Keeping Up

The mysteries of computer profiling baffle me. How is it that accidentally passing the cursor over a hair product now clogs my screen with advertisements for every means of straightening, curling, moisturizing, growing, and glowing my hair? Computer ads are the techno version of those annoying inserts that constantly fall out when I read a magazine. Or the telemarketer that calls at 5:30 every night as we sit down to supper.

According to the pop-up ads on my computer, fifty-three men from Burlington, NC, are searching for a woman just like me. That sounds suspiciously like a posse or an angry mob. I’ve considered hiring some personal security, but the ads say someone like me. Maybe there is another menopausal, middle-aged, married woman with four kids this band of marauders is seeking. Out there is someone just like me who is on the lamb, hunted by a posse of eligible bachelors. I hope when they find her, they treat her humanely. I know it’s not me these masculine hotties are searching for because, according to my email spam box, I can easily enhance my male parts by three inches. I can’t imagine those fifty-three Burlington men want to tangle with that hormone-testosterone concoction.

It could be my recent Google search of Angela Landsbury that sent me on this spiraling vortex of eligible bachelor pop-ups and male body part enhancements. I’ve seen her early work on Turner Classic Movies and she was not always the prim and proper Jessica Fletcher. I should check to see if there is an Angela Landsbury fan club where like-minded Murder She Wrote fans can gather. Maybe that is where my fifty-three man posse is hanging out in wait for my next cursor click.

I’ve also been researching serial killers for a class presentation, but no related pop-ups or solicitations have appeared on my screen or in my spam box. That seems a bit bias to me. What in my search profile is so domestically dull that it overrides serial killer related pop-ups?

Which brings me to another irrational pondering – I am sure that the powers that be are using my computer’s built-in camera to spy on me. The majority of my activities in front of the computer are mundane - using the reflective surfaces to check for stray nose hairs, sharing online pet videos with my dogs, retrieving bagel crumbs from my cleavage, using spittle to clean sneeze splatter off the screen - you know, normal stuff. But there is, on occasion, a moment of brilliance that I believe is then exploited to line the pockets of the already wealthy.

For instance, single-serve cottage cheese with a side of fruit…that’s me. Smuckers strawberry jam with a spoonful of small curd cottage cheese is totally my late night snack. And that stick Starbucks puts in their to-go cup lids so your drink doesn’t bubble out the hole as you walk to the car…me again. It was an invention of necessity that I affectionately call the stupid stick because every time I order a delicious hot beverage, I inevitably spill it out that tiny, little hole in the lid and chastise myself: “Stupid!”

For fun I’m considering conducting random searches on nonsensical topics, like “proportion of moose attacks in correlation to beehive hairdos.” Maybe I should ask my fifty-three bachelors if they would care to join me in this venture. Or are these just the ramblings of a bored, menopausal, middle-aged, married woman with four kids? I think not.