Moving webhost.  New info is propagating throughout internet and DNS databases are seeking equilibrium.  Magic.  If you can't see this, you won't know why.  If you can see this, you have no need to know.

A giant bamboo dildo used in the sexual assault of a woman is a weapon, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Tuesday.

I hate to seem prudish, but how can this even be debatable?  How is it that the appeals court, which reduced the man's sentence, was able to say that the baseball bat-sized instrument used in the sexual assault was not a weapon?  Is there some sort of sick sexism going on here?  Was the thing NOT a weapon because it was NOT used against a man?  Was it not a weapon because it was used by a man in a sexual assault against a woman?  Was the blushing, bashful Appeals Court so embarrased by the way it was used, or so uncomfortable about the term used for it—dildo—that that they actually chose not to look at it in the cold light of reality? 

The appeals court opinion which revised the original sentence should have been titled, How to Commit Assault with a Giant Bamboo Stick, and Get Off with a Dildo.

In an effort to prevent my precocious little computer from overwriting my published blog with my local test copy, which looks crappy (I mirror this site on my local hard drive, sort of), I deleted the test copy.  During its routine FTP session sometime around 5:00 AM this morning, my machine noted the local deletion of blog.htm, and dutifully deleted it from my web server.  Thank God (and Ev) for the miracle of blogger.  All is back to normal. 

The only problem with the world is people.  ;)

This isn't true, either.  It's not even troubling.  In the least.

I think JFK, Jr. died accidentally, too, even if they did send a Navy task force to recover the evidence.  Of course Teddy did publicly ask for the Navy's help, but then Teddy is a broken man, living on someone else's permission, surviving his brothers by some fiendish fiat.

I don't trust this government as far as I can throw a battleship.  Sorry, but it's true.

I thought this immediately when I heard that the former vice-chairman of Enron had supposedly committed suicide; that people in power are corrupted, that any appearance in them of high-minded enlightenment can reliably be attributed to the success of their deceptive skills, and that Vince Foster didn't commit suicide either.  This does not smack of the kind of high-salaried journalism we have learned to trust, and that is precisely why I am more apt to trust it.  If the journalist has 'access', I want to know why.  I am suspicious if he lives comfortably and fits seamlessly into the media matrix that is the perception management industry.  On the other hand, if the writer has naught for sources but the working poor, and the unknown commoner, then that writer's words are the ones I want to read. 

Journalism has joined the World Wrestling Federation in its contempt for truth.  The most successful newspeople have learned what needs to be presented as truth, and participate fully in the deathwork of doublespeak, and they get their mansion in Georgetown.  The truth is not there, as if you need to be told.  But it really is so much easier to believe it, and participate too...  I mean, what the hell, what does the truth really matter—isn't it all relative anyway?  Wouldn't you prefer a Camry rather than a bus pass?  Isn't it nicer to be standing in front of a Jenn-Air rather than standing in a line at a soup-kitchen? 

I really hope that whatever we have lost in our acquisition of comfort isn't killing something vital in our soul.  I've heard no news to that effect, and so I fear it is probably true.

Step back and take a look at who we are.  It will only take a minute, but it is worth its weight in days. 

I want to write like this.  Or maybe I just want to have a life to write about.  Some desperate smash-the-mug romantic rage accompanied by some discouragement at work and some genuine, tangible toilet-overflows, can't-pay-the-bills depression—mmmm, that would be living!  Instead...

The Major Deity visits me at work last night, while I am pining over the memories of boys who once I worshipped, and He stands there, budda-like with his chubby hands folded across the dome of his belly, gazing at me with a grinning expression that says, "I know there is something you want. Just ask me."  MD and I have played this game before.  He is going to trick me again—he is a tireless trickster—but I must be in a teachable moment and he is, if nothing else, all about love and compassion, so I allow the trick to proceed.

"I want you to send me a young man who will love me."  I know from past experience that I should be more specific, such a generalized request will get me into trouble with the Major Deity.  But things at work are, just then, rather frantic, and there is no time to polish my legalese before submitting my request.  I am sure I included the concept of 'cute' as a descriptor in my psychic communication with MD, and I may even have asked that the boy-gift only want me instead of love me.  Love is not actually on the menu at this stage, that would be like a restauranteur presenting Gas and Indigestion as an a la carte item.  It comes later, if at all. 

Then, the admission of my desire obtained, the Major Deity smiled—no, he grinned, a little too much—and went away.  Now cut away to a cold black night as I pump my bicycle up the hill to the doorway of my house.  There is no one in sight except the dark outlines of two men walking down the hill toward my house.  I fantasize that one is perhaps an enemy who wants to kill me, perhaps it is Bernard (another story).  I manufacture a need to get my bike and me through the door quickly and away from this threat which, while it isn't really lethal, it is worse.  They threaten to socialize.  iyeee! 

They are a late-thirty-something man, and an early-twenty-something boy, very early twenty, he could even have been very late teens.  From some elsewhere heaven, MD watches with glee.  They are now on my side of the street.  They are looking at me.  I am fumbling at the door like a damsel squirming helplessly on railroad tracks.  Now they have turned onto the little walk that leads to my door, to me!  Before I am able to flee through the front door, I can feel the 19-ish boy close behind me.  He stares at me, transfixed I'd like to think.  I am about to let go of the first door as I wrestle my bike through the second of my building's double doors.  I have to say, "Got the door?" He wakes. 

The obligatory next line is, He is beautiful.  Major Deity has played this trick on me so many times, that that line is getting worn out.  Alas, it is true.  Sparkling dark eyes, perfect black hair with a glisten of gel, fine eyebrows and long lashes, and fascinating lips, not pouty at all, but pink—and waiting.  He watches me intently.  I think I looked at the thirty-something man, but I can't recall if he even had a head.  The man was a present non-entity as the boy watched me.  The man is aparently my downstairs neighbor, although I thought my downstairs neighbor was a young handsome blonde.  I saw the blonde once when he brought his departing guests to the door as I was entering, again, with my bike.  The blonde had smiled a remarkably disarming smile at me that left me much like I am now, pondering what could have been.  And now I wonder where this thirty-something neighbor gets his friends. 

With a look of hopeful innocence, the 19-ish beauty stood at my neighbor's doorway after my neighbor had disappeared within, and watched the whole while as I ascended the stairs out of sight.  I could have smiled.  I could have winked.  I could have gestured for him to follow me, neighbor be damned.  When I got into my apartment, I turned to the Major Deity just in time to see Him glance away.  He had a smug look. 

I am depressed, worried, and angst ridden.  I am also pathetic, aging, sagging, washed-out and energy bereft.  Every cell in my body has been pickled in caffeine; if not for the artificial stimulation, I probably would have died months ago.  Needy and infantile, I am a ten year old who happens to be forty-three, with no idea of who I am supposed to be now. 

The flow has reversed.  Once, I benefitted from the kindnesses of those who saw me as young and innocent—a babe inspiring the care and concern of strangers.  Now, I am the one who is concerned and caring for the rare babe who appears, needful, in my vicinity—and I have precious few resources to draw upon for the benefit of a needful one, even if he is me. 

A twenty year old called detox last night.  He'd been in only one other detox before, and he'd never been to the one where I work, unlike most of the people who call me.  His voice was soft, almost sleepy.  His drugs were heroin and OxyContin, and he'd just had a few OC's.  With an incongruously gentle voice he was trying to express a desperate need.  Here still were the old life-fears which we all encounter, fears that made the escape look so good to him a couple years before, magnified now to a nightmarish scale.  Added to that are new annoyances like, where will I sleep tonight? and where will I get some stuff when I get deathly ill? and who will I get it from? and will it be safe, because I know I will do anything for it.  In the background a woman's voice, his mother, screams obscenities at him.  It can be difficult to hear, but between his softly spoken words is a real fear, and a question, sometimes asked half-hearted; I can't do it any more—can you help? 

No, actually, I can't.  But I happen to work at a place that will take him out of there for a few days, and provide a brief interlude of structure while postponing the dope-sickness.  We don't really eliminate withdrawal symptoms, we just soften the blow with methadone, and two days after he leaves us he'll be sick, but not as sick as he would have been without us.  That's not helping much, I know, but that's not what we really do at a detox.  We don't cure the agony of withdrawal, nor the agony of life.  We simply show people that there is another way of dealing with it. 

We try and make them see. 

"I got a car, I can get there," he says unconvincingly, after I tell him he has a bed.  "Don't do a thing," I say.  "Just stay where you are.  I'll get a driver to pick you up and bring you in."  That's one of the best things about my job; somebody calls needing to be rescued, and most of the time I can send them a real human being, anyplace in Massachusetts, and that alone probably saves a lot of lives. 

I see him just before I leave for the night.  The driver has just brought him in.  "You're the one I talked to on the phone?" he asks.  He thanks me.  He's young, cute, and despite everything, sweet and innocent.  We are all sweet innocents, whether we're young and cute, or not. 

We just don't see.

What am I, fuckin' nuts!?!  Well, yes.  I am. 

This, dearies, is the ugly side of a DSL addiction.  There is no treatment.  If there were, I would not want it since I already know what the treatment is for most addictions—I work at a detox.  Besides, it is easier to keep using the twisted pair, especially now, since cancelling my pending DSL install now will cost almost as much as going through with it.  (Now fade-in Meatloaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light.) 

I looked at 2 apartments yesterday, one too big, and the other just about right.  $1050 and $975 respectively.  Are landlords in this dumpy city fuckin' nuts too?  Well, yes.  They are.  Only they also own the property.  They are salivatingly unaware that Worcester rental prices are not supposed to be as high as rents in Boston or New York.  However, no penalty will be exacted for their blithe gouging, for I have not the means to penalize them, and I have no faith that the open market will be Robin Hood for me. 

If I don't eat for six weeks, I'll maybe have enough for shelter and DSL.  Maybe. 

So, does anybody want to buy my teeth?

I'm fixing a candle, cultivating the stillest, most smokeless flame that can be obtained through a control of ambient air flow, and not breathing.  It is a beautiful, tall, slender thing hovering in the dark, floating upon the wick like the aura of a soul; unstirred, it looks inert.  My thoughtless movement, not even close-by, becomes a riot to the flame.  I learn to still and gentle the sphere of my gross influence in this tiny world, as I find this little touchless one more sensitive and sincere than many I have touched too much.  Indeed the flame loves me most intensely of all; it counts magnificent the mere movement of my breath. 

This single flame will have to go before I sleep.  Another may come another time, but this one's brief life will have been spent before bedtime comes, and spent entirely with me.  Its excitement at my approach, its twinning with my soul in stillness when I stay, our entrancement together—his light, my energy—will have to end.  And for one like me, who tabulates love only between the sheets, his extinguishment just as I go there will leave me sweetly sad, and though he could not stay, I will keep his light—like thousands before him, and thousands more to come—in my flickering heart.

I actually did a couple of the things that have been on my To Do list for about the last year.  Here's the latest: 

• I have a new doctor.  I haven't had a PCP since Jan 2000, which may not sound like much to most of the world, but me and the medical profession were quite enmeshed when I fired them over two years ago.  They would have me taking lots of nasty things that are bad for my body.  Now don't get me wrong, I am no prude; there are a number of nasty things, bad for my body, that I inflict on it nonetheless.  It's just that the cost/benefit analysis benefitted mainly me, in the case of the bad things that I choose, i.e., coffee, vodka martinis, cheap sex with unnamed participants, etc. Whereas the doctors' cost/benefit analysis, I came to believe, was based more on the movement of money than on my well being. I had been on over six hundred dollars worth of medication per month, happily paid by my insurance to the monstrosities who produce this shit, which the doc's so dutifully shovel into their patients mouths. 

  My insurance, which resumed six months ago, requires me to pick a PCP right away.  I want to avoid the status quo and the powers that be as much as possible, so I didn't want an MD.  The only variation offered by my insurance is a few DO's (Doctors of Osteopathy), so I picked the one closest to my house.  Already I'm thinking that I should have picked the woman DO, not the man.  We'll see...

• I have found an apartment to at least look at.  It is more than we (my friend Irene and I) want to pay, but that is true of every apartment we've heard about lately, except for the mythological 'my cousin's uncle has a really nice place for rent, real cheap...'  We're going Wednesday at noon to look at it.  It has a number of things against it, though.  (Here's another list!)
  • The heat is not included.  This would not matter if the rent were lower, but at $525/month for each of us, I do not want to be looking at any more bills.  The lame excuse used by the rental agent, which does not bode well, was that winter is almost over.  Hmmm. 
  • Besides all that, it's gas heat.  It's not that it's gas that I don't like, it's the big, clunky, invariably ugly heater that sits somewhere central in the apartment, making the den a sweat lodge while leaving the outlying rooms to freeze. 
  • And it is the first one we have looked at in several months (statistics prove that the selected item from a group of items is almost always the third, almost never the first.  Except in the case of my brother; he dated once and married her.  There are always rare exceptions.) 
  • It is the building right next to the one I am in now.  I don't know whether that's a good or a bad thing, but a move that easy would never be allowed to happen by the evil deities who rule my world. 
• And last but indeed, best; I have ordered SDSL to be installed whenever the fates decide—this is the scheduling method chosen by congress when it deregulated telecommunications in 1996.  I ordered it with MegaPath after a disaster with Covad.  Covad discarded me like a dirty cum-rag when they encountered an obstacle to installing the DSL I had ordered from them.  True, there have been many times I have eagerly assumed the role of a cum-rag, but this time it was not my preferred choice.  They sent me an e-mail saying basically, sorry, we can't do it, bye.  I asked for clarification.  They replied, eventually, 'we said we cannot do it, bye.' 

  Now, this might have been a disaster for a paranoid person, and I am a paranoid person, but I also know more about DSL than most people.  So I figured that they weren't just blacklisting me because they found out I suck dick, I concluded (rightly, I might add) that they encountered a silly stupid little problem with my particular phone line, which is not uncommon in the DSL provisioning process.  Covad then decided, to their detriment, to end our relationship.  Silly Covad. 

  Since Covad had not answered my question about what the obstacle was, I decided to ask, not a DSL sales person, but a tech support person at some other DSL provider.  The tech support people are not being told what to say and what not to say; and they usually know what they are saying when they say it, unlike the sales people.  So, at 12:30 AM Wednesday morning, I e-mailed tech support at MegaPath.net, explaining the issue in detail, and I actually got an intelligent response.  In less than an hour.  From Jeff Rohrich, the VP of Service Delivery and Support.  What counts is not the 'VP' title, what counts is his willingness to be identified to me, by name and by whatever title he has—'maintenance engineer' would have been fine.  But what counts most is that he explained what options there were for getting around my particular obstacle.  The option I chose—from Megapath—is a separate, dedicated SDSL line, which Covad could have provided, and it will cost roughly three times more than the line Covad could not install, but I will be paying MegaPath, not Covad.  In a deliciously ironic twist, MegaPath will be hiring Covad field technicians to do the install. 

  This is admittedly an unfair comparison, comparing Covad's sales people to MegaPath's tech support people.  But I don't care.  Hopefully, deities willing, I will have an excellent DSL connection soon, which is a hell of a lot more than Covad offered.  And MegaPath will even move the line once free during the first twelve months, so I can apartment shop angst-free.