At my disk
Some of the editorials from Wilson's Almanac
First Quarter (January, February, March), 2002
On to Second Quarter, 2002 editorials »
Jan 1, 2002
Yeeeeeeee-harrr!: New Year's Day. huh?
I'm taking it pretty easy, how about you? My flatmate Geoff is playing a computer game in the lounge-room. Now, usually I don't spare computer games even a passing thought, and I've never had the time nor inclination to play one. I must admit, however, that Geoff's Redneck Rampage looks like the funniest thing I've seen all year.
Leonard and Bubba are the two characters, apparently. Geoff showed me how you can make these rednecks either blow up the Waco cult compound, or shoot Janet Reno, depending on your mood. It's sick stuff, but you've gotta laugh when you see that you don't have to use conventional weapons. Why, you can use a keg of beer, a buzz-saw – even a squawking chicken. Who wouldn't love to hit Janet in the kisser with a loud chook?
Some day, when even the most reactionary, iggerant, parochial excuse for a human being in the West finally works out (by accident, probably), that all the world is one bunch of people, and one macro-ecosystem, and not nations or races, then the technology that went into Redneck Rampage will perhaps actually be useful. I can only imagine the months of effort and the amount of capital that went into creating this funny program. With a bit of imagination, I can even see how all those resources could actually do something worthwhile, maybe to help our species and our small planet out of its current catastrophic slide. Of course, we could still have Redneck Rampage, but other things could be adapted from the skills and components that went into it. Is that too far fetched? Stretch your imagination on that one.
So now I get it. That's the ingredient missing in the world. Not money, not brainpower, nor even goodwill. What the world needs now is imagination. I also believe that imagination can be cultivated. If I focus myself on increasing anything, it will increase. If I decide to focus on football this year (may the gods forfend), my head will follow. If my focus is eating, I will eat more and learn more about food. A focus on stamp collecting will lead to stamps assuming greater importance in my life - and I'll also notice more stamp stuff in the world, and learn lots more about stamps.
This year, I commit to increasing my imagination, for my own good, and for the good of the world through which I am but briefly passing. Having so committed myself, I have complete faith and confidence that if I practice my commitment, my imagination will grow beyond today's dream. A greatly improved faculty of imagination will be a fun thing to have, and raise me above my current state of being.
Yeeeeee- harrr!! Ah kaint hardly way, no-sirree!! How's about you, Jim-Bob an' Betty-Sue?
Abundance and gratitude, and "Carpe annum!"
Pip Wilson
Jan 6, 2002
Synchronicity: John Lilly would like this, as he would like the coincidence about Caravaggio (1984, This day in history, above).
While searching for material for today's almanac, I came across a smallish web page
that by chance contains three of today's items: Lilly, Twelfth Night and Agamemnon. All coincidentally.
Pusillanimity: The bushfires continue apace in Sydney and right throughout New South Wales. In a media orgy of ink and noise it seems not to have occurred to the general public to ask why, seven years after a similar dangerous conflagration (a reporter's first fire), our political leaders claim that it is all the fault of Nature, God and arsonists.
It's acceptable to refer to those factors - well, two of them at least. What is clearly unacceptable is the facility with which NSW Premier Bob Carr, Minister Bob Debus, and Rural Fire Brigades head honcho, Commissioner Phil Koperburg, are avoiding the issue of bureaucratic responsibility for our protection and that of the environment.
In all other arenas of Australian public life, when something goes wrong, the minister and bureaucrats in charge get the sack. In this case, the inferno is so great that former journalist, Premier Carr, and his spin doctors have worked hard to get the media situation well under control.
At a media conference put on by Messrs Carr and Koperburg last week, one journalist spent her opportunity to question these leaders by asking whether, seeing the state's huge tanker-helicopter was called 'Elvis', any new ones might be named 'Priscilla' and 'Lisa-Marie'. Chuckles all around the media room. All saunter off for a nice quick 'cold one' at the Parliament House bar. Woodward and Bernstein, eat your heart out: this is
Austrayli-bloody-a.
I'm sure that had Bob Carr a mind to question himself, he would have asked some curly ones, such as, "Premier, you've had seven years to fix up the appalling mess this state was in. Would you say you have failed miserably, or happily?"
Not only is the NSW media gallery not grilling, boiling and frying these buck-passing leaders, it is positively fawning. Fawns and bucks, meanwhile, as well as kangaroos and platypodiae, are burning to death in horrific and unprecedented numbers. We may well expect politicians and bureaucrats to dissemble, for that is their usual behaviour; but oh, what a shame we have come to expect the Fourth Estate to tremble when the kings dissemble. Worse - the new breed of Australian journalists know neither of their pusillanimity, nor of any preceding tradition of investigative balls.
My God, I enjoyed that! I think I'll send it to the Letters section of the Sydney Morning
Herald. Any bets on whether they'll publish it?
This was a big almanac, because Jan 6 is a big day.
Abundance and gratitude
Pip Wilson
Jan 11, 2002
Haste: I write from a motel in rural Australia, seated on my bed at a bad angle, keyboard perched on my knees, and my back rather contorted. Either I have to save for a laptop, or motels have to start putting in desks. I have to pack my computer, grab some tea bags and little packets of sugar, and maybe a mini-soap (hell, it's paid for!), leave something important under the bed or hanging in the wardrobe, check out, and be at work ten minutes ago.
I've been in a hurry all week. Consequently, I'm a bit behind in my correspondence. To those kind friends who have written for Ongo-Bongo, the Planet Directory, and others, the good word is that I intend to catch up this weekend. Thanx for being patient.
Oh, you weren't?
Abundance and gratitude
Pip Wilson
Jan 12, 2002
Coincidences: Some curious pictorial matter for us today, Almaniacs.
This is 'Elvis', the Erickson helitanker from Memphis, Tennessee, USA, that has been helping bushfire fighters in my state of New South Wales fight the conflagration:
This below is allegedly an ancient image from the ceiling beams of a 3000-year-old New Kingdom Temple, located several hundred miles south of Cairo and the Giza Plateau, at Abydos, Egypt:
from the website http://www.crystalinks.com/ancientaircraft.html.
This at left is an image from my old homepage, http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com.indexa.html, near which one will find my motto,
Carpe Diem (I also use Non Serviam - 'I will not serve').
And this
at right is a Zippo lighter I that bought today, which by chance (?) contains the only other example I have ever seen of
Carpe Diem in juxtaposition with the eye in the pyramid.
Curiouser and curiouser. What do you think? Make a great day; see you tomorrow.
Abundance and gratitude
Pip Wilson
Jan 14, 2002
Review: Bored of the Rings.
I saw it with my son Remy last week. When I woke up I noticed he was still asleep.
Apart from excellent visuals and some patches of good acting (particularly Gandalf), it's
Star Wars in New Zealand. Tell me how anything could be worse than that.
If the plot were any thinner it wouldn't have been a talkie. It goes like this: Men, outnumbered by many ugly monsters, bash them up. They walk to another place. Outnumbered by many ugly monsters, they bash them up. Repeat for half a day.
Abundance and gratitude
Pip Wilson
Jan 21, 2002
Liberty: There is an old saying, that a people get the government they deserve. If that's the case, a few of us must be working off some pretty heavy karma, dood.
As in few other times in history, the governments of Australia and the USA are running neck and neck in the un-liberty stakes. Buoyed by a populist platform of understandable outrage at the wicked events of 9/11, combined with a truckload of xenophobia and just a tinge of racism, the Howard and Bush administrations are getting away with infringements of human rights that none of us would have countenanced even one year ago. The media are complicit in this new folly – often in hugely shameful ways that will look even more implausible in months and years to come, as Westerners wake up – as we surely shall - from the coma of self-righteousness and cultural arrogance.
A young Australian Muslim, David Hicks, made the silly mistake of getting sucked in to the wrong Islamic crowd, and was captured in Afghanistan, allegedly bearing arms for the government of that benighted country. Allegedly.
The Australian media has had a field day with our very own version of America's
John Walker, and has been disgracefully dishonest about it. Hicks has been shown in press photos with a rocket launcher on his shoulder. Of course, it has not been mentioned that the picture comes not from the Afghan war, but from the Bosnian conflict, in which Mr Hicks fought on the same side as the US and Western Allies ... the Muslim side.
David Hicks is now a Guantanamero, being held at Guantanamo's brutish Camp X-Ray and forbidden to speak to his lawyer or parents, let alone the media. The Australian government isn't the slightest bit interested in protesting to its big brother. The ancient concept of prisoners' rights, held by the English-speaking peoples for at least 600 years, has been burned at the stake in just four short months by "our political leaders". Let us hope they don't turn on you and me next and put us in cages exposed to the elements in some medieval nightmare.
Meanwhile, Aussie Hicks is incarcerated, presumably with Walker and many other prisoners of war who the US government tries to pretend are not POWs, so it doesn't have to accord them Geneva Convention human rights observances. Such hypocrisy is almost unbelievable coming from the USA and Australia, those erstwhile champions of the Rights of Man. Before the economic rationalists (econorats I call them) and global giants won world hegemony after the fortunate fall of the USSR's dictatorship.
Totally unnecessary and brutal indignities are currently being imposed on the enemy –
a crime we once thought only Japanese and Nazis did, way back when. The non-prisoners are now in cages that you and I would be ashamed to put a mangy dog in –
even if it had bitten our loved ones.
The US administration has even seen fit to shave off the enemies' beards, knowing full well that this unwarranted act is a humiliation with a religious twist. Bullying is now the status quo for the oil millionaires who run the world, safe in the knowledge that few will challenge them, out of fear of being called traitors.
But who are the traitors? I say they are those who believe, like Osama, that the end justifies the means; those who treat Liberty as a whore, for hire on special occasions when it suits. What right do we have any more to say we are so much better? If we ever were, we are squandering that source of pride: our firm belief in human rights and dignity, even those of our enemies.
Here in Australia, at a terrible desert settlement called
Woomera, hundreds of men, women and children are being caged as well, in the down-under version of the new Liberty concentration camps. People are crowded 18 to a room in heat that soars over the 100 degrees Fahrenheit mark, without fans or air conditioning.
These are the lucky ones, whom the Australian government has not pushed out to sea. The State policy (unwritten) is to take years, instead of months, to process their refugee applications, so that people fleeing torture and terror for their principles or race or religion, will not come here any more.
Caged in like animals, hundreds of these victims of the New Right have been sewing their lips together as part of their long-running series of hunger strikes.
Of course, apart from Walker and Hicks, the objects of our oppression are coloured people. Try to imagine similar concentration camps holding hundreds of English, American or Australian people.
No, I can't either.
Abundance and gratitude
Pip Wilson
Jan 30, 2002
Trephination: Now, kids, don't panic, but your almanackist will be out of action for a day or two. That's why the Really Big Ishoo.
You might have noticed lots of typos and other wee errors (maybe some big ones) in the almanac. C'est vrai. I have been having trouble concentrating for months, because of increasing severity of a headache condition I've had for years.
Today I'm going for a spot of surgery and, if last time was anything to go by, I might still feel a bit woozy when it's time to do the Thursday almanac. If I were a very prudent man, I would have prepared Thursday Jan 31 in advance, but I'm not, and time beat me.
My condition is not too serious really, its a couple of sinus things working together. But I thought I should let you know. I do try to do the almanac daily whenever possible. Bright blessings to you all till later in the week.
Some update info on the Woomera Detention Centre in Australia's desert, where the Howard government is keeping innocent asylum seekers in appalling conditions for months and even
years: http://www.smh.com.au/news/specials/natl/woomera/
Here's an Easter date calculator, might be of interest to you too.
http://www.ips.oz.au/papers/richard/calc_easter.html
Abundance and gratitude
Pip Wilson
Feb 4, 2002
Gremlins: Oh shux and golly, there have been some gremlins and glitches in your almanac this week, I'm sorry. First, I took a sickie (an Australian institution), then in my post-operatively bewildered state I got the date wrong inside one edition.
You might be wondering what happened to the Sunday, February 3rd edition. Well it's like this, see. I recently bought a Logitech webcam that works well, except for lack of audio. I took it to a repair shop, but they also couldn't get the audio driver to materialise. Sad thing was, when I got my puter home, my Grade 3 problem had become a Grade 8 emergency, and the machine was pretty sick. From Saturday morning till Sunday afternoon I've been without a fully functioning machine. Please bear with me -- I have little doubt you've been in the same boat at one time or another. Don't you hate the buggers when they don't work?! LOL
Anyway, I'm back. Please pay a visit to any or all of the links in the masthead. And thank you for continuing to support your daily almanac into its second year. If you're new to this place, stick around. We have fun here. And I will too, as soon as I can get my computer working properly again. (And I might be able to get some music in without having a crash every time I try.)
It's been fun working on this ishoo, though, and I hope you get a kick out of it as I have.
Abundance and gratitude
Pip Wilson
Feb 7, 2002
scungeous: I would like to register the word 'scungeous', which will not googlewhack one hit -- yet.
Wilson's Almanac hopes to be responsible for the googlization of this frumentious word.
When you find that there is a lot of scunge in the bottom of your garbage bin, turn a hose on it before it is unbearably scungeous.
When you get a scungeous smell coming from your office desk, it's time to clean it out.
Some of those panhandlers in the Central Station tunnel would get more money from me if they would only dress a bit more scungeously.
Ohmygod, that woman has a scungeous complexion!
Oops! You dropped some Chinese food scunge on your tie.
Scungeous is a word that is looking for a language, and I recommend English. Will you use scungeous every day on the Internet? Together we can do our bit for googlewhack history.
If you have access to no other website, why not use it in someone's guestbook. Hell, use it in my guestbook.
I should have cleaned my teeth. I have this layer of scunge today.
Abundance and gratitude,
Pip
PS: Note, Jan 30, 2003: 'scungeous' has been accepted as a 'pseudoword' at http://www.pseudodictionary.com. See its entry at http://www.pseudodictionary.com/word.php?id=16465
Feb 8, 2002
Shmendrick: The story is told of Georgiou, a versatile man from a Greek island in the Aegean Sea.
Georgiou lived in a small fishing village, to which there came, occasionally, a boatload of tourists. Sometimes Georgiou earned a few drachmae leading the tourists around the island .
One bright Aegean day, Georgiou met the boat, and as he shepherded the visitors from the waterfront, he pointed back towards the jetty.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to know that I built that pier with my own hands. But the people on this island are so narrow minded, do you think they call me 'Georgiou the jetty builder?' Tch!!"
He led the bemused tourists along a sandy track. "Do you see that fence between those two properties? I built that fence. But do you think the villagers call me 'Georgiou the fence-contractor'? Hah!!
"And see that building over there? That's right," said the flush-faced Georgiou, "Yes, I put that building up all by myself, but do my neighbours call me 'Georgiou the house builder'?!!
"... But you have sex with just one goat ..."
What a shmendrick was poor old Georgiou. But, who among us isn't a shmendrick from time to time? I may not share Georgiou's romantic tastes, but I'm a shlemiel, a shuck –
a shmendrick – more often than I like to admit. And I see more shmendricks than I wish were the case.
Yesterday on the golden oldies station there was a quiz for $1,000. Leeanne of some suburb had to pick one song title out of ten. She chose Me and Bobby McGee, but the correct random choice was Summer Breeze. Leeanne emitted a shmendrick squeal and then ejaculated, "Oh, damn, I should have known!!" Only a shmendrick could tell you how she could have known.
Summer Breeze. Remember that song? Who was the shmendrick lyricist, Seals or Crofts? 'Sweet days of summer, the jasmine's in bloom.' Didn't they notice that jasmine blossoms in late winter, or at best, early spring.
A few hours ago I was in a big, fancy-shmancy department store. I saw some tiny sheets of stickers with gold suns and some with leaping dolphins. Thinking they would be about a buck a sheet (ha, in David Jones? What a shmendrick I must be!), I grabbed three and took them to the counter.
The lady started bagging them and cashiering. "How much are they, by the way?" I asked.
"Three dollars ninety-five a sheet."
"WHAT?!!! This huge sheet of dolphin stickers I got from Go-Lo was only two bucks!"
"Yes," said the shmendrick cashier, "but these ones are ... different."
"Yes," I said, "they're dearer."
Shmendrick!
I walked out of that store, past the beautifully carpeted shoe department where I bought my leather-heeled boots recently. I went down the escalator and across the vast wooden floor to the exit. My new boots made me sound like Trigger. I guess everyone was whispering, "Do you hear the shmendrick?"
My mate Wayne and I have been doing some handyman work of late. Wayne, like your humble almanackist, does try to admit when he's been shmendrickesque. He told me the other day that when he used to work as a tow-truck driver, he was in the rain trying to couple a damaged vehicle to his truck, and clearly needed assistance.
The occupant of a second car just sat and watched: "What are ya, mate," big Wayne yelled at him, "a cripple?"
"Yes," responded the paraplegic driver, to shmendrick Wayne.
I've always had my moments of being a shmendrick, even more than a putz. Quite a few years ago I was editing a magazine and got an invitation to interview the famous author of The Population Bomb, Professor Paul Ehrlich, who was at the Australian Museum to launch his new book. Whatever it was.
As the expression on my face indicates, the interview would possibly have been a much greater feather in my cap had I slept the night before, read at least the cover of his new book, and put batteries in my cassette recorder. Do you imagine that I told the great man about these handicaps?
What do you take me for, a damn shmendrick?!
Did Prof. Ehrlich realise? What do you take him for?
So, remember, when you find typographical and factual errors in your daily almanac, or when I just don't seem to do it right ... in the words of Bob Dylan's immortal song of independence and faith, It's Alright Ma, (I'm Only Bleeding): "I got nothin', Ma, to live up to". And at least I've never had the inclination for a goat. Which reminds me of another funny story, but it's nearly dawn, and you never know who I might be asked to interview in a few hours.
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.
Abundance and gratitude
Pip Wilson
Feb 13, 2002
Friends: Greetings from Narrabeen, Australia, on the 24th anniversary of the
Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing, for which my friend Tim Anderson was framed and spent more than 8 years imprisoned until pardoned by the New South Wales government. It's one of the most shameful travesties of justice in Australia's history, and some day I shall bring you more info about it. Lest we forget.
We have a few computer problems, Almaniacs, so regrettably we missed a day, February 12, so belated Happy Chinese New Year to you all. Kung hei fat choi!
I'm very grateful that my mate of 34 years, Barry Hood, has helped to rebuild my computer. This is the mark of friendship: Baz drove 600 kilometres (350 miles or so) yesterday specifically to come from his home to mine and spend a full day on the technical necessities of your daily almanac. Tomorrow he will be driving back to the north coast of New South Wales. That's one big trip to support a friend, and I hadn't even asked.
Late tonight (Feb 12) I found that my template for your ezine had been lost in the process of converting my system from Windows 98SE to 2000. So I had to retrieve what I could from the awkwardly archived almanacs at our Yahoo! Groups homepage.
For those who know a bit about software, this is kinda cute: That template has been around. Here's the Pilgrim's progress the text has been through to get to the Almaniacs today:
Word ---> FrontPage ----> MS Outlook Express (OE) ----> Yahoo! Groups ----> FrontPage ---> MS OE ---> to you.
I'm sorry that there'll be a few bugs in the almanac, possibly, for a few days. I'm going interstate in a few hours, and I trust that when I get home on Friday and buy some RAM (to support this huge Windows platform), things will soon be working OK. I owe thanks to, to my flatmate Geoff Keeys who kindly let me his RAM SIMM for the time being.
You got to have friends.
Happy New Year to all!
In haste,
Abundance and gratitude
Pip Wilson
Feb 15, 2002
Lies: The 'Honest John' Howard government here in Australia is in hot water.
Read the Sydney Daily Telegraph story on how the Prime Minister and his colleagues misled the Australian people before the recent Federal Election.
Photographs of desperate asylum seekers in Australian waters, floating with lifejackets on, were issued to the media by the ultra-conservative Howard government. However, our elected representatives, trying to win back office, and riding on an international wave of racist anti-Muslim, anti-Afghan sentiment, told Australians that the pictures were of something different – not panicking refugees at all!
They told us that the photos were of children who had been thrown overboard by horrible, wealthy, selfish, "queue-jumping", disease-ridden, illegal immigrant parents in order to coerce Australia to grant their families visas.
Australia has a Tweedle-Dee "Liberal" (read: economic rationalist – econoRat – right-wing) Government, and a Tweedle-Dum Opposition (econoRat Labor). The Labor Party is now making a song and dance about Howard's lies, but itself is a party that quite happily will turn away people fleeing (because of their religion, beliefs, political views, ethnic group, etc, under the UN Convention on Refugees) massacre, murder and torture in other countries. Neither party seems to acknowledge international standards of compassion and decency.
Make your voice heard about the scungeous Liberl Party of Australia on this petition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/ausrefug/petition.html
(Thanx to Almaniac Mark Kennedy for URL.)
Abundance and gratitude
Pip Wilson
Feb 19, 2002
Clarification: An Almaniac has written to ask whether I was wrong recently when I used the word 'Scotch' instead of 'Scottish', when referring to a person and not a liquor.
Perhaps an Almaniac can help. I can only answer that my first in-laws, real Scots, assured me that only people who are not from Scotland hold that notion to be true. I was told that I could, with confidence, call people from Scotland, 'Scotch'.
As you would expect, I always do what my in-laws tell me. Except not marry their daughters.
Abundance and gratitude,
Pip
PS In the bank today I was talking to a Scottish lass who told me that, were she not so broadminded, she might have taken offence that I asked whether her accent was Glaswegian, when in fact it was clearly an Edinburgh brogue.
This shmendrick could have done worse. Given her oriental features, I nearly asked whether she came from Hong Kong or the mainland.
March 15, 2002
Alper: Alper was incredibly stupid. He suffered from Stupid C (formerly Stupid Non-A/Non-B).
He decided one day to unsubscribe from another email group of which I’m moderator. It’s one of those groups in which all members can post messages, and Alper really decided that his first post would be profound: “Unsubscribe me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I never did take the time to find out how long Alper had been a member of that group.
To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he hadn’t stuck around long enough to discover what Basil Fawlty would call “the bleedin’ obvious”: that every email posted in every email group has an unsubscription link in the footer. Also, by going to the Yahoo! Group’s homepage and taking responsibility for one’s own subscriptions. Apparently Alper thought that his time was more valuable than mine, and that I was somehow responsible for his misguided subscription to our group. Perhaps he wasn’t aware of the Internet convention that people manage their own subscriptions. Within minutes of his post I posted a message informing him of this.
“Unsubscribe me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” “Unsubscribe me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Those was Alper’s replies. Other members entered the fray, explaining in words of one or two syllables what Alper could do (don’t get me wrong; in a nice way).
“Unsubscribe me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” He did this lots more times. Alper was not only unbelievably stupid, he was unfathomably rude. However, the part of Alper’s mind that shines through in my recollection of him is that he had an uncannily effective method of getting unsubscribed from an e-group without exertion of anything more than the slightest effort.
Naturally, I had to unsubscribe regardless of the affection with which we all looked on him. Alper, who probably had never given anyone anything before, apart from infections and so on, gave a new word to that group, and possibly to cyberspace. An ‘alper’ is someone suffering from Stupid C (or the message they post), and the verb ‘to alper’ is to post rude and ignorant unsubscription (or other) messages.
Now I am list moderator of this almanac, and alpers are a daily occurrence. You don’t see the alpers in your midst, however, because this is a list in which only the moderator posts. I see them however – some are not as rude as the original Alper whose name shall live in our dictionaries, and some are far, far unkinder to your almanackist – and I deal with them in my own way. As a general policy, I don’t reply to the first request for unsubscription, whether a harsh alper or a simple “Unsubscribe” (usually spelt “Unscribe”), a purposeful “Remove me”, “Remove” or, my favourite, a returned almanac with no new message or subject header whatsoever. It might seem churlish of me not to reply to these message senders, when in fact it’s a mark of respect. I’m making the assumption that they will soon regret their hasty decision to ask me to be their mother. I do like to think the best of folk.
On rare occasions I get a second alper from these alpers, and often with stronger wording. To these I have a form letter (I insert it from my signature file in Outlook Express) that says,
Dear reader
Thank you for your email. Due to the great number of emails received, I would ask you to check for the answer to your question at the Frequently Asked Questions at http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/faqs.html
If you wish to unsubscribe, you will find a link there. Otherwise, you will find an unsub link in the footer of every almanac.
Carpe diem!
Pip Wilson
I use it for a number of situations, such as requests for technical support. It saves me the embarrassment of admitting that I’m an almanackist, not a geek, and that I barely know how to turn Esmeralda the computer on. I really have no idea why Joe Smithers gets blue text where there should be green. I can’t advise anyone how to install software. The FAQs form letter saves me from spending twice as much time online as I already do. Which, of course, is impossible as I already spend far more than 12 hours a day at this work that I love.
Persistent alpers eventually elicit my personal response. At all times, I try to be polite, unless and until the alper uses abusive language. Fortunately, those alpers are rare. I usually explain, directly and in simple language that all could understand, that they are very rude and ignorant people, and that it’s about time they accepted the fact, and that I’m blocking them as senders to my email. Once or twice I’ve decided to punish persistent alpers of the rudest variety by taking no action at all. The poor bastards are probably still getting the almanac LOL. That’s the worst thing a guy could do to an alper.
Do alpers realise how much correspondence a webmaster and listowner gets? I doubt it; I doubt alpers know their arse from a hole in the ground. I would love to explain, in easy language, to the alpers of the world that this listowner gets approximately 200 emails a day – roughly 1,500 a week. That comprises correspondence, spam, e-newsletters (even after unsubbing to 40 of them recently) and everything else you can imagine.
If I don’t file my emails for a month, as has happened this month because I’ve been building www.wilsonsalmanac.com (and repairing another website) while Esmeralda has been sick, imagine the pile of messages. In fact, there are nearly 7,000 since February 12 that I have to file soon or else Esmeralda will ask for a divorce. I reply to most messages immediately, but it’s the damned filing that takes the time.
I used to wonder why webmasters, if they bothered replying at all (and most don’t), always seemed so terse. I thought they were terribly rude. I understand now why they keep their replies down to “Thanks”, or “Yes”. They’re being digitally drowned, electronically inundated.
Every alper made by the Lord above is balanced by one of heaven’s angels: correspondents who write a good email, who know that I will reply within 24 hours if humanly possible, and who understand if my responses seem a little brief. I love these divine beings, and they make this job a kind of blissful experience that only a webmaster and listowner can comprehend, no alper can alter.
Abundance and gratitude,
Pip Wilson
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