Say Howdy To El Diablo!

So, this is a story from the last week at home, dealing with my afflicted missus, Schmoopie The whole Harry Potter thing was going on last week, you see, and while I'm willing to watch the movies, I don't have the whole rabies thing about it. I think Schmoopie took advantage of my forgetful nature, and just made plans that included me going to a 10PM showing of the first Harry movie with new (7th) book distribution at the end. I don't remember being asked or agreeing to this sort of thing, but she assures me I was and did. So very well, I like hanging out with them, even when they are too hopped up in some frenzied book release to notice me. But this story actually begins the day before that.

I have some kind of peculiar or de-tuned charm for finding really weird shit on the Internet. J says I find "every pothole on the information superhighway". It's been said worse. So, I normally use (abuse) this skill/talent/whatever to look for really freaky porn (disclosure: I am male, and this is as natural as breathing. If porn upsets you- please try and relax, or at least don't click the last link in this entry.) But as fate would have it, I came across a PDF file of the whole new Harry Potter book, so I downloaded it. Schmoopie will be happy, I'm thinking to myself, and I like to do nice things to, er... for her. So I head upstairs to tell her what I've found, and it's more than one day before the release. She's just gotten out of the shower and is finished dressing (damn it) and I tell her that I'm about to make her happy. She thinks it's a vulgar come on (does she know me, or what?) and I tell her that I have the Harry book.

She looks at me as though I have killed a puppy. No shit. Now, for background here- we've pre-ordered and paid for two copies at full retail- we're not shorting Ms. Rowling on this deal. But no- she looks at me with wounded eyes and says- "you're the devil!"

Yup. Stucco. El Diablo. Mephisto. Big Lou Cipher. Judas. Satan. Howdy!

To say I was surprised is an understatement. Then a transformation happened. After accusing me of being the devil, she began lecturing me about how the experience was all about "cracking the spine" and holding a book, etc. This lasted almost a minute. Then she began asking how I got it and wanted to know details about what I had. I'm still stunned, mind you, but I answer her questions as we go downstairs. I sit down at my computer and within another minute, she is asking where the PDF file is. The next minute, she starts reading and my widowerhood begins, only to pause long enough for her to email Pants that she'd gotten a copy and had started reading. Not 10 minutes later the phone rang- it was Pants demanding a copy...

By the time the movie and book deal rolls around, she's forgotten all about calling me the devil, and is happily shuffling me off to her nerd event (and is 250+ pages into the book, courtesy of the PDF). If I'm still a devil in her mind, it may be more like this:


So, the lessons learned:

1.) If you try to do something nice for someone, be prepared for grief.
2.) Book embargo dates are really stupid.
3.) If I were the devil, I think I'd find that sort of work to be pretty easy. Once people get over their righteous indignation performances, they seem happy enough to break rules and do what feels good/naughty/whatever.

And this NSFW (Not Suitable For Work) little gem cropped up while I was looking for a devil image, and I really appreciate this sort of thing...