Like you needed more proof of my insanity, but here it is….
Yesterday just before I sit down to spin up more yarn I pop a dvd into the machine. But it doesn’t recognize the dvd. poop. fine. I stick another one in and that one works fine, but I notice that my dvds are a mess and decide to clean them up. In the process I find 2 unlabeled dvds. Pop the first one in and it doesn’t recognize the format. Fine, put that to the side to toss. Put the second one in and it spins for a bit then my dvd player makes a weird beeeeeep sound, the display says “erase” and damn. ERASE??? erase what? why does my display say that? What the fuck?
Then it all dies. boom, dead, gone. Nothing. Won’t turn on, won’t eject the disk, won’t apologize to me. I dig out the instruction manual, the best it does is tell me to unplug it for 30 seconds. Okay, I know this routine. Plug it back in and still nothing. The manual says nothing about “erase” or anything like that. The manual assumes that the extent of any problem a user might have with their player is putting the disk in upside down or forgetting to plug the machine in.
I search all over the machine for the magic hole where you insert an unbent paper clip and the disk drawer is forced to open. no magic hole. I take matters into my own hands! I find a knitting needle, the ultimate tool of force and threat, and I push and cram and yell and finally force that fucking drawer open and take the disk out. But now it doesn’t want to close. So I yell AT IT! and then I force that fucker closed.
Still nothing. No amount of pleading or cajoling will help. The machine is dead.
but, it can be said that optimism and crazy are two sides of the same wooden nickel! I grab a dvd and I go to my laptop! The optical drive on my laptop died about a year ago, it just cannot recognize disks anymore. But I believe that if you let a drive sit and rest for a year, maybe it will magically recover…right?
I stick the disk in and no luck, it has no idea what it is and tries to spit it out. except it can’t spit it out because on one of the many occasions when my laptop hit the ground in an unexpected fit of gravity the case got bent right at the disk slot. When the disk is ejected it hits part of the slot and gets pulled back in. This causes an unending cycle of “hey, what’s this? oh it’s a disk! what kind? don’t know, better spit it out! hey, what’s this? oh it’s a disk! what kind? don’t know, better spit it out! hey, what’s this? oh it’s a disk! what kind? don’t know, better spit it out! hey, what’s this? oh it’s a disk! what kind? don’t know, better spit it out!”
So I grabbed a pliers and a spoon (they were within reach) and cranked the case a bit to allow the disk to come out. PowerBook cases are really soft and pliable.
At this point Ii lose it. Just fucking lose it. Everything in my head just breaks. I start sobbing uncontrollably, i can’t stop, I can’t breathe, everything is tears and snot and drool and I do the only rational thing, I call my sister.
Oh yes, my poor sister who is sick with some alien viral killbot and is hopped up on cold medicine gets a call from me all blubbery and incoherent and babbling on about everythng being broken! Poor girl. i owe her pie!
She calms me down, pointing out that sometimes $40 dvd players will die after 4 years of continual use in a house full of dogs and no vacuuming and all that. I get calmer, she makes me laugh, things are going to be okay. She’s good like that.
She’s even offered up one of her dvd players for me to use! see, awesome!
Now I must spin and spin and spin