T


his afternoon as I was waking up, I heard Leah getting her stuff together to finalize her departure from Kappa Mutha Fucka. I had absolutely no desire to see her. I stayed in my room until she was gone.

...need to be shipped off to regional extermination centers and disposed of with as much suffering as modern science can inflict.

The creeps who spam, that is, the creeps who send large amounts of junk email to anonymous strangers hoping to sell get-rich-schemes, acne medication, "submissions to over 300 search engines" and the like, definitely need to be shipped off to regional extermination centers and disposed of with as much suffering as modern science can inflict. Since it's unlikely this anti-spam golden age will ever dawn on our enlightened land, I wage my own private skirmishes. Today at UVA's Cocke Hall I engaged the evil spammer known only as elksrain@nevwest.com who'd gone just one step too far promoting a "LEGAL money-making opportunity." He'd said the unsayable, "print this out and read it twice."

Every email is a potential small bundle of joy: a letter from a lover, a new acquaintence, a long lost friend.

I felt like I was seated at the controls of an intergalactic space cruiser, taking aim at an evil spacecraft of alien salesmen as I systematically fired round after round of obscene 95 K text files down the barrel of UVA's T3 directly into elksrain@nevwest.com's mail server. When his limit was exceeded and the emails began to bounce back at me, I knew the engagement was over and I was victorious. "Ha ha ha!," I chuckled inside, preparing to take on my next spammer foe. Those guys need to learn who not to spam.

Why do I hate spam so very much? Why does anyone? Every email is a potential small bundle of joy: a letter from a lover, a new acquaintence, a long lost friend. Spam, on the other hand, is wasted download and dashed expectations. The rage I feel the instant I discover an email to be spam is right up there with discovering Rory has stolen my car or my girlfriend. Why? For an instant, those fucking spammers have stolen a bit of my life and occupied it with emptiness.

---

Are you interested in Rory's spin on recent events? Check out one of his journal entries.

---

But of course I know it doesn't, that such expectations of profundity are simply a residue of my Judeo-Christian cultural heritage.

J


essika wrote to tell me she didn't know if she could trust me. It's an old issue. Again I was blabbing her secrets to the world, this time on web pages I didn't think anyone she knew would ever see. I learn a little every time this happens, where the boundaries between my ambitions and her privacy lie, and how best to optimize my satisfaction of both. Believe it or not, I think I've improved. I used to be much worse, really I was.

I felt kind of glum after reading her email. Then I came home to find Matthew Hart and Leah Hale having a hart to hale on the couch. I fled to my room.

I lay in my bed feeling miserable, thinking cynical thoughts about sex. The only use people seem to get from it is the injury of others and improvements in their feelings of self worth. I guess I'm old fashioned in my view that it really should represent a more wholesome, less selfish underlying emotion. But of course I know it doesn't, that such expectations of profundity are simply a residue of my Judeo-Christian cultural heritage. And I'd be a hypocrite to insist others reserve it for special expressions of love. Most of the sex I've had has been completely meaningless.

By the time I left my room, the hart to hale had bounced around between several rooms and was now out on the porch. As I departed for a second trip to UVA, Angela was showing up with a case of Beast Ice. She couldn't handle the situation and went around the back to sit in the hammock.

Here I am in front of a Power Mac 7100/66 at Olssen Hall with Scotch on the rocks in a big coffee mug. Dear me, but am I ever confused right now.

---

B


ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, Angela was repairing a pair of old jeans for Matthew and he was slicing up mangos to make sushi. Deya was smoking a rare cigarette, and, unbeknownst to everyone, Zachary and the bottomless pit of his stomach were on their way over, which was going to mean a lot more sushi was going to have to be made.

I went to bed a little past 7:00 pm.

---

Get a sense of what I was like exactly eight years ago today.

For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?970930