165: plz hlp!!! comp crsh,fx ndd, blk scrn,blu ln, grr argh]]]]]]

Someone please press the Great Restart Button, installed in our civilisation by the alien masters that spawned us.  Activate the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) generator at the centre of the Earth destroying all electronic systems.  The extraterrestrial originators of this failing experiment we call humanity foresaw that things might go tits up; that we would cover the planet in useless gadgets and our own diseased carcasses.  When they engineered the human species hundreds of thousands of years ago, they knew that one morning, 2011 years after the death of a fictional demigod, I would waste my morning fighting with the Vista black screen of death.

The more I try to understand what occasionally causes my computer to freeze, display a black screen with a blue strip horizontally along the bottom, and then restart, the more I am being bored to death with geek-talk about registries and confusing entries in online forums starting with the words plz hlp!!!   The whole jumbled mess would be easier to solve if computer systems were just wiped from the face of the planet.  Sure; planes might fall from the sky, hospitals and police systems would instantly become unworkable, and most money would immediately disappear, but at least my own computer problems would pale into significance.

The remaining damage from the EMP would render Earth hostile to all electric systems for thousands of years.  Huge amounts of information would be instantly forgotten, globalisation would cease and billions would die.  A new experiment would begin as the surviving few clawed through the wreckage of society, filtering out the crap collective knowledge and focusing on what is essential for survival and comfort.  As we relearn hunting, farming, cooking, art, equality, health care and mutual cooperation, at what point will we need to learn that a man called Jesus, born of a virgin, was the son of god, or that a man called Mohammed wrote a book on behalf of god, and that drawing a picture of him is amongst the greatest of evils?

In a world with no computers, knowing about Jesus and Mohammed and the subjugation of women and the mutilation of genitalia will be as important as knowing that [/OFFWINDIR=[scrb trn/trk trk plnk bla1445]] and believing in X2 Ultra Duel-Core Mobile ZM-80 2.10 Ghz.  Superfluous meaningless concepts and jumbles of unconnected words.  We will all be more concerned with which berry will add an appealing flavour to the rotten pig flesh we are eating, and which will cause our bowels to fall out and our eyes to bleed.  Then when we’ve figured that out we can invent refrigeration (some sort of non-electrical system of course), then we can settle down to making up stories about ghosts and ancestors and trying to explain the movement of the sky using guess work and imagination...

After playing around with registry cleaning software I am slightly confident that the problem might be solved but if it’s not I restate my desire for an electrical apocalypse.  Now all that’s left to do is post this and try restarting.  If I don’t post again tomorrow you know I’ve made things worse, and if nothing works tomorrow you know the alien observers have pressed reset.