Words and Thoughts: Space Cadet, Fox
Hello again alleged readers! I found the internet again! I thought when they took it away from me last time that I’d never be able to re-find it. Honestly, it had been so long that I had given up any hope of finding it. However, it always seems that when one ceases to desire a thing, said thing finds a way to make itself available. Perhaps the universe enjoys the thrill of the chase, being chased rather, and when the chase is no more, so too gone is the thrill. And if there is no thrill then what is there? Not thrill, obviously. But there are stories! And this is one of them:
A while ago at work, after what seemed like ages of complaining that my laptop had too much orange pop in the keys from when I had put the orange pop there (this was before I realized the quantity of orange pop in the keys was what I would consider to be too much), the fine folks in IT saw fit to finally replace my laptop. Aside from the orange pop, my old laptop was great. It didn’t have Netscape Navigator, but it did have Space Cadet Pinball and Firefox. These really were, and are, the only two things I need at work.
However, when I handed my old laptop in, expecting the new laptop would be equally as well appointed, I was shocked to find that there was neither Space Cadet Pinball, nor Firefox. In their places were all these horrid icons with nonsense names like, “Outlook” and “Calculator”. What do those even mean? I opened Outlook once and wow, look out, it was bleak in there! And Calculator? Is it some kind of sick joke? Whereas Space Cadet Pinball is what it says it is: Pinball, with a spaceman on the scoreboard. Specifically, a cadet spaceman. And Firefox- equally as straightforward: Obviously, this is where the internet lives.
This new laptop though… what the hell is a “Cortana”? I didn’t want to find out. I walked straight out of IT, out across the parking lot, over to the retention ditch, and chucked it. Then I went home because I two-hand chucked it, over my head all awkwardly, like a soccer player, because I was distraught, like I assume anyone who plays soccer always is, and I think I pulled a muscle.
So, at home, after I drafted my fax to HR about my Worker’s Comp claim resulting from injury on property by the drainage ditch, I began to ponder my life without the internet. I schemed various ways to get to the internet. I went over to the Arby’s there, as usual, and tried to “order the internet”, but they did not have “the internet”. Then I went to the library and asked them about Firefox. The very nice, but clueless woman presented me a container called “Firefox” by Clint Eastwood. It was not a fragrance, rather it was a DVD. I then gave up. No more internet for Stav.
Time passed, and I passed the time, living off the grid and out of the web. It was liberating for a time. I had reached a certain blissful peace knowing I would never know the internet again. Then I sat down at my home computer, which I use to watch the screensaver, and accidentally jiggled the mouse. My dismay at losing the screensaver quickly turned to shock. My home computer, behind the screensaver… inexplicably also has Firefox. For an instant, I pondered maybe forgetting that it was there. Living in my proverbial cave for a bit longer. Alas, I am but a weak being. I had infinite access to everything again, I could not deny myself further.
Right then and there I downloaded Space Cadet Pinball, and have been playing since. I don’t even need to go to work for it anymore!
