Yes, I know the site was down. My e-mail was down, too. I don’t know what happened, but my guess would be: Ivan threw a branch over a wire somewhere in the American south, where my site lives, and so we were all made to suffer. (Yes, I’m being smartass here. I saw those houses.) But things are back now, and I received three days worth of e-mail. 110 pieces were backed up in the pipeline, I saw. A moment later, the computer chirped that the sorting was over, and the important stuff was ready to read. In the in-box: 10 pieces. Ten! And one was spam that slipped the filter! Ratio of spam:important stuff, more than 10:1.
Then I did the daily spam-comment/blacklist chore. Nine more pieces there. It reminded me of a conversation this weekend, in Columbus, where Kate and I went to celebrate my brother’s birthday. I was helping him do internet research on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which meant I was doing all the research, because my brother doesn’t own a computer and is where everyone else in the world was approximately 15 years ago, saying, “A what? A browser? What’s that?”
“Hey, I’m getting pretty good at this,” he said, when I left him on his own and he figured out the “back” button, after accidentally quitting the program three times in a row.
“Well, when you finally decide to go online,” my sister said. “Promise me you’ll get a Mac.”
He said no no noooo, he’d be getting a PC, “because then you can get Windows.” My sister and I exchanged a glance, and I wondered how long it would be before he sends all his credit-card numbers to a Nigerian oil minister, as security on that Swiss bank account number he’d be getting under separate cover.
(He’s not that stupid, but he’s also got some catching up to do. I actually used to hit “unsubscribe” on spam e-mail, thinking it would stem the tide. Silly me.)
So that’s what I did this weekend: Go to Columbus. Which meant? Yes, shopping! Nothing for me, but baby got two cute new pairs of shoes, from Nordstrom’s. Yes, I paid too much, but I didn’t pay as much as I could have — no $65 kiddie Birkenstocks for us, no $110 European brands with delicate leaf patterns — and what the hell, the kid’s been wearing Target shoes all her life. One pair of genuine Merrell jungle mocs in fuschia is not the crime of the century.
There’s nothing like the Nordstrom’s children’s shoe department to make the class fractures of American life stand out to the casual observer. A man in his 50s, but still obviously the father of this 4-year-old, picks out five pairs of shoes bing bam boom and pays by credit card: That’ll be $265, sir. He may die before he gets to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding, but he’ll leave a nice estate. A couple who look as though they can obviously afford it pick up the delicate leaf-pattered Euro pair, turn them over, make exasperated lip noises at the $110 price tag, put them back on the shelf. A hassled Somali clerk in a hijab waits on all with seemingly endless patience and good humor, more than any of her customers. But then, she works for Nordstrom’s. Patience and good humor is their stock in trade. Along with shoes.
Kate loves her shoes, and still loved them after she was denied a trip to Build-a-Bear. The Carrie Bradshaw of 2027. Although Carrie would never wear Merrells.
Today we went down both water slides at the Westerville Community Center, then took the shoes home to show daddy. Life as a kid is pretty good, if you’ve got the right address. Ask the Somali.
Toni Pacitti said on September 21, 2004 at 6:30 pm
I guess I’m just as silly. What *do* you do with all that spam e-mail if unsubscribing doesn’t work?
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KCK said on September 21, 2004 at 6:56 pm
Unsubscribing just lets the spammer know it’s a “good” email address, you just end up with more spam
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Nance said on September 21, 2004 at 8:05 pm
Yep. That’s exactly right. Never underestimate the depths these swine are willing to sink to, and you’ll be OK.
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TSO said on September 22, 2004 at 5:31 am
Quote I came across in reference to newspapers I thought you might be interested in, although it’s probably obvious to you and will be like telling a doctor about this thing called malaria:
“It used to be that newspapers were the principal disseminators of news. In all major cities, there were at least two newspapers � one or more in the morning and at least one in the afternoon. This created competition for ideas as well as readers.
In any town with two or more papers, one paper would tend to be liberal and another one conservative for purely competitive reasons. In practice, this usually meant that the major paper (usually the morning paper) was liberal and the secondary paper (usually the afternoon paper) was conservative.
Changing work schedules, rush hour traffic, and the advent of evening television news broadcasts killed the afternoon paper. I don�t know of a single one left in the country. Unfortunately, this tended to kill off the conservative paper in most markets.
Sadly, the achievement of one-paper status has tended to neuter the political edges of every paper that has achieved it. These papers, once proudly liberal or conservative, are now mostly mushy centrists. All their editorials seem to be of the �on the one hand, but on the other hand� variety with no firm conclusions. One wonders why they even bother publishing editorials at all.” – Bruce Bartlett
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