This was not the first time my computer has reprimanded me. Sometimes, it yells that I have performed an “illegal operation,” which makes it sound as if I’m sharpening rusty scalpels for a back-alley abortion somewhere. Sometimes I resort to the nontechie’s solution to the frozen computer, shared with me, Yoda style, by the aging, big-eared systems guru at my old newspaper. When all else would fail, he would start out, solemnly, “You must this remember…”
“Yes? Yes?” I said, eagerly. This man was, you should understand, a computer wizard of the highest order. He could coax a virus out of an entire newsroom’s worth of PCs simply by laying his tiny, misshapen hands on the screen.
The wisdom he would impart would be something I would cherish until the end of time.
“Tell me. What should I do?”
“Yes, child. Patient you must be.”
“Tell me! What should I do?”
“Oh, okay. Are you ready?”
“Yes! Yes!”
“Just unplug the sonovabitch.”
So, whenever my screen freezes or pouts or gets generally pissy, I just follow those words and things get back to normal.
Of course, there’s the inevitable lecture when I plug it back in, lots of drivel about how I shut the system down “improperly.” I’m fully expecting it to one day add, “Hey! Did you just unplug the sonovabitch, and don’t even think about lying to me.”
After the on-screen tongue-lashing, the computer then makes (or so I think) an elaborate sighing noise and, very slowly just to torment me, begins the process of checking the various systems to see if there is any “lost data.” It’s a game we play. It knows perfectly well I unplugged the sonovabitch but it has to act like it doesn’t know.
The churlish messages continue, stopping just short of accusing me of drinking milk from the carton and never calling my parents.
The whole Boobalicious thing was embarrassing because I had to explain, in an overkill, protesting-too-much message to friends that I would never, ever send them porn, blah, blah, blah.
Shortly after service was restored and Boobalicious disappeared mercifully into banished-whore cyberspace, my computer contracted some sort of “worm” virus. It absolutely amazes me that these viruses, which can cripple an entire Fortune 500 company, usually originate in the darkened bedroom of some bored teenager who logs off after mom calls him to dinner and, oh boy, it’s taco night!
I had to call in a professional to kill the worm. Two hours and $250 later, I was pronounced virus free and was warned never to open an e-mail from someone I don’t know.
That won’t be a problem because I never open half the e-mail I get from folks I do know. That’s because many of my friends are compulsive forwarders.
It is beyond all understanding why anyone thinks I want to read these lame jokes or “heartwarming” stories that fairly gum up my keyboard with treacle.
A lot of it is just outright nutty, like the one about “This young Peruvian boy who was born without a tongue and was able to survive by drinking yak’s milk and eating a paste made of rotted figs and mayonnaise, and, well, that young boy, ladies and gentlemen is (sniff, sniff) Mr. Julio Iglesias!”
It’s a lot of stuff like you read in those Chicken Soup books, more of that develop a soul in less time that it takes to find out that—surprise!—Jiffy Lube thinks your air filter needs replacing. (True story: My friend asked her husband for one of those for Mother’s Day and he bought her an actual cookbook filled with recipes for chicken soup. Here’s a thought: Chicken Soup for the Person Who Really Just Wants a Chicken Soup Cookbook.)
Not all e-mail forwards are bad, of course. Just like all chain letters aren’t bad. Right now, I’m waiting to receive my fifty thousand U.S. dollars after mailing letters to seven lucky friends last week. Hey, I’d have to be some kind of a mo-ron to pass on the chance to make that kind of money.
Maybe the biggest reason I detest forwards, aside from the fact that they are so damned impersonal, reducing you to line 32 of a list of “friends” that includes the sender’s florist and dentist, is that I am not smart enough to know how to send one myself.
I am a computer illiterate, so nothing, short of paragraph indentions, comes easy. When my husband told me that I could type in italics by typing “control” and then the letter I, I couldn’t believe it!!!! I started italicizing everything until he told me about “control” and B and you can just imagine what happened next!
My five-year-old is far more at home at the keyboard than me and I know that’s just one more smidgen of evidence that my generation is just circling the drain. That, plus I heard myself tell my husband that it was “high time that we bought a rain gauge” the other day.
I’ve also heard myself joining the old folks in wondering why, if you call the phone company, the cable company, etc., you can’t “talk to a real live human being.”
Just this week, the phone company’s vast computer system toyed with me through several levels of pressing 1, 2, buckle my shoe, and so on, before informing me that “The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again.”
“No longer in service! You’re the phone company!” I screeched to a recording.
Smugly, I dialed the repair number and managed to navigate the phone tree forest to the department I needed. But my rush of accomplishment evaporated after too many minutes of horrendous Muzak that included Neil Diamond’s “I Am, I Said,” widely regarded as the worst song ever written as we wonder, once again, why Neil is puzzled that “no one heard, not even the chair.”
I gave up and called back that night and was told by a pinched, computer-generated voice that “If you continue to hold, your call will be answered in eight minutes.” I don’t want to say this was wildly inaccurate, but by the time I finally got connected, my legs needed shaving again.
Repeatedly, a perky automated voice checked in to remind me that my patience (ha!) was appreciated and that my call was very important to everyone in the entire organization. (Ha-ha!) Screw them. I just knew that we were all on hold while they were at some club pounding apple martinis and laughing their butts off at all of us idiots on hold across America.
Coming full circle, sorta, I realized that I should try doing all this stuff via computer. Sure, cyberspace had done me wrong, but maybe this was one case where the Internet could be my friend. For all I knew, I was one of a thousand computer-phobic losers on hold out there.
I logged on to the phone company’s Web site, clicked on “new service request,” and watched things proceed quickly and efficiently. This was fabulous! I could fairly smell the new phone number I needed when, suddenly, the screen blared that it couldn’t process my request because “your address does not exist.” I shall share this at tax time, believe me. House? What house?
I decided to try changing my cable service the same week because as long as you’re trying to gouge your eyes out, you might as well do a twofer.
On hold for forty-five minutes with more schizophrenic, computer-generated Muzak selections, it was like having Sybil as a DJ. First rockabilly, then classical, then Manilow, then gangsta rap. I was told, every twenty seconds or so, that “all of our representatives are assisting other customers.” I was seized with an irrational hatred of these “other customers.” Who were they and what made them so frikkin’ special?
I finally got very helpful humans at both the phone and cable company but the cost to my sanity was great. Isn’t that right, chair?
9
SILLY LAWSUITS COULD
Clog a Toto
Or, How My Trash Cart Nearly Killed Me
Just how dumb do manufacturers think we consumers are? Consider the instructions that came with my new hair dryer: “Do not use this product while taking a bath or shower.” Shoot. It’s such a time saver except for those pesky third-degree burns.
Or consider the instructions on my favorite frozen pizza: “Do not eat pizza without cooking.” (“Break me off another chunk of pepperoni, Pearli
e Ray, and get the broom; that dadgum cheese is scattering everywhere again.”)
The box also recommends that you “remove pizza from box before cooking.” Ummm. Nothing says lovin’ like the smell of burning cardboard in the oven to some folks, I guess.
Here’s what else I found around the house:
On a bottle of bleach: “Do not drink.” (Sure, you’ll have whiter, brighter insides but it won’t much matter, where you’re going.)
On the oven: “Do not attempt to replace oven bulb while oven is in use.”
On the hot water heater: “If building in which heater resides is on fire, do not go into building.”
On the dishwasher: “Remove bones and large pieces of food before placing dish in dishwasher.” (Sure, the turkey carcass will never be truly clean, but do we really care?)
On the ceiling fan: “Do not place foreign objects between fan blades while fan is in motion.”
On a Barney game: “Never leave Actimates Barney in the rain or snow.” (Unless, like me, you can’t stomach one more “Super-dee-duper!” when you step on him in the dark.)
On the VCR: “Do not use this product in the rain.” (Okay, couch, chair, and love seat, everybody back into the living room.)
And my favorite, which wins points for creativity of expression, comes from the manual for my kid’s bike helmet: “Helmets can’t prevent damage from shaking, just as an egg can be completely scrambled inside its shell just by shaking it.” (Gruesome, but memorable. Plus I think we’ve all learned a fun new way to prepare scrambled eggs.) Also from that manual: “Do not wear helmet on playground or while climbing trees.” (Unless, of course, you are in the running for the coveted Nerd of the Year Award at your elementary school.)
Now I am fully aware that the reason for these warnings is that some idiot somewhere has done everything listed so the manufacturer, in hopes of avoiding Mr. Frivolous Lawsuit, has to spell it out.
Americans sue each other over everything. Look no further for proof that something is terribly wrong with our judicial system when a fat guy can sue McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and KFC for making him unhealthy.
Caesar Barber, a New York maintenance worker who weighs 272 pounds and has eaten fast food for five decades, claimed in a lawsuit filed recently that he had no idea the food wasn’t healthy.
Oh, hail Caesar. You gotta be kidding.
This is as wacky as those eight-hundred-pound freaks who dress in bedsheets and wail to the skinny guy making the documentary that they can’t hardly get out of bed in the morning after eating a couple of dozen eggs and a case of Moon Pies for breakfast.
You reckon?
Fast food is what it is: fatty, full of salt, and fried or grilled in a puddle of grease. And that’s just the salads.
Look, I love fast food. If you cut me open, you’d, well, you’d be in big trouble for one thing, but for the other
thing, you’d find millions of little fat blobs, a testimony to an unfortunate weakness for all things cheesy. Nachos? Oh yes, please. Triple cheddar burger? I’m swooning here.
But Caesar—and I’m speaking very slowly here on account of you being a moron and all—I know it’s bad for me, so I try to remember moderation; hey, it’s more than just a river in Egypt. Sorry, wrong aphorism, but you know what I’m trying to say.
Caesar, a boy named Sue who apparently has the brainpower of plankton, claimed that he only recently learned that fast food contains “fat, fat, and more fat” and that since nobody else in his family ever had heart and blood pressure problems it must have been the fast food that did him in.
No, my fat friend, it was you who did yourself in, and you alone. Trust me, next time you go into court to pursue this idiotic lawsuit, promise me you won’t show up with special sauce on your chin and a taco wrapper stuck to your flip-flop. Could damage your credibility.
To discourage silly lawsuits like the one filed by our fat friend, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (youthful new motto: “Safety Whenever”) recently came up with a list of Dangerous Foods You Shouldn’t Eat While Driving.
The study came about after an insurance company ordered one of its clients to keep anything edible out of reach while driving because of a history of food-related wrecks. And who said Delta Burke had dropped out of the public eye?
The list was topped by coffee, which not only spills a lot but also can cause serious burns and “therefore, distract drivers who are trying to drive while in pain.”
Wouldn’t you just pull off the road? What’s up with this scenario—drive, sip, spill, oweeeeiiiieee! Drive, sip, spill, whoa! I’m gonna need a graft on that left thigh. Drive, sip, spill…
Second on the list was hot soup. Who eats soup while driving? I can barely eat it without spilling while seated in a restaurant armed with the latest ergonomically designed spoon (“Do not use spoon to zing food into another’s face, no matter how funny this strikes you”). Just last week, the steroidal crouton in my French onion soup landed in my lap. At least in the car, no one else would’ve seen it.
Third on the list was tacos. Sure, you’re thinking harmless deep-fried tortilla shell stuffed with zesty meat, cheese, and lettuce, but that’s just because you don’t work in traffic safety. That little half-moon of heaven, when eaten at the wheel, is as deadly as an extended version of the World Music Awards.
Hamburgers made the list because the grease and condiments (I thought grease was a condiment) can muck up your hands and the steering wheel. Ditto for fried chicken, jelly doughnuts, and chocolate, which sounded like a mighty satisfying lunch to me.
While I may never injure myself in a doughnut-related traffic mishap, I must tell you that some of those product warnings are a good idea.
How many times I’ve snickered at those circle-slash pictures of fat babies crawling into containers of joint compound. I mean, who expects the baby to be patching the wallboard anyway? You can’t hardly get a baby to do any damn thing around the house.
But, to tell y’all the truth, now I think maybe the fat-baby warning isn’t so dumb after all.
How do I know? Well, it happened to me. Sort of. Suffice to say, hons, your garbage can is out to get you and there’s no slash-circle to warn you. I’m talking about the big rolling garbage cart, the mean green one. “Green Boy” has always understood my needs; it always gets filled up, but is never too full. It’s practically a Zen thing. Up until recently, we had the perfect relationship.
The trouble started when I decided to clean Green Boy, who had developed an unsatisfactory funk following a backyard shrimp-a-roo. I rolled him into the driveway, hooked up the hose, and fetched a bottle of Lysol and scrub mop. Minutes later, the cart, which is chest high to me, was brimming with gallons of soapy water. I scrubbed the sides and top for several satisfying minutes. Still, I wasn’t quite sure the bottom was squeaky clean. I leaned over to scrub the bottom right corner just a… little… harder.
And that’s when my friend turned on me. Literally. Apparently having some sort of acid flashback to being lifted and dumped that morning, the cart snatched me up. My whole body flew into the can with only my feet sticking up. My legs pumped wildly in the air. I couldn’t breathe underwater, of course, so I had to rock the can back and forth until GB released me, Jonah-and-the-whale style, spewing my bruised and cut self into the rocks of the alley.
I had bruises, several goose eggs, and a deep gash on my knee, plus I smelled just like a nursing home. Meanwhile, Green Boy just lay on his side, his lid slightly open in what appeared to be a smirk.
So, yes, sometimes you should scare consumers to get their attention. What I would’ve given for a circle-slash depicting a fat-assed, middle-aged mom upside down in a garbage can.
Sometimes, the dangers are far less obvious than shampooing and drying your hair at the same time. Thank heavens for warnings like I saw in the form of a quarter-page newspaper ad I read the other day: “Warning!!! Due to the toilet laws, there are tremendous flushing problems in the United State
s.”
Hons, I haven’t been this frightened since I saw myself in Pleather pants. Toilet laws? What toilet laws? Who came up with that and how many of them have I personally violated? (I’m guessing at least six; many more for Caesar.) Anyway, the ad invited the public to a two-hour seminar in which they would have the chance to “witness firsthand the world-famous flushing performance of Toto brand toilets.”
(Like you, I’m wondering how they demonstrated that exactly. Did a slick salesman invite the fattest fellow around to chow down on a few Taco Bell gorditas [“remove paper wrapper before eating”] and say, “Heh-heh, let’s just see what develops.”)
When I calmed myself down, I realized I don’t have to worry about this because I live in an eighty-year-old house with original plumbing, therefore my toilets use hundreds, perhaps thousands, of gallons of water with each flush.
Though personally unaffected by the “tremendous flushing problems” threatening our nation’s BM security, I’m in no need of a toilet named after a small irksome arm dog. Still, I worry about the rest of y’all. So sue me.
Epilogue
When I started writing the essays in this book, my daughter was two years old and I still had my right mind. Okay, that’s an exaggeration; she was probably closer to three.
Anywho, as they say in the South (like saying “buddyro!” at the end of a sentence for emphasis, we don’t know why we say it, we just do), that’s only been two years ago but finding the time to write has been tougher than woodpecker lips. I once read that Maya Angelou rents a motel room to write her poetry so she won’t have any distractions, a secret room that only she knows about. What a wuss, I thought. It doesn’t really count unless you’re writing with a kid on your lap, two cats clawing at the hem of your robe every time you cross your legs, and constant calls from telemarketers who want to sell you everything short of a new pair of lungs.
We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier Page 17