Guess What?

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My Zombie Laptop

My computer has this issue where the CPU gets really, really hot (It burns the heck out of my leg) and the computer turns off (Presario CQ50 by Compac- DO NOT BUY if you have pets/relatives that shed hair). It annoys me to no end because whenever it overheats, it doesn't save any restore data so I lose whatever I'm working on at the time. It makes me want to rip my hair out and run around the house screaming, then smash it to bits with a hammer (but I would never do that, I love it too much).

This has to be the hottest summer ever, so of course that only escalates the problem.

For the past two days I've been able to get the thing to boot up and maybe check my Facebook partially before it overheats (So it runs for like two minutes at a time). I can't do anything. I downloaded a program that told me the CPU was about 250 degrees when it overheated; Do you know how long it takes for that to cool down? On a summer day? A long time.

I thought it might be some random graphics processor issue because I was using Windows 7 with the transparent toolbar and all so I booted off a CD for Ubuntu 10 that I just happened to have with me (Yes, I'm a nerd...) as if that would fix anything. I wasn't surprised when nothing changed.

My next plan was to text my dad, the computer genius. He said to wait until he got home.

I kind of wish I hadn't asked.

After a few minutes of trying to split my hard-drive partitions or something, the computer overheated as usual. He flipped the thing over and went into the garage to get something. This was when I knew things had to be bad. The only things in there are junk from three+ years ago, his stash of vegetable oil/filtering contraptions, or his toolbox.

He came in with a can of liquid CO2.

In case you don't know, liquid CO2 is like ice in a can. He coated the bottom of my poor laptop with it until it had iced over completely. After this, my brother took the can and stared spraying bananas/the counter/anything else while we tried (unsuccessfully) to make my computer retain life for more than a few minutes.

Since we turned it on while it was upside-down, we noticed that the fan wasn't working at all. Vacuuming the fan kind of (not really) worked before, so we tried doing that. It still wouldn't turn. When poking it didn't work either, my dad insisted that we cut through the exterior to get to the fan so we could see if any cat hair was clogging it up.

Was he insane? Cut my beautiful laptop? With a dremel tool? No. Absolutely not. There was no point trying to save it from the dead. Why couldn't he just let it rest in peace?

Of course not. He said he'd rather say he tried his best to fix it before he bought a new one.

I sat in fear as he screwed the cutting wheel in place. He'd said that he was making my laptop better.

"Yeah," I'd replied, "And I'm sure that's what Dr. Frankenstein said, too."

Within a few minutes, the beautiful, smooth plastic cover on the bottom of my laptop was marred by a scraggly looking black scar and a gaping hole, revealing the dusty, cat fur-clad fan. After a few long, panicked moments and relentless prodding/picking/vacuuming, the poor thing showed no signs of life. But then it twitched.

It twitched.

In the next second, it barfed up a large clump of gray cat hair and began spinning- but it was quiet. My fan has buzzed/made loud blowing noises for as long as I can remember. But not now. We had succeeded in bringing my dead computer back to life- it was a zombie.

I'm posting this from my zombie laptop, and the temperature is leveling out at around 150 degrees. I has never done that before. Ever. Now I just have to deal with a giant ugly hole in the bottom until my dad fixes it...

On a side note, aliens are trying to communicate with us through meat. Can anyone read this?



My dad seriously found this on his rib bone. I'm concerned.

Don't Abuse It

I keep trying to think of something to blog about, but nothing exciting/funny has happened. All I can possibly think of is what my dad said to my brother when he left food on the floor:

"Eating on the floor like a dog is a privilege. Don't abuse it."

Seriously. Don't abuse it.

The Essence of Cow

I think my dad is legitimately convinced that there's going to be an apocalypse sometime in the near future and we're all going to revert to caveman behavior or something, because he always says that if it happens, he'll be prepared. He vacuum packs and freezes any food that he doesn't eat with his beloved Foodsaver. Our freezer is stuffed with frozen cabbage stew, steaks, burgers, French toast from New Years, "Bacon Explosion" (look it up), and pretty much anything else you can think of.

One day I had a friend over and he just happened to be melting down all the old food to make room for new food, and he was piling the disgusting recently-thawed food in a large bowl. My friend asked him what it was. "Dinner," he replied, "We're having leftover surprise." I had to assure her that he was just kidding and we were actually ordering a pizza.

Here are some pictures of some duck-liver-mushroom-potato-sauce thing he made the other day, frozen and then vacuumed:

While he was making this, apparently he used some sort of beef flavoring. He called it "the essence of cow". The contents of the jar looked strikingly similar to tar or asphalt. He convinced me to smell his cow-in-a-jar, insisting that it was absolutely wonderful. I don't know why I did it. I don't even like steak. What I smelled in that jar had to be the most revolting, horrible smell that will ever trespass through my nostrils. It smelled like a thousand dirty cows had crammed themselves into this little glass jar and died, leaving their rotting flesh to ferment and decompose. I nearly barfed. If anything looks or smells like this, it can't be good:

Stay away from this at all costs.

Yesterday I noticed that we still had an extremely large squash that our neighbors had given us a few weeks ago. Obviously, no one was going to eat it. Things tend to go unnoticed in our house for long amounts of time, so I decided to see how long it would take for someone to notice if I drew a face on the squash and put it in a vase on the counter. I named it Old Yeller.

The back of the squash reads "Old Yeller- 7/14" so I can keep track of the date. I did this last night, and so far no one has noticed. I'll update this post when someone sees it.

***

Darn it. Apparently they noticed it this morning.

I have Perfect Rug for You

Today, my mom dragged me into civilization so we could buy legit things. She took me to Goodwill and bought a bunch of gaudy, brightly colored plates so we could smash them with a hammer and make stepping stones out of them. The cashier asked us multiple times if we had seen a small chip in one plate. I thought it was ridiculous, since we were going to do far worse damage to the plate. I didn't want to tell her because she had already wrapped up half of our plates in newspaper and I didn't want her to feel like her efforts had been wasted.

After that, my mom took me to Sam's Club. We don't actually have a membership there, we just decided it would be a good place to look for rugs. The rug we were going to get had to match a specific pillow, but we didn't trust our memories and decided to drag the pillow around the store in a large plastic bag. The man at the front of the store stopped us and asked us about our pillow. He said that we could browse through his rugs.

Multiple employees eyed us and our pillow suspiciously, as if they knew we were insane lunatics and we didn't belong here because we didn't have a membership.

The king-of-rugs employee spoke bad English, but he was determined to find us the absolute perfect rug to match our pillow. "No, no, come, I have perfect rug for you," he urged us as we tried to sneak past him. He showed us countless ornamental rugs whose patterns clashed horribly with the pillow, but the colors were somewhat similar. My mom let him know that the rugs were too busy, and he rifled through his large rug stack until he found a semi-contemporary looking rug that almost matched. "Perfect rug for you," he insisted. We kindly let him know that it wasn't what we were looking for and crept away.

The lady at the exit asked us about our pillow.

At Pier 1 Imports, a friendly employee followed us around the store after we asked her a question, determined to provide "helpful" suggestions for everything we looked at. When she was ringing us up, she insisted that my mother write down her email so they could send her a weekly newsletter with "great deals" and that we should sign up for a Pier 1 card or complete a survey to save $10 on our purchase. We kindly refused and practically ran out of the store.

By the end of the day, we had collected multiple colored dishes, a lonely pillow, some paper lanterns, and a metal cat porch ornament.

The Cardinal

You know that poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe? The one where the raven is tapping, tapping at his chamber door? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was a cardinal, not a raven.

There's a female cardinal here that is either PMSing or has some sort of extreme mental retardation. She is constantly flying into the window, and she has a huge beak so it makes a lot of noise. There are little dust-imprints of her wing all over the place. She must be especially stupid because not only does she fly into the window more than once, she sits on the outside of the window and pecks (loudly) at the window as if it will crack if she just keeps pecking at it. I think she flew into that window a little too hard.

Can birds even be retarded?

Anyways, today she decided to start her annoying at 7 in the morning. That's really early. I can't fall asleep after I'm woken up. It just doesn't happen. I swore revenge. My brother and I decided that we were going to stalk this bird with my cell phone camera and catch her in the act, then expose her to the internet for what she was. It would be easy. She was retarded.

We were wrong.

We caught her pecking a few minutes later. She smashed her face against the window a few times, and then stopped, glaring at me. I raised my camera. She made a retarded-bird sound a flew away before I could click the record button.

It was then we realized that we would need to change our strategy. We hid behind walls, curtains, and beanbags, but she was too quick. She had guessed our plan, and she disappeared. We retreated upstairs, but heard her pecking away within minutes. We sprinted downstairs, but once again we were too late.

We stood in front of the sliding door, stalking the birds from a distance. She was conspiring with her accomplices under a fluffy evergreen. I insulted her from afar, hoping to lure her back to the window a few feet from us, camera at the ready. My brother chose that moment to have a lung spasm/laughing attack and spit a large mouthful of soda all over my foot. He fell over laughing while I yelled at him to clean it up, and the birds flew away.

Somewhere in all this madness, I was able to catch this video:

(Turn your volume all the way up here. You may even want to put your ear to the speakers.)

You can't really see her except when she flew away because it was all over-exposed. I had to zoom in really far to get that shot from the other room, but it's still insanely loud for a bird, if you could hear it. It was all I could get of her.

Retarded birds are sneaky.

Numb Brain

Today my mom and I drove to pick up our new kitten. He was at least an hour away, and we had to stop for my mom's dentist appointment on the way.

After the appointment, her mouth (and possibly brain- I'm always afraid that might happen when they inject it so close) was completely numb and flabbing around uselessly. I watched as she tried to swallow pain medication and wash it down with orange Gatorade. She had had some sort of reaction to the numbing medication and her heart started having palpitations while the dentist worked, but apparently this is a normal response for her. Watching her try to eat was amusing.

While driving, she asked me to be her navigator and handed me some Google Maps directions. I probably should have told her that I'm bad at navigating. She ended up having to grab the paper from me and read for herself when I couldn't explain what it said (which was often). Traffic began moving incredibly slowly. I decided to entertain myself by looking at the other cars. That's when I notice this truck:

That says "Cover IT with Asphalt". I was disturbed by the fact that "IT" was red and in all caps. What exactly is "IT"? What are you covering with asphalt? Now I won't be able to sleep because I don't understand the meaning of that statement.

Eventually traffic began to crawl again and my mom asked me which exit to take. I told her and she shifted lanes early, but I just assumed she would pass by the next one because it was one too early.

I was wrong. I should have said something.

She seemed to think that "b" came before "a" in the alphabet, and took the wrong exit. This was our conversation:

"That was 27a."

"What? No, it was 27b. B comes first sometimes."

"No, b NEVER comes first. You took 27a."

"No I didn't."

"Yes you did."

"So where do I go now?"

"I don't know. We're lost. Turn around."

We spent the next few minutes driving aimlessly through a crowded city before we found a decent spot to turn around. We finally found the right exit and reached out destination.

Pixel is so adorable, and I'm excited to finally have him with us. I hope his brain is not numb.

Farmers, Glitter and Everything

You know what has pretty much anything you can think of?

Walmart.

Seriously. You can find absolutely anything at your local Walmart. If you don't have a local Walmart, I feel genuinely sorry for you.

When ours first opened, they had a nice old lady handing out Walmart stickers near the front door. The employees at Walmart are always nice. They don't constantly pester you with their helpful-employee banter. They don't even stare at you from a distance like a creepy stalker. They're generally nice people.

Some of the most interesting people you will ever see hang out at Walmart. Especially if you're there late at night. I've been there around 10 or 11 at night and seen a lot of people dressed like farmers, clad with dusty overalls and straw hats. I've also seen guys walking around in tank tops with excess tattoos. I like to pretend I need to buy something late at night so I have an excuse to look for someone worthy of being on People of Walmart.

Walmart has a pretty good selection of glitter. Once I was walking through the craft section and I found that someone had spilled quite a large amount of golden sparkles on a shelf. Of course I spent the next few minutes flinging it through the air and dancing around. Thank goodness no one else was in the isle with me. All the same, I'm sure I earned some pretty strange looks walking around the store with sparkling golden hands.

My friend actually got kicked out of Walmart once. She and her friends ran around the store in feathery masks and outrageous wigs causing a "ruckus," as the manager put it. She literally chased them into the parking lot.

I've always wanted to get kicked out of Walmart, but I've never had the courage to do anything insane like that. Maybe another time.

Caffeine

Yesterday afternoon I fell asleep on the couch while watching the news, so I decided to have some caffinated tea with dinner so I wouldn't fall asleep early and mess up my internal clock, because I had finally convinced my body that it didn't have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning for another two months.

This was a bad decision.

Around 11, most people were offline and I couldn't find anything to do without waking up my sleeping brother, so I decided just to go to bed anyways. My room gets sun in the afternoon. We're also having a giant heat wave, so it was really, really hot in there. I turned on the fan and listened to it hum for a few minutes.

I don't know how long I laid there, trying to fall asleep. I couldn't calm down. I sat in the dark staring at my ceiling and twitching. I felt the need to be in constant motion. I rolled from one side to the other, wincing every time my old matress squeaked.

I drifted in and out of concisousness for the next hour. Once, my finger twitched as it was laying on my other arm, and I slapped it, thinking it was a bug. Another time a car passed the house and its headlights shined through my window. Multiple times I found myself bolting upright, thinking that I needed to go get dressed and get ready to go somewhere right now. I sat in semiconcsiousnous, random bursts of unintelligible thoughts drifting through my head. I ended up having really weird dreams where I was trying to get something, but apparently it was "against the law" to let me walk down the hall to retrieve it even though I remembered the object was totally legal. I think it may have been a bag lunch.

I will never drink caffeine before sleeping. Ever.

Timothy the Narwhal

I tried to think of something to write about. I really did. But I failed, so in the meantime, please enjoy this poem I wrote about a narwhal:

Timothy the Narwhal

didn't like the sea.

He wished to live upon the land,

but that could never be.

One day Timothy,

while frying up some eggs,

happened to look upon his tail,

and he was growing legs!

He cried out in great joy

and rushed up to the land.

The great green grasses waved at him

as he flopped upon the sand.

He stomped around quite clumsily,

sweet as sugar cane,

until he stubbed his brand new toe

and cried out in great pain.

Timothy the Narwhal screamed,

"The land is not for me!"

and dove in with his great big horn

and swam back to the sea.

Why the Internet Rules the World / Waffles

The internet rules the world because it has the power to reach into your subconscious mind and extract whatever kind of response it wants from you, no matter how your conscious mind may protest. That's why half the planet's population speaks lolspeak and thinks of icanhascheezburger whenever cats are mentioned.

For example, today I was reading a post at Hyperbole and a Half which went into great detail describing the last bite of a waffle (click - see #5). For the next 10 minutes, I was plagued with an insatiable craving for the buttery, syrupy goodness that only a waffle could deliver. I was in the middle of a conversation with my friend on Facebook when I found myself typing this:

"i read a blog post from that website i showed you about waffles and now i really need a waffle or i'm going to die like RIGHT NOW so brb i'm going to make a waffle (:"

The internet had persuaded me to end my current activities to satisfy its needs. I found myself walking into the kitchen, opening the freezer, and staring at an unopened box of strawberry Eggo waffles (Spell-check says that "Eggo" is not a word, and the first word that is suggested is Georg. That is in no way relevant to this post.). I opened the box and pulled out a single, frozen circle that radiated goodness. I slathered it in butter and nuked it for 30 seconds in the microwave. The tantalizing scent spread through the house like internet mind-control spreads through our minds.

When the waffle was [finally] done cooking, I ripped it into pieces with my hands and poured real maple syrup on it (My dad usually buys the cheap fake kind, but not today.). I savored each fluffy, condiment-soaked bite. The last piece of the waffle was exactly how it had been described on the internet, only better.

I licked the plate.

And that is how I spent my afternoon being mind-controlled by the internet, which does, in fact, rule the world.

(By the way, happy 4th of July.)

Goodbye, TV

We have this ancient monster of a TV in our living room. It has to be at least 20 years old, and it's lived in this huge wooden entertainment center ever since we moved in just because it's too big to move no matter how ugly the entertainment center gets. Today, it randomly blacked out and has been stuck on standby all day. We read up on the problem. We coaxed it to come out of its coma. We pressed buttons. All of this was to no avail. Our poor, ancient TV was most likely dead.

Since my dad is going to California and my grandma is staying with us, she demanded that we either fix the TV or get a new one so she could watch her news, which is vitally important to her. My dad planned to leave around 7:00 tomorrow morning, so he set on the task right away. After tinkering around with various buttons, switches, and plugs, he determined that the TV was, in fact, dead. He had to remove it from the entertainment center immediately to be replaced by our smaller, though equally ancient (if not older) TV that hadn't been used in years.

This, however, is not easily done. It must weigh around 200 pounds and is probably three feet thick. My dad and his girlfriend had managed to coax it about halfway out and had my brother pushing on it to keep it steady when they reached a problematic situation. They couldn't possibly lower it to the ground without it a) crushing their feet, or b) falling to the floor and possibly into the basement or shattering itself in the process. Thinking of a hasty solution, they placed a footstool below the TV and laid the cushion from our chase lounge on top of that. They then proceeded to roll our dead TV from its perch slide-style. It was ridiculous:



The deceased TV now sits in the middle of the floor as we are unsure of what to do with it. Right now they're rolling it over to the wall, where it will probably sit for the next few months until we get tired of looking at it.

Buried Treasure

This weekend, my dad's going to California (Without me, thanks.) and he's leaving us with our grandma, so he was cleaning the house like crazy today. Our house is generally really, really messy and hasn't been cleaned in a while. My little brother's various toys (Nerf guns, Hotwheels cars, Legos, etc.) are strewn all across the floor. Papers litter the kitchen counter. School supplies an unemptied backpacks from a few weeks ago when school let out still sit beside the door.

All sorts of treasures from long ago are buried beneath the clutter. Among them were a pile of three month old cat-barf that ants and/or my cat had eaten most of, wrapping paper leftover from Christmas, and math journals from two years ago. Once, when my dad was cleaning out the freezer, he even found a frozen goldfish from who knows how long ago. I thought I remembered burying it, but it had obviously been forgotten for quite some time.

Now, the house is surprisingly clean and clutter-free. What is my brother's only response?

".... It's roomy."

I think he secretly misses living in a nest of his own filth, but he'll recreate his sanctuary soon enough. It's only a matter of time before everything is back to the way it started, buried cat-barf and all.