Me at my actual computer. I have a weird operating system, I know.My blog done got hacked. Am I disheartened? Sure, a little. Litigious? Come on, people. It's a [f-word] blog. Plus no lawyer seems to think I have a case, so...
When I discovered that a hacker cleverly tunneled into johnatron headquarters and Scotch®-taped the word "Post" over the word "Delete", I went through several classic stages that are common to any tragic scenario. The first is called "What's This Piece of Paper Taped to My Monitor?" Then there's the moment of realization - picture Brad Pitt in Seven when he found out what was in the box. It was his wife's head! Spoiler alert! (Don't worry, I'll reorder that in the second draft.)
There's an emotion called shock that you can't truly envision until you're embroiled in it. It's not
unpleasant in the least; not even unsettling. In fact it's so benign - while you're trapped inside it - you may mistake it for giddiness. Me? I got a Capri-Sun®, put on The Maury Show (did you know tickets to the live taping are free?), and repeatedly bounced a tennis ball off the ceiling. I didn't know how much time passed, but I next awoke to my mailman harshly rapping at my door. "You can't just not get your mail," he said, heaving a Butterball® turkey-sized and -weighted stack of varied postables into my arms. I checked the postmark date on the Talbot's® catalog that rested on top. November 5, 1955. 1955!?! Had it really been negative fifty-four years!?The shock eventually subsided, and I gradually understood what had happened. A hooligan of sorts - let's call him "Dan" - played what the history books will ultimately call "The Great American Button Swapperoo". And so the picture gradually became visible to me, just like a Polaroid® executive who slowly realizes that digital photography is here to stay. It's true: for the past six weeks, I've been writing my keen observations in a comical and yet insightful manner, daily - the only way you've come to expect the johnatron. But here's the catch - every time I thought I was hitting "Post", I was hitting "Delete". Can you imagine if Barry Shakespeare, after penning each breathtaking drama or side-splitting comedy, clicked "Delete" when he meant to click "Post"? Of course not - Shakespeare lived long before the internet even existed. Geez, America, you can be really dumb, education-wise.
Man, you should have seen some of the stuff I was writing. I remember there was this faux-memoir of Thomas Jefferson - I think I even used the word "slave"! I did some kind of goof on Sarah Palin being, you know, like, well you know how she is, so just imagine the wacky spin I must have put on it! I reported on some really good deals at Shoprite, like I do; there was my signature "airplane peanuts" bit; I was even embedded in an al-Qaeda hideout in the Paktia province of Afghanistan for three weeks, for which I thought I won a Peabody; that hope's dashed. As far as the artistic quality of my work goes, well, it was my blue period. Or, like, 'navy', or whatever the blue-ish hue on the Blogspot text color palette is called. It was classy; totally readable.
Who's the real victim here? I guess it's me. I really felt like I was hitting my stride. My grammar was straight-up on point, my vocab was like, really totally good. I was just putting it together like what-what-whatwhat-what, you know? And it's all lost. Just like Atlantis.
I always thought the real mystery of Atlantis was how its people could breathe underwater. There's just -- oh wait I just got it.Stiff upper lip, reader. I always say "when milk spills, why the crap should you cry? You need to clean it up so it doesn't curdle - then, afterwards, regain your internal strength, buy some more milk (assuming you spilt the last of it), and push forwards with your life. Heck, there's no going backwards, right? Unless you have a time machine, and I'm sure you don't - they don't exist. In theory, yeah, but 'theoretic schmeoretic', I always say. You have to focus on what's in front of you, not the behind-part." I always say that.
*Some really funny anecdotes came out of that one. One had to do with the time Akmed's M-16 backfired, and it juuust missed igniting the cache of grenades like six feet away. He was all giggling and what not, like as in "wow, that was close!", but in Farsi, and right then a FIM-92 Stinger missile hit our camp, killing or maiming every one of us (I was in this little cavelet way in the back doing Sudoku, so I just kind of bumped my arm; I can still feel it now if I touch it, but whatever, it's war...). Anyway, later at the tribal ceremony, Najibullah was saying how Akmed was initially so lucky to escape his mortal fate, but it followed him until he was a casualty of jihad. Right then I go, "Yeah, looks like Akmed pulled an OJ Simpson!", or something like that, referring to OJ's acquittal of the 1994 double-murder charges, later followed by his 2008 conviction for kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon. But I phrased really funny, and everyone cracked up. Ugh! I wish I could remember it word for word! This is so going to bug me!
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