Shame, Shame

Everybody knows your name.

Well the good folks at SBC decided my building didn't need phone or DSL service yesterday...and the good people who run the spamblocking software on my main email accounts apparently decided to tweak the product so that every-fucking-thing is now apparently regarded as a solicitation for enhancing your penile grandeur, seriously debilitating my handheld (to which I have my main accounts forwarded) as a means of contacting the outside world. So off the grid I go. And I still am as of this A.M.; typing this only because a friendly stranger saw me sleeping under the digital viaduct under the Bridge to the 21st Century and offered me some bandwidth.

He offered me a ride in his van too...to wherever I want to go.

Not to worry; I know I can trust this guy. It smells kinda funny -- like old, wet pennies -- but his van is positively festooned with "Bush/Cheney 2008" and "Jebus is Coming and you're all gonna Burn" bumper stickers so I know he's a good Christian. And I know I'll be perfectly safe because he has lots of guns and machetes and flensing knives and such hanging up in the back in case we're attacked by heathens and run out of cheeks to turn.

They make a pretty, wind-chimey sounds as we jounce along down this empty, country road.

I'm hugely pissed at SBC, and was showering and such this A.M. under a dark cloud (And if you think that's not tricky -- showering under a dark cloud -- you try it.) until I turned on the only wireless device in Castle Driftglass that is functioning -- my radio -- and heard of the hurricane and the devastation that it has left in its wake.

Followed closely by a reminder by Springer on Air America that more than two years after the invasion, millions of Iraqis are still without electricity, clean water, security, and basic sanitation.

So I put Dylan on the CD player and got over myself.