So my friend, hereafter called {name removed}, just called to ask me to remove her name and her comments from my Tried To Kill Me post – so that she could keep her job.

It seems someone at {name removed} found my blog entry and forwarded it to the CEO, who fired {name removed} for having posted sympathetic comments on it. She’d been dooced by proxy! But then they un-fired her, and she called me up. She mentioned that they also want me to remove the hospital’s name from my blog, but I said no. Not yet, any way. I mean, if you google the hospital’s name, my post doesn’t even show up on the first page… it’s under links to hospitals of the same name in other states.

I mean, here’s the deal. I went to a hospital for care, I received bad care, and then bitched about it on my blog – just as I would about crappy food in a restaurant or a bad mechanic. My language is harsh, yes, but that’s how I talk. Can they really force me to remove their name? Isn’t this some order of free speech? I’m certainly not lying, so it’s not slander.

I’m off to call Wally to let him know that {local hospital} is going to try to make me remove their name from my blog. Ugh. Oh, well – the post will still be relevant even if I replace “{name removed}” with “shitty local hospital”. Snark.

Oh, if you want to see the original version, it’s cached by Google (and no, there’s nothing I can do about that).

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Edited 4:55 PM: I went back and removed three instances of the hospital in question’s full name from my original post. I mean, no reason but ego prompted me to tell {name removed} that “they couldn’t make me do that.”

The point of blogging – for me, at any rate – is to express my experiences and get feedback from friends. It’s not like I’m crusading to save others from going there or something. Nothing I can say on the web will impact the local community’s perceptions of the hospital in question’s care standards either way, but my post showing up on a borderless Internet search does have a broad perceived impact on their… their… whatever. Their brand name, I guess. So. I removed it in favor of initials.

*hurumph*

When Brett bought me my iPod, it came with a rebate offer: sign up at audible.com for a year, and they send you a $100 BestBuy card! This makes the $250 iPod functionally a $150 iPod, and you’ve got a bunch of books to look forward to listening to!

So I signed up at audible.com. And I downloaded some audiobooks, and got them on my iPod. It all sounds great, doesn’t it? Except for one thing: apparently, I don’t like audiobooks.

And I still have ten and a half to listen to.
Continue reading Audiobooks →

It’s soooo nice out: warm, balmy, breezy, and overcast. I LOVE IT. Yay. I feel like an actual person! I’m not wearing a coat! Or socks!
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I went to 2nd Street this morning for a latte, mostly because I was starving because I hadn’t eaten any breakfast due to oversleeping, and because I can always convince myself I need more milk in my diet. You know, for the calcium.

Anyway. While I was there, Jonas (Magram) asked me if I’d be interested in singing on an album of “spiritual music, like bhajans but Western” that he and Greg (Wadsworth) are working on. And then Chris asked me if he could keep me in mind if ever his company began hiring for IT positions.

It was fucking great, I felt like a rock star! People want me! (Of course, I had to tell Jonas my chops are trash and Chris that I’ve never been too terribly intense about web standards and that I’d taught myself CSS. But still. They’d thought of me.)

For lunch I went to Los Portales, because I can eat there for less than $4. (It might be the cheapest place in town to eat, if you know how to order, and since I’ve only got about $30 in my checking account it seemed like the prudent thing to do.)

I ended up eating with Matt (Mazza) and a friend of his (who gave me his name and which I promptly forgot because I’m a sieve-brain for names); we discussed music and actors. Matt told me I’d like a band called Maroon 5 (so when I got back to LISCO I promptly downloaded a dozen tunes and stuck ’em on my iPod for later). “They’re pop rock, but tasty. Like, R&B tasty. You’ll recognize ’em, probably.”

The friend (Dave? Todd?) proclaimed he thought Meryl Streep “overacts too much.” (At which point Matt leaned over and stage-whispered to me, “Did he just say that Meryl Streep overacts?!”) I laughed a bunch and was glad I hadn’t ordered carry-out. Matt’s considering joining Mr. Brett and I in Chicago this May for the Joe Jackson/Todd Rundren show because he loves Joe Jackson.

Later, Irene (Archer) called me to ask me to come to a meeting tonight because it’ll have to do with the satsang’s website (which I maintain). Plus I think I need to meet Christina tomorrow (is tomorrow Good Friday?) about seva stuff and possibly Reni too (because I told her I wanted to hang out with her). Not to mention meeting Jonas and Greg for a jam. Essentially, I think I’ll spend the next 24 hours in “meetings”. How cool is that!

So far I’ve been pretty hard on my Apple/Sony iPod earphones. I drop them, smack them into doors, sit on them while they’re in my bag… they’d begun to develop a bit of a buzz that I had to squeeze them to fix.

But then, a couple of days ago, I stepped on one of them and cracked it open. (They look really cool inside, btw.) I Superglued it back together, and it still works, but the ‘phones themselves are not long for this world.

I surfed all the obvious places – Amazon.com, the Apple Store – and I’ll be damned if you just can’t find a set of replacement ‘phones! It would be easier in Asia or the UK, but in the States you can only get those in-ear thingies. Anyway, finally I pulled my head out and tried eBay. And that’s where they all are, the replacement ‘phones.

1. I had lunch at La Hacienda today. I have to admit it: their food sucks.

2. I went to the chiropractor again today. I think I’m addicted.

3. We’re totally out of firewood again, which would be fine except that it snowed this morning.

4. I love my iPod so much that if it wasn’t bad for it, I’d probably lick it.

5. All I want is more Buca Di Beppo food. I have no idea what I’m going to make for dinner.

I just walked over to the 2nd Street Coffee Shop to buy a decaf latte because it’s ten in the morning and because I’m off caffeine.

I saw Rudy there, and he told me I looked good (I said, “Aw, thanks!”) and we talked about how stupid it is that there’s no manual way of rolling up an electric car window when its motor fails.

The most interesting thing about this exchange was not that we were in a coffee shop, nor that we were discussing the irritation of failed electrics, but that Rudy had a three-inch high scab on his forehead in the shape of an X.

Wow, that’s so Rudy.

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