Chapter Four: Criminey, HOW many more of these things do I have ttt--- I mean, Chapter Four - uh... yeah.

Sanctuary.

Okay, so I'm in middle-aged, bored rich junior leaguer kind of sanctuary, but sanctuary nonetheless.

But, first things first. I needed a morphine drip with a thorazine chaser, but in lieu of that, I saddled up to the counter to get a Dr. Pepper. And one of them muffins. Those up front. The ones with those black things that look like rabbit turds. Okay, okay... Raisins. Sure. Raisins, whatever.

So I settle in an overly perfumed, overly stuffed chair, and popped open my laptop. "HMMM? What is THAT? Is that a computer?" said the 90 pound, dried fig of a woman wearing Dolce and Gabbana, and a yellow wig. "Oh, can you do that WINDOWS on there?" she said, smiling a toothy capped grin, of which I think would have broken her face if not for all the collagen holding it together.

"My son has a computer like that. He can email..." she continued, waving a gnarled finger crowned by a blood red Lee Press-On in the general direction of my Powerbook.

I felt that sick feeling, not unlike when you get a snootful of cyanide gas. It's the same feeling that comes over you when you are on a flight from Phoenix, Arizona to New York, sitting next to hyperactive triplets, each with one of these.

I looked up from the keyboard, and tried that killing her with a look thing, but all it did was make her smile at me. "I HAVE WEB TV..." She said proudly. Hmmmmmmm. I looked back down at my laptop. She continued on. "I have always been FASCINATED by computers. We had one of those Ataris and my son played on it forever. Never thought he stop. Can you play Atari on that one? I have many friends on internet computers, and we talk all the time...." and she looked as if this droning verbal Battan Death March would continue until I decided to smack her upside her head.

"I'm wondering..." I said to her, giving her joy at the thought of conversating with mah bad self..."YESSSSS??" she leaned in "I'm wondering," I leaned closer. "Yesssssss, honey?" she smiled even more. "...if you were mostly dark meat or white meat..." Never had I seen so many feathers fluff in a flurry as I seen this poor woman's, as she tried to recoil in horror with grace. "How much excercise do you get a day? Do you drink a lot of milk? And are you Jewish, because then we get into that whole kosher thing - but I don't think that matters since I'm not..." She mumbled some sort of polite excuse to go to the bathroom and backed away. Silence.

And that's all I really want in life. Silence. Oh, and an extra-strength bottle of Geek-Away...

So. I settle back and search for those suspect files that in some way, have caused me to be a big target for nearsighted ninjas. "... hmmm.... SoylentGreen, KoshPoop, KodakYaking..." strange names for files. And of course, being the nightmare manifest of every IT guy I know, I went and doubleclicked on them....

Ever have a kernal panic? Remember the feeling the first time it happened? Well, okay, stick about twenty tabs of LSD in your hard drive while its panicking, and that's what my poor little mac was doing - freaking out big time, Oliver Stone-Style....


Suddenly all the neon flashing went away, and a terminal window came up...

In green glowing letters, "rm -R *.*" appeared in the terminal window...


Uh-ho...

Chapter Five: I didn't do NUTHIN....

---

---