to replace one of the cooling fans? I know desktops have problems too, but they don't have batteries. You don't carry them around and expose them for hazards like weather, backpacks and stupid people looking over your shoulder at the library or coffee shop like they've never seen a laptop before.

And honestly, with mobile smart phones and tablet computers, I sometimes think the traditional laptop could be on the way out. But then again so could our civilization in general; did anyone watch Jeopardy a couple weeks ago, that Watson computer is just one more step toward Skynet. I was shocked when the show ended and Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't show up and start shooting at us with bazookas and mispronouncing simple english words. Technology is so helpful in helping us do things we never really needed to do in the first place. Really, all we NEED to do is eat to live, reproduce to replace and shit to, well you know, empty out. I guess in some way the computers are helping us do that; except for the people who sit in their basement and play video-games and watch porn, but do we really want them in the gene pool anyways?

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Rage Quit

I quit. Cars that is, I quit them. What two face backstabber came up with that industry? “Here I’ll sell you this vehicle for a ton of money but I’ll see you again real soon when you starting having problems with it.” Awesome. I’m going to buy some horses. I’ll ride everywhere I need to go. If something isn’t in reasonable range of me and my horse, then I don’t really need to go there. But knowing my luck the horse would break a leg and I’d have to shoot the damned thing and make some glue, or dog food. Even then, at least it would be useful to me unlike cars which break down and become the eye sore of rural lower class America. I might as well scatter a few plastic flamingos and half naked children around the yard and throw a barbeque. I’ll buy some Bud Light and wear a cut off denim t-shirt with a Dale Jr. hat and cook up some road kill steaks; skunk is in season. Odin help us all.

You would probably like some context? So would I. I’d love to know what fate deciding ass hole crapped on my head. I have recorded my past problems in the automotive department in previous postings: The Tire, A Lost for Words, The Bad Friday and The Mouse: so I’ll spare you the recap. The wife and I decided to go to Huntington for dinner Friday night. In our normal run of luck, we both got off work late and were rushing around the house to get going. About three minutes after we left, my sometimes lovely wife turns and asks:

“Did I leave a bottle of Diet Coke in the dogs reach?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I left the cap off! Oh my God, what if Winston (the dog) gets it and dies?” I assured her this would not be the case and the bottle was not left out. We proceeded to Huntington. Around about ten minutes from our destination, we hit a large bump in the road. I thought nothing of it and we went on for a minute or so, when I realized the bump caused us to flat. We later went back to discover the hole was actually a branch of the Grand Canyon; how did I not see it? So since July we've dealt with three flats now. Actually, my wife and I are now past three years of marriage heading to four and we are averaging two flat tires per year of marriage. It was also very dark outside. Before I got out of the car, my wife asked if I knew how to change a tire and I almost lost it. She later clarified that she meant if I knew how to change the tire on the new car. I shook my head and told her to make me a sandwich. Then I threw that damned donut on the new car and we rolled out to the Olive Garden. I mean, we were already there, may as well eat.

After a moment, I started thinking; perhaps some place is open that could change the flat real quick so we don’t have to drive the donut home. The Wife called both Wal-Mart’s in the area, one was closed and the other didn’t answer. I gave up until we got to the mall and I remembered that Sears has an auto center. Saved! And they where still open! We pulled up and showed them the tire. This was the first time I had a chance to see the flat in the light. I noticed at the same time the mechanics did, the large dent in the rim. They quickly informed me they could not fix it and sent me away because they wanted to close and go home to their families or porn, feel free to incert the word of your choice. People helping people, that’s what this world is all about.

So we went to Olive Garden. The relatively short wait seemed like a silent eternity as we sat and watched the fat nine year old girl across the waiting room wearing spandex short shorts do cartwheels and jumping jacks in the crowded space while the parents just pretended the kid wasn’t fat or annoying. Way to carbo-load your poor child and teach them to eat away their sorrows. Good luck with Weight Watchers in twenty years kid. Finally we were seated. I was happy to sit until I realized two things at the exact same time. First, those little mozzarella pushers put us right by the kitchen door that did nothing but slam all night. Second, they sat us at Andre the Giant’s special reserved table. If I’m uncomfortable with the height of the table, my poor wife (who is a foot shorter than I) must feel like a Hobbit.

Our conversation the rest of the evening was on our misfortune, the costs involved in fixing the tire, my concerns about drive home on the donut: among others. Yet all these pressing matters and still, after dinner and the movie as we settled into the car for the ride home, my lovely, caring, beautiful wife turns and asks: “Do you think the bottle of Diet Coke is okay?”

I drove the car off an embankment, into the Ohio River. I’m writing this from the beyond. Have a nice life.

*Rage quits*

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Zen and the Art of Rambling

I sat down to think about this weeks post, but nothing came to mind. However, my desire to consistently post; so not to leave the blog barren and sad face, as in the past, pushed me forward to this point. At this moment I have yet to gel on one particular idea. Sometimes my mind is jumping off so many cliffs I don’t know whether to hold my breath, protect my face or shit my pants. If someone paid people to daydream I’d be Bill Gates, without the glasses and unoriginal OS. Alas my dreams are prisoners to my mind, unless you all possess Inception capabilities. Now there was a good movie I hope to high hell they don’t make a sequel to. I’m tired of terrible, unnecessary sequels. Doesn’t anyone in Hollywood have anything original to say? How hard is it to just not copy everybody else? Here, just off the top of my head:

Two guys suddenly find themselves walking through the desert wearing women’s clothing. They don’t know each other and have no idea how they got there or even who they are. Soon they come upon an oasis and living in that oasis is an old woman who trades them some men’s cloths for the women’s cloths and predicts their futures. She says one of them will live and remember everything; the other will die. They both think this is utter bullshit until they find a coffin hidden at the bottom of the oasis lake and inside it, pictures of one of them with people he doesn’t remember. The man in the pictures looks very happy. They assume the man whose pictures are in the coffin will be the one to die. They search the oasis for more artifacts but find none. Soon they run out of food and return to the old woman only to see she has turned into a lion who wants to eat them. Insert five-minuet chase scene.

The old woman lion catches them both because they were too stupid to spit up and tells them, still as a lion, that she will eat one and spare the other. The man whose pictures were in the coffin steps forward to accept his fate. But the other man, who still has no memory of his past life, reflects on the pictures they found of the other man. He puts himself forward to be eaten, so the other man might find his happy family again. Just as the lion goes to take the first huge bite out of the man’s ass, a helicopter moves over a sand dune and a sharp shooter takes down the lion. The men are saved until they realize the crew of the helicopter is after them, not the lion. The men are taken to a strange compound and raped mercilessly. Just before one of them dies, he looks at the other and says "I remember..."

Well you get the idea; it’s not that hard to come up with original ideas. I’d watch that movie, as long as the writer was able to conjugate an ending that tied all that crazy shit into a nice little bow and spoon-fed it to me so my Neanderthal mind would understand. How hard could that be? Speaking of hard… salami sandwiches, I haven’t had one of those in a long time. Which obviously brings me to that sham of a theory called time. I mean seriously, what bull. But go ahead and keep living in your little dream world where the sun comes up because it's time too, not because your pathetic little spot on the earth rotated to face it. So, this seems like enough for now. Remember, if life gives you lemon-lime Gatorade, combine it with some antifreeze and you have the perfectly disguised poison for your enemies.

Dump, out.

P.S. Don't forget to follow me on the Twitter!

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Sweating the Small Stuff

One of these days I’m going to slip at work. Instead of saying, “Have a nice day!” or “Thanks for choosing us!” I’m going to loose my mind and say something to the effect of: “Next time you have a thought, make sure to call your doctor: he’ll want to know you’re slipped out of the coma.” But, they probably won’t get it.

It’s the small stuff. Sometimes it is stuff no one else even notices. I can handle the big problems, because they can be fixed. Everyone notices the big problems and wants to fix them. But everyone says you’re crazy or nitpicky when you go bat shit insane because someone took the last coffee pack and didn’t tell you and now everyone’s annoyed with you because you didn’t order more. I try hard to do the best I can and keep to myself, in everything: life, job. But this small stuff is slowly chipping away at my very soul; soon I’ll have enough pieces to make a horcrux.

I’m sweating buckets of small stuff. If you sit in line at McDonalds for five minutes and then get to the speaker and still don’t know what you want: please die. They have… hamburgers. If you like Avatar because of its awesome 3D and original story: go Google Pocahontas and then go outside, look around and realize everything you see is in 3D, why is it more awesome when you box it down and put it on a movie screen? If you drive ten under the speed limit in light rain and twenty under the speed limit in light snow, please drive thirty under the speed limit off a cliff. If you like Twilight, if you think the books are well written, if you think the movies should be nominated for awards: I don’t know you. Vampires do not sparkle.

Dear old people: learn to use computers; if it kills you, you probably weren’t that far from death anyways. If your name is ridiculous and made up, because your parents were drunk when they conceived you and high when they named you, go change it; no one is stopping you. Teachers, you get summers off, holiday breaks, weekends off, snow days, spring break and are generally out of the school building by at least four-thirty. Stop whining, you have a great job! Guy with huge lift kit on his truck, you can jack that sucker up all you want buddy; it will never make your penis bigger. Speaking of impotent, retard hill jacks- if your house looks like an abandoned meth lab and you have four starving kids that don’t love you: yet you own a really nice pimped out car, a 72 inch TV, fifteen dogs, every season of The Dukes of Hazard on DVD and Blu-ray or have a tattooed map of Azeroth on your ass, I have no sympathy for you or your hepatitis.

And I haven’t even scratched the surface.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Dump the Twitter

My wife thinks the strange, incoherent thoughts running through my head would be even better via microblog. Thus, I present to you, @Dumptheblog, my twitter feed. I'll try this out for a few weeks, along side the regular blog and see how it goes. The side bar will also have the latest updates embedded in the blog itself so you don't have to put forth any more effort that you lazy bums do already. Anyways, I have to go and start tweeting. I feel so dirty.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Feb-R-uary

Seriously February, you suck. Your short, and have letters you don't need. You have an extra day every now and then, what the hell's up with that? You're cold and can only muster two stupid holidays, that aren't really even holidays. No one likes you February, not even people born in you.

And furthermore, what’s up with the Super Bowl being in February the last few years? As if the season isn’t long enough. What next, they start playing the college National Championship on January 10th? I mean the NFL is already trying to add two more games to the schedule. Madness. Before long Football season is going to be just like NASCAR and Golf, does anyone know when their seasons actually end? I think they get a long weekend off so something.

I don’t generally side with the babyish over paid athletes who play a game and make more money than I’ll ever even see, but here I may agree. When I ran in high school and college, my best days were after long rest between races. I hated it when we had short rest or more meets than usual, and Cross Country and Track are non-contact sports. I mean has anyone seen Jerome Bettis try to walk lately? No? That’s because he can’t. Now imagine what two more games a year might have done to him. Maybe in fifteen to twenty years when all these guys start dieing in their fifties someone will ask if it’s a good idea to pummel into each other eighteen to twenty weekends out of the year.