Posts Tagged ‘death’

I am just getting back online after several days of being DOA, computerwise. I came downstairs on Sunday morning to discover an empty black screen with flashing white cursor in the corner. Rebooted, checked cables, and used my phone to search for the cause… the universal diagnosis seemed to be hard drive failure.

Incidentally, what is it about looking for something that makes you lose your mind? Seriously? Around, oh, hour 4 of searching for the driver Cds so I could start the recovery I started having hallucinations, having looked everywhere it could reasonably be- twice. “You know, maybe I put the backup disks in the pantry, it kind of makes sense” or “I could swear I saw them in the freezer awhile back.”

I decided to pull the hard drive out to see if I could at least transfer the data. I was going to have to wait for the replacement driver disks to come, but if I could at least pull the backups…and that’s where the horror show began. One of humiliation and nausea for me, but that’s made many people around me laugh.

Inside the computer was… a slug’s slime trail. Across the motherboard. Over the fan, the power supply, the inner casings. Shiny and gross, it made my heart sink. There was no way this could be good. But still, I had my mission. I got the hard drive out and went to work.

I slaved up the drive to one old computer. Nothing.
I slaved it up to another, more recent computer. Nada.

The drive had ceased to be. It was an ex-storage device. Bereft of life ‘e rests in peace. The backups, the original drive, nothing. Gone.

I schlepped the corpse to ye olde repair shoppe, whose techs laughed their almighty asses off. In front of me, even. They just couldn’t help themselves. They traced the trail, noting that it smootched its way up the outside and into a vent. They called other people over. I know they would’ve done that anyway, but for $75 an hour they could’ve done me the courtesy of waiting til I left, dontcha think? I talked with them 3 times over the course of the day as they updated me on the state of the patient- every time I talked to them, people were laughing in the background. I doubt this is a coincidence, tho I have to say they really did take an interest, even researching slugs to reconstruct the scene of the crime.*

Death by slug.  Only me.

People kept asking me how could this have happened (while they, too, laughed)- as if I keep slugs around the house for entertainment and one got off leash or something. I had no freaking idea how the slug got in my house, or why it would want to be there in the first place.

Until last night, when I discovered that apparently I’m running Club Med for disgusting creatures.

Holy crap.  This is the really nasty part, and I’m going to put it after the jump, just to give you fair warning.

I was understandably in a vengeful mood. Charlie told me he’d bought some slug killer and I should sprinkle some around, kill some of the bastard’s relatives, that kind of thing.So…

this stuff:

caused….THIS (last chance to turn back!): Read the rest of this entry »

“And very tasty, might I add,” said Pratchett.

Lantana is technically a weed. A pretty weed, okay, but a weed. I first saw it years ago growing in the sidewalk cracks in Mississippi, and when I brought a photo of it to our local nursery, I seriously thought the owner was going to spit on me. I was oh-so-thrilled to get be on the receiving end of a 5 minute lecture on the subject.

But it was effective, apparently, because now I’m compelled to point out that Lantana’s a weed whenever the subject comes up.

Regardless, despite the fact that it grows all on its own through street cracks where it gets mashed and stepped on every day, I cannot grow the stuff. I’ve killed off any number of sacrificial lambs.

This was last year’s:

Pink and yellow together in lots of tiny tiny blooms. This one was kind of cruel- see how nice and big that sucker looks? Looks like a winner, right? A survivor?

Yeah. Not so much. The front of the house, the back, any sun/shade combo you can think of. In pots, in the ground. All of these in my hands = dead lantana. On one side I have a neighbor who has one that just started growing on its own, and she’s shaped it into a gorgeous lollipop-looking bush. On the other side I have somebody whose boyfriend keeps running their wild lantana over with the lawnmower, and it just keeps coming back.

Seriously, this is true.

So I’ve decided that I’m not taking care of it any more. I’m not being nice to it, and I’m considering backing the car over this one a few times. Maybe then it’ll live for a while. If not, at least I know where I can get more- the local speech giving nursery? It’s caved, and I’m perfectly welcome to go buy my evil weed there.

Quiet Riot Singer’s Death Ruled Overdose

Coroner’s Report: DuBrow’s Death From Cocaine Intoxication

Not that very stable and centered guy who wore ratty hair extentions for twenty five years and was quite the philosopher, with such pithy pronouncements as “nothing exceeds like excess.”

I’d like to add to his list of wit and wisdom lyrics like “we’ll get wild, wild, wild,” and “Ma ma mama weer all crazee now,” but of course their two hits were both covers. I suppose there’s something to be said that he chose those songs, but, ah well.

Kevin, you were 52, still singing that damn song and twirling that stripey mic stand. I guess I can understand the ‘drug/escape’ thing after all.

Murder #164 happened tonight, just outside our house.

Ten shots. Large caliber.

It was one of the most horrific nights of my life, and how selfish is it of my to say that?

After all, he wasn’t my boyfriend- though it was that poor girl’s shrieks that told us the shots had found a target.

And he wasn’t my son- though I’ll never forget his mother’s agonized wail when she found her boy.

But all the same, he was ours. He belonged to all of us in the neighborhood last night. We were there before the police, as he lay dying in front of the church where we hold our neighborhood meetings.

The Reverend came running from his Bible study class, kneeling in the young man’s blood, offering comfort and prayer until he was gone.

And he was gone before the police had even arrived. He stayed there, uncovered in the drizzle, for a long, long time, lying impassively on his side as measurements were taken, evidence collected, interviews held.

In the meantime neighbors gathered, comparing stories. Charlie gathered phone numbers as part of an effort to get a Neighbor Watch program started. I checked on some elderly neighbors, knowing they’d be frightened by wouldn’t step outside after dark.

Gradually, a story emerged. A stupid, goddamned infuriating story.

He was in a fistfight in the neighborhood park. I didn’t hear who got the better of whom, but four teens caught up with the victim and shot him down. There were many witnesses to the original fight, so theoretically it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out who would be angry enough to go after him.

And so what? Where does that leave us? One dead, four incarcerated- and that’s the best case scenario. (Given our DA’s track record, who can say?) And over…what? Testerone? Ego? Teenage bravado they’ll never have a chance to outgrow?

People here have gotten jaded; it’s easy when your city’s a wreck. There’s a tendency to look at the crime stats and say, “Well, almost all of that is one thug plinking away at another. It doesn’t really have a lot to do with me.”

Normally, I could rattle off a dozen reasons why that ‘reasoning’ drives me bats.

Tonight, though, the only reason I can think of is his mother’s heartbreak.