This story is in the first book created from this website, Mentally Incontinent. I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, please consider picking up the book. It's chock full of stuff just like this.

The Motherboard Chronicles 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6| 7

VII. Vive La Dell!

“HEY!” Mike shouted from behind the steering wheel of our rented Volkswagen Sahara van as it rounded yet another corner with breakneck speed. “Could you please make your stupid computer stop doing that?”

“Could YOU please stop treating this gigantic van like it’s entered in the Paris to Dakar rally?!?” I retorted. “You’re going to get us all killed!”

“Well,” He said loudly, “Maybe I could concentrate better on driving if your fucking humbox back there would shut the hell up!”

“I CAN’T HELP IT!” I screamed as I flung my hands in the air in an effort to somehow make my point more valid. “ALL of the maps for this trip are on this stupid laptop, and YOUR dumb ass lost the headphone fix I made, so really, it’s YOUR fault this thing is buzzing insanely.” I took a breath, slid back into my seat, and continued amidst the ear-piercing squeal pouring out of my Dell laptop’s hi-fidelity speakers. “So really, It’s either this or we ask directions – and I don’t know about you, but given our general temperament with one another, I don’t feel like it’s the best idea in the world to stop here – in Paris, a city notorious for hating us Americans – when we’ve gone nearly 72 hours with NO sleep so that we can badger these people with what little I’ve retained of my high school French class!”

“Wait, hold on – this is MY fault?!?” He retorted. “How is your piece of shit laptop buzzing everywhere MY FAULT?!?”

“YOU lost the jack I put in the headphone slot!” I demanded.

“It’s YOUR piece of shit laptop!” He returned.

“Maybe –” Andrea interjected from my left, “—And this is just a hunch, but MAYBE – you two could continue this pissing fight after we reach the hotel –”

“Shut up, Andrea!” Mike shouted. “I don’t need—“

“HEY! Don’t tell her to shut up!” I said as my testosterone spiked. “That’s my wife you’re talking to!”

“Well she’s MY friend!” Mike replied.

The van sat silent as a steady tone filled the vehicle. No one knew what to say. “Dude, that doesn’t even make sense,” I stated. “Why would Andrea being your friend give you the right—“

“I can defend myself, you know,” Andrea inserted. “Especially against Mike the wonder dummy here.”

“Wonder dummy?” Mike replied. “I’M not the one who insisted we drive 72 hours straight through Europe just to get to Paris, now am I?”

“Listen, You –”

“No, YOU listen –”

And with that, Andrea, Mike and I flew into a cacophony of sleep-deprived nonsensical yelling in the middle of Paris… Amidst a screaming buzz from a laptop… In a van, down by the river. The Seine River, to be more accurate. Beautiful river, really… So long as you aren’t screaming at those you’re supposed to be sharing the experience with… Or using a laptop that should have been repaired more than a month earlier for emitting an extremely loud tone from the speakers while you experience it… Or blocking all traffic on the largest major bridge across it, Le Pont Alexander III, with your gigantic rental van.

“What!” Andrea screamed as she turned to face me, irate about my interrupting a perfectly fine tirade by tapping her on the shoulder and shushing her.

“Listen,” I said, placing my index finger to my lips. “Hear that?” It took both Mike and Andrea a second for it to register, but when it did, their reaction was severe.

“FUCK… All those horns… We’re blocking the bridge!” Mike shouted as he rammed his foot on the accelerator in an effort to get the hell out of there. Once clear, he pulled over so that we could continue our yelling match, but before we could, I became increasingly aware of something. Well, not something, but rather the lack thereof. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.

“Hey,” Andrea said in mid-exclamation, “Your laptop. It stopped buzzing.”

“Yeah, I noticed that too,” I replied. Looking down at it in disbelief, a gigantic smile stretched across my face. “Holy cow… It’s FIXED!” I shook it happily. “IT’S FIXED! IT FIXED ITSELF! HA!”

“No,” said an until-then silent Trish from the back bench, shattering my joy-filled dream. “I replaced your lost headphone jack. The hum was driving me nuts.”

“Oh,” I replied, examining the headphone slot on the left of the laptop to find a plug sticking out from it. “But wait – where’d you find the jack?”

“I didn’t,” She answered as she held up the sliced-off end of her own headphones.

“Wow, Trish… you sacrificed your headphones just to end the noise.” I was fighting through the massive amounts of adrenaline that had built up, but somehow, I found it within myself to be thankful. “That’s… well, that’s very kind of you.”

“Yeah, I will be without music until I can buy some more, but shit… Anything’s better than that stupid HUMMING,” She answered as she folded her arms across her chest.

“Uh…” Andrea said calmly. “You know, Trish, you could have just… you know… plugged them in without chopping off the end.”

Trish looked at Andrea, then at me, and then finally back to Andrea. “FUCK!” She shouted with a heave and a scowl, waking the ever-asleep Lori who shook in her seat next to Trish.

“Wuh…” Lori managed to squeak out through her sleepy haze.

“Nothing, Sleep-o,” I answered. “Nothing at all.” And suddenly, we all started laughing like in the sitcoms. Not that anything was really funny about waking a sleeping passenger with an angry reaction to butchering your only pair of headphones to silence a piercingly-loud malfunctioning laptop while trying to find your way to a hotel in the middle of a foreign city on 72 hours of no sleep… We were all just delirious. And starving.

“Dude,” I said, “There’s a McDonalds over there. Let’s hop out for a minute and get some… Uh, what time is it?”

“Fuck… it’s 4:00,” Mike replied, referring to the post-meridian version of that time.

“Yeah, so let’s get some dinner then,” I stated. “I could go for a Royale with Cheese right about now.”

Mike laughed. Trish laughed. Lori chuckled from behind closed eyelids. Andrea, however, missed the joke entirely. “Huh?” She asked.

“A ‘Royale with Cheese’,” Trish answered as Mike started the van back up. “That’s what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in France. Haven’t you ever seen Pulp Fiction?”

“No,” She answered plainly. Suddenly, the entire cabin of the vehicle became devoid of air as we all simultaneously gasped.

“Joe!” Trish demanded. “How could you possibly have let this happen?”

“Don’t look at me,” I replied. “I take no responsibility for this whatsoever.”

“What’s so great about Pulp Fiction anyw—UUMF!!” Andrea asked as Mike took a nearly 90 degree corner at nearly 90 kilometers an hour, slamming her into the side of the van. Again. “ASSHOLE!” She shouted.

“HAHA!” Mike replied, indicating that he not only did it on purpose, he did it just to piss us all off.

“What’s so great about it?” Lori repeated back to her, now wide awake, hoping to move past Mike’s ridiculousness and talk about anything other than what a jerk we all were being at this point. “God… what’s NOT great about it? That’s a classic movie!”

“Basically,” I explained, “There’s a very funny scene between John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson where Travolta explains that they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese a ‘Royale with Cheese’ in France.”

“Well, sure,” She replied. “Because of the metric system. What’s so funny about that?”

Once again, we all sat silent. “Never mind,” I replied. “You’ll just have to see it for yourself. Besides, we’re here now. And just in time, too,” I added, seeing the final point of light fade away from the screen as the laptop’s battery reached the end of it’s supposed extended life.

We walked into the Parisian McDonalds and approached the counter. In an attempt to bring a little levity to the situation and with Pulp Fiction still on my mind, I decided to forego the traditional ‘Parlez-vous Anglais?’ and instead, in a very calm and light voice, asked the young man at the counter:

“English, motherfucker. do you speak it?”

This drew chuckles from all of my friends except Andrea, who hit me on the shoulder. “That’s not very nice!” She said.

“Oh, relax,” I replied. “It’s just another line from –”

“—From Pulp Fiction,” the young clerk answered, finishing my sentence with a scowl on his face. “And yeah, I do.”

“Oh!” I said with surprise. “You know the film?”

“Well, yeah,” He replied. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Not her,” Trish answered, pointing to my wife.

He gave her a strange look. “You’ve never seen Pulp Fiction?” he asked in extremely well-spoken English.

“NO, goddammit! I’ve never seen Pulp Fiction!” She exclaimed. “What’s the big fucking deal about Pulp Fiction?”

“Well, it’s only one of the classics of American Cinema,” He answered.

“ARGGGGH!” She exclaimed. “FINE. It’s a classic. Can we just get some food, please?”

“I suppose you’ll want a Royale with Cheese, eh?” He asked with a chuckle.

“Yeah, sure. Whatever,” She replied.

“I’ll take one myself,” I interjected. “Sweetie, could you grab that for me? I gotta go charge this piece of shit laptop.”

“Laptop?” he asked. “Need Wi-Fi?”

“Uh… YES!” I answered immediately. “They have Wi-Fi in McDonalds???”

“Yep,” he answered. “Just about everywhere here is Wi-Fi enabled.” He pulled a card from the register and handed it to me. “Instructions are on the back.”

Like a junkie getting his first hit of the juice after days of withdrawal, I literally sprinted to an open table and prepared myself for that beautiful hit of my chosen drug, the internet. I plugged up and tuned in, and within seconds, I was poring through nearly a week’s worth of email. I tapped through each message, scanning for those which looked to be of major importance. I saw one from Trish’s mom talking about how the train bombing in Madrid had everyone back home afraid for our safety, insisting that we contact them immediately. I saw another explaining how all of our servers at work had serious issues and, if I found time, it would be seriously beneficial to our continued ability to service customers if I could just drop in for a moment and fix what was wrong. Emergency after emergency, issue after issue, I tapped through each message as I attempted to pretend I’d never gotten them – and then, I saw it.

Amidst the long list of inbound email, I saw peeking through the haze an “@dell.com” email address. At first, I thought it was just another customer service survey to find out just how pissed off I was that it had been almost two months since my last promise that my computer would be fixed. I examined further – there was a person’s NAME before the @ symbol. A real person’s name.

A person named Andy.

With the curiosity of a kid at Christmas who’d just received a package with a strange name on it, I highlighted the message in the list and began to read it. My eyes danced through the email, eager to find out what it was that Andy from Dell wanted to tell me.

I literally squealed when I found out.

”What?” Mike said as he sat next to me at the gigantic corner booth I’d reserved for us.

“You’ll never believe this,” I replied.

He took one look at the expression of disbelief on my face. “What is it, another offer to enlarge your penis?”

“No… Someone from Dell emailed me. Apparently, he’s read the Motherboard Chronicles on my website and is offering to do whatever it takes to make what’s wrong right.”

“Oh… Well, thank God,” He said as Andrea, Trish and Lori all made their way to our booth. “It’s about time someone took care of that thing so you will quit whining about it.”

“Whining about what?” Andrea asked as she placed my Royale with Cheese before me and took the empty spot of the bench next to me.

“Oh, Joe got an email about enlarging his penis,” Mike answered. “I’m just glad this situation will finally be over.”

“What, not enough for you, Mike?” Trish interjected, making reference once again to Mike and I doing the gay together.

“HAR HAR!” I said loudly. “What are you now, my mother?”

“I can’t believe she really thought you two were lovers,” Lori chimed in. “God, she’s your mother, for chrissake. You’d think she’d, like, know and stuff.”

“Eh, that’s my mom for ya’,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “No, this guy from Dell emailed me. He read my story about this laptop on my website and wants to help me get it squared away.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Andrea answered. “Maybe now you’ll shut up about the damn—“

“Too late,” I said. “Mike already said that.”

I jotted a quick reply to Andy explaining to him that I was out of the country and that the second I returned stateside, I would be in touch. I thanked him at least 133 times throughout the course of my reply, taking special care to call him a champion among men and commenting that his boss should give him a raise and a promotion. And then I took a bite of my Royale with Cheese and commented in my best Sam Jackson voice, “My, this IS a tasty burger!” Again, everyone laughed except Andrea, who just pouted and called us jerks.

Things moved rather quickly once I got home. It was near the end of March – about two months since I’d last been promised a repair and a little over a year since I’d first ordered the laptop. It took nearly one year of constant trying to get my requests into the hands of someone who actually gave a crap about handling my issues – and even then, it wasn’t really through the normal channels – but once Andy took over, every single issue I had was handled with the utmost expedience. The second I emailed him, he got to work with initiating a full-scale diagnostic on my system and within a day, had a solution to me. The motherboard still needed to be replaced – making my seventh motherboard since I’d ordered the laptop. And just to be safe, he replaced any and every component that could possibly be replaced without actually ordering a brand new laptop, so as to make sure that there wasn’t some sort of internal conflict. He made absolutely sure to keep me informed of every step of the process and assured me that, in the future, he was my man for all repairs.

And yes – there have been repairs that were necessary from that point until now. I’ve been through a keyboard, power supply and a stick of RAM in that time, but each and every issue was managed with the utmost expedience by my good pal Andy, and fortunately, my seventh motherboard has persevered to the present day. It’s unfortunate that there can’t be an Andy or a Dagney for each and every Dell customer.

I know that their goal was (and is) to make things right with me, and I think that’s a fine goal for their departments to have – however, it’s unfortunate that this goal isn’t exactly held in high regard by a majority of the support staff. Sure, a commitment to excellence in product manufacturing is supposed to be the number one thing, but let’s face it – things break. Sure, they break more with me than they do with others, but still – things break. And when they do, people need support. At this point in my little journey, I’m convinced that handing them off the lowest bidding outsourced company full of dispassionate, underpaid, non-English-speakers is not exactly the best way to go – but hey, I’m not running the company. I’m just writing a story about what happens when it’s done that way.

So, ladies and gentlemen, we come to what I am considering to be the end of the long, long road I’ve traveled in my quest to get a working laptop – but finally, I think I’ve succeeded. I can’t tell you what a relief it’s been to be able to work on stories with confidence, knowing that I can just relax and write without having to worry about the machine going haywire and either freezing up or burning me – or having to worry about calling India once again when it does. Yes, it seems that, in regards to this laptop, things are FINA