HappyStinkingJoy

If anyone has ever called the tech support department of their Internet service provider for one reason or another, every once in awhile you may get a tech on the phone who seems to be a little lacking in patience.  The reason for the tech’s lack of patience is most likely because the following conversation (or something very similar) happened moments before you called:

“This is Rich, how may I help you.”

“Your Internet ain’t workin’. ”

“I’m sorry to hear the Internet isn’t working for you.  How long has it been down?”  hurried sound of typing as the tech tries to figure out what’s wrong

“Don’t know.  Damn thing was working last night, but this morning, nothing.  I paid my bill, so why ain’t it working?”

“Well, according to what I can see here, it looks like your Internet should be working.  If you don’t mind, I’d like to try to do some trouble shooting over the phone…”

“…Can’t you just send someone out here and make this #$@*& thing work.  I paid my bill!”

“Yes, I understand your account is current.  I can’t get anyone out to your location today or tomorrow…”

“…So your gonna credit my $@#% account, right, since your Internet ain’t working and I gotta wait two days for you sons-a-$@#&s to come fix it?”

“I really think we can get this fixed over the phone if you just give me a few minutes to troubleshoot your problem.”

“Ok, fine, do your troubleshooting.”

“Great, thank you!  Could you please open your browser?”

“Open my what?”

“Your browser….”

“…What the hell is a browser?”

“Your browser is the program you use to surf the Internet; Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome…”

“…So you want me to open the Internet?”

“Yes, please open the Internet.”

“But I already told you, the damn Internet isn’t working.”

“If I could get you to pretend that the Internet isn’t broken and you were trying to get on the Internet, that would be most helpful.”

“But it ain’t gonna do any damn good, ’cause the Internet is broke.”

“Yes, I understand that the Internet is not working.  What I am trying to determine is the error message that you are receiving when you try to open a web page.  This error message may help us figure out why the Internet isn’t working.”

“Well how am I supposed to open the Internet if the Internet ain’t working?”

“I don’t actually need you to get online.  I just would like you to open your browser to see what error message you get.”

“What’s a browser?”

“For the love of… never mind!”

“Well, there’s no need to get snappy.  If anyone should be getting snappy, it’s me.  I’m the one who paid the bill and I’m the one who ain’t getting no damned Internet!”

“I didn’t mean to snap at you. I apologize.  Let’s try something else.  In the bottom right-hand corner of your monitor, there should be a series of little icons…”

“…What’s a icon?”

“An icon is a little, uh, like a picture.  There should be a series of little pictures in the bottom right-hand corner of your monitor.”

“Oh, ok, pictures, and what’s a monitor?”

“………– You’re kidding, right?”

“What’s a monitor?”

“Four years of college and tens of thousands of dollars in student loans and… your monitor is your screen… you know, the thing you look at when you are using your computer… kind of like a little TV.”

“Ok, monitor, got it.”

“Down in the corner of your monitor, do you see a picture that looks like… oh man… two computer monitors?”

“Huh?”

“Ok… there should be a little picture that looks like two little TVs, one in front of the other, down in the bottom right-hand corner of the TV-type-thingie you look at when you use your computer.”

“I don’t have that.”

“You have to have that.”

“Don’t tell me what I have to have because I’m telling you… I don’t have that!”

“Ok… could you please tell me what you have pictures of down in the right-hand corner of the TV-type-thingie you look at when you use your computer.”

“Well… I got a picture of what looks like a speaker or something…”

“Ok.”

“…and I got a picture of a little blue guy with a red ‘x’ on him…”

“Ok.”

“…and I got a smiley face…”

“Right… right…”

“… and I got a picture of two little TVs with a red ‘x’ on ’em…”

“……..– So you have the icon of the two TVs that I asked you about?”

“No, these have a red ‘x’ on them.  You didn’t say anything about an ‘x’.  You gotta be specific.  I ain’t real swift with this computer stuff.”

“Wow, you could have fooled me.  Ok, can you please put your cursor over the little picture of the TVs with the red ‘x’ on them?”

“What’s a cursor?”

“For crying out… the little arrow that moves when you move your mouse.  The thing you use to select things on the screen.”

“I don’t have an arrow on the screen.”

“You have to have a cursor.  Every computer has a cursor!  You HAVE to have a little arrow that you use to select stuff!”

“I have a little hand that moves around when I move the mouse.”

“Ok then, that is your cursor.”

“But you said I HAD to have an arrow.  I don’t have an arrow, I have a hand, so you were wrong.  I’m not to sure you know what you’re doing.”

“……….”

“Are you there?  Did I lose you?  Damn it, if he hung up on me…”

“… I’m here.  Can you please move the hand over the little picture of the TVs with the red ‘x’ on them.”

“Ok, done.”

“There should be a little pop-up message that displays when the hand moves over the little TVs with the red ‘x’.”

“Yep there is.”

“……….”

“You there?”

“Yes, I’m here.  Could you please tell me what that message says?”

“It says, ‘local area connection – a network cable is unplugged’.  What does that mean?”

“It means that your computer isn’t getting the Internet through the cable plugged into it.”

“What cable is that?”

“It would be your Ethernet cable.”

“What’s a…”

“… Ethernet cable looks like an over- sized telephone wire.  It usually plugs into the back of the computer.”

“You know, that’s kind of funny.  I unplugged a cable from the back of the computer last night when I was cleaning up.  It looked like a big telephone wire.”

“……….”

“Do you think I should plug that back in?”

“……….”

“Hello, did I lose you?”

“A long time ago.  Yes, could you please plug your Internet connection back into your computer.”

“Alrighty.”

“Why would you unplug wires from the back of your computer?”

“……….”

“Hello?”

“Yeah, I got her plugged in and your Internet seems to be workin’ again.  Thanks.”

click

Please, please, please think twice before allowing that codgerie, crankity person in your life to buy a computer.  If you have even the faintest sliver of humanity in you, and if you disregarded my first plea… for the love of everything sacred and holy… please do not let that crusty, complaining, technologically inept person in you life get the Internet!  Your goodwill may save the innocent from the fury of a tech support specialist gone postal!

There is a lot of information available in this world of ours that disputes or contradicts the theory of evolution.  One that comes to mind is the complexity of the human mind and all of the emotions associated with humanity.  The human mind, however, is a deep subject and not one many people are willing to research or put a lot of thought into.  Apparently our minds aren’t evolved enough to comprehend the mind… or something like that.  But why make evolution so complicated?  There is a part of the human body (or at least about half of the human bodies) that is much easier to understand than the brain and proves, in my opinion, beyond a reasonable doubt that evolution is nothing more than, to be honest, a bunch of poppycock.  If you want to take on a liberal thinker and dispute their irrational theories on evolution, there is only one word that needs to come out of your mouth : testicals.

Testicles, testes, gonads, nads, cojones, juevos, balls, nuts, marbles, twins, “the boys”; whatever you call them, there is no single ( er, double?) organ of the body that goes further to disprove the theory of evolution than the testicles.  If you dispute this, you have never been kicked in the balls.  Anyone who has had his testicles touched in any way, shape, or form that is not with the greatest of tenderness knows that the testicles are an organ that really should be located somewhere inside the body… and not just on a cold day.

According to the theory of evolution, we have opposable thumbs thanks to many small changes in in our DNA over many thousands of years due to influence and pressures from our surroundings.  There was this little fish/reptile thingie that crawled out of the primordial stew that was one of our earliest ancestors.  This little fishy cousin of ours (from here-on referred to as Larry… and Larry refers to all ancestors of man) was the first to make the break from living in the water to living to land.

Larry had to adjust and evolve to his new surroundings.  As inadequacies were found in Larry’s  physical make-up, his internal workings registered the need for improvements and, over time, his DNA changed.  So,  Larry developed opposable thumbs.  Larry also grew hair on his body to protect him from cold weather.  Larry learned to walk upright on two feet.  As Larry learned to use clothes, the hair became less important and, on most of Larry’s descendants, hair is only in a few varying places around the body.  The amount and location  of these hairy spots change over the course of a human’s lifetime, which also shows that evolution is a bunch of phewy… we lose an inordinate amount of heat through our head, and as we age we need to conserve more body heat, so old guys lose hair on their head and in turn lose more body heat which results in premature death through balding… yet the inside of men’s noses and ears stay nice and toasty due to the new hair that sprouts in these areas as we age!?!

Thanks for nothing, Larry!

Anywho… you can’t tell me with a straight face that one of the first things Larry did as he climbed naked out of the water and made his “one small step for mankind” wasn’t introducing “the boys” to some inconvenient obtrusion that he tried to walk over.  Can’t you just see it?  Little Larry crawling out of the water and looking at the beauty of the land before him; the fine sand of the beach between his toes, the warm sun beating down on his back, the small rock in front of him that he just knowshe can walk over… WHAM! right in the cojones… and Larry doubles over in pain!

And we have opposable thumbs?

When Larry racked himself for the first time, he wasn’t thinking about opposable thumbs.  He wasn’t thinking about the need to pick things up.  He was thinking about how not to vomit from the intense pain that was created by the rough treatment his marbles had just endured!  Larry’s internal workings should have immediately started on a resolution to this problem.  His internal workings should have said the following, “I need one of two things to happen: either suck the nads up somewhere in the body where they are safe from harm, or grow me some kind of permanent codpiece!”

I spoke with a co-worker of mine about my idea to share my opinions on testicles, and this coworker told me that my observations were irrelevant.  “Sperm has to be maintained at a certain temperature in order to survive,” he told me.

Ok, so here I am thinking about how incomprehensible it is that a kangaroo can grow a pouch to support its offspring in one of the most secure environments known to man, and yet, through the evolutionary process, man has not found a way to make his sperm a little more tempature-tolerant… or found a way to add a little “air conditioning”… for “the boys.”

Yet here we are, thousands of years later, with one (or two) of the most sensitive of all internal organs dangling freely between the legs of most men.

DANGLING FREELY!

I realize that America’s Funniest Home Videos would probably not be in existence if it weren’t for the obligatory nut-shot… but I could do without America’s Funniest Home Videos!

So, if evolution did not lead to the formation of the twin brothers swinging between the legs of most men… what did?  Well, it’s obvious!  It was a God with a wicked sense of humor…  which will be the subject of the next post 🙂