Aine McCarthy

For the past couple of weeks, my attention span has degenerated to little more than that of a gnat. When I think of my brain lately, I am often reminded of eggs in a frying pan and how closely they resemble the effects of crack. Luckily, I don’t need narcotics to sizzle my creative juices: I just need Chaucer.

So, when I look at ‘ermahgerd’ memes online, during some coveted downtime, the latest quips inevitably transform into Middle English prose or the underlying symbolism surrounding Death in “The Pardonner’s Tale.” Despite my methamphetamine eyesight, reading comprehension is proving a task too difficult; though I am becoming fluent in gibberish.

Much of what I try to focus on eventually turns into indiscernible babble. It’s as if the influx of final papers and exams have chased away all of my cognitive processes. I’m certain if I move my head from side to side, the distinct sound of brain matter can be heard sloshing around inside my temple. It should figure that, when I need my brain the most, it catches the quickest bus to a quaint little B&B in the village of Ermahgerd.

On Friday, I installed some updates on my rather insistent laptop, Genevieve. However, as I was on a time crunch at work, I opted to postpone the required restart, and sternly instructed her to “remind me later.” When I got home from work, I decided to get back into this godforsaken Chaucer paper.

This encompassed three hours of assaulting Genevieve’s keyboard — rewriting my neoteric drivel into something more scholarly ­— and lambasting the pages for not accumulating faster. It was when the vein in my forehead expanded into a new timezone that I retreated from Genevieve’s needy clutches and took a 10-minute respite.

Obviously, she became angry with me. And, like a petulant child, she completely shut down. With some tender coaxing, though, she eventually came around to being turned on. Well, more accurately, I sort of forced the issue; but we’re going through a nasty separation, and I can’t admit dominance.

I should have known better than to neglect a megalomaniac like Genevieve. From the moment I bought her, I knew there was something wrong with her wiring. And, so it was that she conspired with all of her little chips — who all jumped on board to harp at me for having commitment issues with a very succinct “unable to restore file.”

So, that damn medieval paper was, well, history. That’s what I get for having an affair with the word processor.

One would think, given that Genevieve’s hard drive has more RPMs than Veronica (my car), she’d be less likely to experience such flippant affirmation issues. But, so it goes: Genevieve’s puerile antics won out.

Luckily, however, the word processor decided to continue our affair, and the two of us spent 10 romantic hours on Saturday rewriting all that was lost from that paper. This time, though, I was smart and didn’t let on that I was also exercising other non-platonic interludes with Red Bull and Jimi Hendrix.

Unfortunately, lack of sleep, bursts of caffeine and catchy lyrics don’t comprise very convincing papers. I’m sure my professor will appreciate reading how Chaucer’s Pardonner and his “Foxy Lady” walked “All Along the Watchtower” in the “Purple Haze,” but there you have it.

My next laptop will be different: something less needy. I’ve decided I’ll name it MacGyver with the hope that my cheeky clairvoyance will resolve any future issues by using a paperclip and a turkey baster. For now, my affair with the word processor continues on in the wretched stanzas of metaphor-latent prattle. I hear Genevieve is seeing a very nice blogger.