Have you ever written a really lengthy, thorough, and somewhat personal message, only to mistype the e-mail address and send it to some random person? I mean, the recipient probably doesn't know anything about the situation or what's going on -- and it's really nothing that I wouldn't and haven't already detailed at length here, where anyone can read the page and search the archives -- but still. It's rather embarrassing.

Fingers crossed for a mailer daemon response.

Floory scares me.

And the Daleks continue to haunt my head.

First time ever! I think today was the first time I've purchased gummi anything -- bears, worms, children, Super Mario Brothers and assorted enemy shapes, etc. I've tasted these things, of course, but they're the kind of thing I'd take only when someone else had them. They're the snacks mothers buy, sticking the little pouches in their kids' lunchboxes before shuffling them off to school. They're the kinds of things you find at the ice cream topping bar and pack onto your makeshift sundae at the endangered species of a restaurant that still has that sort of thing. And, yes, they're available in the snack aisle at your local supermarket, but does anyone buy them? Are there people who write "gummi bears" on their grocery lists? Someone must. I never did.

I happened to be standing in the line at the dollar store today when I saw them there amidst the impulse buy candy that every store places near the front in order to pump their customers for spare change and incite violent tantrums from children. (In front of me, a little girl with chocolate frosting smeared across her mouth wailed, "MOMMY I WANT IT," as her mother scolded her for eating the chocolate treat she now wore on her face. The girl was holding what looked like a wax paper bag -- the kind one fits with a cone-shaped tip and uses to frost a cake. She had apparently gnawed a hole in it and had been sucking the frosting from the wound.) Gummi bears. And I would have looked away without giving them a second thought -- as I have so many times before -- if not for the voice in my head. It said:

"Would you like a jelly baby?"

I snatched the bag from its metal peg and placed it among my other purchases. No, gummi bears are not jelly babies, but they will do.

Curse you, Doctor Who. Curse you and your jelly babies.

And not because of the stupid dead pixel thingy, which I've gotten pretty good at working around and not noticing. No, I despise this LCD screen because when I happen to be awake in the mornings when the darkness flees, Mister Sunshine illuminates every single tiny spot and smudge and speck of dust and lint on the goddamned thing, which moves me to commence shrieking followed by ninety-minute sessions of wiping and buffing and wiping and buffing and wiping and buffing and wiping and buffing and wiping and buffing and wiping and buffing in order to remove these horrible blemishes from my sight -- a neverending series of futile gestures because even as I continue to wipe and buff and wipe and buff and wipe and buff and wipe and buff buff buff buff buff the screen continues to acquire additional smudges (hence the repeated buffing) and collect even more tiny particles due to its irredeemably evil static field that somehow manages to attract every single vicious speck of dust or lint within a thirty-foot radius. I swear, someday this laptop is going to drive me to the edge of insanity and then send me soaring over the edge and into the distance just like Charlie Brown would have kicked that football if Lucy hadn't kept being a total bitch and moving the damned thing. Argh.

Your mission, junior inventors -- should you choose to accept it -- is to create a smudge-proof LCD screen that generates a reverse static field that actually repels dust and lint particles. Your Nobel Prize awaits.

Every fucking month, Windows XP bugs me with an update for some built-in malicious software removal tool thingy. Then, after I comply and say I don't want to reboot until later, it interrupts whatever I'm doing to nag nag nag me EVERY FIFTEEN GODDAMNED MINUTES until I finally agree to restart the computer. Windows 2000 never did this. Hell, even Suuupa Xtreme Blue Screen Enhanced Windows 98 never went this far. I seriously think Windows XP is going out of its way to drive me irreversibly insane.

If this malicious software removal tool program actually did what it purports to do, I would have no fucking operating system. 👿