The Computer Kicked My Ass:

The Story of the Review of the Book

I love computers. They are my gateway to the world. Last months Evil Robots was composed from various sites linked via the internet. Computers bring me to you. I owe all of this to computers.

So you can imagine the feeling of betrayal when the computer attacks me. that’s right, attacks me. In the story I’m about to lay on you, it will become obvious that the computer didn’t passively destroy my good idea -- it searched, attacked and utterly annihilated my chance at being smart. Twice.

You see, I was being smart. I wrote a review of Carl Hiassen’s Sick Puppy. I deconstructed the phrase "sick puppy", I wrote about the nature of satire, and I started the whole thing off with the title "Hey, Check Me Out -- I Read a Book!" You people would have loved that review, especially those people who think I might be a little over the top. You people would have loved how smart, insightful, and clever I was in that review.

But it was not to be. The article was written, spell-checked, and thoroughly reviewed (which many of you will appreciate is a change from the normal method of operation). So, I e-mailed it to Godzilla at ERI Headquarters (a remote, undisclosed location in Maryland). He said that it needed some work -- something about needing 3 or more paragraphs (that’s the rule). It was a short article, but I figured he must be joking. I told him I would fix it when I met up with him over the weekend.

He wasn’t joking. Somehow, only one paragraph of the article had been sent. I got so angry I got drunk and did something stupid. I forget what I did but I think it involved crawling across the floor carrying an air rifle with a scope wearing a bowling shirt on my head with a belt around it. I was guerrilla drunk.

Anyway, the plan at that point called for me to re-send it and then Godzilla (or G-money as we sometimes call him. Actually we don’t but we might start.) So, I did. I made sure that I was sending the complete
article. Then I attached it and sent it. Godzilla got a blank e-mail. It was late, and I hadn’t started drinking for the night, so I told him to forget about it and we would put it in next month’s issue.

The first transaction was in March. Between the deadlines for the March
and April editions, we (by "we" I of course mean someone else) discovered an easy and cheap method of posting out articles online in a central location for review at the deadline. I posted a couple of articles to make sure it was working. Everything was working beautifully. I have proof -- last months stuff by me was transmitted by this method, and they all arrived in their beautiful, dirty glory to the webpages.

So, I opened up the document (my beautiful book review), and posted it.  I left and headed over to the remote offices, which has a faster computer than mine. I went to the site where the article should be, and there was nothing. Not a single word.

Now I think I have it, and if all has gone well, that I will have beaten the computer at it’s own game. If it didn’t work I’m going to get way drunk. I’m going to get so drunk that they have to invent another word for it. If all goes well, the article now lives here.

Read the review.

A note from Godzilla to the readers: It happened again (with this story this time), but we fixed it.