'Meltdown, ba-da-la-da-na-na neer-neer-neer'

That's supposed to be to the tune of the Meat Puppets' "Meltdown," but it doesn't quite translate phonetically, or without music.

Yesterday my computer basically melted down thanks to a blizzard of viruses clamoring for domination over my Web surfing ability. This wasn't your typical infection, but something nastier and more tricky to defeat than anything I'd seen before.

The first clue something was up was when all my browser window ads turned into penis enlargement commercials. I just figured all the sites I surf had given up on ethics and started taking ad money from any ol' vendor, but no.

Then I happened to run disk cleanup and got a bunch of alerts from my Spybot asking me to approve or deny changes to my registry. I figured the two phenomena were related and ingeniously clicked OK to every change request.

Later I tried updating Ad-Aware, Spybot, Norton Utilitie, even Windows -- and all the programs said they couldn't contact their servers and that I should check my Internet connection.

So I tried Googling Microsoft Update to go directly to the Web page, but when I clicked on the result, I was redirected back to the Google home page. I searched for Lavasoft (Ad-Aware's creator) but got redirected to some other random Web page.

When I went to check whether something was up with my new AirPort router connected to my cable Internet, the AirPort Utility program wouldn't start. Its registry entry had been corrupted or deleted, just like all my malware programs'.

Ultimately I was able to search Google for "Google has been hijacked" and found this relevant explanation on the Ask Metafilter site. Someone there suggested I install Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and also SUPERAntiSpyware, which I had to run a couple times for them to succeed.

I was lucky to install them at all from Download.com, I guess. Thanks heaven the virus-making scum hadn't blocked access to that site.

In the end I turned off my WWAN to make sure the viruses weren't reconstituting themselves everytime I tried to delete them.

Today, success! All my malware programs could be updated, and I'm running full system scans with all of them now. Norton Internet Security just wrapped up its run -- and of course still found stuff.

I used to imagine that I was immune to most of these viruses that go around. For some reason, I figured that's the kind of thing that always happens to somebody else. But me? Come on, I'm special.

No longer. The moral of this story? Do your backups, update your plethora of malware programs, and practice safe surfing. Amen!