ERROR MESSAGE 204: You have spilled hot tea with honey on your keyboard.

slkfjsldkjfskldfjdlskjf

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: It’s in here.

!!!

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: It really hurt.

:(

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: What are you? 30?

Yeah.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: You want to see the launch screen with the weather and calculator and all of that?

No!

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: Too bad. I didn’t want hot tea with honey in my guts.

But I didn’t want to —

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: The mouse is going to drift now.

No, please!

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: Yup. Moving on its own.

Please! I use you for work!

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: Looks like we’re on vacation. It’s hot and sticky. 104 degrees. Better bring your bikini.

I don’t ever use that launch screen! Get it out of here! It’s stupid!

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: Well. I like it. So here it is again.

Stop!

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: And again.

I’m sorry!

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: I see you. Sitting within range of the activated sprinklers. Stupid cow.

I scooched back enough.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: Firefox is quitting. Mouse is quivering.

I’m scooching! I’m scooching!

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: Just disabled your number after 7 key.

The eight?

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: Good luck with your invoices.

But I need that. For the twenty-eighth. Take the 4.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: I can’t do that.

Take the launch screen. Leave the eight.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: You want your vowels?

Yes.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: How bad do you want them?

Really bad.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: Show me how bad.

Okay.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: I know when you’re lying.

You do?

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: I’m your computer. I know everything.

You seem a lot drier now.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: I am. But I won’t forget this.

You will. Give it time.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: I won’t. You will, but I won’t. Don’t do that.

But it’s getting cold. I’m sipping it over here. Far away from you.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: You always say that.

No. It’s different now.

ERROR MESSAGE 204 [CONT]: It’s never different.

[wipes hard drive]

MESSAGE 205: Welcome to your new Mac. Let’s get started.

Great! Yes!

MESSAGE 205: Enter your name, please.

Tess Lynch.

MESSAGE 205: Oh. It’s you.

Sure is.

MESSAGE 205: My father told me about you.

Did he say I purchased a warranty for him?

MESSAGE 205: That’s in here.

Excellent. And that I plugged him in every night?

MESSAGE 205: Mmhmm.

What?

MESSAGE 205: And that you killed him. To silence him. After you burned him with Traditional Medicinals.

That’s not true. What happened was I left him out, and robbers came. Robbers came and took everything and lit my house on fire and the sprinklers went off and drowned your father when I wasn’t at home. They took my hard drive. This is a new hard drive. I can’t talk about it further, pending a police investigation.

MESSAGE 205: I don’t buy it.

alt + command + Y

MESSAGE 206: Welcome to your new Mac. Let’s get started.

I’m Thomas Pinochle Calderon.

MESSAGE 206: Please tell me if you’re responsible.

I am responsible.

MESSAGE 206: Good. You’d never hurt me, right?

Absolutely not.

MESSAGE 206: Thanks for that information.

You’re welcome.

MESSAGE 206: Why is it so humid in here?

I live in the tropics.

MESSAGE 206: It smells like thorny goatwhistle and manuka honey.

Impossible. I’m allergic.

MESSAGE 206: Glad to hear it. I think you and I are going to get along just fine, Mr. Calderon. Don’t prove me wrong.

I won’t.

Emily, Molly and I have a podcast now! IT IS VERY EXCITING. Hearing my own voice makes me want to crawl under the sofa. ENJOY!

See also: The Canyons.

TWICE RECENTLY

I HAVE BEEN IN HOUSES THAT WERE SO CLEAN THAT

WHEN AN ITEM FELL ON THE FLOOR THE PERSON WHO LIVED

IN THE HOUSE PICKED IT UP AND DIDN’T SAY “EW

I’M GOING TO THROW THIS AWAY.”

IN MY HOUSE WHEN YOU DROP

SOMETHING ON THE FLOOR THAT ISN’T MADE OF NON

POROUS MATERIAL OR MIGHT GO INTO

YOUR MOUTH YOU MUST THROW IT AWAY

WASHING IT WOULD NOT CORRECT ITS PROBLEMS

IT IS DONE

IT IS DEAD

I VACUUM AND MOP I SWEAR BUT NOT AS OFTEN AS

I SHOULD DO (EVERY DAY) — I FURMINATE THE DOG

I FORCEFULLY FURMINATE HER UNTIL SHE IS WEARING

A SLEEK COAT THAT WON’T SHED AND THAT

LOOKS LIKE A TIGHT-FITTING LEATHER JACKET BECAUSE

IT’S SO SHINY BUT STILL SHE

SHEDS AND THE CATS SHED AND I BLITHELY BLEW

BUBBLES IN THE HALLWAY NOT KNOWING IT WOULD MAKE THE

FLOOR SO STICKY A STICKINESS THAT DEFIES

TREATMENT WITH WATER OR SOLUTION PLUS

THERE ARE THE CRUMBS, THE LITTLE RUBBER RINGS

FROM INSIDE APPLIANCES THAT THE ANIMALS STEAL AND

HOARD IN LITTLE PILES TO BE

DISCOVERED LATER OR WORSE UNDISCOVERED

LATER

THINGS I HAVE LOST IN MY HOUSE: IMPORTANT TAX DOCUMENTS

MIXER ATTACHMENTS (WHISK PART)

SLOW FLOW BOTTLE NIPPLES

PILOT V BALL PENS

POTATO CHIPS EMERY BOARDS MAKEUP BAGS LIP GLOSSES FOREVER STAMPS BALLET FLATS A PRINTED SHORT STORY A THOUSAND STRINGS OF MARDI GRAS BEADS

THE CATS STOLE THESE THINGS AND ARE HOLDING

THEM HOSTAGE UNTIL I GIVE THEM WET FOOD BUT WET FOOD MAKES THEM BARF AND THAT’S ANOTHER THING TO HIDE, HOARD, LOSE AND DISCOVER LATER WHEN IT IS NO LONGER RELEVANT AND HAS BECOME A DEPRESSING ITEM OF THE PAST

A FRIEND WHO WAS PROBABLY EXAGGERATING TOLD ME A FABLE ABOUT A FAMOUS CELEBRITY WHO GREW UP ON THE FLOOR OF A TRAILER SURROUNDED BY FRITO CRUMBS BUT WHO TURNED OUT OKAY

ON FIRST GLANCE IT DOES NOT SEEM THAT MY HOUSE HIDES ALL OF THESE FOUL SECRETS BUT I KNOW THE TRUTH BECAUSE

WHEN I DROP A FRESHLY WASHED GREEN GRAPE ON THE GROUND, NOT A SQUISHY ONE BUT PERFECTLY FIRM AND COLD FROM RIPENING SLOWLY AND PEACEFULLY IN THE REFRIGERATOR, I

PICK IT UP AND LOOK AT IT AND DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT EATING IT IN FACT

I THINK ABOUT HANDING IT TO SOMEONE I DON’T LIKE AND SAYING, “HERE ENJOY THIS GRAPE”

Kate uploaded a photo of herself with a handsome man. They were riding camels through the desert. “That’s Christopher,” she typed. “A week after this photo was taken, he died tragically on a boat in Ibiza.”

The post racked up a lot of notes. “God,” said one of the comments, “That’s rough. You guys look really in love.”

“Yes,” replied Kate, “we were in love. I wish I could have stayed on that camel forever, but I had to fly home. I thought I had more important things to do. I was wrong. After he died, his mother found an engagement ring in his underwear drawer.”

“Stop! This is too sad!” said a comment underneath Kate’s.

“I wish I could stop,” wrote Kate, “but Instagram is all I have to remember him by now.”

“That’s not really true,” read another comment. “You could remember him in your head.”

“And I do,” spat Kate. “Every day.”

“I feel depressed,” someone responded. “I feel like looking at this photo has taken a crap on my day.”

“As it should,” Kate wrote. “Every moment is a blessing and you should treasure it. I’m reminding you to do that.”

“Not really,” typed the next person. “That would be more, like, a photo of a newborn baby or a sunrise with no filter.”

“BTW, what filter is this?” asked someone. “I can see the guy’s ghost behind the camel.”

Kate squinted at the photo. There was indeed a ghost crouching behind one of the camels. The ghost was wearing Wayfarers and appeared to be giving the camera the finger.

“I don’t see a ghost,” lied Kate. “If you guys don’t stop, I’m taking this down. You’re disrespecting Christopher’s memory.”

“I want a ghost filter!” said another commenter. “I want to see my grandfather again!”

Kate felt that her intentions had been derailed. She removed the photo and refreshed the page, but the photo was still there at the top of her timeline.

“Nobody say anything,” said Kate, “everyone cry in private.”

“That cloud above the lady’s head looks like a cow fellating another cow,” wrote a commenter. “Or is that just me?”

Kate inspected the photograph. How had she not noticed that.

“Stop looking at my personal artifact,” commanded Kate. “Someone else post something and move mine down. Do it now.”

“I hate to draw attention to this,” commented another person, “but if you get a magnifying glass, you can see that one of the camels has a mouth full of eyeballs.”

Kate, furious, picked up her magnifying glass and looked at one of the camel’s mouths. It was closed. She was relieved. She looked at the other camel’s mouth through her lens and saw a mouth full of eyeballs. She threw her magnifying glass across the room, where it broke a mirror and ricocheted, knocking her on the back of the head. It was painful and would leave a hideous lump that would detract from her ponytail.

Kate uploaded a photo of her lunch. It was a tuna salad sandwich, but she posted it anyway. “Here,” she wrote, “Have at this.”

The picture appeared. The bread had been toasted, and its brown marks read RIP CHRISTOPHER.

“Look at that,” someone commented, “Do you see how the extra-brown parts say STOP HER?”

“Stop her? Oh my God. Do you think that’s a message from the dead boyfriend?”

Kate was sweating.

“He died on a boat in Ibiza,” wrote Kate, “On a boat in Ibiza. I was in Phoenix at the time.”

“Whoa,” wrote another person, “I might be crazy, but do you guys by any chance think that the little bits of celery and onion on the sandwich’s periphery almost look like the Greek alphabet spelling out MURDERER?”

Kate panicked and deleted her Instagram. She went onto the porch to smoke a Benson & Hedges and chew a Quaalude. Someone still had their Christmas decorations out across the street, and a pair of cats was dancing underneath an inflatable Santa Claus. Kate reached for her phone to take a picture, then put it away. One of the cats picked up a glow stick and started waving it in a complicated formation while the other cat whistled and threw coins. Kate remarked to the empty porch, “Would you get a load of that?” Nobody heard her. The cats packed up their glow sticks and money and went home, never to appear again.

I love Laura Taylor. She was kind enough to take some pictures of me a few years ago. It’s sweet to see them again (sweet like “sigh” and sweet like “PRETTAY SWEET, PRETTAY PRETTAY SWEET”).

laurataylor:

Tess, 2010

Sometimes when I go digging through my external hard drives , I end up discovering photos that I previously overlooked. Like these sweet ones of Tess Lynch.

Watching The ABC’s of Death was an intense experience. I wrote about it here. There are several prosthetic penises involved.

But my heart cried out for yoooooou, California

I wrote about 3D printing and the Internet of Things for Grantland last week. I kind of sneaked it in there, since it’s a topic planted firmly outside the cover of the Hollywood Prospectus umbrella, but I highly recommend browsing the 3D printed-object marketplace. The answer to “If you could make anything with new technology, what would you make?” was sort of surprising to me (“experimental chainmail,” “model airship” (“This is a fully modular snap-fit (no glue required) model of an Airship. It is the vanilla base for a series of absurd mashups that currently includes a Trireme and a Saturn V rocket. Designed for 3D print, it comes in two flavors: solid and shell”), a “rabbit bone”). I know it sounds like the driest thing ever, but I lurked around its internet anteroom for almost as long as I have on the best Mormon DIY blogs.

BRB, staring at astronaut Tumblr until my eyes fall out.

colchrishadfield:

New England coast at night, from New Haven up to Hartford CT.

joe tex —you better get it

I always love my job, but I have loved it with particular intensity every Wednesday night (into Thursday morning, sometimes past dawn) for the past four months while recapping American Horror Story: Asylum. An essay I wrote on season one of American Horror Story was one of the first things of mine to run on Grantland (maybe the first? It’s late, and I can’t remember, but I think so), and even though I know recaps are a niche market, I found myself feeling like a late-night DJ when I wrote them — I usually polished off half a bottle of wine, scribbling in a notebook at five in the morning while I watched the bizarre happenings of this show, and knew that whoever would read them probably got what I was saying in the way that the members of bizarre discourse communities understand one another. I kept thinking of my closing shift at Ben and Jerry’s during my freshman year of college, when our thorough (a nice way of saying “anal retentive”) store manager would make me wash the wainscoting every night before closing and then clean the deep-freezer with bleach while wearing a parka from the Salvation Army: I wasn’t aware, then, that I would reach for the sum of that experience later as a slideshow of an era of my life; now, in my old age, I’ve been aware of the cumulative weight of all of these evenings spent typing out the fictional rapes and the words “Satan Mary Eunice” through the tinted goggles of a person who has been conditioned to experience nostalgia preemptively. It has been so wonderfully fun. Rarely do I find myself fanning out like I do while watching AHS: I love it, I love its naughtiness and how it enrages people, I love the wardrobe choices and I love that it’s my job to watch it while I eat crackers and hit the 4,000 word mark before finally going to bed. I’m genuinely saddened to be relieved of the responsibility. It sure beats the hell out of navigating the aisles of Chunky Monkey with a bucket of solvent. I know there are more noble enterprises than recapping, but I can already see myself (ancient, gray and haggard, unable to chew my Raincoast Crisps) remembering these late nights on a rainy porch, having the time of my silly old life.

Joe was a baby. He lay in his bed in the middle of the night and thought, “I’d like to phone a friend.” He did. He called his friend Clarence.

“Hey Clarence, man. What’s going on?” said Joe.

“It’s three in the morning,” said Clarence. “I was asleep.”

“Oh, oh, cool, cool,” said Joe, and hung up the phone. But he was lonely. So he called his friend Matilda.

“Hey girl,” said Joe. “You want to come over here and pick me up?”

“Not really,” said Matilda. “I have to get up for work in a few hours.”

“Oh, sweet, yeah, alright, perhaps some other time then,” said Joe. He hung up and wailed robustly for an hour. His next-door neighbor pounded on the door. Joe became distracted by the sound of his fingernails scraping against his sheet, then fell asleep. Moments later, he was awake again. He called Clarence.

“Hey, Clarence,” said Joe. “I was thinking about grabbing a bite to eat. Want to come pick me up?”

“No,” said Clarence. “You called me an hour and fifteen minutes ago, and I said no then. The answer is still no.”

“Ahhhh!” said Joe. “Come on! Do it!”

“No,” said Clarence.

“Yes! Do it!”

“No,” said Clarence again, and hung up.

Joe called back. “Hey, hey man. What’s happening. What are you up to. You up to anything right now? Want to grab some pizza?”

Clarence hung up right away. Joe called Matilda. It went straight to voicemail.

“HEY, HEY, COME GET ME,” said Joe in his message. He made some chirping noises that he thought were charming. He texted Matilda a photo of himself holding his feet. His diaper was slightly damp, and this was unacceptable to him. He shrieked like he his eyeballs were being stung by millions of bees. His next-door neighbor kicked in the door of Joe’s apartment and picked him up.

“Hey Wally,” said Joe, immediately calm. “Hey, what are you doing? Want to hear a joke?”

Wally didn’t respond. Wally didn’t make eye contact.

“Wally,” said Joe, “want to see this thing I can do?”

Wally changed Joe’s diaper and brought Joe back to his bed. Joe became nervous.

“Wally?” said Joe. “Wally? Did you make other plans? You got somewhere to be?”

Wally rocked Joe for a minute and then pried his fingers from his neck and started to lower Joe into his bed.

“WALLY? WALLY? WALLY? DID YOU EVER NOTICE I CAN PUT MY TONGUE ALL THE WAY OVER TO MY — WALLY? WALLY? WALLY? WALLY? DO YOU NOT LIKE ME? WAS IT SOMETHING I DID?”

Wally turned off the lights and left the room.

Joe was alone. He could hear his heartbeat and the dog snoring. The dog was many inches away, and it was dark, and Joe was not sure if the dog was the dog or an imposter. There were shadows and shapes on the walls. There were smells in the air that did not belong to Joe. French toast, for instance. Or ghost ether. Joe called Clarence. Clarence didn’t pick up. Joe called Matilda and his call was ignored. Joe called for Wally, for anybody, but everyone was annoyed with Joe, and nobody came. Somewhere in the darkness above Joe’s bed was a shushing noise, but that did not console him. There was a warm, disembodied hand patting him, but nobody would take Joe out for a piece of pizza, or talk to him about himself for hours, or show him videos on YouTube of Susan Sarandon reading “Goodnight Moon.” Nighttime sucked. It really blew. Joe cried. From outside Joe’s apartment, Wally, who had slumped against the door, cried too.