Off Campus

07 September 2005

Hell hath no fury like Hell, when it's mad

Did you ever make Hell mad at you?

I realize that the notion of making another dimension (one consigned to the afterlife, no less) angry at you seems unlikely, but hear me out. I think that, in one way or another, I've managed to upset the residents and management of Hell.

I've never been there (duh....I'm not dead yet!), or seen color photographs of the place, but I've been getting some pretty strong indications that if I were to visit for a weekend or an eternity, the welcome would be of a harsher nature than, say, your typical Saturday afternoon telemarketer gets.

At first, the signs that all was not swell in Hell were pretty subtle. I'd get the occasional demonic message coming through my alarm clock in the morning (which I initially thought was the antics of a "Morning Zoo" crew, until I realized that they generally don't broadcast through a wind-up clock), my toast would pop up with "The Beast awaits you" singed into it, and once in a while the TV would bleed. Other than that, though, everything was normal.

This week, however, I've found that my car drives by itself on my way to work in the morning, always in the wrong lane, and always double the speed limit, and the radio will play nothing but "Highway to Hell" at top volume (which I'm actually kinda fine with). Then the abusive e-mails started, all containing coarse language and vivid descriptions of uncomfortable places to put a spear, all coming from " hell.gov".

I've spent the last few days trying to figure out exactly WHY I've become such a focus of anger emanating from the tortured souls of countless sinners burning in the fires of eternity, and I think I may have figured it out. Combing through my "Sent Messages" folder in my e-mail, I noticed that I sent out a few mass-mailings of chain letters (hoping to get that free trip to Disney World or million dollars in M&Ms from Bill Gates, Jr.), and in doing so accidentally typed " thedevil@hell.gov" (which apparently is the address of His Dark Lord Satan) instead of "thedevil@hell.net" (my friend Kip). It turns out that the message had a virus attached to it that makes your computer play "I'm A Little Teapot" repeatedly (with accompanying visuals of a pony dancing with a fireman around a wishing well) until your CPU commits suicide. I'm on a Mac so the virus didn't affect me, but other friends reported that their antivirus programs caught the little cuss and quarantined it.

Apparently another aspect of Hell is that no computers have virus protection, and all are running Windows 95 with 32Mb of RAM and a 14.4k modem. (Translation for the computer illiterate, or technophobes not suffering from bouts of laughter: THEY HAVE STINKY COMPUTERS.) This virus must have locked up all their PCs, making their worldwide control of spam, bogus websites, and pop-ups shut down for the time being. As this is their main source of revenue and recruitment (according to U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT), I can see why they're touchy about it. Pitchforks don't come cheap these days, you know.

So, I'm not sure exactly how to get back on the good side of Hell. Amazon doesn't deliver there, so there goes sending CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE DAMNED SOUL. For the time being, I guess I can live with the demonic tauntings and mind-bending multi-dimensional visions. Actually, if I can manage to keep this going until Halloween, I could have a pretty kick-ass haunted house attraction. Hmmm....if I charged 10 bucks a head......I just may be able to send some "sorry dollars" to the Hellions via PayPal (yeah, they own that, too) and let bygone multidimensional tiffs be bygone multidimensional tiffs.

Is it hot in here or is it just me?