Here’s one for you, WolframAlpha…

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Never forget who you are.

Admin:

I finally recovered my Wordpress blog from one of their famous “upgrade” accidents. Things to note: Always log out of Wordpress everywhere before you hit the upgrade button.

This is difficult for me, seeing as I use around thirty computers on a daily basis, including a couple of handheld devices, and since some are at home and some are at work, it’s really hard to keep track of where I might still be logged in. And there’s no (at least not that I’ve found) button on in the admin area to log out everyone who’s logged in (that would just be me, but about thirty times). So every other maintenance upgrade I seem to lock myself out and have to determine whether it’s worth the effort to recover manually or just wait for the next upgrade.

I’ve been asked a couple of times in the past two or three weeks how to maintain public and private online identities. Also I’ve seen a couple of questions about what to do when your mother gets a twitter account and asks to follow you. Related questions.

It’s not lost on me that these questions would have been spectacularly meaningless a couple hundred years ago. Except for, you know, authors and criminals. And maybe the Scarlet Pimpernel. You only had the one identity unless you were up to something, and most likely up to no good. Now we have so many (more or less) legitimate identities that we can have them stolen or can carelessly mislay them. Someone who gets ahold of our True Name (or at least one of the truer names) can righteously fuck us up.

(As a side note I’ll mention that the future seems to more closely resemble fantasy than science fiction, or syfy, as it has come to be known. Amulets and talismans and potions and magic jewelry and faerie mistresses — that’s where to invest your money. Bestowals of curses and blessings and paying for the removal of the inconvenient ones, trapping souls in jars, deals with spirits and demons … keep an eye on that market.)

So it’s not really surprising to me that my answers to these questions lie in the dead (or never truly living - heh) fields of sorcery and necromancy. Oh. And the related field of marketing.

I write under at least one penname. It’s not a big secret deal. It’s a branding thing. It allows me to rant and rave and be an asshole in public without (directly) bringing shame to my parents and my family name. It allows me the risk of writing tripe and, when (or if) my skills improve, the ability to cut it all free to flap away into the past and establish a new, higher quality brand.

That’s how I construct identities. I build them like I’d build shamanic masks. I feel it when I put them on and take them off. It helps me keep track of them all.

I have a writing identity or two or three, some of which I wear in public places for the sake of making contacts and building publicity. A private identity I use (or reserve, as I don’t use it much) for the purposes of talking to close friends. Another formal identity for talking to family and friends of family from which I would like the ability to keep a few secrets, for their sakes as well as mine. A super-private identity for saying the things I’d only say to myself — but wouldn’t mind a complete stranger overhearing. A throwaway identity for registering with information sites I don’t care about, with a similarly throw-away password. A firmly guarded identity for financial and utility online accounting, but one I share with the wife for maintaining our accounts. A work-related online persona for being an official face of the company. An admin identity for controlling and monitoring the business’s technology infrastructure. A sub-identity to share with venders who might need access to help maintain business infrastructure for me.

Not everyone needs the entire suite. People with a strong online fantasy life might need a few more. But separating the functions of the identities into categories before you have to backtrack too much will help tremendously. And building the identites the way you’d consciously take on any important project — making lists and notes, drawing charts and sketches, choosing a Power Animal, etc. — is totally worth all the effort you need to expend.

Sites make it tough by establishing bogus arbitrary requirements and restrictions for account names and passwords, but if you tie the ones you have to remember to the mental image of the face you have to put on to interact there, it’ll be easier to remember. It’ll at least reduce it to a limited number of guesses for each login page if you can’t remember outright. And it will tremendously reduce the clean-up if one of the identites is compromised.

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BEERMAS IS COMING, Friday after next

artwork by fazicar

Here is the lovely and delicate story of the best new holiday for the working class, BEERMAS:

Because I’m fed up with the Christian churches hijacking pagan festivals and painting saints all over them, I’m creating a new pagan holiday right fucking now, complete with cute fuzzy animals and enslaved workforces creating and delivering goodies AND BLOODY FUCKING DEATH to the deserving. This festival involves DRUGS AND BOOZE and is for ADULTS ONLY. The kids have enough holidays already.

The festival is one of a number of festivals called BEERMAS because I don’t care that there might be other festivals called Beermas to the extent that I’m not even googling it. Don’t care. Don’t Care. Because there are no copyrights and trademarks on traditional pagan festivals even if they’ve only existed for forty-five minutes. Got that, you intellectual-property-grubbing Wiccans? Fuck you. On with the show.

On BEERMAS, the hard-working rock hyrax named Throaty Kneecap McForehead, having filled his last keg with zebra-and-donkey-piss magically transmuted into beer, whips his hordes of enslaved brewer bush babies into rolling the kegs onto the huge razor-wheeled chariot pulled by two ass-raping, man-eating honey badgers. (One, “Lefty”, female, is pictured above. “Penisface” is never pictured, as he is known to seek out and eat photographers.) Every Friday the Thirteenth, also known as BEERMAS, around 9:05 AM Throaty K. McForehead the Rock Hyrax hops into his chariot, “Rosebud”, pulled swiftly and eagerly by Lefty and Penisface the Honey Badgers, to tour the world, stuffing the fridges of the deserving with zebra-and-donkey-piss beer AND THE BLOODY HEADS OF ALL WHO CROSS ME, their mouths stuffed with peyote buttons and magic mushrooms, before the deserving motherfuckin’ workers of the world make it back home from work to find the goodies. The undeserving will find their fridges stuffed with snakes — or would, if their own heads weren’t already in MY fridge stuffed to the gills with peyote and magic mushrooms.

Throaty, Lefty, and Penisface will heartily tie up and assfuck the layabout slackers who stay home from work on a Friday the Thirteenth without being well-and-truly-and-in-Technicolor® ill and will only stuff the fridge for the slackers if they had a good time. Everyone deserves a second chance.

For the truly sick they deliver bush-baby-made chicken soup. Made from zebra and donkey piss. Be warned.

On days while the beer is brewing and they aren’t making deliveries, Throaty, Lefty, and Penisface go bowling, and the bush babies have to keep setting up the pins.

There you go.

Merry Fucking BEERMAS.

I’ve written to Throaty Kneecap McForehead the Happy Fucking BEERMAS Rock Hyrax asking if there’s any slack to be cut for the fifteen percent of Americans who would be hard workers if they chose but are currently unemployed or in an alcoholic coma from having drunk way way way too much during the Superbowl. After delicate negotiations to find a common language (finally settled on Swahili — the hyrax is African, donchaknow) I determined that McForehead is a swell hyrax with a heart of gold, but there will be NO MERCY FOR SLACKERS.

McForehead states in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that if you are unemployed, your new job, for which you shall be busting ass without any thought of taking a break to play Halo, is to find a new goddamn job.

In order to be a recipient of the Happy Fucking BEERMAS Rock Hyrax’s intoxicatingly awe-inspiring generosity, unemployed persons WILL HAVE A COMPLETED AND UPDATED RÉSUMÉ stuck to his or her fridge with some clever magnet thingy and copies of five job applications completed and submitted with timestamps on ‘em dated somewhere between the sixth and the twelfth of the month inclusive and sitting on the counter nearest the fridge awaiting filing.

If the résumé on your fridge is missing when you get home, that means Penisface thought it looked promising and knows of someone who should have a look at it. Penisface is a social networking genius, as you could probably guess from the name.

Keep in mind that during this next month it is essential that there is to be NO SLACKING OFF, as the next Happy Fucking BEERMAS is NEXT MONTH, In March. February and March are (strictly platonic) buddies like that and have all their days of the weeks and dates lines up to match, at least until you run off the end of February. March is a bit longer but men don’t particularly discuss such things even when they notice.

____________________

Technically it’s the bloody heads of all who cross ladykinbote, since this part was her idea.

Using a strap-on, in the case of Lefty.

IT Professional Dies In Plane Crash

The headline is the fact. The rest of this is what I could gather gleaning, while theoretically working one of my several day-jobs:

Mike Connell was an IT professional who worked for the Republican National Convention and set up hosted services for them.

Mike Connell is mentioned as being responsible for setting up the non-White-House email server GWB43.com that was used to by staffers to communicate without recording/oversight.

Mike Connell was implicated in various and sundry “electronic voting irregularities” in Ohio during the 2004 election.

Mike Connell reported threats against himself and his family from Karl Rove with the aim of interfering with his testimony regarding aforementioned 2004 election irregularities.

Mike Connell was apparently told not to fly his plane due to the possibility of it having been tampered with.

Mike Connell had apparently decided not to fly his plane a couple fo times because he thought he detected tampering.

Mike Connell died when his plane crashed on Dec 20 2008.

MarketWatch: Bush Insider Who Planned To Tell All Killed In Plane Crash: Non-Profit Demands Full Federal Investigation

Larisa Alexandrovna’s blog: One of my sources died in a plane crash last night…

PRNewswire-USNewswire via Yahoo!News: Bush Insider Who Planned To Tell All Killed In Plane Crash: Non-Profit Demands Full Federal Investigation

Ohio Action 19 News (video): Pilot Killed In Plane Crash Thought Plane Was Sabotaged

Telegraph (UK): George Bush aide dies in plane crash

SourceWatch wiki info on Mike Connell

E Pluribus Media: Ohio Attorneys Seek Protection for Mike Connell and his Family against Alleged Threats from Karl Rove

McClatchy: Computer expert denies knowledge of ‘04 vote rigging in Ohio

The Raw Story: ‘Karl Rove’s IT guru’ Mike Connell dies in plane crash (previous article/background material:Republican IT consultant subpoenaed in case alleging tampering with 2004 election)

Velvet Revolution: UPDATE: 12/20/08: Michael Connell Killed: VR Demands Full State And Federal Investigation

Enjoy doing whatever homework you think might be required.

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Time for the wrap-up: 2008 in pictures

…assuming nothing worse happens in the next twenty-two days.

Click on the images for sources and/or explanations, if needed.

Thank you for playing.

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There will be peace on this farm or else!

Someone issue those chickens a pair of blue berets.

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It’s no stupider than burying fake dinosaur bones 6000 years ago.

It’s a little long for a motto, but this needs to be streamlined, translated into (possibly Pig) Latin, and added to the Xalieri family crest.

What’s Latin for “Stump the Future’s Archaeologists”?

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The action doesn’t happen until the 1:08 mark.

I find this obscenely fascinating.

Also there are no comments yet. For YouTube, this is unprecedented.

Go fix that.

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Your world in pictures.

My new travel alarm clock. Already packed for my next flight:

Nummy puggle:

Hell of a peep show in there:

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When Nonsequiturs Attack

Needs more photoshop:

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