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I’m Back, Baby!

That’s right, suckas — after days and days of working (and weeks and weeks of putting it off in the first place), I finally managed to get my gimpy machine back on its feet and running. That means — or should mean, anyway; I can’t test it directly from behind my firewall — that the links to the standup clips and descriptions should be magically working again. And magically delicious, as always.

It took a helluva lot of doing, though, no doubt thanks to my ‘I know just enough about this shit to be able to dig myself a really deep fucking hole’ vibe I’ve got going on. And thanks to my pack-rattiness, I had six crappy hard disks to play with, rather than the original two that failed. And for the record, I re-installed Windoze on four of them. Two of them twice. And one of them three times. I’ve got that asinine over-protective 25-digit OEM code for the damn disk hard-wired into my brain now. It’s probably kicked some important phone number or password out of my memory. Fucking Microsoft.

Along those lines, I decided that I haven’t had quite enough of this software installation bullshit. In an effort to prevent ever having to go through this ridiculous process again, I’m also cobbling together some spare parts to build a Linux server, and I’ll move the web stuff over to that.

(Not only will that make it easier to rebuild the damn machine if I ever have another problem, but now I can feel free to pull the plug out of the Windoze box when I’m losing at Madden. Double bonus, eh?)

Anyway, suffice to say the past week or so has been one pain in the ass after another. I’ve seen more SCSI drivers and ribbon cables and full-disk scans than any non-full-on tech monkey should ever have to deal with. I gave up on three separate occasions — and three times, I eventually said, ‘Nuh-uh, bitch — we ain’t playin’ that way‘ and dove back in there to get a little bit further. I went heavy on the elbow grease and sweat and tears — and streams of rabid vulgar curses that would make Heidi Fleiss cross her legs.

I even bled, from a boo-boo I got sliding a drive past some particularly jagged piece of metal. It sliced a bit of skin off my right middle finger — my wife walked in to check up on me just after it happened, and found me spouting profanities at the open computer case, shaking my bloodied fuck-you finger at it with a wild look in my eye. Needless to say, she didn’t check up on me again after that. I think she may have locked herself in the basement for a while, actually. She seemed a little nervous.

But in the end, things worked out, more or less. There’s still a bunch of shit to install, and configure, and — if that Linux idea comes through — even transfer between machines. But at least I can see the files again, and I can listen to my MP3s while I’m working, and feel like I’m getting damned somewhere. And now I’ll never touch any teeny little piece of the configuration ever again, so I don’t have to walk this partiicular pissy plank in future. I’ve only got so many middle fingers, you know.

Okay. Enough bitching about technical nightmares. Let’s move on to greener pastures for a while. Ooh, I know — I can tell you about this thing that I saw recently. And it involves boobs. Pastures don’t get much greener than that, people.

Except that this thing was a little bit disturbing. Actually, it was a lot disturbing, but I’ll get to that in a second. It happened as I was watching TV a few days ago — I forget what was on, but I have this impression that it may have been the World Series of Poker that ESPN has been trotting out the past few weeks. Something to do with poker, or casinos, or Vegas, at least.

Anyway, whatever it was, the announcers, or narrators, or color commentators — whatever the hell they were — had some occasion to talk about betting, and the hard-core sorts out there who’ll take any bet, and know how to manipulate cards and situations and games to their financial advantage. It was a planned aside, apparently, because while these guys were talking, the cameras showed a few such people, shuffling cards and milking tourists for money, that kind of thing. Of course, it was Vegas, so that’s pretty standard stuff.

But then they showed a short interview with one of the grifter types, and it was mentioned that he once made money on a very unusual bet. Apparently, one of his gambling buddies wagered that this guy wouldn’t have the nerve to get breast implants. For himself. Not his wife, or his daughter, or his dog — himself. Just so we’re clear.

And, it would seem, this wasn’t the sort of fellow who liked to lose a bet. So, he went and found a doc to job his boobs.

(You know, it seems so cheap and tawdry when I put it that way. ‘Getting his boobs jobbed‘. Yeah. Cheap. Tawdry. And really, really creepy. Moving on.)

Anyway, that’s not the worst thing. For me, anyway. Maybe for the guy with the silicone-encrusted pecs, that’s the worst. For me, no. For me, the worst part was when the guy lifted his shirt to show everybody his new best friends. Just flopped ’em out there, like they were real, live… desirable boobs. Ewwwww!

And the even weirder — um, okay, weirdest, at this point — thing was this: the network, whoever it was, put that little black bar over the guy’s nipples. Again, like they were real, live, mouthwatering mammaries. That almost made it worse, you know? To know that someone out there in the censor’s office draws the line there — that if you insert floppy bags of water into a chest, and then bare that chest, it’s filth. Guys’ nipples while they’re running around on Cops, or competing in the Olympics — those are fine. But slip a couple of water balloons under those nips, and you’ve crossed the line — you get the little black bar. And honestly, I don’t know whether knowing that — that someone out there has given this so much thought and consideration — is better or worse than if I’d actually seen those freaks of booby nature. At this point, I just want the whole damned thing to go away. I’m used to feeling dirty when I think of boobs. And, at my age, even creepy sometimes. But now I’m just… queasy? Confused? Morbidly curious?

(I mean, really — can there be such a thing as a bad set of boobs? Are the things even shaped right? Are they hairy? Ew ew ew ew ewwwww!)

So, anyway, welcome to my nightmare. I couldn’t really provide you the full experience for that computer mess, so I’m glad to find something that should disturb you just as much from afar as it gave me the willies from… um, anear. If such a word exists. You know what I mean.

And now it’s time to get back to that machine from hell, and finish setting the damned thing back up. It’s almost finished, but that fucker’s not done until I’m sitting there playing Madden, cursing the game for making my receiver drop a pass in the end zone, and shaking my bloody middle finger at the monitor. Oh, yeah, baby. Then I’ll be back, for real. I’ll see you kids in a day or so. Peace.