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Bethany Black, the person responsible for me finding out that I had aphantasia, and thus my mortal enemy, came over today to fix my computer. It was a six hour round trip for her, to fix a computer that she had assembled and which I (presumably) had smashed, so maybe I should downgrade her to just a regular enemy. Maybe even friend.
I had been so careful moving this computer from the old house to the new house - having carefully packed everything in original boxes, even putting things back in the polystyrene that is my actual mortal enemy (and there's nothing it can do to get downgraded). And that was polystyrene at its worse: tightly around heavy equipment, being squeezed into a cardboard box, shrieking its evil shriek that no sane human can abide, turning me into an angry punching machine... I really hate that sound. Once the esteemed broadcaster Tracey Macleod hid behind a car so she could leap out and run polystyrene against polystyrene to surprise me. Apparently this act of aggression was a "joke" and that would probably have stood up in a court of law had I punched her. Luckily she was laughing so much at her jape that she failed to make a sound and thus escaped certain death. I am not in control of my response when that noise is made.
Anyway, I had packed the computer, stored it in a cupboard and then transported it to the new house very safely. When I tried to assemble it all, it did not work and when Chris Evans, not that one, turned up to set up the snooker cameras he couldn't get it to work either and when he brushed against the glass panel on the outside of the computer box (I believe that's a technical term for the thing which has all the motherboards and CPUs and flashing lights int it), the panel shattered into a thousand pieces. Clearly at some point the computer had been banged, but I could not for the life of me think or remember when. I started to question myself. I'd even made a point of telling Chris how careful I'd been with it before all this happened, just like someone who had actually smashed at the thing with a hammer would have done.
I started to question whether I had actually dropped the thing at some point and then somehow wiped the trauma from my mind. I was really the only person who had touched this thing so it seemed more than likely that it was me. Unless it was a final goodbye from the ghosts that haunted our old house.
Bethany, having driven from the environs of Manchester, suspected that she'd find out that I just hadn't turned the computer on or that a loose screw might have fallen somewhere where it shouldn't be. She found some coffee inside the box which might have had something to do with it, but again I was struggling to work out how that was possible as I kept the thing on the desk and kept drinks away from it, but I vaguely remember spilling a coffee in the new location and the computer was underneath the desk, so that one was explainable (but also hadn't caused the malfunction). It turned out not to have got in anywhere too important.
After a bit of impressing deconstruction and moving things around Bethany discovered that the issue was that the CPU had become detached. I don't really know what a CPU is, but I know it's important because in the Terminator Pinball Machine, Arnold tells you to "Get the CPU" and you get lots of points if you do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdlWQAXlrqM
Bethany was surprised by this development because (and I won't get this entirely right) but the CPU has 1800 little sproggets that all fit into 1800 little holes and are then clamped in place, so it would take some extreme force to knock them out and if you did you would expect them all to break and also for most of the computer to be smashed. Yet aside from the smashed glass, everything else was fine and unbelievably the CPU itself didn't seem to be damaged. She was hopeful that she could reconnect it all and the computer would work. And she was right, it did.
Which really makes the case for the damage having been done by a supernatural force beyond our understanding - maybe the Birthday Donkey did it in the hope it would stop Twitch of Fun.
I know that this is all somehow my fault and thus it's more worrying that I have no memory of doing anything extreme enough to have caused this damage. It's possible Chris Evans (not that one) or one of his cohorts kicked the thing when they were setting up the system, but it's not likely. He's many things, but he is not a (convincing) liar, but also the computer hadn't worked before they turned up. I am the only human who has touched it. Which puts me in the top 5 suspects for this crime. And the other suspects are ghosts and puppets, neither of which have ever been successfully convicted by the UK legal system.
The good news though is that the super-efficient and brilliant system that Bethany made for us is now up and running and I seem to have connected everything to it properly, if messily and so live streams can now continue in a more reliable fashion.
Here's a clip
We're also started putting up full RHLSTP videos that haven't yet been on Youtube, starting with Stevie Martin and Tessa Coates from August 2021.
Watch here. 
