Okay, I couldn’t possibly even begin to fathom why my connection is being screwy right now, but it is. The little lights on the modem are blinking, blinking away in their normally reassuring cheery little way… but still, time and time and timeout again I am unable to access the lifelines of my geek psyche. Even the illustrious Suicide Girls (yes, I am talking about YOU!) is down for maintenance, so to save time and get me into bed by my bedtime (that would be 4:30 am, a’thankyou…) I am typing this jaunty missive in Word and henceforth shall employ a function well known to you all as Ctrl-C to bring it to all who care (and all who don’t, so suck it up or else!). As may be excruciatingly obvious, I am in a mood of both high good humor and also what I term Vocabulary Apoplexy, a rush not unlike adrenaline, delineated, not by a speeding pulse and flushed skin, but by an irrepressible impulse to mercilessly use and then callously drop each and every single solitary multi-syllabic word that pops into my heavily overcaffeinated brain. This is what an afternoon nap and liter of Dr. Pepper will do to ya, kids. Be thou warned.
To continue. Dual epiphanies have struck my brain with the force of small but fiercely-wielded ball-peen hammers, each with their tiny shiny heads wrapped in fragrant, luscious rose petals. Just chew on that image for a moment. CHEW ON IT I SAY! These aforementioned epiphanies, in opposition to inspiration’s traditional practice when it comes to Yours Truly, are not spread willy-nilly over areas of my creative life that either require no inspirational support or are not currently “On the Workbench” as we say here in the Factory O’ Perversions and Oversized Dreams: Rhain’s Parietal Lobe Branch. Nay, these epiphanies, in a rare and oh-so-gratifying stroke of fairy-dust luck, are both in the area where they will do the most good: that of my ever-growing obsession, my monstrosity of a book. Now, I can’t share them with you, since both are related to the end environs and reveals of this multivolume leviathan, and I wouldn’t want to spoil any delicious surprises and thus dilute the inevitable (yes, yes) showering of me with your compliments, flattery, gifts, rains of money, awe and reverence, whatever. For that reason you will all (with the exception of Katrina, my Constant Reader and Rutabaga In The Garden of My Heart) just have to take my word for it that these brainwaves are not only gargantuan in size, scope and application, but also gleaming and scintillating in their every pulsating square millimeter. I have butterscotch pudding awaiting me in the fridge, 'scuse me.

You know what sucks about pudding? That it takes so long to become pudding, and that before it does, it’s merely attractively-colored glop sitting there in the bowl not even getting any chillier. Anyway.
Back on track, I still don’t know what the devil is wrong with the connection, but it continues to waver and flicker like a tenuous thread of food-coloring diffusing in a rippling pool of fiber-optic static. Homestar Runner is unreachable, to my chagrin, as I was looking forward all day to their weekly update (and if, when I finally rest my feet on the dear dry land of their positively voluptuous URL, they have not even yet updated, there will be an explosion of wrath hitherto undreamed of in the minds of Flash-animating nerds everywhere. I know whereof I speak, for this demon, it lingers in my very soul, and I feel its harrowing presence staring out through my eyes, waiting for its moment to rise and consume the world in a firestorm of Un-Homestar-Runner’d agony.). Slashdot is reachable, but I’ve already read every last geeky character on the page. The only remaining bone being thrown in my direction (and isn’t that a delicious alliteration?) comes from my beloved Penny Arcade. For this reason I have not torn my hair in internet frustration. Penny Arcade can, and has, keep/kept me entertained for weeks on end. And while I read the convoluted and equally vocabulary intensive musings of one Tycho Brahe and the mysterious Gabriel, I click away on my guilty pleasure: the subtle, underappreciated function on all of your Windowed compys: Minesweeper. I am the fully-witting, consciously-accepting victim of Minesweeper addiction. No, I’m not talking about you people who just open up Intermediate difficulty and click a few times at random and maybe flag a tile or two. No, no. For my Minesweeper pleasure I am obliged to both increase the field size to its maximum (24x30) and Overclock (so to speak) the number of mines to truly awe-inspiring totals. Each time I win I add another ten or (dare I say it? Dare, dare.) twenty mines to the threatening total. I am up to and knocking my head against the brutal brick wall of 190 mines. For any who can beat the game at these settings within, say… a day, I will give you…. a sub sandwich. I have one here. It’s hot and juicy and lovely and comes from Quizno’s, that purveyor of joyously perverse commercials courtesy of Joel Veitch and Rathergood.com. So I challenge ye all faithful to go and do thou likewise: battle the demons, trace a delicate clicky path through the mines, dance ye on tiptoe through the tulips, and come back with a full report. And I shall deliver unto thou brave and resourceful brethren this sandwich. But it’s going to get cold if you don’t go and do it now, okay? Come on, turn off your browser, tear yourself away from the (admittedly lovely) nakedness, and spend some time with that deceptively simplistic grey box. I recommend some music and a couple hours of free time. I think you’ll be surprised… it’s like… a very methodical, low-tech meditation. A mantra in clicks. Click….
Click…
Click…

Labels: Rants, Technology