Thank you, Mayor Hitler

I saw a news story today, here, about how the mayor of Flint, Michigan has forbidden city employees from reading - or apparently even subscribing to - the Flint newspaper. The mayor is apparently feuding with the local paper - not the first time politicians and the press haven't gotten along, but I've never heard of a feud being taken to this extreme. Anyway, a few city employees were defying the mayor's decree, and when the mayor found newspaper carrier trying to deliver papers and city hall, he had the carrier arrested when the carrier wouldn't tell the mayor who the papers were for. The mayor sounds like he's either insane or some sort of power-crazed fascist. The newspaper, of course, is playing this up as a First Amendment issue.

Sounds like Michael Moore needs to return to Flint for his next documentary.

You Tore Me Down

All this month I've been fighting a battle against spyware and adware on my computer. Of course, I have AdAware and SpyBot, along with Norton AntiVirus, but I've still got lingering programs in my computer.

The problem, I think, stems from my Internet Explorer. Even though I don't use it anymore (I've been using Firefox since July), my ISP (BlueLight), every time I log on, automatically launches IE, with all of its security flaws. Usually, I'm quick enough to shut IE down just as it starts to load, but sometimes I'm distracted and the browser successfully launches, and the spyware programs that are hidden from SpyBot go into action. Worse yet, last time I allowed IE to open, two viruses were installed on my computer (but I caught them with Norton).

My operating system is WinME, and I saw some news stories recently that said that Bill Gates is no longer going to make any new security patches for IE & ME users. If a person wants a secure IE, he has to buy WinXP. That bastard.

Right now, I'm toying with the idea of getting a new ISP - one that won't automatically launch IE (or will let me set Firefox as my default browser). I tried emailing BlueLight a few days ago, asking if there was some way I could prevent IE's autolaunch, but the tech support insisted that I had to use IE. Bastards.

"So what is a 'depthfunction,'" you ask? Well, the short story is that it is my online persona, one that I've been using for a couple of years now. Everybody should create their own persona or avatar, one that reflects, supplements, or even replaces their own meat-and-bones existence in the "real world."

You're most likely to find "depthfunction" at the Television Without Pity website. I think it's the coolest site on the net, a place where smart, snarky folks go to mock or praise (mostly mock) the TV shows that they watch. I'm a big reality TV buff and I've found that talking about the shows with a community of like-minded individuals is the perfect supplement to watching the shows.

The long story about the origin of "depthfunction" is that it is a literary reference by my favorite online poet, Mez. She has her own website (and blog) here. She's really cool and, I think, destined to be canonized (that is, if you still believe in the notion of literary canons). The word "depthfunction" appears in one of her codepoems, and I think she even used it, briefly, as an avatar for herself. She burns through avatars like and mp3 player burns through batteries. She uses a lot of neologisms in her writing which is a sort of combination of English and computer code. When I decided that I needed an avatar, I went to Mez, found "depthfunction" and the rest is history. I like it; it has a lot of connotative possibilities.

Entry Number One of ???

Sweet. I now have a blog!

But what to write in it??

Years ago, when I was younger, I used to keep a diary - or, more precisely, I tried to keep several diaries. The problem was, I never could stick with it for more than a few months. I hope that doesn't happen here, but who knows?

Anyway, I don't want to think of this as a diary - there will be no "Dear Diary" (or as Lisa Simpson would say, "Dear Log") entries. If I could use this as a sketchpad for my thoughts, a repository of my stray ideas, that would be cool. . .

Well, let's post, and see how this looks.