Global Shutdown Day is coming up for us in GMT -4 (EDT), but for those of you in UTC/GMT +12, it’s already going strong. The world community still doesn’t know what the effects will be with this voluntary action but it will be amazing if someone can quantify and aggregate results.

I think that I will be participating in this global experiment, but I have a lot of computers and internet appliances running. I think I can get away with shutting down the G4 Cube, Powerbook G4, and Dell lappy. I doubt I can convince Snuff to shutdown his PC, but since we have plans for Saturday I don’t think he’ll mind if it is shutdown for a few hours. As for my main machine, my MacBook, I can get by with staying current on my mobile devices.

I wonder if internettrafficreport.com renders properly on my SideKick

http://www.shutdownday.org

I got a call from my mom, asking for me to stop in and visit dad. I’ve noticed that he’s been shrinking in stature but now I’ve been told, he’s been losing weight. I blame this on mom’s own desire to slim down. While not morbidly obese nor drastically over her ideal weight, she has this unrelenting obsession to lose weight. Oblivious to the fact that men and women differ in the way they metabolize food, she insists on this diet-as-lifestyle regimen going so far as to seek out organic foods; this coming from a woman who handled DDT on her family’s plantation as a little girl.

Strangely enough, despite growing up in hard times in the boondocks, mom is consciously chooses to not partake in the abundance of the first world; rather gleaning off of its surplus. Discounted meats from shops or stalls that can’t shift them, odd lots of produce that would otherwise be thrown into compost heaps, scraps from the fishmonger dismissed by customers who only want clean fillets or headless/tail-less “whole” fish – all are perfectly serviceable foodstuffs.

This abject parsimoniousness can be quite brutal, and I assure you Snuffy can attest to those habits that I’ve picked up, but it’s all good food. The problem is, that my mother takes it to such an extreme, that poor dad is wasting away. I worry that dad sees this weight loss as welcomed and encouraged.

I guess I have to go over to their house with a case of San Miguel and a crate of balut to put an end to all of this.

I was driving into work today and noticed that I was approaching a sleek sport coup with a Human Rights Council [link http://hrc.org] sticker on the back bumper. I thought “Hmm, there may be a good looking man in that car… oh, but just my luck it’s a lesbian or transgender person”. I decided to press my luck in the fast lane to get a better look.

I pull up beside him and take a peek. He is a plain looking man, no horrible disfigurement but no striking features either. Never looking in my direction but sensing that my intent is to pass him or slow down his route he darts into the slower moving lanes.

Passing cars, weaving through traffic dangerously, this man turned out to be a real jackass on the road. I wonder if he placed that HRC sticker on his bumper to ease the trauma of the people he cuts off on the road “Yeah I cut you off, you were going slow, and oh I like the GLBT community.”

I like to think that this man doesn’t realize the sticker is on his bumper. His friends appreciate irony on my level and placed the sticker on his car, knowing that it would instantly attract apparently slow moving gays to his car to catch a glimpse of who is in the drivers seat. Even better, I imagine this man hopes to anger a hot blooded burly man. Who will follow him to his destination, shout at him for his rude driving, then share a wild tryst in a small office bathroom.