I came home tonight to find my little brother in tears. Hanging out at the Cafe with Jen and Glen, buzz on home with Kate Bush on the tape deck, windows down, turn off the headlights when I enter the top of the drive, it's a good evening. And my little brother, who earlier today insulted me in every way possible before striking me, comes to the door as I let myself in at curfew. Face red, eyes puffy and swollen, hands clasped in front of himself, begging me to help him. Oliver Twist has nothing on this kid.
Seems that little bro had been doing what every red-blooded American boy does at one point or another. Using the glorious, wondrous Information Superhighway to get himself some porn. Somewhere between Naughty Russian Cossacks ("Wet Red Commies!") and Net Lolitas ("I'm Only Twelve But My Father Fucked Me Today!"), he'd accidentally set a porn index as the home page for the computer. The same computer my stepfather uses to check his stock quotes along with his morning coffee. The same computer my mother uses to write her daily emails to her sister in Florida. The same home page that pops up every time you hit that Internet Explorer button on the desktop. With Kiddies 4-16 being spread across the monitor every time he logged on, what's a boarding school brat to do?
Go to his heroic older sister, of course.
Actually, he's not nearly as thick as thought. He tried to fix, frantically I imagine, for a good long time before I stumbled in the door. He's just lucky they couldn't convince me to go dancing. Because the Tools menu-Internet O was bloody useless. "You can change what page you want to use as your homepage." it promises. Well, let me tell you something. IT LIES! 5 times I set the homepage back to www.newyorktimes.com. 5 times! And I would clean out the cookies and the history, and fuck, even blocked the sites that were popping up in place of the usual Republican scum homepage. And I'm a Blue Ribboner. Oh, it would work for a moment, taunting me, teasing me, leading me on! But upon hitting restart and waiting for Windows to reappear, what do I see? Once again; "Hottest 4-16s on the Net!". Hmm, I think, maybe I can find someone on Everything to help me. Word Galaxy, no love.
You know those times when you would gladly take a sledgehammer to your beloved Pointdexter?
I eventually wound up just creating a shortcut on the desktop from the New York Times, and changing the icon and the text to what it looked like before. It's slapdash as all hell of course, and it'll fall apart as soon as anyone starts fucking with the desktop, but in this household, no one does that but me. And hopefully, on the eventual occasion Pointdexter decides to follow The Laws of Thermodynamics, particularly the one that specifies that he will fall to entropy, I will be far enough away so as not be blamed.
Of course, somewhere between the 3rd reboot and the 5th, I thought "Hey. I could node this!"
toastido, bless him, made a special trip over to the Bitcave just so he could physically plant himself in front of Pointdexter and find out what was wrong. He is to be worshipped as a god. Unfortunately, I really have no idea what it was he did, so he will have to add his own wu to explain. |
