Yuck, with a Silver Lining, with a YUCK Lining

So ... as some of you may know ... my car got broken into recently ... and my backpack grabbed ... that included my computer.  Which ... as all of you probably can imagine, sucked.  Months of work ... months of DJ work and tons of personal information and collections of art and music and bookmarks and emails and to-do lists and the whole shot.  A lot of stuff that's super important to me.  Plus, my shades and camera and headphones and so forth.  Needless to say I was pretty sick to my stomach.  It was super lame, and totally made me bitter and suspicious of every person on the street and kinda changed my view of everyday life around here.  Ruined my week quite nicely.  It's amazing how fast you become a raving Republican when you're a victim of a crime.

The police were unfeeling but ... efficient.  They seemed more interested in just filling out forms rather than chasing down leads.  I had no hope.  One website about laptop theft said that 98% of stolen laptops are never recovered.

But ... incredibly ... the other day, I get a call from the investigating officer saying that they recovered my stuff ... and to come down and pick it up at the station.  I was FLOORED.  I was even more floored when I went down there and there was a plastic bag containing almost everything that was in my backpack.  From my laptop to my mouse and sound card, headphones, and even little audio connectors and a USB flash drive.  I was crazy elated and profusely thanked the universe for such fortune (if you can consider it that).  I really couldn't believe it.  I was so happy.  I mean, when does that ever happen that you get your stuff back??!

But there was a yucky lining to the silver lining.  

I get it all home ... and plug it all in ... and it all has this ... fucking ... SMELL.  That stale cigarette and white trash rental apartment smell.  YUCK.  Like, I can fucking smell it right now while I'm typing this.  And consider how nasty the place must've smelled to make a metal computer smell up my room.

EWWW!!!

And it gets worse.  All the stickers on my laptop are removed (years worth).  I open it up, and my desktop image is now some motorcycle picture.  I open iTunes and all my music is gone.  Replaced by a handfull of crappy country music MP3s (the horror!).  I'm starting to feel more violated than I did before I was returned my stuff.  The smell is making me sick ... and I open the browser ... shudder ... and open the history tab.  Can u guess what this wonderful person was using my computer for?  Yep.  Porn.  Porn porn porn.  Dozens of porn Google searches (the screen scrolled for a *long* time) ... including some disturbing search terms I won't repeat ... followed by Craigslist "chance meeting" personals ... and job and housing postings.  Some wierd Google map searches on an address in Seaside, Oregon ... and lots of Craigslist searches for free shit and 70s VW bug listings.  And then it gets even wierder.

Searches for sex offender registries in Utah and Oregon and nationally.  Inmate rosters for various jails in Utah and Oregon.  I'm officially fucking sick to my stomach and I can still smell the cigarettes.  I delete the country music and consider just whiping the entire hard drive in general and start questioning whether I'm happy to have my stuff back at all.  And then I look at the camera sitting on my desk.  Jesus, no ... 

Yes.  

Self fucking portrait ... 

This is the face of yuck in your community.  Undoubtedly taken for a Craigslist personal ad.  There's also numerous photos of some poor kids, including a couple of a little girl wearing my shades and some similarly scary characters.

By now I'm seriously grossed out.  They made my computer ... gross.  I almost don't even want it back.  YUCK!!!!!  Yuck yuck YUCK!!!

:: SHUDDER ::

So I erase everything.  Change my desktop picture to a beach scene ... get out the Lysol, erase the camera and hope to soon forget the entire experience.  I still don't know how the police managed to make the arrest (note about criminals ... most of them are deadly stupid), but Mr. Charming was likely on parole and hopefully will be doing some time for this.  The browser history shows no email website accessed, and nothing else is touched, so I'm not worried that this person used any computer skills to get anything off my laptop.  I had my stuff backed up (learn that lesson right now) ... so I didn't lose anything.

Verdict:  porn obsessed chain smoking white trash drifter crackhead sex offender borrows your laptop for a week.  Fucking GREAT!!

Yeah.  You know ... I usually have a policy ... if something yucky happens to you ... to not really share it ... so you can keep that experience from infecting other people needlessly ... but please allow me to break that rule this time.

YUCK!