Funny, It Doesn't Feel Right

...Yet we're perfectly within our rights to look people up through such online services as White Pages and, say, Facebook.

Checking Google Trends, I found a lot of people have been looking for more information about Heather Lynne Zeo, a high school math teacher in Philadelphia, PA, accused of sexual intercourse with a student. Or two students.

Is she on Facebook? She's totally on Facebook and MySpace. Will people use that as another argument that Facebook is a morass of decadence? It doesn't help that the two teens testified she used it to communicate with them. And I've never heard of Yola, but apparently Heather Zeo started a Web site through them, in which she promotes her inspirational religious music. "The 2003 release of Light as a Feather provided an opportunity for every individual to share in that Light as a Feather freedom attainable only through Complete submission to God's perfect peace."

"As a Christian," she writes, "I love my faith and all people! Teenagers and women's groups are a large part of my passion, but my God and my family direct my world!!" Turns out that's half right.

White Pages lists a Heather L Zeo in Philadelphia, at 1263 Holly Road (it provides a map, provided by Microsoft's new Bing service). There's a phone number, too, but it's only visible to members. But it's free to become a member--they just want online records as to who's looking up who's phone numbers, of course. So I could call and see what's up, which I'm curious to do, but I'm sure that household has disconnected its phone. She's a married 36y.o. woman with three kids, you know. White Pages lists all the names of the people registered in that household, but it doesn't state who's the father and who the kids are.

Part of me thinks it's neat that I can read a news article and instantly look up the home and phone number of the people involved. I did that a couple years ago, when a business woman attempted to run a police officer over with her car in her attempt to sneak past a road block. There had been a car accident and, consequently, a traffic jam, which the woman tried to drive around, crying, "I don't care who died! I'm more important!" I looked up her address and phone number, too.

I think it's neat, but I also think it's really creepy. There are certain people who would act on that information, either with harassing mail/phone calls or actually driving out to make a visit. Useful for a journalist, disastrous in the hands of someone with impaired morality, judgment, and a lot of time.

What Do We Know About Ramzan Kadyrov?

Currently president of Chechnya at age 32, Ramzan Kadyrov is reputed to have been an unruly schoolboy. He looked up to his father, a Muslim imam, and at the age of 16 helped lead a group of separatist fighters against federal Soviet forces. (If you find Chechnya on the map, one wonders what would stop the Ukraine and Kazakhstan from just drawing a line across the narrow channel that divides them, permanently separating Chechnya from Russia.

As it turned out, Kadyrov completely reversed his position and sold out to Moscow, now running Chechnya with the Kremlin's authority. He is credited with rebuilding Grozny, the capital (largely destroyed in the Second Chechen War), taking the opportunity to construct one of the largest mosques in Europe. He's also a fan of boxing, and said that the Danish artist who drew an inflammatory political cartoon of the prophet Mohammed "should be buried alive." He also bragged to human rights activist Natalya Estemirova of having "blood from my hands to my elbows."

Estemirova had been working on gathering evidence of human rights violations since the Second Chechen War (1999). In 2000 she was elected as representative of Memorial, a human rights agency in Grozny. She met with Kadyrov over a year ago to discuss human rights violations and the meeting was less than satisfactory: he ordered her to cease her investigations.

Kadyrov seems to have taken care of his problem:

On Wednesday, the 50-year-old single mother[, widow,] and onetime schoolteacher was kidnapped, driven past numerous police checkpoints, shot in the head and dumped by a roadside [within nine hours].

He, of course, denies any involvement in this, but what kind of vehicle could get through those checkpoints? What kind of driver had the authority? She also worked "with the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and lawyer Stanislav Markelov — both of whom were slain in assassination-style killings." Huh.

Huh.

With the rest of the world looking at this string of inordinate coincidences, all of which seem to run along a very clear theme, Kadyrov shares that weird quality with other world dictators: he believes he is cleverer than anyone, can successfully get away with such a shoddy ruse, and that everyone else is too stupid to see through it.

He has also sworn to conduct two investigations into her death: one official, and "one unofficial, according to Chechen traditions." While he was running for office, he actually used reports issued by Memorial to feature his opponents in an ugly light. His alliance with that organization dissolved immediately upon taking office, of course. Anyone care to place any bets on what the results of his investigation(s) will be?

What is This "Good Day" of Which You Speak?

The sun's fighting to make a showing now, but when I woke up it was grey and overcast in the sky. Bella was making affectionate demonstrations to my wife, crawling and nestling on her, which is rare for this normally reserved Savannah. Toki was elsewhere in the house for most of it, though now I can hear him chewing on cellophane in the next room. One moment...

It was the foil cap to a bottle of wine, peeled off days ago. Sometimes the cats will dig out little treasures from the trash, if it's an open waste bin.

It's 8:30 AM now. In half an hour I'll start getting ready for work, taking a shower and assembling my belongings in a pannier, choosing an outfit. When I started biking I was all excited about shopping for biking shirts, advertising my cyclist-ness, but those shirts are fairly expensive. Whenever you get into a niche interest, there will always be a merchant waiting to jack up the price of whatever you need; the deeper you go, the more expensive it gets. In this way, capitalism stifles personal development and creativity, makes them prohibitive.

So when we went on our cruise around Europe, I was especially excited about picking up biking shirts from each nation we went to. But that gets costly quickly, what with the American dollar being as anemic as it is. I picked up one shirt in Norway, a blatantly souvenir-ish shirt modeled after their flag. It was made of the breathable material I've come to associate with athletic clothing. That's it, one shirt. I bought a couple nicer workout shirts last year, when we got My Fitness Coach for the Wii and started to really make an effort to exercise. Dressing in them puts me in the mindset for exercise, as I find it helpful to have a ritual about some things. I've worn those workout shirts for biking, but now I find it suitable to just pick out some old ratty t-shirt. I mean, who cares how I dress? I'm old and pudgy and married: being "marketable" should be the least of my concerns.

The cats are thundering around in the next room, stampeding back and forth. I've always thought cats were silent and stealthy.

I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts last night, for their Third Thursday presentation. This one was "Tour de Force," a play on Tour de France, and the focus was to be on bicycles. To that extent they had an interesting "make your own vintage French bicycle poster" activity, using templates of old posters with space for you to make your own design. I thought that was an awesome idea. They also had a local fashion designer displaying her "bike-friendly" work, which seemed to be cloth flowers you could pin in your hair. Which, as my wife pointed out, prevent the use of a bike helmet. In that light, "bike-friendly" means a decoration for your head that won't get caught in your bike chain, I suppose. Otherwise, I don't know what made her stuff more "bike-friendly" than it was "casual office-friendly," "radio-friendly," or "lemonade-friendly."

Kid Dakota was playing, but he wasn't singing songs about biking or public transit. I didn't see the connection, anyway. The pamphlet mentioned briefly that there was an exhibit "celebrating all things transit" but it did not allude to where this might be, nor was it mentioned anywhere else. There was a showing of The Bicycle Thief, but I didn't go to a museum to see a movie. Except for the DIY poster design, the evening's features seemed arbitrary and random. I'm sure I just missed the point.

The event was thickly populated with the kind of counterculture cyclists I have learned to hate: dressed uniformly, announcing how very into cycling they are, but in practice completely dismissive of traffic law or consideration outside of themselves. At that point I became disinclined to buy any special exercise shirts for biking, but would rather dress like a pedestrian while riding my bike.

Yes, I own a courier bag. Everyone at this event did too. The difference was that I actually carried a lot of stuff in my courier bag, like a small library, my laptop, and a complement of stationery items. Theirs looked empty. Mine was made by Swiss Gear and I keep it looking new, in gun-metal grey and royal blue. Theirs were uniformly black, ragged canvas, in the same way people buy pre-faded and distressed jeans: to advertise to others how long they've been into this motif, making them more integral and harder-core than you.

I don't wear my courier bag anymore, and I'll probably sell it despite its usefulness. I wouldn't want anyone to think I subscribe to their fashion show, just like I wouldn't dress in any way that would lead random bystanders to think I'm a neo-Nazi. I've identified a group and wish to dissociate myself from it.

Anyway. Currently I'm updating my podcasts, though I don't know when I'm supposed to have time to listen to them. I won't wear headphones while biking, unlike half the cyclists I see, and if I have time alone at home I don't want to spend it sitting still and listening to something for an hour. When I'm not alone, that's an even worse thing to do. But my concern is that my wife and I don't share enough interests, so I'm downloading all the Planet Money podcasts and need to find some time, somewhere, to listen to them so I can discuss the economy with her. I will also have to read a lot more about the economy and start studying the news, too. These commentators just bring out the misanthrope in me, which makes it hard to focus on the core message, but as a matter of self-discipline I need to learn how to do that. It's like The Andromeda Strain: putting energy into avoiding irritation only makes you extremely susceptible to the next irritation you encounter. Better to constantly subject yourself to irritation and deaden your nerves.

What Do We Know About Gambia?

Two things are immediately interesting, to me, about Gambia: 1) it is actually called "The Gambia," like the Hague or the Yukon. (Actually, it is really the Republic of the Gambia.) 2) It is a long, thin, noodle-shaped strip of land that surrounds the north and south banks of the River Gambia (or "the river" as it is colorfully known) for well over 200 miles. Usually you just build a city on a river for its riparian advantage: these guys shaped a nation around it. That's pretty handy.

On the other hand, it is entirely surrounded, let's say "engulfed," by Senegal except for 40 miles of shore on the North Atlantic Ocean. If I were a nation entirely enveloped by another nation, I would feel pretty insecure. What would stop Senegal from saying, "You're completely surrounded. We're going to absorb you, and if you have a problem with that, you appeal to any other neighboring nation." It would be useless at this point to have a small community of fish-elders who can speak to the sea-dwelling creatures because fish make a terrible land-based army.

The Gambia was owned by the United Kingdom up until 1965, and there was a brief stint (1982-89) during which it did actually form a union with Senegal, and it was known as Senegambia. I'm pretty sure no one ever mentioned this in high school, and I was in high school from 1985-88. It should have been very timely, if not exactly relevant to a small, racist, northern Wisconsin town.

The Gambia is currently home to about 6,000 refugees from Sierra Leone, which is about one-seventh of all refugees from Sierra Leone. These refugees either took a boat up the North Atlantic Ocean or somehow crossed through Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and the southern limb of Senegal to find refuge in the Gambia. They fled Sierra Leone because of a civil war in which the so-called Revolutionary United Front attempted to overthrow Sierra Leone's government, and 50,000 civilians were killed in the process. The UN sent in 13,000 peacekeepers who attempted to disarm the RUF but were themselves taken hostage.

The Gambia is known for having traffickers for the European sex trade, dealing mainly in women and girls but sometimes in young boys. That is to say, they may be flown to Europe, or they are simply corralled at home for European tourists. The thought of a nation plundering its own helpless citizenry for questionable and fleeting gain is horrifying enough, but that they do so in order to continue being exploited by another nation is pathetic. The government itself declines to prove in any way that it's working to halt their sex trade; indeed, it couldn't provide any proof of convictions or arrests for this offense for all of 2007. One has to assume the government itself is benefiting from pimping out its defenseless citizens. Not so much of a leap, when President Al'Haji Yahya Jammeh claims to have created a herbs-and-banana cure for AIDS, independent of his plans to behead homosexuals. He is also instituting a hunt for practitioners of magic. ...Yes, seriously, he seriously believes wizards are conspiring against him.

But no one can say the Gambia doesn't have a sense of humor: on July 11 AllAfrica.com claims they commemorated World Population Day, the theme of which was "Investing in Women is a Smart Choice." Probably not the way UNFPA had in mind...

As for the decent, hard-working Gambians who work within the farming, fishing, and legitimate tourism industries, one-third of Gambian citizens fall below the international poverty line. Two-thirds live in rural villages. The media censors itself and lawyers are unwilling to take certain cases for fear of reprisal and brutality by the government. In the last month, ten journalists and media executives have been arrested for criticizing the president. See, they were upset about the president's insulting commentary over the mysterious of another journalist. Go figure.

How bad must things be in Sierra Leone, that anyone would think to take refuge in the Gambia?

CONCLUSION: I don't think I'll take a vacation in the Gambia.

Seeking Needless Options

I've decided to play the underdog for a while.

As an alternative to Google Reader I'm exploring the more obscure Netvibes service. Tonight I figured out how to add RSS/Atom feeds so I can follow a few blogs of friends--I'll add more soon--and I'm pretty impressed with its flexibility and showmanship. I don't know if it's superior, but it's fun and it's not very well known, I don't think. I only discovered it because it turned up in a StatCounter report. It turned up a lot: I'm guessing someone is checking me out daily through Netvibes, or else Sweven Volant turns up in their blog searches regularly.

And instead of Twitter I'm going to pay more attention to Tumblr. I've noted in the past how I like how much more information it can receive and display. I'm going to capitalize on that and diversify my input there.

If anyone out there reading these words is also using Netvibes or Tumblr, please send me your links so we can connect. If nothing else I'll just add you to my Friends lists, however that's done, and we will have a small, quiet, private network. I've got Jaffa Cakes.

Mismanagement Skills

In line with deleting the extraneous blogs and social networks, I'm deactivating my Facebook account. I'm not deleting it--that appears impossible--but users can put their account on hold, remove themselves from the FB map, and have all their information put into storage. Users can come back later and, upon reactivation, find everything exactly as it was. But until I'm a better husband and a balanced, mature individual, there is no harm in shelving Facebook for a while.

I'll still post here, where no one will read it, and I'll keep my e-mail accounts, which no one writes to. I'm beggared to find a point to maintaining Facebook on top of all that. And with all the extra time I have in the evenings (and mornings and afternoons), there should be ample opportunity for personal development. I'll be able to pack a lunch for myself each morning, and every afternoon I can chip away at cleaning the house. It's like I had a supply of gold bricks and, instead of using them for currency, stacked them to form crude bookshelves up to this point.

Just this morning, I finally uploaded the photos from last Friday's disastrous morning. It was satisfying to get that out of the way. I'm almost done with the two large Gene Wolfe collections I'm reading, which will make room for a stack of other books I've been meaning to get to. See? Benefit upon benefit, and all I had to do was tap into it. And get rid of Facebook.

Death of That Which Did Not Live

Goodbye to my fakey Facebook account, M______. A friend and I used to call these secondary mock-ups "shadow accounts," for when we wanted to air grievances but not have them attached to us. A more enduring term (circa 1953) has been "sock puppet," referring to a false identity set up to deceive.

I never deceived anyone with M______. It was strictly a gaming account--some of my friends on my genuine Facebook account don't like to play games and complain when, twice a year, I invite them to join in. I created a fakey account, befriended strangers, and bulked up my support in the various online games. That's the thing: in many of these games, you cannot succeed or even progress without increasing your entourage. Many of these games are created by marketers or sponsored by them, so they have a vested interest in coercing as many unwilling players as possible to sample their wares. It sucks, but then again, nothing in life is truly free.

I had a pretty good thing going with M______. The games were getting very far and I started to reach up into the upper levels. Unfortunately, that's where the petty, vindictive fucks with nothing else to do lurk, and they wait for someone to show up so they can bully them all to hell. They impede your progress, they deplete your resources, they taunt and insult you, and then they swear vengeance when you do anything to defend/retaliate. That's pretty much the end of the game for me.

Fashion Wars was the worst, for that. Anyone who says that a government run by women would be at all superior to our current patriarchal system needs a crash educational course in trying to get anywhere in Fashion Wars. There's a wall you hit, when you start to come into some real power and, subsequently, attract the notice of the real heavy hitters in the game. (There's a second wall, which I never reached, where you lose the bulk of your defenses and the game introduces a structure which makes it easier for bullies to isolate and torment you repeatedly, indefinitely. I cannot imagine why someone would write that into a game.) If you peer into their accounts, they are mainly white trash women from 17 to 55 years of age. They form alliances and betray them rapidly, then swear vengeance when they are likewise betrayed. They are too willing to take offense at anything around them, and every struggle they're engaged in is evidence of how the world is slanted against them. And that's outside of Fashion Wars--in the game it's ten times worse because they actually have real-world time which translates to in-game power. They form dynasties and clans, and they start up campaigns to systematically harass players they dislike for whatever reason. When I was thus targeted, I quit that game.

It's started up again in another game, though, where a player four times as powerful as me has been killing my character off several times a day over successive days. There's no defense against it, there's no recourse (the game developers are supremely disinterested in this game dynamic), and there's no reason for him to stop. Even though his gain is minimal, the harassment is a real psychological weapon that I can't cope with. Right this minute, if someone gave me a wooden baseball bat and teleported me to a spot just behind the person who has made a small career of harassing me, ideally while they were logged on at their computer, I think I would hospitalize that person. I don't have it in me to kill him, but I would take a lot of joy in breaking him into pieces. I would enjoy his shock and revel in his helplessness, and I would bathe in his agony. It would not be quick, either, I would not swiftly disable him. I would give him ample reason to deeply, sincerely regret his life decisions, and then continue to torture him for several more hours. I wouldn't get tired of it any time soon and I would remind him every five minutes why this is happening. I would also make it very hard for him to go online again.

That's an unreasonable reaction and so I know it's time to quit the game. For that matter, I'm no longer interested in any of the other Facebook games: once you have a steady supply of support and can generate enough energy to completely quests and gain levels, you've essentially won the game. The game never becomes some other model where you need to rethink your strategy. It just repeats itself, making the obstacles larger and the goals more distant, but it is essentially the same thing you started with. Nitrous Racing was more interesting in that there was some judgment to your actions, and there was some amusing storytelling involved in the game (and if someone was repeatedly attacking you, it was never apparent), and I'll miss that game. I got very far in it with the M______ account, but like I said, many of my friends don't enjoy these little games and I will never have a large enough group to get very far in that game with my main account.

The only thing there is to do is terminate M______ and give up playing games on Facebook. Yes, there's Farkle, for which you do not need a large group, but that is only an exercise in frustration.

Online Representation: Simplified

I've often thought about consolidating all my online activity down to a few systems, like, deleting all my extraneous e-mail addresses and directing everyone to one solid, consistent, timeless e-mail address. For example, my "xn70.mpls" experiment failed: I will always be "XN" and I will always have been born in 1970, but I will not always live in Minneapolis. (I inserted the dot in the middle of that ID in an attempt to foil spammers. I think it wasn't a totally bad idea.)

And while I have shut down a few other blogs, I kept Blogger and still update Heavy Boots and CWFredrickson.org. Blogger's my main one. I quit Open Salon for sundry community-related issues, and I've terminated several Wordpress blogs--I seem to have anti-luck with them--and I don't even contribute at all to the blog at Writer's Market. No one else does either, though they post frequently: all their posts are "Check out my new self-published book about (angels/my homelessness/troubles with romance)! Click here to praise an article I pulled out of my ass but lack the courage to submit for publication!" and it even expands into private e-mail. There is one user who routinely exhorts people on her distribution list to please edit and review her ATV Web site. I'm the only person I've found who simply writes updates and posts random thoughts.

I kept Tumblr. I like Tumblr a lot, for some reason. It seems more diverse than Twitter, for one thing, though I only have one friend on this network. See, I would like, ideally, one prime e-mail, one prime blog (hopefully tied to one prime home page), and one prime social network. This is so people don't have to guess how to reach me. Maybe that can only happen after I change my surname back to "Wilkie" and can buy a distinct domain name without a lot of letters. On the other hand, "sxoidmal" is pretty unique and is only one letter too long for a MN license plate.

It is too, too hard for people to remember how to spell "sxoidmal." Amazingly, a Brazilian guy pronounced it correctly upon glancing at it, when we traded e-mail addresses. He is the only one to have ever done that, as well.

Reflections in Ice Wine

Not doing anything really useful with my evening alone. I should bike out to Hosmer and drop off a way-overdue library book. I will do that, but I should, too. I just ran around and consolidated all the house trash into one bag to be taken out. I cuddled the cats as much as they would tolerate it, and I had a vodka/lime soda. I reheated the remainder of the BK Big Fish from yesterday's road trip, and I played a bunch of Facebook games. I think I'll go for a walk with a cigar.

It's funny how directionless I can be without Rebecca around. She doesn't even have to tell me what to do while she's here: I just feel "on" when she's here. Without her, I feel like I'm killing time, stalling, waiting for something that's about to happen. I think I'd be very bad at living alone again. I fantasize about it when we're shopping in IKEA or World Market, I think about how I'd decorate an apartment or a house all by myself, but in the final analysis (as everyone is saying so frequently lately) it wouldn't be a fun time, I don't think. I'd rather have her around.

I'll clean up the apartment a bit more and try to write at least one letter to send out tomorrow. I bought a sheet of Bob Hope stamps as well as some postcard-rate (domestic) stamps. It sucks that I have to write to complete strangers in order to get my postcard fix. Only two people I know ever send postcards or write letters at all.

For that matter, right now I'm listening to a CD, Lovetune for Vacuum by Soap&Skin, sent to me by a friendly, entertaining lady in northern France. The music sounds a lot like Mum, Rachel's, and Sigur Ros. It's very interesting.

Address Change

Amigos y amigas con queso? If you're reading this, read this now:

I have a new URL: http://www.swevenvolant.org/

Please update your links! URL forwarding is in effect, but please!