Life Journals

The Incredible Disappearing Friend Request

More MySpace “friend” nonsense.

This afternoon, the following subject line graced my email summary:

MySpace Friend Request Trista would like to be added as one of your friends!

Hi Gene,

Trista would like to be added to your MySpace friends list.

Et cetera.

So, I logged into my MySpace account to check this “Trista” out. The control panel blinked happily “New Friend Request!” I clicked on it. The friend request page was blank. Nothing. “No friend requests pending.”

Huh. Now what was that about?

MySpace sends out an email when someone supposedly wants to be your friend, but nothing if they take it back. I think they should send a second email in such cases, something like:

MySpace Friend Request The biatch changed her mind

Hi Gene,

Um, forget we said anything.

 

Lingering

“Do you have to, do you have to,
Do you have to let it linger?”

– lyrics to “Linger,” by The Cranberries

 
I felt better a week ago. It’s into the third week and I’m still fighting this thing. I feel like reheated crap on a stick. Most of today I spent sleeping on and off. As I laid here thinking this afternoon, I couldn’t believe how awful I feel this far in. Most people get sick, they’re BLAH for a week and then they recover. With me, it lingers.

I first noticed this around age 13 when both my father and I got sick. We’d just switched to new health insurance — my first experience with big, bad HMOs — and, as a result, a new doctor. My father quickly recovered and returned to work. At first, I appeared to be on the same track, then suddenly I got worse. It seemed to me like I’d gotten sick again. I ended up being sick two weeks to his one.

That’s the first time I noticed it, but given my health difficulties up to then, I’m sure it wasn’t the first time it happened. After that, I watched it happen time and again.

That’s exactly how it went down this time. By the first Monday, less than a week in, I seemed pretty much over it. I still coughed up gunk, but gunk increasingly thinner and lighter in color. I thought I was out of the woods. All weekend, I’d marveled at the speed of my recovery. Then it went south. By Wednesday, I felt awful again. Here it’s almost another Wednesday later, and I’m no better.

 
Right now, I’m inclined to blame the infection. I’m prone to getting infections when sick, and I’m thinking that is a large contributor to the lingering.

I tried to get away without taking antibiotics. I do not like taking pills. In my 20’s, I frequently let my body fight infections off on its own. This time it’s not going away. I’ve given in and started the antibiotics, and I’m a little distressed and disappointed my body wasn’t able to get rid of this infection itself.

 

Spammer Go *POOF*

So, the other day I wrote about getting my first MySpace friend, whom I decided to approve even though they were obviously a spammer. Today I went to my MySpace dashboard and noticed “she” was gone.

I originally wondered if spam-ella had put in the request hoping I would give a shout out to her web page the way I had to my first Twitter follower. (It’s possible spam-ella had somehow seen that, either through some blog watching service or Twitter itself.) When she (assuming it really was a she, a dubious assumption) disappeared, I wondered if she got miffed at me not only not giving her a shout out and a link, but calling her out as a probable spammer.

I didn’t have the address of spam-ella’s profile page to go look at. After a brief tiptoe through the browser history, though, I found it. Lo and behold, the MySpace equivalent of the blue screen of death — the user account has been deleted.

Looks like spam-ella’s spamming ways caught up to her. Which leaves me back with only old “default-Tom” as a “friend.” Sheesh. Next thing you know I’ll be paying for it. “Hey, baby, wanna make $5? Got MySpace? Wanna be my friend?”

 

One Order Of Sick, With A Side Of Infection

If you follow me on Twitter (yeah, right), then you know I’ve been sick the past couple days. I hate being sick. Not that many people enjoy sickness, but I hate it with a passion.

I take illness as a personal affront. I’ve spent so much of my life sick, particularly in my first 16 or 17 years, that I almost feel I should now be exempt, as if we’re each given a certain allotment of sick days, and I met my quota a couple of decades back. Any illness that comes near me now should be in violation of some cosmic law and subject to immediate extinction. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way.

These days, I probably don’t fall ill more often than the average person, maybe once or twice a year, but it still riles me. It brings up all those wasted years, all that I lost, all that I missed out on. It reminds me that I am still subject to all the faults inherent in this flesh, all that is “common to man,” and that even worse could still await me.

So, while I erroneously think past suffering should somehow exempt me from future suffering, I know that the only permanent escape from sickness is death, if death isn’t the ultimate permanent sickness, that is.

 

Wow… That’s a BIG Town…

I just got an email from the website RockHouseMethod.com informing me…

A Rock House Instructor/Artist is Coming To Your Town

It then gives the details…

Date Venue City State Distance Date Tour/Venue City State/Province Country Distance
Sun 5/18/2008 Bernie Worrell w/ EMT @ Joshua Tree Music Festival Joshua Tree CA United States 117 miles

117 miles away from me. I had no idea this town was so big. :-/