Rural Dictionary

Blue screen of death

The phrase Blue Screen of Death has its origins in the maritime trade, particularly buccaneer lore of the sixteenth century. When a ship is sunk, all that is left is the morbidly still ocean, glistening bright blue in the Caribbean sun. Thus, when one heads out to sea, with the intention of meeting another boat, and all one sees is the rolling blue ocean, one can sadly assume that that boat has sunk.

The phrase became absorbed into common language as a term referring to the feeling of empty hopelessness one experiences when faced with a vast expanse of watery oblivion. Staring out into Lake Windermere, the great poet William Bleak was sufficiently moved by the still blueness that he wrote his masterpiece "Songs of Death", eventually going on to kick-start the goth movement.

With the advent of air travel in the twentieth century, it became applicable to the sky, as well as the sea: many an early airman was deemed lost to the Blue Screen of Death (although quite a few of them simply turned out to have gotten slightly lost and landed in the wrong place). Over time the Blue Screen has become synonymous with loss, emptiness and to some, the Devil.

The association of the colour blue with death, watery or otherwise, is readily visible throughout modern civilisation. Household cleaners such as bleach are packaged in blue bottles, in memory of those who, when the product was new to the market, mistook it for cheap ouzo and passed away through dissolution of the digestive tract. When one sings "The Blues" one is reflecting on the brevity of life, and the oblivion that awaits in death. Cheese and onion crisps, known to be the foulest of all snack foods, often come packaged in blue to ward off the purchaser.

With this in mind, that the "Blue Screen of Death" is the most chilling and deadly entity in computer science is no surprise. They have been plaguing computer operators since someone had the bright idea of connecting a screen to a computer. This is one of the most puzzling phenomina in computing since during the 60's, 70's and 80's the Blue Screen of Death was able to manifest itself in full blueness on green and amber monochrome cathode, black and white, and two tone LCD screens

The Blue Screen of Death was slipped into the very core of the Windows operating system at its inception, by a malicious developer with a sick interest in pagan rites. It is rumoured that when one sees the Blue Screen of Death on a computer screen it wrenches a tiny part of your soul and binds it to the afflicted machine. Repeated exposure, legend has it, will eventually drain one's spirit, leaving a living corpse, pale and restless, existing without purpose and an unquenchable thirst for caffeine.

A recent evolution of the "Blue Screen of Death" feature in Windows Vista has serious side effects. Instead of simply displaying a "blue screen", the new variant displays random flashing colors in a superhypnobrainwave pattern, causing the user to have a seizure and die within 195 hours of continuous seizure. The seizures are extremely painful for the 195 hours, then the seizure-ee suddenly feels a jabbing pain in their lower upper thigh and dies. 96.3141592% of these seizures last for the full 195 hours. The colors of the screen randomly flash between red, green and blue and actually cause death, so this variant of the "Blue Screen" should instead be called an epileptic screen of red, green and blue death, but Microsoft have decided to make the feature part of their new family of software - creating "Windows Live Screen of Death Beta".

The blue screen of death has had many social consequences. The Catholic Church has condemmed the blue screen of death for promoting a "culture of death". Instead, the church favors the "Ooops" kernel messages generated by linux. The phrase "Ooops" is a sacred part of Roman Catholic tradition, as it is the sound an Irish women makes when she realizes that the rythem method of birth control doesn't work.

A recent study conducted by an up and coming university Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Chicago, has managed to determine the Blue Screen of Death as cause of other incidents. It was an extensive study, conducted for over 30 years by a group of under-fed under-grad students.

Incidents: broken computer equipment; violent crime and suicide increase; loss of data and home made movies; wet floor and terrified expression on the face of a person that used the computer last; mysterious deaths of occupants in high-tech residences; increase in drugs abuse; and many more.

It is also possible to see a yellow screen of death, if you are colour-blind. While the BSOD has been known to cause many many heartattacks, it has also been known to cause coniptions as well as the ability to gain super human strength and shoot eye beams into your computer monitor. Please, do not have a heart attack if it happens to you.

“Damn You Bill Gates.”

~ Oscar Wilde on Blue screen of death

by kodiac1 July 5, 2006

124👍 50👎