If Deep Blue Something was mentioned, I blocked it out.

155. 13 Months Haunted – Jimmy Juliano

This tale of someone not realizing how not anonymous blogging can be and not getting consent to tell someone else’s story, let alone just type it up wholesale and post it, was interesting. There are a few issues I had with it beyond my first sentence like that it is somehow necessary to cross into Minnesota when driving from Iowa to Madison, WI, which is towards the bottom of Wisconsin (it’s not) and what he was talking about when referencing the library’s “archives” being on fiche. I always question anyone not writing in the actual 1980s or before when they mention fiche, of course, and also a lot of libraries I’ve worked in have a vertical file, which means some of the weird little things they keep which might be the sort of thing you’d consider their own archive are actually on – gasp – paper. And if he’s talking about newspaper, any regular readers of mine know that’s on microfilm, not microfiche, and I very much care if they know that there’s a physical difference between those two things.

Anyway, my highly specific concerns aside, I did also have an issue with the musical taste of the main characters. It provided me with more of a barfy nostalgia than the happy kind because I wasn’t a pop listener. Most of the songs mentioned were what would make me turn the station at all costs if I was driving. There was a metric ton of good alternative music during that time, so, you weren’t stuck with pop. We had choices. I actually got my first computer just before going to college when Napster was fresh and full of mindlessly mislabeled songs and it was fun. Also, my computer was one of those blueberry iMacs, so I had a cute and contained computer. Essentially, I am pretty much in the same age group as the main character Piper Lowery. I burned a lot of CDs and had a lot of time with my Discman.

The story itself has to do with a killer computer virus cobbled together from a child’s will to code and a website with a lot of dark and occult content. It’s an interesting idea and when they got down to sorting out what was actually in the virus I was entertained. There were also some genuinely scary moments with a drunk town dude whose son fell victim to the virus. His inability to distinguish a Grateful Dead shirt from devil worship just made it clear how little understanding he had for anyone else’s existence.

I have to say though, I think the main character kind of deserved to be cursed for not realizing that you should never just type of out someone else’s writing work and post it online without any kind of consent (and no credit since she wanted to stay anonymous – ugh). It’s heinous behavior worthy of perpetual computer cursing.

 

Finny probably knew how to code occult curses. He was that kind of pig. The awesome kind.

 

It’s unclear if this was a true mistake or not, but it’s on the verge of being one.  And I would like to say that I can recall only one time – a single time – that anyone started talking to me about fiche not inside a library and wasn’t mistaken. It was amazing.