Old Personal: August 2004 Archives

This is dedicated to someone I asked for something from and never really gave her back what she asked for, and I'm a quite a bit apologetic, which is me for sorry.

I think I'd be pretty upset if I looked back on this period of my life and remembered how one of the last great civil-rights conflicts occured and I did nothing more than mew. I'm going to try stowing some of my mitigation and attempt to be as little ambivalent as possible.

My response for a while now, has been (like "bite - me, who's. yo. daddy.") there is nothing to discuss. I am someone who has a great issue with evangelism - but I've also recently reminded myself that hypocrisy is what springs to the minds of people who lack imagination. Not that this is evangelism, but well, the hypocrisy thing sounded good anyway. Which is my roundabout way of saying - there's nothing to discuss.

I remember an extended and rather torturous conversation with Karen about morals - basically, me say morals = bad. But some things are just Right (up till a minute a go, it was Wrong). So - some things are just Right; there is nothing to discuss.

Another time, I said rather in a forceful way that the economic argument is a great one, since it got around rather silly arguments otherwise. Perhaps I want to say that because I want to be too Post-so many things, or I'm just in a place where aspiration and ideals are crushingly not encouraged. Regardless, money is a good reason, and one that can't be argued against except by people who want to protest globalization.

In many ways, I'm in two minds about any number of things, paternalistic single party states being one of them. With that in mind, I say this: if you have a bully pulpit, use it. Use it not for paltry things, don't be mealy mouthed about genuinely good policies *perhaps* disenfranchising groups of people - but above all, use it for things that are Right. Things that are Right are just that, Right. Republics were formed at least in part to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. If it's Right, it's Right.

I sometimes talk about the End of Satire - and I say it in the face of the entirely insensible. Do a search on this site for that phrase and you'll see how this links with free trade and the perception of self.

Some people (who are being repressed) say things to me like they don't need to get married, it's not something they're interested in, that all this is just unwanted attention making people backlash. I know this won't make me anybody's darling, and things will never be Right Right in my lifetime or the next - but it makes me angry and makes me want to do something about it whether they want it or not. I'm curmudgeonly in my own way and I speak like the I/eye of Empire, which translates in to all too earnestly; but like I said, things may never be Right. I wonder whether I really should be comforted by Derrida saying that the process of assimilating the Other is always necessarily a process.

I don't know if I've really changed my mind, but it's probably best that some things just remain Right, though somewhere I really believe some things are just Wrong. As for the lives people live, that's none of anybody's business - except the gossips like me. The act of Being is Being - but only when that Being is not shrouded, not hidden, not In or Out.

People who know me should realise that I really appreciate combative conversations - I'm not trying to beat people or evangelise, but I appreciate conversations where actual opinions are expressed. I love nothing better than being convinced to like something that you sincerely recommend. But at the same time, I'm not about to mince words about what is paltry and otherwise what I want to be effusive about.

There is not need to be offended - I think someone I really appreciate is Chris - someone with whom there can be heated debate with, and then you go out and have dinner.

I'm apologising for moving important posts down in the ranking, but I'm now watching the Bangles episode of Gilmore Girls - and like Paris who has just said it, I really like this band.

I need friendly volunteers to give me feedback on an unfinished draft of my novel - e-mail me if you're interested. In a moment of weakness I'm going to say that anyone can apply - though depending on who you are I might be very strict as to the kind/amount of feedback I want - if you don't want to be offended by this, you can, well, fuck off.

Total strangers can apply, but I can't promise I'll be incredibly enthusiastic - you have to sound friendly and not be stupid. There's an e-mail link on the mail page of www.fallingbeam.org if you don't already know how to get at me.

There's an introduction that I'm working on now, and two chapters that I've just tweaked, and a third chapter that's being finished and a fourth that's in teeny tiny pieces.

I'm suddenly very taken with the idea of Leigh (AllisonLeigh from the MyOpera forums) reading this, so on the astronomical off-chance that you are, e-mail me, since I've lost your address.

This is a load of crap.

And just as a curiousity, the title is derived from this.

Also see this.

You cannot stop me from doing something that is simply possible on the network - it is there, it is available, so it is fair game so long as I affect no one else in the process. If you can find a way to secure your network to stop me doing certain things, all power to you - well actually no, wait a minute, unless it's a serious security breach that will affect others, you can bite my shiny metal ass.

As long as the work gets done, what the hell business is it of yours what I do while I'm getting there? If I'm not doing my job properly, you can avail yourself to the channels in place to have me disciplined/fired. What I do doing company time, goofing off included, is none of your god-damn business, as long as at the end of the day the work is done.

I don't even claim that there's any positive work aspect to porn (hence people in some places having porn accounts signed up for them) - it's simply none of their business. What exactly is a misuse of "company" property anyway? You're given a tool, and you use it to accomplish a task - but unless you want to at least partially break the tool, and waste your own expenditure, whatever else that tool can be used for, it should be used for. If I want to shove a staple remover up my ass to get me off, why not? No harm is done to others.

If I use the company car to ferry grapes, that was otherwise scheduled to be used by some other freak, then okay - but it is the incident of misuse, not the principle. If there are limited resources, fine, you can say that when there is excess demand, that users curb behaviour that would otherwise infringe on the resources of others, that's sensible. If I use excess capacity on the network at night to play online games and download pr0n, warez, gamez, mp3z, whose resources am I taking away from? If there is talk of legal liability, it is the end user who might be the subject of a sanctimonious and contrary government directive, the network itself is dumb and innocent - or it should be.

The only issue is an (at best) idiotic moral one - or a matter of PR. So you find out that a government agency is rife with porn surfers, so what? Government has no right to monitor the actions of individuals, much less people under their employ, unless there is a significant suspicion of wrongdoing that is to the detriment of others. Legality and government action is not to act as a censorious moral unity - it is there to prevent harm to others, or to help those that require help: if they can't find help elsewhere.

Not that PR is a bad thing in the way morals are, at least PR is honest. People are not normally like this, but in our company/government, we uphold a higher standard of professionalism. So if you accidentally e-mail your client pictures of you eating messily or dressing like a tramp in a sex-game with your partner, the company might castigate you for the slatternly manner of your portrayed deportment or bearing - would you that it were otherwise?

Sometimes how you get there is none of your fucking business. If you cut corners and endanger others or profits by doing so, that's an issue, not when you simply do things in a way other people have an irrational dislike for.

So they discover this about your company - are you so taken with your corporate ethos and identity, by even your national/religious rectitude that you fail to recognise that individuals are people too? Can you no longer differentiate your image of professional ability, which you rightly demand from your emplyees, from their entitlement of rights and opinions and desires?

I've discovered a cool thing to do with e-mail filters in Fastmail. If you include a "secret word" in your subject line, or use e-mail+secretword@fastmail.fm as the recipient, it will bypass all filters - ie it will definately get through to me.

I now designate my secret word to be batchcakes - but replace the a with an i where it most counts. This refers only to my public address that I tend to send mails out to friends with by mistake instead of my personal address.

Hi, I've put filters on my public e-mail account - so don't include anything that might set off my rather crude filters that will reject your mail and not notify you of the rejection. This includes the sure sign of spam: ...

So be more certain about your mail.

Or you can be good and send mail to the personal address I give to people, not forms. Yes I, by mistake, send personal mail from my public address, but people just got confused with the whole business of my rather more tart and extended instructions in the form of a signature, so deal with it.

Hypocrisy (the accusation of) is the last refuge of a lack of imagination.

Makes me wish I was a communist.

There are times when you really wonder whether Republicans don't deserve to be thought of as stupid.

M1 sends SMS Spam. I'll say that again. M1 sends SMS Spam.

You *cannot* opt out.

They do not ask if they can send you spam.

It is unsolicited marketing and it is *Unethical*.

They claim that because I'm using a pay as you go mobile and hence it is "technologically impossible" to not send me spam.

It appears that it is an extra service not to be harrassed.

It is an extra service not to recieve spam from the people who are sending it. Where do I sign up?

I cannot be removed from their database. "Technologically impossible".

Their site also happens to be BROKEN.

Isn't Zhang Yimou a clever clever man? It just shows that if you're intelligent enough, you actually can present melodramatic farce in your film to a fantastic end. You'd think only the middle-brow amongst us would walk out without feeling either pleased, sobbing, or smiling. Of course it helps if you still understand how to convincingly present spectacle. Though I'm convinced that Zhang Ziyi's appeal (sexual and otherwise) is in seeing her looking frustrated. But yes, if you want to see sexual charge, the film is also, in that regard, breathtaking.