TECHNICAL MELTDOWN

Or. When Technology Turns Against You

I can’t be bothered to introduce this lot. They are all vile.

Captchas – OK. I know what you're thinking. What could be easier than typing out two little words on a spotty grey and white background in order to prove that you’re not a robot? Huh? Huh? Huh? Well, let me tell you. Smashing the atom. That’s what. Or, sequencing the entire human genome. Or, unravelling the mysteries of the universe. Or, understanding the mind of God. Or, harnessing the sun’s power to meet the energy requirements of humanity for the rest of eternity. Or, getting Little Miss Gwyneth Paltrow’s perfect offspring to drink a mug of motherfucking Cup-A-Soup. That’s what. The other day, after about a billion attempts at typing a captcha - and having to suck out the insides of a whole Cadbury’s crème egg between each attempt just to stay calm - I tried the captcha audio version. Except that nobody told me that the captcha audio version is a download from Hell. This is what I got: “Oh please, mother, make it stop, it’s hurting. I’m gonna die up here. No. Keep away!” Well, something like that, except it was backwards, and double-speed. *urinates on the carpet, traumatised *

Printers – somewhere in California, there’s a place called The Museum Of Shit That Never Works. A whole wing of the museum is dedicated to printers, and houses a model of every single printer ever made. This is because all printers are bastards. All they do is sit there, blocking out sunlight, and whining on in a totally uptight way about being jammed, or out of paper, or out of ink, or toner, before flashing their asshole of a light at you. But the absolute worst thing about printers is when they pretend to be working. At least when they’re not working you can paper tray them in the face and move on. But when they fuck about with your emotions, when they peddle Hope, when they start churning out paper, only then do you realise how truly treacherous they are. Because even before your touch the rim of the ‘printed’ page, you know in your guts it will be blank. You know, too, that the second page will be concertinaed into a fan, that the third page will comprise satanic runes masquerading as HTML, and that the fourth, fifth, and sixth pages will be something you wrote when you were fifteen, on an Amstrad computer that no longer exists. In desperation, you will phone your other half for technical advice, you might even sob a little out of frustration, and then, within seconds, you won’t be able to help yourself, you big pathetic cow, you will be weeping into the receiver,  blubbering about wanting to do something else with your life, and he will finish with you because frankly, it’s the last straw. And then you will lose your job because you failed to deliver the papers. And all because of the printer. The cunt. 

Passwords – Passwords are okay if you’re allowed to choose anything. But some sites dictate that you must choose a password that contains exactly 8.5 characters of enigmatic, highly personalised letters, numbers, exclamation marks, hieroglyphics, animal drawings, juvenilia, and rare punctuation marks not used since Chaucerian times, all of which must be memorable and case sensitive. Not only this, but if you forget your password - you geriatric left-brained imbecile - you will only be resent a password to your email inbox if you complete a captcha test to prove that you’re not a robot.  Mwahahaha … mwahahaha… mwahahahahahaha…  

Welcome to the dark side of Progress. 

PS: OK. Those are some lines from the Exorcist and weren’t in the captcha audio version. But I still maintain that there was a strong demonic influence. Either that or I was high on crème egg.