I love all the ways spammers use to get around spam filters. “Well, actually, I hate them, but you know what I mean.” I got one yesterday with the subject line, “Mën, Nö Sidë effects” I guess the umlauts have some sneaky effect, but it made me think the email had been written by someone from an ’80s hair band. Maybe Mötley Crüe’s former publicist is working for a spammer now. “Oh, yeah, if you need umlauting, he’s your man. He’s definitely the go-to guy for umlauts”

While I write this entry I am attempting to use EarthLink’s live chat support to ask how to get www.plooble.com “don’t bother going there” to point to this blog. The support page promises you’ll “get an answer in moments” If a moment is, say, ten minutes, then yeah, I got an answer in moments. Three of them. Anyway. My interlocutor appears to be Indian. His name is “AnilG” Kind of sounds like someone L’il Kim might hang around with, doesn’t it? I recognize that I am not fluent in any other language, and I hate to make fun of the way foreigners speak English “well, actually, I love it, but you know what I mean”, but I couldn’t help but laugh when his response to my question came back as “Okay. Kindly be on hold for a moment” And it was one moment. One EarthLink moment, a.k.a. ten minutes.

Chatting with my Anil buddy reminds me of the time I lived in London and got a really nasty reaction to an infected ear piercing, which I won’t describe in detail because what I just said is nasty enough. I went to the hospital and was attended to by an extremely charming and reassuring doctor from Pakistan. When I asked him what I could do to make the skin less rough, he replied, “Once the wound has healed, you may apply some Nivea cream, and your skin will become smooth and supple again” If there is a more elegant way of putting that, I can’t imagine what it would be.

Whoops. AnilG is back. “I see that your domain is not Hosted with the EarthLink” Oh, yes it is, ass-name. Kindly don’t make me come to Bangalore and slap you with a chapatti.

And now he’s gone again. “Kindly be on hold for a moment” It’s not so cute this time. Why do I get the feeling that AnilProbe is sitting somewhere in India surfing the same useless EarthLink support pages I was surfing before I resorted to this particular farcical time sink? And he’s probably on dial-up.

Oh, super. He’s just come back and told me to do something that didn’t work an hour ago. He asked me for my password, and I gave it to him. Why is the phrase “EarthLink will never ask you for your password throbbing in the back of my mind? Oh, no. I see it all now. AnilG has been attacked by thugs who have taken over this chat session. Now they have my password and can get into my domain hosting, my blog, just about anyth

Hello! This are your friend Mr. David of America, and there is nothing strange going on here. Please my Friends, I need the Monies very importantly for the urgent Surgery of the Head. Please fill the large Envelope with American Dollars and send them with all haste to my good Friend Mr. C. Mukherjee, care of General Delivery, Mumbai, India. Thank you very much, and have the Nice Day. When I return from the Head Diseases Hospital I will see you at the restaurant of McDonald’s on Main Street in our Town of America, and we will enjoy the fried Potato while listening to the music of Madonna and Michael Jackson together. Now I must go to my bed as my Head is very, very pain. Please to hurry!

Because we have cooler uniforms. I mean, seriously. The South Korean soldier on the left looks like he was dressed by Gaultier. See that look on his face? He knows he’s a badass. Now check out his North Korean counterpart. He looks like he’s guarding the monkey cages at the Pyongyang Zoo. If they had better uniforms, maybe they wouldn’t have to announce that they’re making more nuclear bombs in order to get some cred. Come on, Designers Without Borders, get to work!

Yeah, he knows.

After five long years languishing beneath a decreasingly-believable “under construction” banner, Plooble finally has a home on the web. “As soon as register.com stops being wonky, you’ll be able to get here by typing www.plooble.com.” My thanks to everyone who has said, “You should have a blog,” and again, I hope that didn’t mean, “Stop sending me all those emails.” Special thanks to Adrienne, who helped me with the set up and design, and to Rebecky, Jesse, Myküll and Pinky for providing me with daily inspiration to get one of my own. “The fact that the title of this first entry is a song lyric is an homage to Pinky. But I’m not going to keep doing that, because that would be crass and derivative.”

And now, to begin polluting cyberspace with my pointless observations, not to mention bitchin’ ‘n’ moanin’.

This blog was created on my new laptop, obtained thanks to the combined efforts of State Farm and Some Crackhead. “I hope you’re enjoying my old laptop, Mr. Burglar. And I love that I’m still paying for it.” I brought the new machine “should I name it?” home from Best Buy last night, and at first I was excited. I soon realized it was possibly the least enjoyable technology purchase I’ve ever made. As Primo pointed out, “It’s just like your old laptop, only without your stuff on it.” What I’ve actually purchased is two solid days of transferring files, installing software and cursing Microsoft. Still, it is very fast. Of course it’s fast. It doesn’t have any of my stuff on it. I’ll soon take the wind out of your sails, missy.

I interrupted HMS Thighburner’s shakedown cruise to go to my homeowners’ association annual meeting. Big mistake. Before I knew what was happening, I was on the frickin’ board of directors. Two people “one of whom I’d never met” asked if they could nominate me. Despite the fact that I purposefully gave the lamest stump speech in electoral history “I basically said, “Uhh, I’ll do it if I have to”” I was elected in a landslide. I have no idea why. Perhaps it was my new sweater. I considered demanding a recount, but that would have been crass and derivative. Oh, and, joy of joys, because I was one of the top three vote getters, my term lasts three years. Perhaps I should rename this blog “Adventures in Petty Authority,” because I’m sure my tenure will provide lots of blog fodder. I can’t wait to get into a heated argument about deck truss replacement, or spend my time listening to the complaints of the lady from Long Island, whose tone of voice makes it clear she considers the board of directors to be somewhere below Carlo Ponzi in terms of character and honesty.

Things peeving me at the moment:

Microsoft

my unstoppable electability

my enduring unemployability

the fact that I actually watched all of “Mr. Deeds” on Monday, instead of doing, um… anything else

songs with noises in them that sound like something is wrong with my car “there’s a Portastatic song with a sound like a wheel bearing going bad, and one by the Fruit Bats with an off-tempo percussion line that sounds like someone is locked in my trunk”

Speaking of car trouble and CDs, yesterday on the way to Best Buy I started hearing a crackling noise coming from my CD player, which, along with the rest of the car, is 1500 miles out of warranty. I’m glad I realized it was actually the plastic bag in the back seat fluttering in the wind before I took the car in. I’m still rebuilding my cred after last month’s visit when I complained about catastrophic handling problems, which were solved by letting some air out of the tires.

Okay. That looks like a blog entry. But man, I can’t believe I linked to a picture of a sweater.

5-7-5, neigh.

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“And a double bourbon for the guy in the dirty shirt.”

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