First of all, I’ll get out of the way that as of this post, welcome to a pretty but unimaginative new look for the site. This is the attractive styling of the newly instated default theme for WordPress installations: Twenty Ten. I like it. It’s pretty. I haven’t even bothered to change the header image just yet.

With that said, moving onward: I am totally Doomed.

I made shrimpy pasta two days ago (I know, I checked my tweets.) I saved some, as I was not hungry enough or endowed with a large enough stomach to eat all that I had prepared. A mere two days later I find myself scarfing down the remainder, heated from its chill in the fridge.

And it looks like that was a bad idea.

I’m sitting here, blogging, a ticking time bomb. I can feel inside me that something went wrong and I’m totally going to be so sick. The food didn’t smell bad, it didn’t look bad, and I heated it up in a perfectly acceptable manner (fry pan and extra virgin olive oil) but I know. I know it’s all down hill from here.

I’ve taken my pepto bismol. I’ve brought the ginger ale out of the basement to the main fridge. I know where the chicken soup is.

But it’s the waiting.

And! And and and! Even if I’m not going to be sick I’m going to be sick anyway! Because the mind is a powerful thing and if I truly believe I’m going to be sick and I’m wrong, it won’t matter. Because I wasn’t going to be sick but I believe so fervently that I am that I’ll probably make myself sick.

Double screwed.

And now we wait.

Someone someday will have the solid brass balls to tell our story. And when that day comes it will have a name. The Eggs and the Giraffe.

I do enjoy considering myself Termination Zero. The epicenter of the entire downfall. The sign of the worsening. The precursor to the age of whatever the exact opposite of enlightenment is. I’m Termination Zero, Patient Zero, because it’s amusing in a grim sort of way and because it’s awfully coincidental.

And it’s not a disease so I have the ‘pleasure’ of watching the survivors suffer. But there’s no pleasure there. Not in the least. The grim amusement comes from the obvious failings of the powers that be, so much higher up in the corporation, who have no idea at all of what they’re doing. They’ve never spent a minute in the trenches of the war zone that is the sales floor. They’ve never had it out with one of the machines.

That, I believe, is a fact.

And it’s amusing and interesting because while OF COURSE it does not hold a candle to a battle or a war, it IS easy and is that kind of darkly, grim half-smilingly comparable to a war.

One that you’re on the front lines of. One that you’re losing.

Or one where you’ve received a dishonorable discharge.

The story is about eggs. It’s about giraffes. It’s about the place where I felt I belonged. The place where I was awesome. The place where I knew everything and everyone knew me and I knew everyone.

The place where we were united.

And the place where I got myself fired from due to curiosity and hubris.

Hubris is my new word. I find it applies often.

There are a lot of people who would be entertained to see our story written. There are a lot of people who would read it.

And there are a few people who would probably stop just short of having us killed if we told it.

If that’s not amusing, I don’t know what is.

It’s not much but it’s longer than a regular tweet.

I’m referring mostly to the recent Facebook scandals and whatnot, which I actually know very little about because it sounds like a whole lot of nothing. Now, I’m also aware that it could be a huge something, I just fail to see that being too true, and while it is of course impossible to know without actually reading about it, well, that is simply me not doing what is potentially good for me, plain and simple. So be aware this is the outlook of someone without benefit of actual information.

See, a lot more than a tweet.

All I’m really saying is that I don’t know anything about the Facebook privacy issues and if what I’ve seen happen is a result of it, I don’t really care either. Naturally I’m referring to one isolated example which probably has no bearing on the rest of reality.

I’m using Pandora Internet Radio to find new artists I might be interested in by creating radio stations based on songs or artists I enjoy currently. Today, a little bar pops down from the top of the window and says that Pandora is now utilizing information from my Facebook profile to better suit my listening experience to me.

I don’t know how it did this. I don’t know what nefarious channels had to be traversed to link my Facebook profile to my Pandora radio station without me even logging into Pandora properly. But if this is the unreasonable dissemination of personal information people are up in arms about, I have to say, I don’t mind.

In fact, this led me to find out one of my favorite bands had a new album I’d been unaware of which I popped right over to iTunes to buy. This, I believe, is some kind of targeted marketing scheme. And I don’t mind that either.

If it becomes overbearing, or if they manage to know things they shouldn’t know or I’d feel better with them not knowing (and nothing exactly comes to mind immediately) then I’ll probably become upset. Until then, the privacy issue doesn’t push any of my buttons too badly.

However. If I did not have a job and money, it could lead to small time piracy. But I probably wouldn’t do that because I let myself believe that my purchase actually matters to the artist somehow.

So. Yup.