It was time for an upgrade anyway

Just about two weeks ago, I experienced one of the most traumatic events in my recent life. No, nobody close to me died. I didn't get into a car accident. Neither myself nor any close friends or family members had come down with any kind of terminal illness or were injured permanently in any way. No, my little snatchlings, it's much, much worse than that. I would have to honestly say that it's worse than the incident last year when I finally learned the awful truth about the existence (or lack thereof) of the Easter Bunny.

The hard drive on my computer at home crashed.

I'll give you guys a minute to catch your breath.

Better now? Okay, good. Let's go on, then.

I don't know exactly what happened. One day I'm slaving away on MySpace, meeting new people, promoting bands, avoiding closeted sexual predators - the usual. The next day I go to turn on my computer and Windows won't even start. It immediately displays the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death." I do all the little things it suggests, like starting in safe mode, starting in the last known "stable" environment, sacrificing small goats to Mephistopheles, etc. Nothing worked. I couldn't get that stupid blue screen to go away. I even called my husband to ask him what to do (and to find out what he did to screw up the computer), and he was at a loss (and adamantly swearing his innocence). When he came home from work, we had done everything except pour holy water over it to make it work. We finally had to admit to ourselves that we had no fucking idea what we were doing.

I'm not sure what happened. We have a kick ass virus protection program (or so I'm told) and I never received any virus warnings. I didn't download anything suspicious nor access any porn websites that weren't already saved in my favorites. I had no weird pop ups, and I never opened any of the emails promising me millions of dollars in personal revenue a month doing part time work, a better sex life or a larger penis. (Although I am interested to find out if those pills really will give me a larger penis. That would be one hell of a story to put on here, huh?) So the husband and I decided we should take it to a friend who "knows about these things" and see if he can help us.

I won't bore you with too many details about what he did. In fact, I couldn't tell you what he did if my life depended on it. I think what he did was some weird cross between brain surgery and some voodoo form of divination. I will tell you that at this point I was willing to gut a few chickens and dance naked around a fire shaking a rattle if I thought it would help. But eventually we had to just accept the bad news: It wasn't a virus that killed our computer. If that was the case, it was just a simple process of trying to see what files weren't affected, recover and save those files separately, and then reformat the hard drive and reload all the old software. Piece of cake. But it seems like my life just isn't fated to be that simple. Apparently, the hard drive just didn't work anymore. It was a mechanical issue. In a nutshell, my hard drive ate itself, and it didn't even leave any leftovers to pick through.

All my files were gone. All those digital photos of friends and family that I had taken over the last two years, including my wedding and honeymoon pictures in Las Vegas. All my music files stored in iTunes, some of which hadn't made it onto my iPod yet. All my contact and other information for my Treo phone. (I had better not let the batteries die out on either my iPod or my phone or I'm really screwed.) I'm just sitting here thinking of all the time I spent in Paint Shop and Photo Shop lovingly creating my mini-masterpieces to be put on postcards and flyers for band promotions, forum avatars and MySpace comments. I cringe at all the wasted efforts of amassing one of the largest personal collections of photos of hot looking men with long dark hair, tight pants and eyeliner. I could just cry.

But my troubles don't stop there. Far more sinister and scary things have been happening at my house recently. Heed this warning: If your computer ever dies, make sure to have an exorcism done both on the computer and on your home. I'm deadly serious about this. I think some sort of evil prankster spirits were released when the hard drive quit working. Strange, unexplainable occurrences began happening around my house that, to this day, baffle both me and my husband. My dishes were suddenly getting done. The laundry was being folded and put away neatly. The floor was clean and vacuumed. Hell, even the dinner was being prepared regularly. Apparently, some demon from the sixth level of hell with a penchant for lemon scented cleaning supplies has taken over my body and has been forcing me to do these strange, unnatural things against my will. I'm not of the particularly religious sort, but I'm beginning to wonder if I should seek the help of some church organization. One can never be too careful. I'm hoping (and even doing a bit of praying) that when we get our computer back later this week this disturbing poltergeist activity will cease once and for all.

The good news is that we've gotten a new hard drive, and we are hoping that this one will work for a number of years before it succumbs to some weird technological version of Ebola. We're also going to be much, much more diligent in keeping our files stored off the hard drive so in the likely event this happens again, I won't be left with the daunting task of trying to recoup all the work I had lost and sorting out which log in and password went with which porn site.

So take it from me, kids. Back up everything saved to your computer in at least five different places, listen to your hard drive and immediately call your friendly neighborhood computer geek for help the instant it starts doing anything "funny," and just pray that when said geek tells you he didn't find anything on your hard drive that was recoverable he's telling you the truth and not pilfering the porn you worked so hard to pay for.

Although the new hard drive is already paid for, Marie is graciously accepting donations to help her get her computer back to normal operating capacity. Currently, she is in need of pictures of extremely hot looking men, preferably with long dark hair and wearing eyeliner. She is not picky at this point, so the men can be either rock stars or movie stars. She also prefers them in tight pants, but clothing is completely optional. You can send your donations directly to Marie at poisongirl@hobotrashcan.com.