Triage
I'm reading the paper this morning and I come across this story about this horrific car crash in Indiana that killed a bunch of people and left one in a coma. The family sits by this girl's side for five weeks doing all the things coma-victim families do, which I suspect is mostly watch TV, bother nurses and then, every once in a while, cry so hard you throw up. We have Lifetime movie channel here, so I know.

Right now you're thinking, "Why such a downer this morning, Pops? Is it because you didn't get your regular Couric this morning?" the answer to which is: maybe.

Hang on though, kids, it gets worse.

The family spends all this time with the hair-stroking and gentle conversation and the tooth gnashing and the consternation over the broken-yet-still-functioning body of their little girl. And then they find out that the girl they've been fretting over for the last five weeks isn't actually their daughter.

Yes, this girl and another victim--one who died in the accident--were very similar looking and at some point, what with all the scarring and swelling and trauma, the identities got confused. So that's a good day for the people who thought their daughter was dead and buried, but man, not the best of days for the people who spent hours and hours reading The Velveteen Rabbit to some girl they never met before and who, for all they know, thinks The Velveteen Rabbit is overrated bourgeois pap.

They think THEY had a bad day, but they've got nothing on me, man. I suffer too, you know. Yesterday I had a computer virus.

I know. I accept your heartfelt condolences. Cash will be accepted in lieu of flowers.

I should have seen it coming. My computer is pretty slutty. I keep telling it and telling it if it's going to hang around seedy internet neighborhoods signaling its openness and accepting anything anyone is willing to shove into it, things like this are going to happen. But you know how it is with computers these days; you can't tell them anything. They sit there with one panel off their case, CPU fan spinning out there for all the world to see... it's indecent. They spend all their time in chat rooms or playing video games or downloading porn and we wonder why this country is in the state it's in.

My computer gets a virus and who has to spend half a day hunting down infected files and running various scanning and cleaning programs? That's right, me. Computers just want to have fun and steal MP3s without ever thinking about who's porn-viewing time is going to be cut into later.

Big shout-out to my friends over at Computer Associates who won the contest between themselves, Symantec and McAfee to see Who Gets To Clean Pops' Computer. Theirs was the least hurdle-and-advertising-laden approach to downloading antivirus help fast and (most importantly) for free. Plus you get a whole year to try out their EZ Antivirus whereas the others are like 90-days tops. After the year is up, I might even consider sending them money.

In all EZ Antivirus deleted over 4,000 infected files, most of them generated by the worm. And before you ask, I will tell you: yes, my porn is safe. My museum-quality stash of vintage lesbian-clown-porn was largely unaffected. Thank God for small favors.

One last thing brought to my attention by loyal Bucketeer the lovely and talented SJ this morning: Prince Albert of Monaco, as part of his long-term public relations plan to convince us all that he's not gay, has announced that he is indeed the father of yet another illegitimate child. This child has lived all her life in Palm Springs.

Where is Palm Springs, you ask? Why, it's in Riverside County. Hey, hang on, Riverside County is where I live!

Let me ask you this: is there any European royalty knocking up local hoochie in the county YOU live in?

Riverside asserts its supremacy once again. First me, now this.

It's the Royal Bastard Children that makes us great.

Normally this is where I'd fit in what's called a "call-back" where I reference the beginning of the post in order to tie the whole thing together. But do you want to revisit the coma-mistaken-identity story? Nah, me neither.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.2

Oh my God wait! That's not the score for this post! I've just discovered that this post on the Narcissus Scale is actually: 7.7




Pops
- posted by Pops @ 9:42 AM