A Game of Laptops

I can't watch Game of Thrones yet because I have no HBO and no clue where else to watch it. We don't have cable or satellite anymore because we find Netflix sufficient most of the time. Now I have to find a way to stream that that will probably be too expensive anyways. Ugh. Instead of doing that I've been reading fanfiction of Ryan and Shane from Buzzfeed Unsolved because I'm a weirdo and I think they'd be cute together. Also I might think Ryan is the most adorable guy ever.

Some relatives visited today. One of my older cousins, Christine, brought me a new nightstand from a set she bought years ago, since she's getting ready to move out of her old house and start renting it out instead, and has to sort through all her old stuff. She mentioned she may just sell the house instead and has been talking to a realtor. It's crazy to me that that house won't be in the family soon, since I have so many memories there. It's the first place I played IMVU or downloaded LimeWire.

Around 2007-2009 I would hang out there on the weekends a lot. My Nan had died and I'd always spent a lot of my weekends at her house, and Christine's husband had died and their son moved out, so we were both lonely, so somehow we ended up pairing up. I spent most of my time on her computer like any pre-teen who didn't have internet at home would, but she didn't mind because she didn't know how to use it.

Actually I'm pretty sure I eventually gave that computer a virus looking at gay porn on it, but hey, I was a preteen boy, and I was deep in the closet. Cut me some slack!

Anyway, I would sit in her computer room/nook and listen to Sweet Dreams by Beyoncé and She Wolf by Shakira, on rotation, for hours, while I played IMVU. I also listened to a Justin Bieber cover of some older sixties or seventies song constantly, but I can't remember the name now. It was in his feminine elf-boy days when he looked like a little Keebler Elf and wore all purple all the time. I actually like that he committed to purple as HIS colour for so long, because purple is Boss. Big Black Horse and a Cherry Tree was also a go-to bop in those days. God, I have good taste in music.

So I downloaded IMVU on her computer and hung out in a bunch of virtual nightclubs trying to find surveys to fill to get more IMVU coins to buy avatar clothes with. One Christmas I spent like $100 dollars of real money on it and my parents almost murdered me because I was supposed to order actual clothes for myself, but I was super bad with money growing up. I actually still am but I tell myself I'm not. The truth is I never wanted practical stuff like clothes or new shoes or hygiene products, I wanted more books and IMVU credits and laptops. Constantly.

I think I went through like a billion laptops as a kid. Maybe not that many, but:

1. The beat up and incompetent debut laptop; I bought it from my friend Caitlin in grade six and used it to download music on LiveMesh, a LimeWire ripoff, paint in MS Paint, and write in the default Notepad. I could only use the internet on it when I stayed at Holiday Inns with my aunt because it only connected to wired internet. I downloaded a bunch of pictures of Naruto Yaoi because that was all the rage in the late-aughts.

2. The cherry red netbook. This was a beautiful little red Acer piece I didn't take care of enough. It was a grading present because I finally passed sixth grade after failing the first time, but it was also definitely my mom and dad buying back my love after forcing me to move out of the city and switch schools. It mostly worked but then stopped when we fought about the next thing, which I'm pretty sure was me being gay. Anyway I used this to watch Mirror's Edge playthroughs, played a lot of Mirror's Edge 2D, and watched anime speedpaints on YouTube. I would stay up all night watching I <3 Vampires (A web-show CLASSIC) and be tired all day at school. I skipped a lot anyways, since I was bullied, I would stay home reading really long, overtly sexual Harry Potter fan fictions about Harry and Draco.

3. The refurbished $100 dollar mess. I hadn't had a laptop in like two years, and my dad brought me to a clearance/liquidation hardware shop where they had a bunch of refurbished old Windows XP laptops, which were not that good, but better than nothing, obviously. I had it for a week before it broke and we brought it back. I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower on it. On Primewire, which no longer exists in a reliable form, or else I'd be watching Game of Thrones right now. I might stop by that shop again and see if they have a new batch of cheap refurbished computers. It would be nice to draft in bed.

4. The actual laptop laptop. A super nice Windows 8 laptop that was the culmination of all my Christmas money from every relative, plus promising my dad ten hours of work to match my half. I had this for a lot of early high school and loved it. I'm pretty sure I wrote Stars Full of Lies, my first actual book, on this laptop for Camp Nano in April 2013. It's insane to think about now. I would stay up all night with this in the summer, drinking Red Bull and writing vampire stories of my own between watching episodes of True Blood. I painted parts of my room orange. And I posted to this blog and my last one with it, I'm pretty sure. I took this uptown a lot and wrote on it in Market Square on sunny days. RIP laptop prince.

5. The short-loved touchscreen debacle. I bought this $500 fancy touchscreen laptop I loved while I was a seasonal hire at Bath & Body, Xmas 2016. You can find posts about and from it on this blog. I was super excited. It ended up breaking on me, blue screen of death. That was traumatizing. By then I'd finished my seasonal job and lost the warranty on that laptop so replacing it was a no-go. I lost some decent writing I didn't have backed up but most of it was spared. I don't think I finished a book while I had this laptop, but I blogged more than ever, so this blog was at its peak at that time. I want another one like this, and I honestly spent months after getting it trying to touch other screens because I forgot they weren't my laptop.

Anyway, now I'm back to square one. I have a desktop on its dying legs and an iPad older than all my pets. If I win the lotto, which I won't because I don't play it, I'll buy a million fancy laptops and just be able to grab a new one when one of them breaks. I don't know how I'm so rough with them. Obviously though if I have some huge windfall of cash I'm just going to buy my parents a bunch of gifts and throw a wall of money at their mortgage because they deserve it. And also plant some fields to save the bees. I want to create a giant bee sanctuary one day.

Anyway I didn't write a short yesterday, so now I have to go write two tonight. And finish Glimpse. Being behind on things is my brand. But it was Easter so maybe I deserved a break? I sat around and ate a lot of roast beef and squash. Now it's time to work. :)

ETA: I did NOT write two shorts or work on Glimpse the night I wrote this. Now that I'm posting it a day late I feel the need to cop to that, lol. I'm about to finish my first short of the day and start another one, though, so I'm making up for lost time!