Friday, January 25, 2008

An Innocent In The Woods Of The World Wide Web

While I spend a great deal of time on the computer, I only know enough about it to make it do the handful of things that I use it for. I know how to check my Email, but I always have trouble sending one. I can start up and run the couple of games that I play on it, but always run into some sort of snag when I try to load up something new. I can find my way around blogdom, but am easily stymied by even the simplest of web pages. I can easily say, without any reservation at all, I am a technological boob, and this has gotten me into trouble before.

I had never used a computer before Flannery and I started dating. She grew up with one in front of her as her dad worked for IBM for some twenty odd years. She knew how to use it. She knew how to program it. Hell, she could put one together from a box of four thousand pieces and make the little s.o.b. stand up and howl if she wanted to. It took me three days to figure out that the little switch that had an "O" and an "l" by it was the one to turn it on and off. I even had to ask her why they didn't just label it "off/on" or "power." Then she explained that these were universal emblems for people who don't speak English. Then I had her explain why the keyboard wasn't laid out in alphabetical order. Yes, I am a bit of a dunderhead.

Well, the first year that we were married we both worked for the world's largest photocopier company and one day I was just too sick to go, so I stayed home and she left to bring home the bacon. I moped around the house for most of the day and I just couldn't find anything to distract me from the fact that I felt terrible. Daytime t.v. sucks, we didn't have any movies that I hadn't seen, and I just couldn't concentrate enough to read, so I took a couple of slugs of NyQuil and turned on the computer. This was my first time messing with the thing by myself as I was always afraid that one wrong keystroke would ruin the thing, but being under the influence of a small overdose of cold medicine had emboldened me.

I went to the Internet. I kept hearing what a modern marvel this Internet thing was, and how it was rapidly becoming the grand repository for all of the knowledge that mankind had gathered to date, almost surpassing the Great Library of ancient Egypt. I had also heard that it was overflowing with porn.

So I tightened my robe around me and took a swig of my hot tea and went to see what was out there. I clicked on the little box that was where you typed in what you were looking for and put in every dirty word for anatomy I could think of. Nothing. I tried a different tactic. I typed in the name of an disreputable men's magazine. Aha, results! There on our little twelve inch screen were breasts of a grossly disproportionate size. This was interesting in much the same way as seeing the ocean for the first time. It was very large, made a lot of noise, was fun to dip into, but leaves a very bad taste in your mouth. I was quickly bored and went to seek out something that would really interest me, namely the three hundred page gun catalog from Heckler & Koch. I left the porn website, or so I thought, and began looking at fine, high quality firearms that I would never be able to afford. At the bottom of the page for H & K was a button where you could have them send you this glorious catalog of guns, right to your very door, for five dollars shipping. I poked around a bit until I found the page where you send them your name and address and your credit card number to cover the shipping. I filled it out and sent it off. The screen went blank. So I did it again. Name, address, card number, etc., and sent it off and the screen went blank again. After the third time and I still got the same blank screen, I gave up and took a nap.

At the end of the month when Flannery was doing the bills, she called me over and asked me, point blank, why I had purchased $200 worth of porn time from Hustler, not once, but three times. I didn't have an answer because I was busy wondering why the hell my new gun catalog hadn't come in the mail yet. For a long time I didn't use the computer without supervision, and rightly so.

In the fifth year of our marriage, just after my four years of computer probation were up, I heard of the phenomenon of using Google to find yourself on the web, so I tried it. I put in my name and sent the search engine looking for me, just out of the perverse curiosity of seeing if I was listed and what people were saying about me. It pulled up a long list of names but only one was even close to the way I spell mine. Without really reading the fine print, I clicked on it and as I was waiting for the page to change I noticed that it said, "see SoandSo nude!" The page changed and suddenly I am presented with some young, buff looking Englishman who is obviously displaying himself for the entertainment of the same sex. Now keep in mind, I am using Flannery's work computer and I am doing this at our kitchen table and my pregnent wife and our little girl are in the next room playing. I scramble to close this offending website and as I do, six more of the same ilk, or worse, pop up. I keep clicking on the little x's in the top right hand corner and for every one I close, I get three more. I'm sweating, I'm swearing softly, and the panic of what is going on is really starting to set in as I can hear Flannery grunting as she is struggling to get her distended self off the sofa. I'm clicking at a furious pace but I can't seem to get pictures of young men doing things in the barnyard off the screen. If Flannery sees this, she is going to think that I have gone to play for the other team because she is no longer desireable now because of her present condition. I have spent enough time around pregnent women to know how fragile their ego is at this point.

In a stroke of brilliance I yank the power cord, but it never occured to me the damn thing has a battery. Sure the images fade a bit, but there are still groups of sweaty men rolling around in the hay. I poke the power button and the computer stays on. I hold down the power button until the screen turns a welcome black. I look up to see Flannery over my shoulder and I blanche. "Found some porn have ya?" she says as if she was commenting on the heighth of the corn this time of year. I try to explain, it was a simple mistake I sputter, I was looking for me and this pops up and they just keep coming, I couldn't stop them, Oh God! I don't want a Divorce! She smiles and turns the computer back on and with a couple of clicks turns the pop ups off and then gets a Diet Coke and heads back to the living room without another word.

God Bless her, she is a good ol' girl, in as much as I'm a computer dufus.

Doc

12 comments:

  1. There's nothing worse thatn frantically trying to stop an out of control cascade of pop-ups. As an early Internet coder, I landed myself a job back in the 90s as a webmaster. It was fun work, although once people knew you could code a web site, you'd get weird requests. One guy wanted me to set up a bedroom webcam so pervs could pay to watch his naked wife paint her toenails. I politely declined.

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  2. Heh...I had it happen to me at the library once. The librarian understood too and came over and restarted the ocmputer for me. ;)

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  3. Good ol' girl? Couldn't you refer to her as a beautiful young woman?!

    Yeah, I know you're still learning.

    Sigh.

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  4. you uh... ::ahem:: don't remember the URL for the hay-rolling site... do you, by any chance?

    This sort of thing happens all th' time-- the other day I was looking up saccharin on Wikipedia, and it offered to take me to "penis envy". Getting lost in a thicket of porno pop-ups (take that any way y'all like) is so commonplace that even your granny-mum wouldn't bat an eyelash anymore.

    Now, if you're caught with your knickers down 'round your ankles furiously greasin' up the old baseball bat, THAT might be something different.

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  5. 200 dollars worth of porn 3 times in a row! He he ha ha h bwaaaahahaha...

    Damn, I wish I could have seen that exchange!

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  6. SKYDAD: the worst part is he didn't get to SEE anything he paid for!!

    DOC: shampooin' rugs. I've now removed 50% of the evil!!

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  7. Ha, funny thing is, the second you started writing about not knowin nothin 'bout them there 'puters I was already thinking "wow, I hope this guy doesn't try to look at porn - he'll have no idea how to cover his tracks."

    Curious though, why did searching for your own name bring up male porn? Have you been hiding something?

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  8. Next time this happens right click on the taskbar on the bottom of the screen, select Task Manager, and close (End Task) all open applications. Don't use the X to close pop-up windows as furciferous programmers could hide some malignant code ontop of the X. Not that I have any experience with these sort of pop ups.

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  9. As smart as Flannery is, it wouldn't have mattered if you closed all the windows or powered off. I'm sure she knows how to look at your internet browsing history, if she really cared about all your dirty porn surfing.

    Has the gun catalog showed up yet?

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  10. I'm dying...this post absolutely killed me...thanks, now I'm dead.

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  11. Now I know why to comment here you have to click on 'pulls at the tap'. You filthmonger Doc!

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  12. Look. All I'm saying is that I was in college at the time and needed the money. I'll send you your damn gun catalog first chance I get... Sheesh...

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