When Electronics Attack

I am going to have to approach my toaster with caution from here on out, as it appears that my electronics are in the early stages of what is sure to be an all-out war.

It started with the iPod. As documented below, it decided (on what seemed to be a whim at the time) to give "complete hard drive failure" a try.

Monday night, it was the... DVD player. "My, this West Wing DVD is taking a long time to load," I thought innocently. "Perhaps I'll try another." No good. No DVD will load. After a couple of minutes, I just get a sad "NO DISC" notice.

And as I'm sure the DVD player is aware, this malfunction comes just days after I decided to stop my cable for the summer. Last night, I had to flip between Access Hollywood and Jerry Springer. The Springer discussion of "women who prostitute themselves with their husband's best friends to feed their babies" just made me sad. On many levels.

And, no, the story is not done. Yesterday afternoon, I insert my floppy disc (innocently, again) into a lab computer. I had been working with this same disc all week and all morning. Now, though? "Disc needs formatting. Would you like to format now?"

Format NOW??? NO, I WOULD NOT LIKE TO FORMAT NOW! The CURRENT format has all of my CURRENT work on it. ARRRRRGH!!!

Deep breath. I don't think I ended up losing much actual work, but I am on edge nonetheless. And what is it that is most disconcerting? It appears that the electronics may have forged an alliance with the bathroom appliances. This morning, the toilet broke and the shower drain was even more clogged than usual.