Perverse
Discrimination.
Story #1
Back in 2003 the propaganda drum-beats for the invasion
of Iraq had begun and the "patriots" on one of my favorite
chat sites were publicly salivating at the possibilities
of "turning the sand to glass". I
argued so vehemently against this vanity war that I
was eventually banned.
Gosh, imagine. (He said, eyes batting furiously.)
But these were still the early, innocent days of
the 'net so all it took was a fake email address and a new account and I was
back in the fight. Only this time I eschewed all talk
of war and merely peppered the boards with innocuous
messages, each accompanied by
a small
thumbnail of a flower that was served directly from
my web host.(Dun-dun-dunnnnnn.)
After a few hundred of these posts were in place
I went to the server, deleted the flower image, and
replaced it, filename and all, with a 10-meg high-rez
image. For those not familiar with the state of connection
speed in 2003 this action was akin to every 18-wheeler
locking-up their brakes on the freeway... at rush hour.
Petty? Yes. Satisfying? Oh, yeah. Would I do it again?
Well, let's just see which country Trump decides to
nuke first.
-----------
Story #2
I'm selling a rather bulky piece of technology on Craigslist
and an interested party asked if I could demo it for
him at a local Starbucks. I responded that I wasn't
lugging it anywhere, that if he wanted to see it in
operation he had to come to my house. He said no because,
basically, he said he was afraid.
I understood what he meant, and I felt sorry for him.
He'd fallen for the media-driven paranoia that crime
is everywhere and we're all its next victim. The guy
had my name, my phone number and my address. Hardly
the sort of thing a person intending to commit a crime
would provide.
(Yeah, its possible to be mugged, robbed and raped
during a CL transaction but the same thing can happen
to you during a routine traffic stop in our lovely
little police state.)
I learned a long time ago to not argue with people
like this so I told him to have a good life. The world
is still full of brave suckers.
=Lefty=
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