Ooops, I just forgot to tell my hosting company my new credit card number, so they’ve been trying to charge a stolen card and got sick of it while I was gone and pulled the plug on my sites while I was down south visiting Nefarious for Halloween. Which was lots of fun, although the actual trick or treating actually got rained out — not that the rain stopped any of us. Nefarious used her candy bag (traditional pillowcase) and dragged myself, Rachel, and Matt (her boyfriend) until we were soaked to the bone and most of her makeup was washed off. But the whole thing was lots of fun as was the visit — although the travel was odd so I wanted to mention it.
First of all, when I was at the airport on Friday I got bodychecked by one of Rob Ford’s entourage! Seriously, I’m walking to my gate, limping along with my cane as always, and I notice the Blob and his gang (recently anointed “World’s Worst Person” by Olbermann) heading toward me. He really is hard to miss because he is much sweatier and pinker than the piggish photos would make you assume. Remarkable. Anyway, since they were steamrollering right at me taking up most of the hallway I did my best to get out of the way but the guy on the cane didn’t move fast enough for them and the outer member of his entourage gave me a solid shouldercheck without slowing down or an excuse me. Should I have expected anything more?
On the way back, I discovered that I have had my flight status changed to “SSSS” — Secibdary Security Screening Selection, which is a sort of soft no-fly list or something like that. I asked everyone along the way whether this is a permanent thing, or if it’s a single-flight random thing, or something else, and no one was able to give me an answer — no one knew — which is not surprising since it seems to have all been set up behind closed and locked doors without oversight. I suppose I will try and make some more calls but I’m dubious as to finding anything out. I guess I will find out on my next flight (three weeks, although that one avoids US airspace so now that I think about it, those flights may not be affected) if I should expect “extra screening”. Today I was aggressively searched at every checkpoint — meaning hand searches of my luggage (which found nothing, and allowed my long sharp metal spikes that I use for carving clay to travel carry on — so I don’t think it’s related to any of my adventures traveling with dubious objects and testing those limits, which was the first thing that crossed my mind of course), full scans, and a full pat-down. The “yup, that’s my penis” sort of scan. That said, everyone was very nice and I didn’t feel abused or molested — mostly just annoyed and bored. But I would like to get to the bottom of it. I did have a nice chat with one of the guys feeling me up about the legal status of branding in Virgina after he asked about my white ink facial tattoo which he thought might have been a brand (a common misconception). I haven’t checked what he told me, but he was telling me that branding is not legal there although some shops are fighting the law, and that the law dates back to slavery-era laws stopping cruelty against slaves like branding them as cattle would be.
Other than that, I was hoping (perhaps on a long-shot) to get some audio player advice. I’m reading Nefarious books which I record to MP3 files and send to her. Right now the solution is just to email them, but I’m wondering if there is a stand-alone audio-player (she needs a desktop stereo solution anyway) that has some sort of a drop-box folder? Something that would like me send files to her stereo for her to listen to. oes anyone know if that exists? Obviously it could be done inexpensively with a low-end computer, but that’s not the solution I’m seeking.
