Dear London-based friends,
I am without words right now; plenty of raw emotions of varying stripes, but no coherent way to share them. So I will say only this: If you can, if you're able, if you're inclined, please leave a comment and let us know if you're okay.
An open letter to the person or persons who has (or have) attempted to send me all variant forms of the W32.Mytob virus fifteen times over the past six days, under such subject heds as "Your Account Has Been Suspended for Security Reasons," "Please Take a Moment to Review Your Records" and "Your Password Has Been Successfully Changed":
Dear Intrepid Worm Farmer:
Thank you for your tireless interest in my e-mail address. I do give you credit for both persistence and initiative. Do you sit before the warm glowing warming glow of your monitor and think hmmm, the suspended account warning isn't working; let's try the new password notification! How clever and resourceful of you!
If I might make a suggestion, though...If you really think I'll fall for this; if you really think that I'm not firewalled up the wazoo thanks to my internet service provider, my virus software package, the dark lords at Mister Softee and the routerrific machinations of my local IT professional (a/k/a husband); if you really think that there's a chance that all of the above will simultaneously fail and I'll still feel compelled to click on the attachment; if you would really like me to believe that you are, in fact, the customer support team from my ISP, then it would help your cause if you could get the name of that ISP right. Here's a hint: It's not "Nyc."
Asshat.
No, wait. On second thought, I take it all back. Please continue to send me ham-fisted, lame-ass attempts to infect my computer with a worm. Please continue to close them with "Thank you for choosing Nyc! Sincerely, The Nyc Support Team." It's the best laugh I get all day.
Asshat.
Love,
Pointing and Laughing at Your Genitalia in Astoria, Queens, NYC, NY
Dear friends,
My desk sits about 10 feet from the entrance to our lunchroom (which is actually called our "cybercafe"
. At any given time, the tv is tuned to CNN, MSNBC or Fox, which means that I've spent the morning listening to a) breathless news of a certain custody battle between a certain woman's husband and a certain woman's parents, with certain presidents and governors and Congresscritters muscling their way in for camera time; b) breathless news of a certain pop star's trial on certain charges involving certain youngsters. I'm sure that I should be paying better attention to all of this news than I am, but I am hoping that somebody, at least one of the local news stations, finds time to squeeze the following into the news cycle:
The Triangle Waist Company factory fire, which took 146 lives on March 25, 1911.
The Happy Land Social Club fire, which took 87 lives on March 25, 1990.
Dear friends, the attached link contains an awful story. Proceed with care.
Today I learned something new: The cassava root, from which we get tapioca, contains cyanogenic glucosides. If the root is eaten raw, the human digestive system will convert part of it into cyanide. For this reason, it is critical that cassava be peeled and thoroughly cooked before use.
How I wish I had learned this another way than the way that I did.
I had thought I had seen how low food could go on my return from my summer studies in the Soviet Union in 1987. I had come home acclimated to the dour and sad Soviet supermarkets, with aisles of cabbages, dried apples and two brands of canned fish (but also with some surprisingly fine and cheap black bread). On my first grocery trip back home, I felt barraged within five minutes. I thought I would hold it together well enough until my mom and I passed the deli case and I saw something called "macaroni and cheese loaf." It was like olive loaf (for those dear friends not familiar with olive loaf, it is a bologna-like lunchmeat with sliced pimento-stuffed green olives dotted through it; it looks like a bit like mortadella, but doesn't taste nearly as good), only it was flecked with macaroni and cheese instead of olives. I thought it was the most revolting thing I had ever seen.
It *was* the most revolting thing I'd ever seen, and remained thus until I started working at the box factory, when I read an article in an industry mag about a company that was test-marketing microwaveable breakfasts in a push-up tube. It was disconcerting to read salespeople and R&D weasels talk about being able to drive with one hand and eat scrambled eggs with the other, and to talk about this as if it were a desirable thing to do. I do not want to contemplate what sort of eggs are used for these push-up scrambles. I have seen pictures of them. They are the most revolting things I've ever seen.
At least they were until last week, when I went to visit Raspberry Sour at The Sour Patch, who wrote a brilliant essay about the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. How much plastic has been disgorged into our landfills and watersheds as a result of this grand experiment? (Have no fear, the "Fun Facts" section will tell you!) How much hydrogenated fat, how much high fructose corn syrup, had to be added to this formula to make the peanut butter sheet like that? How much of the original peanut is left in this nonsense? Why in the world do we need it? Does anybody, in fact, want to buy it?