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ARTICLE 131: bootleggin' OCTOBER 2004 this morning i woke up and came downstairs to the most horrible growling and screeching i have ever heard in my house. at first i thought it was rickeydog (a small dog that lives in my house) but then i realized it was my computer! upon further inspection, it turned out not to be my computer itself, but my dvd burner. you may scoff at such a luxury item but it is a peripheral i hold near and dear to my heart and wallet! for i use the wondrous abilities of this simple box to make bootleg movies, and sell them to pay for various and sundry expenses. i could pretend that these expenses are a part of everyday life, but in fact, my bootleg profits go directly into my coffee habit. i brew anywhere from eight to ten grams of high-test organic coffee every day. whole bean, locally roasted and supplied. oh, it is making my article better just by thinking about drinking the coffee, that is how much i like it. if that sounds luxurious to you, think again: it is an addiction! oh, what it has done to my life. if not for a pot of coffee in the morning, my mood remains slightly cranky for upwards of an hour, and i develop a slight headache and harbor a desire to drink coffee. THE HUMANITY!!! looking over at my dwindling stash of sacks of coffee beans atop the microwave, i added them up in my mind to try and calm myself. you've got at least six days worth of coffee there, maybe seven, i told myself. that sumatran is awful strong, you could probably go easy on it and pull seven and a half days out of what you've got, even! then i multiplied the costs of the coffee times how much i drank and realized that without internet bootleg profits, i would not be able to buy more than a few pounds before i completely drained my savings! when faced with the realization that i would no longer be able to pay for coffee, i panicked. RICKEYDOG! WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE DVD BURNER! i yelled at him. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO IF I CAN NOT AUCTION OFF BOOTLEGS OF ART MOVIES FROM DECADES PAST??? he woke up, blinked a few times, looked over at the dvd burner, and went back to sleep. there were no bite marks or pee puddles on or around the dvd burner so i suppose it was not the work of rickeydog after all. i don't know how to describe the sound to you using only letters, but imagine a low growling sound, and on top of that, a sort of warbling, wheedling, wheezing sound. if the drive were an expressionist symphonic piece, it would be performed with double bass and oboe and cat. i tried to collect my thoughts and sat down at my computer. the drive, sitting on the floor next to my desk, kept screaming away. perhaps google will have the answer, i thought. i brought up my web browser and typed frantically. HOW+TO+FIX+DVD+BURNER+HELP+ME, i asked it. DVD+BURNER+GROWLING+NOISE+NOT+THE+DOG. turning up nothing, i even tried to ask jeeves. JEEVES how do i fix dvd burner help me??! i typed. jeeves coolly responded with "Buy Gourmet Coffee $5.99/lb Click Here". NOOO!!! i shouted. INTERNET, YOU HAVE MADE ME, AND YOU HAVE BROKEN ME!! i threw myself down onto the desk, morrisey-style. (when i don't know what to do, i always ask myself, "what would morrissey do?" and in this case i knew that he would tell me "i will be at the desk... with my head, on the desk"!) the telephone, balanced on a stack of torn-off page-a-day dog calendar pages, fell off the side of my desk, directly onto the dvd burner. instantly, the noise stopped! i slowly removed my torso from the desk and lifted my arms up into the air. morrissey, you have saved me! thank you! i tried to get rickeydog to sing a morrissey song with me to celebrate, but he only wanted to sleep. as soon as i finish burning a new batch of bootlegs i am going straight to google image search to print out pictures of morrissey, and tape them to the living room wall above his bed. that is the golden rule here: if you don't sing a morrissey song you have to sleep under his mysterious gaze for a fortnight. vengeance is his. (back to the writing index page)