Don't *Bleeping* Ask

Oh Goodie, just what you wanted; another installment of 'Mad As Hell Monday'. This wasn't supposed to be a weekly feature, amazing how it's turning out to be one anyway. The offenders this week are... #1: My external modem. #2: Hubby.

Q: What do you get when you mix a pissed-at-her-husband woman with no way to get online and blog about it?

A: Flashing lights and a story that ends in, "...the defendant is to be held without bail."

OK, so you know I'm exaggerating... it takes weeks to have enough jail-cred to be able to use the computers in cell block C, unless the warden is a fan of your blog... but I digress.

I'm getting close to admitting that I have an electronics curse. Whereby hubby does years worth of research and gets great results with his electronics, I do not. In fact, hubby is so electronically gifted by the ghosts of Edison and Tesla, that if there is a problem with something electrical that he's bought, it will be within the return date and wherever he got it from will have another one or even a better one in stock and that new electronic unit will be happy as hell to go home with him. Just like a puppy that takes a shine to you in the pet store and isn't just faking to get a real home.

He never has to argue about the date or the price or the fact that it worked fine one day and then spontaneously-internally-combusted so that now when we watch Wall-E, the sound and the video are out of sync by about 5 seconds, which is kinda disconcerting, but unless Mommy actually sits and watches the movie with munchkin, instead of going off to do housework when the opening music is going and not connected to anything, you may not realize it for a couple of days. No matter, the receipt in hand, off he'll go off to flaunt his ability to perform the Jedi-Mind-Trick on anyone at the return desk, coming home only (it seems) moments later with the new, possibly better one tagging along and nipping at his heels.

I, however, have never had this kind of luck buying anything remotely electronic. If someone else buys it, I can operate it like I'm trying out for the Electronics Olympics. I usually figure out all the bells and whistles and remote control features in record time and I can hook things up and have them working with lightening quickness too. I'm the kid that used to take apart the cable box just to see how it worked and then put it all back together before my mom could take her nitroglycerin pill...

But, if I buy something electronic... if it's my hand that takes it off the shelf, and my card that goes through the machine at the register... we should just write it off as a loss the second we go from the store to the parking lot. Whatever it is, by whatever bargain-basement or high-priced-name-brand-best-in-the-business manufacturer, bought from whatever high or low end retailer~ It. Will. Blow. Up.

It will stop functioning one day after the return policy expires. It will wait a few months after that and start emitting sulfur smelling smoke. It will seem to be fine for years on end until you wake up one night to find it strangling you with it's power cord and laughing maliciously... And even if it just lays down and dies one day, during the return period, I'll cart it to the store and for some damn-girl-karma-must-hate-you-cause-that-shit-just-doesn't-happen!!! reason, I'll be unable to leave the premises with another one to bring home.

Problem is... I buy electronics so infrequently that I tend to forget about my curse. A few years in between and you think it's safe to buy an external modem. You get all happy cause you don't have to do this bizarre ritual to get online because your internal modem has gone all Rain Man on you. And you forget. So you are actually genuinely surprised when you rearrange your computer (cause you got the entire pit of room where you happen to keep your computer cleaned out so thoroughly that you can fit all three computer chairs and a couple of standing adults as well without feeling crowded in a space that used to become claustrophobic if you dropped a piece of gum on the floor ~ Yay me!!!!!!) and the external modem stops working.

Like now you try to get online and you get an error message that this modem could work faster if it was in a different USB port and it's "NEW" hardware every time you power up and you uninstall it and reinstall it, and that works one time and then won't work the next and it's now Monday and you're pre-coffee and you woke up late and you haven't posted yet and OMFG My Skull Is Going To Implode... because not only isn't the modem working, hubby won't look for the receipt or pay attention to the free-range-munchkin and then informs you that we are all going to return this *bleepedy-bleepin-bleeper-bleeping-bleep-bleeping* external modem even though you've finally gotten online using the temperamental internal modem since you shook chicken's feet at it even though it's now even more difficult to do all the steps in the "get online dance" because how you rearranged said computer on the desk makes it a bitch to get to the back of the tower, but he doesn't want to go alone cause it's over an hour to get there even though it's in the right direction for him to stop watching some 1980 made for TV movie where Hugh Grant actually looks way young and go handle both the business of job hunting and returning my *bleeeeeeeppppp* modem and...

The Q & A at the beginning makes way more sense now, doesn't it? Or is it just me? I'm not above the possibility that I'm just being Monday Morning Bitchy and I need to get over myself. It's possible. Then again, I now have my coffee and the snakes have retreated back into my head.