Category: Uncategorized

Go Cyberverse!

For the second year in a row, my ISP has done the following:

  1. Totally screwed up the billing for months
  2. Not noticed a change in my credit card information
  3. Sent me a dunning notice for several hundred dollars with a threat to discontinue service.

Come on guys. You don’t invoice monthly, you don’t call if there’s a problem, you barely keep records, and suddenly after months of this crap you want $700. Remember last year, when you did this? And apologized? And billed me an extra $20 a month to get your money back slowly? REMEMBER?

Capitalism shouldn’t be this hard.

Edit: The mess was worked out to mutual satisfaction. One advantage of the small ISP is that when the shit hits the fan, you can get someone on the phone who has the authority and the time to deal with your problem. I’d still recommend these guys, with the caveat that you need to get invoiced monthly or you’re fucked.

Professional driver. Closed course. Do not attempt.

It is important for stockholder value for the sysadmin to be sitting under fluorescent lights for 8 hours during times of possible high server load.

Christmas in the WHAT

I don’t think we’ve gone far enough with fantasy sports. Sure, we’re paying to pretend to manage athletic events that we usually just watch professionals act out on the television, and that’s pretty cool. But I think we need video games that simulate fantasy sports, so we can pick out fantasy teams and play against computer opponents and each other, live, networked. And then, we should have a feature film based on that video game. And a novelization of the feature film. And a children’s book based on the novelization of the feature film of the video game of the virtual management of athletic events played by professionals on TV. And finally we can put those characters on footballs and have the kids throw them around. Then we can organize them into leagues…

Yesterday I saw an ad for Norwegian sardines on public television.

We sail tonight for Singapore
The whole town’s made of iron ore!

Burger King has TEAMED UP with AOL in some project involving Whoppers and downloadable music.

Also: the rally monkey is back.

Also: I am at work for no reason at all.

Also: the replicant cyberpigs are loose.

My new law is this: The only man who ever lived who didn’t look completely ridiculous in a sailor suit was Steve McQueen. He is still badass in that goofy costume. (See: The Sand Pebbles)

What have we got for entertainment? Cops kicking gypsies on the pavement.

This is Illyria, lady.

Gertrude Stein said about Ezra Pound that “He is a village explainer. Which is fine, if you’re a village.”

I, too, am a Village Explainer. I got it from my father. I rediscovered this last night when I found myself giving the 15 minute history of 19th Century American Religious Movements to someone and thought “Why am I doing this? How do I know this?”

My uncle Richard told me once that it’s a miracle that I escaped the academic world. He should know; he spent a career in a love/hate relationship with being an art professor.

But it’s true. If I could spend an entire life learning things in detail and then explaining them to other people, I’d be happy. I just hated academia because it was too much learning about things I didn’t care about and then explaining them to people who had no interest, which is a lifeless task. If my spiritual life wasn’t such a minefield, I might have become a pastor. If it paid at all, I might have become a computer trainer.

So by default I’ve found my true calling. I’m a dilettante, amateur, flâneur, habitué de café, freelance village explainer. Maybe this is a decent way to grow old.