My laptop’s on the DL right now — I’m trying everything to clear off what’s bothering it, but it’s so bogged down that running anything is five times the time investment it ought to be.

It’s my own fault: I was looking for software cracks on Limewire and trying to get something for nothing and in doing so I unleashed a horrible skanky adware bomb. Now every function of my computer moves like it’s a mammoth trying to pull its leg up out of the La Brea tar pits.

I had Norton Anti-Virus uninstalled at the time and so VERY should have put it back on before I tried anything. But I got what I had coming, I reaped what I sowed. I was a john trolling a bad internet neighborhood; I picked up a five-dollar internet hooker, didn’t use an internet condom, and brought some communicables home to the innocent, unsuspecting hard drive wife. Now I’m sitting in the internet free clinic. (And yes, I can belabor this metaphor just as long as I’d like, what’s it to you?)

What I don’t understand, though, is the PURPOSE of any of these adware thingies. I mean, I don’t know how this particular cocktail of badness came to be — for all I know some virus-writer asshole took all the worst pieces of adware he could find and wrote a program that’d unleash it all and the result he got was the one he was looking for: malicious annoyance. Which makes him a fuckwad, for sure, but at least his actions are linear and contain a certain fuckwad logic.

But let’s just say,, for the sake of argument, that it was the adware people themselves that came up with this particular means of distributing their genius. WTF kind of sense does this make? Isn’t gaining the goodwill of the customer integral to making a sale? What makes them think that hijacking my computer and turning it into a steaming lump is going to lead me to want to buy ANYTHING on the countless windows that won’t stop popping up? Like I’m going to make some kind of mental u-turn in the middle of screaming about how I’m losing the most important appliance I own and go: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAA–ooh wait! Look at the price on that high-end digital camera!”

And if we go even further and assume that I am that big a piece of Samsonite, how am I gonna BUY any of that internet-offer stuff IF I CAN’T USE MY FUCKING COMPUTER???

I want an answer. See what you can do.

Remember that kitten my roommate found a while back, which I posted about? Well, he was adopted , renamed Biscuit and is now terrorizing the toes of a completely different household. But before he left I made a little video of him, so we could all remember him as he was — cute, tubby, uncoordinated and fierce! Click the picture below, wherein he encounters the threat that is my camera!

I love Pixar’s ideas and grasp of character. I SO wanna see this!

Click the pic to watch the trailer! (Because any trailer that features the line “If you can sort of muscle your way past the gag reflex, all sorts of food possibilities open up!” is on my must-see list.)

This just in!  There’s a brand new Weird Al song  (which unfortunately, due to legal reasons, will NOT be on his new album) available for free download right now at www.weirdal.com!

Nab it now before the lawyers make them shut it down!

Oh my God, six more days till the roommate comes back from vacation. Approximately 25 more times I have to walk her 5-lb. toy poodle. I’m not sure I can take it without exploding. I hope I don’t chew my own leg off.

It’s never bothered me this much before - I think it’s just that my roommate hasn’t ever been gone this long. (Plus we just did the thing with the kitten (who got adopted), which was pretty attention-intensive as well — must have used up my mothering.) But the thing with me is, despite my generally being nuts about dogs, the one thing I have never been willing to do is keep a dog in an apartment and hence, become a slave to the little darling’s toilet habits. I am waiting for a house, a yard and a doggie door, and then I may just adopt a whole pack. It’s that simple. And I’ve lived by my principles — I haven’t adopted a dog. My roommate is willing. She did.

But in her absence, I take him on four walks a day. Four freakin’ walks a day, which are mandatory unless I want to clean rugs. I like a non-mandatory dog walk — say, in the evening, those are relaxing. But these start at 6:30 am — dog’s orders! — often require me to come home from doing things, and — and here’s my main beef — are drawn out by my little charge into the longest possible itinerary he can finagle.

Because you see, a dog can’t just crap anywhere. It isn’t just a poop, it’s a gesture, it’s a sweeping social manifesto, it’s a statement. Peeing can — and is — done anywhere and everywhere, and indeed often turns a simple walk into a jaunty game of go three steps, stop, go three steps, stop, go three steps, begin complex ritual of sniffing, lift one’s leg for several seconds even when no more urine is forthcoming, scratch up grass behind you like you’re covering something even though you’ve wandered approximately 8 feet from where said faux peeing occurred, then go three steps…and repeat. Yes, peeing is a freely-given form of love, passed around without reservation or concern for the time of one’s escort. Pooping, on the other hand, has weight.

For pooping, locations must be scouted with deep and abiding concentration and discernment. Every square of grass must be inspected with a maximum of mind-numbing slowness, and often many many many many many many blocks’ worth of seemingly prime pooping space must be rejected before the perfect space is attained. This is not a job for a layperson — the methods of a true master can seem baffling and nonsensical to a half-awake woman in pajamas and sneakers, or a hungry human who’s run errands all day and wants nothing more than to go home and have her goddamn dinner before it’s time for breakfast again, but these short-sighted naysayers should not be heeded in the least. Where You’ve Pooped will be sniffed by scores of dogs to come, and will engraved in Dog Memories for millenia…or at least until the next squirrel runs by. Approach each such decision with the greatest of gravity.

Seriously, brides-to-be have taken less time to pick out their wedding locations. Career quarterbacks have covered less ground.

If I try to insist that no, we don’t need to go another block to find the perfect place, or if I try to hurry him along from his millionth sniff, half the time he’ll resist with everything in his five pounds, pulling against the leash like I’m leading him to the dungeons. Sometimes he’ll go so far as to lay down in protest. And although I do know that I’m the boss and can invoke said authority, my own brain does me in more often than not. For instance, iIf I insist harder that he move along, then I’m being a terrible hateful person who drags helpless fluffy poodles down the street by their necks. If I pick him up and carry him where I want us to go, then I’m robbing him of some of the few measly would-it-kill-me? minutes of the day when he gets to leave our crappy little apartment.

I really need to think less.

Six more days loom ahead.

I think I’m going to have to start carrying extra bags. Plastic ones to pick up after him, and paper ones to breathe into.