Chasing the evil virus with a possessed pizza cutter

Like Aerosmith.."I'm baaaaaackkk." Only I don't have those fabulously fat lips of Steven Tyler. No matter. I am in The Chair again doing what I am meant to do. Whining.

So where have I been? I've been to war with a virus on my computer, that's where. For the past several days I have indeed been in The Chair in The Office at GodView but I have not been stroking my ego via the keyboard, but instead have been endlessly searching for an elusive solution to a vicious and brilliant computer virus that had taken over my fabulous Dell Desktop and was melting it down byte by byte. See on Saturday Little Kev the future collegian came to me and said the following: "you (notice the use of the pronoun" you" and not "we") don't have any anti-virus software on the computer do you?" he asked with no sense of urgency or remorse whatsoever." "No," said I, "I cancelled Norton because I hated it and I've been looking around for some free stuff because I read from one of those smug computer writers on the Internet that the free stuff is just as good as the stuff you pay for. Why do you ask?"  Well, I should have known why, and it was not because Little Kev had taken a sudden keen interest in computer programming. It was because he had been downloading an entire CD from some sketchy-ass Internet website and along with swell guitars and drums and screaming lyrics about disenfranchisement he also loaded a wicked virus that I have been unsuccessfully chasing like a mythical Snipe ever since. Thank God for the MacBook Pro which does not get viruses, because I have been sitting here like an air traffic controller lo' these many hours with two computers going - the MacBook which i have used to load every known antivirus software onto a memory stick, and the sickly Dell desktop which every time you got on the internet it would direct you to some phony page that said you had a virus and needed to load some software. Didn't matter if you typed in the website for the friggin' Vatican, a phony screen would pop up telling you that you had a virus and desperately needed to load this stuff which if you actually loaded it would probably have spontaneously turned the Dell Desktop into a steaming pile of shit with flies buzzing around. Maddening. Worse yet, the evil genius who developed this little computer worm set it so that you cannot open or run any anti-virus software to get rid of it. So you're screwed. And if you write a blog, as some people I know do, you are totally and completely douched.

Really, though I have a confession to make. I actually like this kind of thing. I actually like the challenge of it. It's like a really hard puzzle. I like problem solving, but only if I know eventually I can solve the problem.  I knew I would figure this thing out, but it takes time. Whoever the tool was that developed this thing is an evil genius who needs a hobby or a girlfriend. Anyway, as you know i get strangely obsessed about stuff - body hair, a particular kind of sneakers i simply have to own, neti pots, my own self-worth. I have been obsessed with fixing this virus problem for days. In fact both yesterday and today at work it was all I could think of, walking around tossing this thing around in my head. I do this sometimes with song lyrics if I get a song started and i get stuck and am not happy with a line, I run it around in my head, like let the words circle around in there non-stop so whether I'm having a conversation with someone or standing at the urinal shaking my tail feather inside I am thinking about that damn lyric. Anyway I came home from work tonight, rushed home really because I worked late, and immediately hopped on my two computers and stared searching and loading again and somehow i caught that little shit which came up in the log of one of the 30 programs I've downloaded in the past 72 hours. It was like finally seeing a dead mouse in the trap after finding mouse poopies in your kitchen for a week. Ahhhhhh. I walked around the house tonight proclaiming my computer genius, jumping around like that annoying Rocky at the top of those annoying stairs in Philadelphia.

Oh speaking of Philly, have you been watching the World Series? I certainly have (speaking of obsessed). So far it's been a terrific Series with a little bit of everything, and I have alternately worn a path in the carpet pacing in front of the TV in the GodView master bedroom and worked hard to ignore the proceedings depending on how I was interpreting my luck that particular night.  Of course my beloved Yankees are up 3 games to 2 over the Phightin' Phils and the series is going back to New York but the beloved Yankees lost last night and now everyone in the ol' big apple is pushing the panic button and freaking out. Me? I'm staring at the panic button but not pushing yet. If the beloveds lose Game 6 tomorrow and the Series goes to a game 7 with chubby CC Sabiathia pitching on three days rest then i might start producing prodigious sweat rings under the armpits. For now I am nervously under control.

Oh did I tell you that La Sooze was out of town all weekend? My beloved LA Sooze, what would I do without her? She actually flew to Dayton, Ohio which i call Gooberville, and spent the weekend with a friend of hers, a guy she's known since high school. This was no cause for concern on my part because A. La Sooze is simply not that kind of person and considers me her soul mate, and B. the dude she visited is gay as Liberace. Anyway she went out there because this guy, we'll call him Double R because those are his initials, is a former professor at Northwestern University and apparently ridiculously smart and creative. La Sooze, as I say, has known him for years and they still talk and they have been talking about getting together because Double R is not only super experienced in the theatre but he is a gifted grant writer. La Sooze is trying to raise funding to shoot a documentary film about a young boy she has worked with for years who has severe brain damage as a result of a near drowning when he was a baby. Anyway while La Sooze was away what I was doing? Well I did not sleep under the blankets in the Country Squire because I never do when my beloved La Sooze is away. I just can't. Under the blankets is like a holy place. I get a blanket and sleep on top of the comforter as if I am only napping temporarily. I also spent a sleepless night on Saturday. Dig this. Several month ago daughter Shannon bought me a pizza cutter with a NY Yankee logo on it. The beauty of this device is that when you press on it to cut a slice of the ol' peets it plays Yankee announcer John Sterling calling a home run by Derek Jeter. Great fun. Anyway in the middle of the night Saturday, after the Yankees had scored a thrilling late-inning World Series win over the Phightin' Phils, the pizza cutter decided to do Yankee calls all on its own. So it's like three o'clock in the morning and I'm in bed and John Sterling is in the kitchen howling like a madman doing his patented home run call ..."there it goes, it is high, it is far, it is gahn!" and in my semi-conscious state I'm thinking I left the radio on and I keep banging on the damn thing to no avail, and after about the fourth homer that Jeter hit in the kitchen i finally was lucid enough to figure out what the heck was going on and got up and turned it off and hid the possessed pizza cutter. Maybe this is a sign huh? Maybe Jeter - El Capitan, the namesake of my annoying beagle - is getting ready to do something special in the World Series. Or maybe my pizza cutter is malfunctioning, just like Yankees, and just like my Dell Desktop.