The Big DumpTruck

I’m wearing my red, white and blue sweater today. I wasn’t going to, but then I thought “why not?” I bought it just after 9/11 – red sleeves, blue torso, with a white star in the middle. Someone saw me and said “Star of the day!” and I wondered it I should just agree, or if it was necessary to point out why I’m wearing this thing.

That interaction made me a little self-conscious, and looking around, I don’t see too many other people in flag-mode. Last year I was unemployed on the 1st anniversary, so I wore a denim shirt that has a flag decal sewn over the pocket, like I’m a patriotic car mechanic. I was working at Vibren on 9.11.01 and we filled the office with flags and red, white and blue bunting in the weeks that followed. I’m not going to go into my “here was my experience that morning” but you can believe I can remember every minute of that day like it was yesterday. So ya, I’m wearing red, white and blue today, and I’m happy I am.

As a parent, you spend your whole life drawing lines and making rules for your child and for yourself. How far do I go? How far do I let him go? Some of the lines are very serious and must be enforced (You must hold a grown-ups hand when you are walking in a parking lot because you are too short and the drivers can’t see you). And then there are those like last night.

I bought Junior a 100 piece Power Rangers puzzle last night. I thought it would be good for the old noggin after 5 straight years of cartoons. (Okay, only a slight exaggeration) Now a 100 piece puzzle for a 5-year-old is actually a tricky thing, and in our case, he is still building the skills that allow him to look at the picture on the box and match what he sees on the individual pieces to that picture.

It’s a total exercise in frustration for me. I’ll admit it. It’s one of the few things that drives me buggy. We try to do the outside edge first, like good Americans, and I clench my fists every time I have to repeat “No, you need a piece that’s straight on one side”. We worked on the puzzle for quite a while – eventually his interest lagged and I didn’t want to force him to stay there and finish the danged puzzle. What kind of freak would that make me? And I didn’t want to do the puzzle for him. That’s the line I’m talking about. How much should I help him, and at what point is it no longer help? As a toddler, he was notorious for saying “you do it” for everything. And sometimes it’s just easier to say “here, let me finish that so we can get on with our lives”. But I want him to learn how to do a puzzle.

Maybe we’ll finish it tonight.

Okay, another few hundred copies of sobig today. Tell me…is this thing just living on it’s own out in the wild now, feeding on nuts and berries and drinking water out of puddles, or are there still a whole pack of mouth-breathers out there who haven’t heard the news that there IS no screensaver, that “That Movie” isn’t really a movie, and that nobody is actually thanking you for anything. Seriously, we’re a month into this now, I personally know people who have received TENS OF THOUSANDS of copies, and just when it slows a little, there’s a banner day like today.

Also – I would really appreciate it if ISPs (including my own, for goodness sake) would turn off the auto-notification that a received email contained a virus. People, I did NOT send out all those emails. Do NOT send an autoreply to a forged header saying that my system might be infected. Do you understand that you are ADDING TO THE PROBLEM? I’m getting 40 tons of crap email a day now, and if 10 percent of the crap is from ISPs being pro-active, that’s 10% too much. They KNOW the headers are forged. I’m begging my ISP – check the logs. I’m not sending any messages with those titles. Stop threatening to tell my ISP on me! You ARE my ISP!

p.s Can someone please tell me how to get Microsoft’s .net messenger OFF of my system? I don’t want it, I don’t use it. And now on a daily basis it launches itself to tell me I need an important upgrade. Yet, there’s nothing listed anywhere for me to uninstall this beast. I’m getting Mighty cranky about this.

Dude, seriously, a nice anti-depressant and long hours of therapy will really help you out. I fear that if you don’t get the professional help you need, they will lock you up and throw away the key.

6 weeks in a see-through box with no food – what’s the point? I hear a big old cry for help, that’s what I hear. I mean, even if you don’t die, and that might very well be your goal, to die in a see-through box suspended above the Thames, what’s the point of having the world be aware that you’re peeing into adult diapers where everyone can SEE you for all that time?

There’s being cool and daring, and then there’s being psychotic. Some would say you’ve already crossed the line. And even if you succeed, people are going to assume that it wasn’t “real,” that you got food, or that there was something in the water you are allowed. That is the only way they should allow you to do this, otherwise it’s a very public suicide. We all get a front row seat to watch your organs shut down.

And another thing – six weeks is too long. We’ll all lose interest long before then. “David who? Oh, the psycho guy who doesn’t need to eat? Ya, call me when he does the ‘no air for six weeks’ trick. That’ll be a good one. Har har har.”

So come down out of the box, and get thee to a therapist. You’re like the kid in the playground who has to keep doing more dangerous stuff just so that the other kids will pay attention to him. “Look at me! I’m going to climb up on the roof of the cafeteria!” It wasn’t cool then, and it isn’t cool now.

Signed,

A concerned American

I thought it was supposed to be sunny this week? How am I supposed to wake up early if it’s dark and overcast? A little help, please?