today to learn that I know an actual living, breathing creationist. Who is under the age of 80. And is convinced of the high quality of the education that led to that belief. (I think indoctrination would be a more accurate name for it, but whatever.)

I have a hard enough time trying to comprehend theists, really, anymore (although it’s the actual, corporate, religions that disgust me, while theism tends to just bewilder me), but trashing all of the science of the past 150 years or whatever it is, deciding that you know better than Charles Darwin?

How does anyone do that?

I have had four random strangers with realllllly long gmail addresses subscribe to this blog.

I’ve deleted them on principle, since I don’t know them, and it’s easy enough to bookmark the blog if you have an overwhelming interest in it. Subscription doesn’t confer any posting or editing powers or anything.

If there’s some reason you want to be subscribed, random strangers, comment and tell me so

Actually, it’s even weirder if you consider that there’s nowhere to subscribe on the page, that I can see.

I tweeted this thought some time ago, making me guilty of what I am about to decry. Yay me!

With the social networking that so many of us are involved in, we have tons of opportunities to talk to each other. Most of my friends, both real life and strictly internet-based, are available to me through any number of the following media: public message boards, private message boards, livejournal, facebook, blogs, email, and twitter. There are a few with whom I communicate only using one of those, but mostly it’s two or more.

There is a certain amount of overlap, obviously. People briefly announce on facebook something that may occasion a more substantial blog or board post. There is the devil’s tool which automagically tweets your facebook status updates, or is it that it facebooks your twitter updates? I’m not sure, but several of my twitter friends are also facebook friends, and there’s nothing like getting same-day reruns…kind of like staying glued to a cable news channel for too long. There are people who disseminate stuff on one or another medium which you are fully aware they have found through a mutual friend…who is not given the customary hat-tip. SHOCKING!

So I maintain that the modern social networking reality requires, and will, with luck, engender, Modern Grace.

Modern Grace is knowing which immediate things to disseminate on Twitter; which longer-term things are made for Facebook; and which substantial thoughts really belong on a blog or board. Which isn’t to suggest that boards are worthy only of substance, because they aren’t, exclusively. To me, it also means crediting your sources. And most importantly, acknowledging and apologizing if necessary for heinous cross-posting, which may make your friends decide to pare down the number of places in which they interact with you.

Or may not!

I don’t find that “networking” with so many people in so many places is redundant—well, not in the cases where the people have attained at least a modicum of grace.

no sooner did I thank the powers that be for Skype and internet than the Main Distractor lost the wifi he was hijacking. (It was beneficent and emergency hijacking: when he was originally supposed to have moved last month, he took the leap of faith and cancelled a whack of services, and when he learned that he wasn’t going to be moving on that schedule after all, he cancelled the cancellations, except he forgot that one. So aside from a little Skyping, he wasn’t using much…not downloading music or movies or anything, he’s kinda straitlaced about that kinda thing, as am I.)

So we’re back to telephone in the evening, which has a certain charm. It’s not the same though.

This too shall pass.

I’ve been remiss. Soz.

Since I wrote last, there’s been a minor flea invasion (possibly, and in addition to spiders; I never met a flea that I was as allergic to as some of these bites; as well, there are the mosquitoes at the park. Why am I so irresistible to all these creatures?). The animals have all been redosed with their Advantage, and now just waiting for the insects to fuck off. It’s HOT out and I can’t wear shorts as I can’t shave my legs while they’re all bitten like this, unless I want a bloodbath.

What else? I had a hard and fast flu that knocked me on my ass for three days. I had a doctor’s appointment that reminded me how old I am (OH BOY MAMMOGRAM), and made some more calculations and preparations for my Europe trip. I really wish I could skip a haircut but that’s not possible.

At some point, possibly last weekend, I got the new Portishead album, Third, off iTunes. I’m not a huge Portishead fan…don’t hate ‘em, don’t love ‘em, liked what I’d heard well enough but was never motivated enough to get an album. This one, though, was getting such rapturous responses from so many of my tastemakers that I took the plunge. It’s whacked me over the head in a huge way, and I can’t recommend it enough. I don’t know whether it’s that good, or if it’s just fitting a particular niche in my head right now. Anyway c’est le saveur du mois.

Waiting, toes tapping impatiently, for my Main Distractor’s arrival, fingers and all other appendages crossed that he will easily attain his visa. It should be a case of rubber stamping, but as someone who’s crossed the 49th a few times, you just never can tell. We’re trying to find some good advice and info. There’s some out there, but there’s also a lot of utter shit! Some site with a very authoritative tone about Canada, mentioned that pastries and baked goods are available in large cities, but are very expensive. Um. OK. You definitely need that (incorrect, IMO) opinion in order to decide whether or not to emigrate to Canada. There are also hundreds of sites on the web that are just, I guess, link-farms. No content whatsoever, just a page of links and some kind of payment-per-click arrangement I suppose. People make money off this? I’m sure this is old hat to everyone else in the world, but I don’t normally surf aimlessly, I usually know where I’m going, and don’t tend to end up on these kinds of sites. I can’t imagine a) who creates these useless sites, and b) who clicks these useless links. What pride of ownership can there be, “Yeah, I am a webpreneur, I have a hundred link farms where idiots click through and I earn a few pennies each time!” Hey, I wanna be just like you!

It’s the junk mail of the internet, the paid programming, the wasted fucking bandwidth. It’s disheartening. As my man says, People are broken. This isn’t even that bad, but I don’t see the point. I like utility, and I like frivolity. This is neither, just wasted space on a server somewhere.

But anyway. Still alive!

So my modem crapped out on me. I went on Tuesday to buy a new one (before the Radiohead presale), and found out that London Drugs doesn’t sell ADSL modems at all anymore. WHAT?! They have some wireless package for $150, no thanks. I had called tech support, and he said you have to buy a new modem.

I go home, beg my neighbours to let me use their wireless, they are sweet and let me, surf the Telus site where I can find absolutely NO MENTION of where or how to buy another modem.

I look online, I look at Canadian and US stores, I can’t find a same-brand replacement for less than $80…more than that, I can’t find one to ship to Canada, and I can’t find one in stock in Canada. (Huh? I was surprised, myself.)

So I order this other brand one, which is supposed to comply with all the relevant standards. Astonishingly, it arrives in less than 24 hours, and I take it home and plug it in, and it functions as far as Telus. I call Telus. A lady tells me that Telus doesn’t support other branded modems, only modems specifically made for Telus work on Telus. I say you know I looked online and there are plenty of people out there with other-branded, not bought from Telus, modems on their DSL lines. (Nobody with the brand I bought, mind you.) I couldn’t make it go though. I mean it worked to where I could communicate with the modem setup site at a specific IP, so I know it worked. So I ask the lady what do I need to get, and she says well you have to call Customer Care, they can sell me this other kind of modem. So I rail a little bit because I am not a fucking n00b and I could not anywhere on their website find a place to buy another freaking modem, and I’ve wasted HOURS of my life, and gas driving around, and why the hell should it be this hard? and it’s not this lady’s fault or anything, I just ask her why it has had to take me these phone calls and hours of surfing to find out what I need to know. And I say fine, I’ll waste another hour on the phone with Customer Care tomorrow.

So I go to the website to find the Customer Care number. I call the closest thing I can find, and get stuck in Voice Mail Lady Hell, and end up in the same place where you get tech support, and I don’t want tech support, they can’t support me. I look on the website for retail locations…and whoa, their website shunts me to the mobility site. I’m not looking for a goddam cell phone here.

A couple more clicks and…I’m on the Shaw site, and I’ve signed up for cable internet and cable home phone because I simply cannot be arsed any more, I’m too fucking tired.

I have a couple promos, I won’t be any cash out of pocket, and for a couple of months will be somewhat to a fair bit cheaper, and then it will still work out 5 or 10 bucks cheaper than I have been paying. The only problem/tedium I have is I have to change a mess of contact emails. Which I’m probably changing to goddam gmail anyway. Long-distance calls to my main distractor will be 3 cents a minute cheaper, and my internet might be a little faster.

But as of two weeks from now I will have entirely divested myself of Telus services. I am just too tired of doing so much of the work myself. That’s supposedly what I am paying them for. And why a leading telecom and internet service provider can’t hire someone capable of creating a useful site architecture…? I mean I surf a lot, and I can usually find my way through websites to access what I’m looking for. What do the people who are worse at it than I am doing?

Tomorrow: Shannon’s baby shower! Holy cow! and some work, too, I have some time to make up.

I believe my food geek site has been hacked. How fucking lame is that. What’s even lamer, is that I can’t submit a help desk ticket at my SUPER AWESOME WEBHOST SITEGROUND.COM. Because it’s looping me around for no apparent reason (yes I disabled the popup blocker on my firefox). And there’s no other way in, because God forfuckingbid that a customer should be able to contact someone who might have an answer to a question. This is NOT what we call GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE.

I’ve submitted a ticket to billing, they usually get to them sooner or later. Maybe Monday. And I started a topic in the support forum,  which has to go through a moderator before it goes live, who may also be able to help me. There is no telephone number you can use except to get through to sales, and sales doesn’t know anything and isn’t allowed to put you through to anyone who can help you, I don’t think. And if you email support@ you get invited to go to the help desk. Which I have tried to do a fucking dozen times now but it ain’t helping me. And there is no other way through.

I just hope that the cocksucker with the HongKong IP who seems to be playing around with things gets all his fuckin ya-yas out without screwing me over too much.

Anyone want to go retaliate for me? the IP is 58.65.236.89 and all my foodchat.net/forums site are routing through them, basically.

What’s your point, asshole? it’s a couple dozen food geeks.

I wish I knew how to turn the site off but I can’t even do that.

Impotent, much?

William Gibson has blogged about Die Ärzte, the band my college bf Rodrigo is now in…and whom I’m seeing in Berlin this summer when he plays the same venue as Radiohead a few days later. Another Gibson boardie from Berlin is a fan, and I’m going to try to see if I can get a “plus one” (ooh! never had one of those) so he can go (show is sold out).

My apophenia gland is jest feckin’ twitching, Bill.

I’d like to protest the sexism of spam. Not sure if it’s because they think women are canny enough not to click on their retarded links, but fer chrissakes, I don’t need a 9 inch cock.

Well, not to make me feel like more of a man.

Uh yeah.

Never mind.

is blowing for me right now.

(As Shanny would say, you’re a big girl now: suck, don’t blow. But that’s beside the point.)

I’m hearing from people I don’t care to hear from (well, not so much), and then the few people I really am interested in hearing from at this moment in time are not stepping up. Case in point: got my phone bill yesterday (at least it was a small one), but crickets from the guy who undertook more than a month ago to clean my gutters and replace some errant downspouts and powerwash my fence, which is looking like crap. I had emailed him to ask if he’d forgotten about me, and haven’t heard back. This is the guy who did a good job on the dining room, so I’m not that eager to hunt down some other guy. On the other hand if he doesn’t get back to me soon, I will have to, the green stuff growing on my fence is particularly alarming.

At work last Tuesday, asked for a quote for an item to be delivered by this Wednesday. I am not confident of quick turnover, but I had no quote by 6:00 pm Friday. HI WE’RE TRYING TO HIRE YOU TO DO SOMETHING, WOULD YOU KINDLY DO IT? WE’LL PAY YOU FOR IT.

With tradespeople, I really don’t understand this attitude that they’re doing you a favour by agreeing to let you hire them. That’s why we call it a service industry, chaps.

Speaking of service industry, I had a dream last night that I was assistant floor manager of an appallingly overstaffed coffeeshop. like 20 tables and two servers, and a manager and me. No idea where that came from! The place was empty in any case. Then the damn dog woke me up so I don’t know where the dream was leading. :p

Have a great weekend I have some cleaning to do, a little grocery shopping, and some editing. Oh, and the Oscars to watch