On Thursday I mentioned that Scott, Brian, Chris, and I went to see “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” and I stated that it was “pretty spooky.”
I think it would probably be a more accurate assessment of the movie to say that it scared the living crap out of us.
None of us had an especially pleasant time sleeping that night, apparently.
Without giving too much away for those of you yet to see the movie, 3 AM is a very significant (and scary) time in the movie, so the last thing any of us really wanted was to be awake at 3.
Chris found himself awake at exactly 3, and Brian woke up a bit before and realized that he wouldn’t get back to sleep in time – with the added benefit of having his cats staring at him, which also relates to a scene in the movie.
Of us all, though, I think Scott had it the worst, as he was awoken a bit after 3 by the sound of his wife screaming. Apparently she thought she had seen “something.”
So on Friday morning all of us were dragging ass thanks to are less than restful nights.
The four of us had been the only ones in the theater for the movie, as apparently not many people take in a movie at 12:45 in the afternoon on Thursday. As an aside, the theater itself, with its green vinyl seats (Without cup holders!) and their faux wood panel backing looked like something out of the 1970s.
At the movie’s start, there was an annoying light that got left on for some reason, until Scott got up and asked someone to shut it off. All things considered, maybe we should have left it on…
Because we knew we wouldn’t be disturbing anyone else, and as a defense mechanism once the movie started getting scary (a defense mechanism that didn’t work), we went all “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” busting out with all sorts of funny comments.
My favorite was probably Scott’s reference to donkey punching, though it was definitely a “you had to be there” kind of joke.
(And no, I’m not going to explain what donkey punching is)
Of my own comments, my two favorites were when Emily’s boyfriend stated that despite all of the craziness he wouldn’t trade the time he spent with Emily for anything, to which I appended, “Because demon sex is amazing!”
This was made even funnier by the fact that he kept talking about his time with her, stating that she had made him “feel things he’d never felt before,” which I followed up with “like nipple clamps and hot candle wax!”
My other favorite happened at around the same time as Scott’s “donkey punching” comment, both of which involved what we all feel was the freakiest (as determined by the fact that we all yelled “Holy Shit!” when it happened) scene in which the boyfriend wakes up to find Emily in the grip of her possession lying on the floor staring up at him, her body all twisted and contorted. Speaking for the boyfriend at that moment, I said, “I think we should see other people,” and pantomimed running the hell away.
Still, despite the laughter and the whole “whistling past the graveyard” thing in the afternoon, my night was pretty restless.
I woke up several times and fell back to sleep until about 12:30, at which point I found myself unable to get back to sleep. I got up and watched the episode of “The Daily Show” that I had recorded. I then tried to get back to sleep a couple of times without success. Eventually, sometime after 3 AM, I managed doze off for about 45 minutes.
Stupid possessed girl, keeping me up all night…
Actually, “Emily Rose” was only part of the problem, I think.
I think the real problem was that I was still kind of tense from the rage that installing my new DVD burner had built up in me.
The biggest problem, initially, at least, was getting the old drive out.
I opened the chassis up, which is easy enough with the two simple thumbscrews.
Then I removed the screws holding the drive in place and disconnected the cables hooked up to it.
So far so good.
It was at this point, though, that I realized that I couldn't slide the drive forward to get it out because the front panel was in the way and I couldn't find any way to remove it, and that if I slid the drive backwards the power supply unit would be in the way.
Turning the computer on its side, I removed the screws holding the the PSU and lifted it out of the way, then slid the drive backwards a bit. It would go so far, then no further. After a while I noticed that there were tabs on the side holding it in place, so I bent them back and the drive slid a little further.
I removed the panel on the other side, bent some other tabs, and found that it slid even further, but still not far enough.
Bear in mind that the whole time I was sweating more and more profusely, which wasn't helping matters any.
So I was stuck. I couldn't slide the drive forward because the front panel was in the way, and I couldn't slide it backwards because it would only slide so far and no further, despite my best efforts.
I was at a crossroads. One path would lead me to give up and put things back the way they were, leaving it that way over the weekend, and having Brian come help me with it during the week. The other path involved carrying the whole thing out to the balcony and smashing it against the parking lot.
Instead of taking either path I turned around and managed to find the off-ramp that I'd missed earlier in the form of the clips holding the front panel in place.
Even after having found them, though, things weren't exactly a walk in the park, as the most effective means of squeezing the clips and pulling the panel loose would have involved having, at a minimum, six hands.
Eventually, though, I managed to get the panel off and slide the drive out.
Getting the new drive into position took some work, as it was slightly longer than the old one, but eventually I lined up the holes for the screws, connected the cables, and was ready to give it a test run.
Leaving the chassis open and without a front panel, I hooked it back up and hit the power button.
Until I opened the DVD drive door the computer wouldn't boot, which was one of the problems I was having with the old drive, but once I did that Windows started up normally, informed me that there was a newer firmware version for my DVD burner, asked me if I wanted to download it, then installed it.
Success! I threw "Sin City" in and everything worked normally.
I then told it to shut down so that I could put all of the external covering back into place.
That's when my other troubles began.
In the process of shutting down, I got a blue screen, and attempting to boot up resulted in failure until I eventually got it into Safe Mode, then ran Checkdisk on it and made changes to the start up process by making the hard drive the primary boot device.
Once I got into Windows I moved the only "critical" files I have (my drawings) onto my external drive so that they're properly backed up in the event of some catastrophic system failure, which seems, at this point, to be an inevitability.
So far I’ve only tested the CD burning capabilities of the new burner, which went off without a hitch, but I still need to try burning a DVD.
The burner itself arrived packaged as thought I’d bought it out of the back of someone’s van. Apart from the shipping materials, the box contained the burner, a CD, and a cable for connecting the burner to the sound card. No manual, no registration card, no actual packaging.
As I said, I think it was the lingering affects of getting extremely angry that made my sleep so fitful that night, though the image of a possessed Emily Rose stuck in my mind didn’t help matters any.
Friday night I only lost an hour of sleep, having woken up at around 11:30 for a while. Saturday night would have been okay and mostly Emily-free, but I woke up choking about an hour after I fell asleep. I’m not sure what the problem was. There was just something irritating my throat and making me cough and choke, to the point that I was starting to gag and nearly threw up.
Eventually the irritation went away and I managed to fall asleep for most of the rest of the night. I did wake up a bit before 3, but dozed off again and slept until about 4, at which point I woke up feeling like I was having a heart attack.
Once I got up and started moving around, though, I discovered that the pains in my chest and left arm, as well as the nausea, seemed to be caused by some bizarre species of really intense hunger pains, as it all went away once I ate a banana and drank some milk.
At the very least, I didn’t drop dead while working out.
It was an unusual circumstance, but on Friday night I had managed to find a parking space in front of my building, so on Friday and Saturday morning I didn’t have much of a walk to my car. Sunday morning was another matter entirely, though. Going out the door, I had a long scary walk to my car ahead of me. Trying to remain calm and restrain my imagination, I walked over to my car, unlocked the door, and began to carefully place my gym and lunch bags inside – until I heard a door banging in the apartment building I was parked by. At that point, I just threw the bags in and jumped in after them, started up my car, and got the hell out of there.
Not everything about my weekend was scary, though. On Sunday I discovered the phenomenon that is Jon Mikl Thor. Singer! Body-Builder! “Muscle Rock” pioneer! Actor! Producer! God of Rock!
I can’t believe I had never heard of this guy before. Granted, his brand of “metal” is nothing like what I would have listened to, but I was still familiar with the existence of bands I didn’t like back in the day.
Additionally, I have a very strong appreciation for pure cheese, and Thor is about as cheesy as it gets.
Reading about him at his site provided hours of amusement for Scott and I on Sunday, though in many ways it was also very, very sad.
If nothing else, though, you have to check out the Lyrics section on his site. Shakespeare, Byron, Wordsworth, Dickinson; they’ve got nothing on Jon Mikl Thor!
I discovered that one of his movies, “Zombie Nightmare,” was once featured on the actual (as opposed our rendition of at the theater on Thursday) “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” I searched the MST3K newsgroup and found a copy of that episode, which I downloaded and watched today.
As a special bonus, the movie also featured Adam West, and a young Tia Carrere.
There’s not much good that I can say about the movie beyond the fact that Tia, as always, was hot and that it got off to a promising start with Motorhead performing their classic “The Ace of Spades.” It was all downhill from there, though, and Tia didn’t appear often enough, or, more importantly, scantily-clad enough, to make up for the rest of it .
In fairness, it was not Thor who was responsible for the majority of the groans the movie induced, but there were a hell of a lot of groans.
Saturday was Scott’s birthday, so he has officially joined me (and Brian) on the other side of the hill.
In any case, I’m going to watch the premiere of “Threshold,” which is waiting on my DVR.
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