When I was younger and got close to a pretty woman, I would have certain reactions. I'll leave it at that. But don't hang up yet, this post is actually going somewhere...

You know you've been spending too much time in the social networks when you see a pretty girl in the supermarket and your index finger starts to twitch.  You want to click her.

I've no longer got a TV in the house, so I figured it was as good a time as any to turn off my cable service. Yay! Finally! I've wanted to do this for ages. I looked on my recent bill and found the web address. Hmmm. Maybe I can do this on the web and avoid being put on hold listening to elevator music for 45 minutes. 

No such luck - service cancellation isn't among the supported forms. But right there at the top of the page it says:

Great! It's late enough I might get through in maybe twenty minutes instead of 45. So I call in and negotiate the voice mail menus to the service disconnection tree. I'm then greeted with

"Our offices are currently closed. Our office hours are 8AM to 7PM, seven days a week. Please call back at your convenience."

My convenience would be right now. So I guess they really aren't there for me 24/7 after all...

Just when it seemed like things were cooling down after decades of cocaine wars in Colombia, they find themselves facing an even deadlier enemy. Chiquita. The banana folks. The Colombian president wants U.S. Chiquita folks extradited to stand charges after reports that they financed hit squads in that country and are responsible for importing several thousand AK-47s from Israel.

The weapons and money were used to kill anybody that threatened the crops or distribution channels. Gee, it sounds just like the cocaine wars. Except we're not talking about white powder and smuggling empires. It's a return to the politics of banana republics that plagued earlier generations of Central and South Americans.  

I lamented the passing of CNN Headline news a year or two ago. There seems to be nothing left but self-serving talking heads talking about the latest sex headline.

It's not like I have a lot of time to stay informed at present. My days are filled with working and packing. But at the end of the day, I've been channel surfing to find something - anything, informative. Nothing to be found on the airwaves.

As long as the only choice is mindless entertainment, I wound up two nights ago watching the house design competition.  Gawd-awful, but at least it isn't pretending to be informative. Last night I succumbed to pure fiction - Catwoman and Gothika. 

Tonight I started surfing again. Whoa - what's this? TV news? Really? CBN (that's Christian Broadcasting Network) was actually engaged in the act of reporting important current world events. Not the daily media circus and sex scandal. With Pat Robertson as the anchor. Now I'm no fan of fundamentalist dogma, but wow. They've got real news. Nobody else does. Tonight Pat topped off the headlines by talking very lucidly about the immediate state of the world economy and the possible effects of other countries dumping dollars.

Who would've thought?

OK, to be fair, there's only so much inspirational Elvis and 700 club I can take before the gag reflex kicks in. But information is information - I'll take that wherever I can get it.

After a few weeks of exploring the virtual world of Second Life, I finally decided to cash in my chips and walk away. It's a fascinating world - in fact I'd love to say that it's a microcosm of everything that is wrong with our sick society; which is why it no longer interests me. In your face advertising, gambling, prostitution, crime, and of course anything having to do with sex. Sounds just like America. Except there's not much else. OK, there are a lot of buildings - where people go to find sex or have sex. If you get lonely and try and find some people, you'll find them. Having sex or trying to have sex. Notice a common theme here? If you try and approach a single person in the 'street', they'll either fly away quickly (because they're sick and tired of having sex), or you'll likely get shot with some kind of particle disruptor or attacked by a swarm of killer bees. These are really nasty, incidentally.

It'll cost you about $5 for the hardware and software to actually have sex (but of course the sky is the limit if you want to upgrade). Don't buy the cheap one, get the Xcite. I could give you twenty reasons, but the most important is that the Xcite is interactive and you can tweak the size and color and uhm 'hardness'. The cheap ones come in a single skin tone and are one-size-fits-all and you can either put it on flaccid or stiff. Nothing in between. No refunds, and you can't sell it later. The Xcite will react if someone touches your privates (and you allow them to arouse you). There's also a female version and they all interact automatically. OK, that's the basic hardware. You also need to be around 'pose balls' to have sex. These are little blue and pink balls that you'll find everywhere, and they play a little (possibly x-rated) animation starring you. Usually the guy gets the blue ball and the girl gets the pink - but of course there are variations. Different balls have different poses. Doggie, missionary, 69, on the desk, etc. If you want to run a sex parlor, you'll need a bunch of these puppies. They cost about a dollar each. If you don't want to run a sex parlor, you're going to be awfully lonely - because that's where everybody is going.

But the cruel irony is that you won't be able to get it up in the free sex clubs where everybody goes to try out their hardware. Too many people - your system won't respond in a timely manner. They call it 'lag'. The only way to truly exercise your hardware is in private with a call girl (for about $5 for a half hour). They're everywhere, because this is the one profitable business you can run in SL without owning land (which will cost you somewhere upwards of $25, depending of course on location, location, location; and an account upgrade to monthly fees of $5 on up depending on how much land you want). Get out your credit card.

I probably should qualify all of this with 'so I've been told', because of course I would never do these things.  

But there's an upside to all this. There's a future for Second Life yet. We give all the sex offenders and perverts in our jails second life accounts and let them live out their twisted perversions. They'll be ecstatic that they can do whatever they want with like-minded people and get so absorbed in the fantasy that it might just keep them off the real life street. 

I'm getting sick to death of seeing nothing but Anna Nicole on the news. You'd think she was royalty or something. C'mon folks, let's call a spade a spade. She was a scheming bimbo.

It would be nice if they could move on already and report some real world events.