The Meter Readers

This is a pic of Vince and Sara. Vince and Sara are the website traffic meter technicians that I have hired to help me monitor and analyze the virtual mountains of raw data generated by the thousands of daily visits to this site.

Basically, it works like this:
Whenever a 'visitor' ( such as yourself) views this site, Sara prepares to install a new InterTube Measuring Machine (IMM) in the ever-growing wall of IMM's seen behind the pair of techs.


First she uses a Mathison Electropsychometer to determine if the visit , ('hit', as us 'insiders' call them) is from a valid IP address or just some sort of electronic 'spider'. Sara told me that if she counted all the 'spiders', she would need to bill overtime hours , so I told her to ignore them.

For those who don't know, a Mathison Electropsychometer is a primitive predecessor to
the Hubbard EMeter, currently used as a sort of mind-reading device for Scientologists.
Using it, Sara can determine not only if the 'hit' is from a human being with an actual soul, but she can also ascertain what rung on the Scientology ladder of enlightenment that that particular soul has reached. Sadly, according to Sara's EMeter readings, most of my visitors (myself included) are still suffering soul-trauma from our past lives as mind-controlled, implant-bearing slaves of the extinct extra-terrestrial dictatorship of Helatrobus.

Sara, who is a lapsed Unitarian, thinks Scientology is to religion what Kilgore Trout is to Science Fiction. I tend to agree, although I believe that Trout was a far superior writer to L. Ron Hubbard and that Trout's works are valid as both literature and philosophy, especially when compared to Hubbard's Dianetics and E-Meter User's Guide, which are both pure bullshit.



After auditing the visitor's soul with her EMeter, Sara installs a fresh IMM in the wall at CamelsBack Inc.'s IT Department, then she runs a length of North Korean surplus Cat 5 wire to the computer that visited the site, thus establishing a connection. This is how "cookies" get on your computer. Sara is a regular Girl Scout when it comes to cookie distribution.












Sometimes Sara needs a LOT of cable; on occasion the users of wireless services have complained, stating that they would rather not have 950 km of cable attached to what would otherwise be a portable computer.
For these installations, I send Vince along with a Tazer .

Anyway, once Sara has connected and installed the IMM, it's up to Vince to analyze the data and give me a report on what it all means. I don't know much about the Intertube, so I pretty much have to take his word for it. Vince likes to talk about browser specifications, OS mods, monitor resolutions and other arcane IT crap, but he really earns his money when he tells me about the
' who, where, when ,how & why' behind the internet visits to my site.

Vince is the one who pointed out last year's rash of 'possum' hits from the United Arab Emirates- UAE surfers were typing in phrases such as 'girls who eat possum', 'pink possum', 'virgin possum', 'nude possum fun' etc. and finding my blog. In real life, I am an expert on possums, but the UAE has ruined my fun with their pervy possum searches; as a result it's been nearly a year since I blogged possums.
Vince's theory is that perverts in Dubai mistakenly believe that 'possum' is slang for something else, something vulgar and/or pornographic- all I know is that my Arabian web traffic has all but ceased since I stopped blogging about possums.

Occasionally, Vince provides me with some truly useful data:

"Hey man, there are people out there who are finding you by Googling something called 'whalanol'. I'm pretty certain that there is no such thing as whalanol. What are they looking for?"

Investment opportunities, I tell him.

"Boss," asks Vince," have you recently asked someone out? Like on a date?"

How did he know that? Sometimes I think Vince is a Thetan Scientologist secret agent and he is using Sara's E-Meter to read my mind.

"Well, I see a few visits from local addresses and the referring search engine phrase was your full name. The last time I saw a flurry of hits searching your name was right after you asked Lenore in accounting if she'd like to have lunch. Don't you know that chicks will Google you? "

Fuckin' Thetan mind-reader.
He's right though. I did ask someone out recently, and she did Google me. According to Vince, she 'out-clicked' from my blog at 11:43 Sunday night.
Monday morning I got an email from her, sent at 11:47 pm Sunday: "I am busy for the next seventeen years or so, but thanks for asking, have a nice life..."

Vince also tells me, " Last night, between 9:36 and 10:45 , three web-surfers from three different U.S. states (FL, NY, MA) Googled 'baseballs float' and all three were directed to your blog. I'll bet you don't even know if baseballs float or not, yet the Intertube makes you out to be some sort of floating balls expert. Furthermore, in Malaysia you are the only source of info on 'MacDonald's (sic) Big Mac Specifications' - you are the only one who knows of McD's secret bovine eugenics program. Is this more whalanol?"

Uh, er...were any of the visitors female? Are they single?

Vince gives me a look of compassionate pity.

"What do I look like, a mind reader? I can't tell their gender or relationship status from their internet statistics. Sara is the one who does installations. Ask her."

I am afraid to tell Vince that, yes, he does look like a mind-reader and that I suspect him of being a telepathic Scientologist spy. If he is, then he is already aware of my suspicions.
Dealing with telepaths is a headache.

Vince continues,"Dude, here is an idea: why don't you just ask Sara out? She's kinda cute and I know she likes you."

She does? Really?

"Um-hm. She does. You two are, ah, how to say this?...you are both the same height, for one thing- and you both think the E-Meter is cow manure...she has even read your blog and she still likes you- the only real problem is that she's a bit nervous about dating a client- you are technically her boss, y'know? "

Well. I can fix that.

After lunch, I sat down and wrote Sara an email:

Dear Sara,
I just wanted to thank you for your great work over the last three years and let you know that you are fired. Friday is your last day at CB&F Inc.
Would you like to have dinner with me on Saturday night?
Sincerely,
Allan


When I told Vince what I had done, he stared at me in slack-jawed disbelief.

"Man, not only have you just doubled my workload, but you have also proven yourself to be the most clueless motherfucker to ever shit behind two shoes."

Mind-reader!

Vince's observations were cut short by a sudden explosion of shattering glass- something heavy smashed through the one-way mirror that serves as my office window. We both looked down.
Amid the shards of glass was Sara's vintage Mathison E-Meter. There was a note attached to it with a piece of twine. I untied it and read it- it was a print-out of my email to her. At the bottom, Sara had written a message in red felt-tip marker:

"You bastard! Sometime, somewhere when you least expect it, I will show up in the middle of the night. Then we will talk about this. Until then, I suggest you sleep with one eye open."

Hot Damn! She said "Yes!"

Security

I wonder what would happen if you tried to carry this aboard an airplane? I'd wager that you would miss your flight. I forget exactly what it is , but I do know that it's a harmless device, some sort of audio relay/processor. But how could you prove that to an over-zealous TSA security guard? You'd hear dogs barking and the sinister snapping of latex gloves.

I know what the object below is. It's my Boss BR-8 Digital Recording Studio. If I ever forget what it is, all I need do is look at it. It's labelled in print that isn't as blurry as this pic:

I also know what will happen if you try to bring this object on-board an airliner as carry-on luggage.
In fall of 2002, I flew to Chicago to visit my brother. Due to illness, I hadn't been able to play guitar for nearly two years and I was thinking I'd start again while I was on vacation, so I brought my portable studio. I was quite aware of the post 9/11 airport hell, but I figured, what the heck, I'll just stand in line with everyone that has a laptop. My device is pretty much the same size and shape as a laptop and is in a laptop case. It's got writing on it that explains what it is.

I reached the checkpoint and unzipped my bag. The guards went silent , save for the quiet gasp of the middle-aged woman who was checking bags.

"What...is...that?" , she asked, drawing her hands back involuntarily, as if afraid to touch it.

"It's a portable recording studio. You use it to record music. See, you plug a microphone in here,
and an instrument here and record just like on a cassette deck."
I helpfully pointed to the inputs that were labeled "mic/vocal" and "guitar/bass".

"That..is not a tape deck"

"No, see, it uses computer discs, it has a Zip drive."
I may as well have said that it was a remote control device for piloting 757's.

The red-coated woman used her radio, requested assistance. She waved a burly male guard over. The man escorted me aside and opened my suitcase, checked the contents.
He examined my shoes and waved a wand over me. He didn't seem frightened of me, nor did he act mean or abusive.
He just seemed bored. I had dull luggage and my shoes were less than thrilling.

He then escorted me back to the checkpoint where there were a half-dozen TSA guards and -get this- a soldier in full uniform , complete with assault rifle. They were all looking at my BR-8, except the soldier, who was instructing me to stand back.

Hoo.Boy.

I was afraid of being marched off, searched and interrogated, possibly deported or even covertly executed. The rest of the passengers were looking at me with suspicion...why do they have that guy standing over there, under guard?, I could feel them wondering.

Suddenly I heard one of the guards speak up. It was a youngish black man with his hair in neatl- arranged cornrows and wearing a necktie. He , unlike the other TSA personnel, looked competent. He was my savior.

"Hey. I know what that is. I have one at home. It's for music."

Ohhhh....whewwww....Ok...went the other guards. They conferred briefly, the young kid nodding a few times, pointing at my device. The soldier beckoned me forward.

I made my flight with five minutes to spare.

My BR-8 hasn't worked properly since that day.

Respect My Disbelief

I didn't know it at the time, but in the months preceding my forced hospitalization I did make a few half-hearted and ultimately doomed attempts to "get help" for my drinking.

Jenny was one of those attempts. Jenny was a girl that I worked with during my on-again/off-again temp assignments at Bank of Generica. She was slender and bookish, keeping her long auburn hair in an unfashionable bun and wearing unflattering, baggy clothing with minimal cosmetics.

She looked like the kind of girl who would play Dungeons and Dragons with you- the sort of chick who would allocate more points for her character's Intelligence than for Strength or Charisma.

She wore librarian glasses and sensible shoes.

To me, she was hot. She was real, and it made her the most attractive woman in our department, so I was delighted when she approached me as we were leaving a meeting.

"Do I know you from somewhere? You look very familiar- have we met?", she asked.

For a drunk, this is a tough question to answer. Drunks have bad memories and worse behavior. If she 'knew me from somewhere', it was probably from me being drunk and hitting on her in some stinky-ass rock club.
Perhaps I had sold cocaine to her?
Hmmm...I like this woman. Did I know her?
I wanted to.

"I don't know...are you into the local music scene?"

Maybe she had seen me at a radio-sponsored event. Perhaps she'd even seen me play guitar or bass on-stage!
That would be cool...but the look she gave me indicated that she wasn't aware that there was such a thing as a 'music scene'.

"No...that wouldn't be it. Have I seen you at church?"

"Uh...no, I don't think so."

Church? When was the last time I went to church? I have never attended church in my adult life. I'm sure she hadn't seen me in church.

"Well, it's from somewhere...I feel like I know you..."

She likes me, I thought, but work intervened before I could follow up.

A few days later, we were working together and she picked up our truncated conversation.

"I think I did see you at church."

She named a church. Sure enough, I used to attend AA meetings there when I was on probation, but I didn't want to tell her that.

"Oh, yeah...I have, uh, been there before. It's been a long time, though."

Jenny smiled and said she was glad she figured that out- she'd been thinking about me for several days, it seems. That turned me on. She likes me, tra la la...

We worked together quite well, Jenny was smart and funny and our tedious tasks were not so bad when we did them together- over the course of our talks, I learned that she was into Jazz Dance and liked to write fiction. Cool.

She rarely drank and she didn't do drugs.

I did both daily, but I didn't tell her that.

I didn't want to keep doing those things, I just didn't have a reason to stop. I didn't even know that I wanted to quit- all I knew is that my head was full of really bad ideas and I was desperate for something...but what?

One of my really bad ideas involved Jenny.

I thought that if I could get Jenny to date me, I would find the strength to quit. I would get my courage from her, not from a bottle.
For a woman like Jenny, I believed, I could do anything- including quitting booze.
I hadn't had a significant relationship for years, and the women I did know were at least as drunk and fucked-up as me. Eightballs and benders...I didn't 'date', I binged.

One time, my girlfriend stole all my dope and then tried to sic her half-wolf/half-Shepherd hybrid on me when I demanded the return of my drugs, which she had already sold and shot.
I was the one who usually fed the poor dog-beast, it liked me a lot so it just sat and whined while we fought, but the whole scene was fairly indicative of my success in relationships.

Hey man, can I crash on your couch for awhile?

Why?

My girlfriend threw me out. She tried to attack me with a wolf.

What would happen if I dated a a girl who didn't have a coke dealer on speed dial or a wolf in the backyard?
Maybe if I dated a 'straight' woman, I'd get clean- that was my hope. At least in hindsight, I think that was part of what I was looking for- Jenny was much too bright to date a fuck-up, so I thought maybe she could magically "fix" me just by sleeping with me on a fairly regular interval and doing whatever else it is that people do when they aren't fucking or getting wasted.

That was a false and wholly unfair hope if there ever was one, not to mention a completely ass-backward approach...definitely not a moment of clarity or reason for me. I had completely bottomed-out and didn't even know it.

But the bad idea seemed like a good one at the time.

Of course, first I had to get her to go out with me.

This was really easy to do. A friend of mine was playing at a local Jazz club and I had free admission. When I asked Jenny if she'd like to go, she readily accepted.
She'd been waiting for me to ask. So we went.

We had dinner in the club's quiet dining room- when the waitress cleared our plates, I noticed that I had three empty beer bottles and two shot glasses on my side of the table.

Jenny had consumed about one-third of a glass of wine.
Jenny was aware of this disparity.

"Look, I need to ask you something and you might not like hearing it", she leaned towards me.

"OK."

"How can you be a Seeker if you drink so much? How can you find anything in that condition?"

A Seeker? What is that?

"Um...what's a 'Seeker'?"

"A Seeker of Christ. Of the Truth. I thought that's what you were."

"Uh...well...honestly, I'm not religious..."

Oh no. I can't have this talk right now, I thought. I have too much liquor in me to be tactful and I'm not drunk enough to tell lies. Why is it assumed that I am a Christian? We've never even discussed religion before.

I raised my arm- another beer and a shot over here, please.
I am not ready for this.

"You do believe in God, though. Right? Don't you?"

Make that shot a double!

"Ah...no. I don't."

"What? How can you not believe in God?"

"I just don't...I'm an atheist...or maybe an agnostic. I dunno. I haven't really thought about it much."

This was true and it still is- except for the thinking part. After that night, it occurred to me that I might stand to benefit from giving religion some thought. I figured I 'd better learn enough about it so that the next time a woman asked me if I was a 'Seeker', I'd be able to give the answer that got me laid.

That's how I saw religion. As a tool to be used to coerce others into doing something that they might not otherwise do. A means to power.
Sure, I'll pretend to be a Christian if it means getting laid. Or a raise. Or elected.
Or at least I used to think that way.

After sober reflection, I have no faith that any 'God' exists, but I do believe that using religion as a tool for manipulating people is inherently wrong. It's how wars get started and it's a pretty shoddy foundation for a healthy relationship.

The truth is, I don't really care if there is or isn't a 'God'. It doesn't much matter to me.
I can change myself , but I can't change God. Can I ? Would I even want to?

The beliefs of other's shouldn't be cause for killing.

Does this exchange make sense?:

"Why do we hate them?"

"They worship in an improper fashion."

"How do we know that?"

"Our Book About God tells us that."

"And that is worth killing for?"

"Yes."

"But our God tells us not to kill."

"Die, infidel, die."

It doesn't make sense to me, but it happens every day.

When I was dying, coughing up my shredded guts onto the cold white ER floor, I didn't pray.
I didn't think about God at all. I wanted to live. I was afraid of dying, but not of judgement.
I was bleeding to death and I needed surgery.
God wasn't a part of the decision to go to hospital instead of letting the darkness fall.
Pain was. Fear was. God was not.

Who will feed my cats? I remember thinking about that, but I don't recall saying any prayers .
I remember wanting an ice cube really, really, badly and suddenly feeling quite cold.
No praying.
Whomever said: "there are no atheists in foxholes " was wrong.
I've been in a foxhole of sorts and I didn't convert.

But that was to be in the future.

In the past, I am still talking to Jenny.

All I needed to do was to lie to her and say I believed- and I would have been in her bed, making her cry "Sweet Jesus and Amen, Hally -Yoo-Ha!" all-night long...all I had to do was lie...but I didn't. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't.

"How", she asked, "is it possible to not believe in God? How can you even live like that?"

"Jenny, I really just don't know. I guess I just muddle along. I never really give it much thought."

Jenny was a bit stunned by my revelation.

"You haven't thought about it much? That's not possible."

Maybe I should have lied. She didn't believe the truth. Maybe I should have asked what particular faith she was...not that I much cared. She wasn't a puritan or a tee-totaler, I knew that much.

"Uh...it just doesn't come up much."

This was true, but it wasn't well received by Jenny, who was Seeking Truth.

Jenny took a long sip of her wine and stared at me. She looked stricken. She glanced down at her wine. I thought she was going to gulp the rest of it but she set it down, pushed it aside.

I thought, she's ready to leave and the band hasn't even started yet.
I'm not getting any tonight.

"I respect your beliefs."

That's what she said.

"I respect your beliefs."

It was a concluding statement but I was too drunk to let it go. Mistakes were made.

"You can't respect my beliefs. I don't have any beliefs.
I know things or I don't.
Things are or they aren't.
Whether I believe or not doesn't change reality, so I choose not to believe in anything."

Of course, I was too much of an asshole to keep that belief to myself.

"Are you sober enough to drive me home or do I need to call a cab?"

"I believe that I can drive."

"Liar."

FU-WHAM!

Q:If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?

A:Yes. Sometimes a very loud one.

It's a dumb question but there are dumber ones.

This is the dumb question that made me completely lose track of what I was thinking:

" How do I work myspace?"

That is an actual question voiced over the telephone about an hour ago. It was directed at me by someone exactly half my age during a discussion about something else.

I was unable to respond. My first urge was to hang up. My second was to hurl a string of curses and insults into the phone and then hang up.

Instead,I played it back in my head. Perhaps I misheard.

"What did you ask me? "

"How do you work myspace? I can't find it."

At this point I'm about ready to take my phone to the river and drown it like a burlap sack full of deformed kittens.

"You don't. You type the name I gave you into Google and hit search. Then click the link at the very top. You will be directed to that person's Myspace."

"Oh. Does it cost anything?"

"Only if you let it."

"What does that mean?"

"Dude, I don't know squat about myspace. You can listen to that person's music though- free."

"How much does it cost to buy one?"

"Buy one what?"

"Buy a Myspace."

"Dude, my oven just exploded- there's pieces of frozen pizza lodged like shrapnel in the walls of my kitchen. I gotta go."

"But, but... I have more questions."