Putting the "Anti" into Social Networking. . .

Mister Sloppy had left an urgent summons in my voicemail. Wise coyotes do not casually deny evil geniuses of his calibre. I hoofed it across Centretown.

When he buzzed me in, I followed the whooping to his secret subterranean lair, where his manic keyboarding – two computers at once – gave me pause. So did the plethora of vintage mega-sized Jolt Cola empties. He only cracks his stash when he's kickin' coding old-school. Which is never good for the state of world.

"Ummm, so, how long you been at this?" I asked.

"Since the Prime Minister got hisself posted on YouTube three days back" he said, keyclacks barely slowing. "If Jurassic politicos are pretending to use social media, it's finally jumped the megashark. They think they’ll go viral, I’ll give ‘em freakin’ viral! It's almost ready!"

"What is, Sloppy?" I asked.

Fevered blue eyes blazed.

"The Next Big Thing!" He purred, grinning, well, evilly. In capital letters. "AntiSocial Media! Facebook and Myspace are tossing net privacy under the bus, people are sick of tweeting, dorks who don't understand social media are trying to warp it back into old paradigms they do understand. So it comes to this! Is my new Antisocial Networking site not genius?"

He waved at his monitors. "Here! You can only set your relationship status to, "Alone", "It's complicated" or "None of your damned business"! It automatically rejects all friend requests! And the only reject options are, "No response"; "Ewwww"; an LMAO emoticon; or an autogenerated phrase saying, "I'd rather...." followed by a random act of self-mutilation!

His speed and pitch rose.

"You can’t control your own friends list, but all other users can remove anyone from it! When you comment on someone's status, or insult ‘em on a comment thread, it’s visible to anyone except them!

"And get this! There's no way to just follow anyone. It's only got a "stalk" option! A bot program pops up your photo on every website they browse. An automatic search for every web photo of them slams together a tribute album site that auto-links to every page that references them. The album background wallpaper can be either candles or hand-scrawled protestations of love.

"And only by paying for a premium license do users gain the power to file virtual restraining orders on their stalkers! But they only limit how many times your stalkers’s pictures pop up on websites you browse – you can never block ‘em entirely! Cool app, or what!!??"

"I love it!" I yelled, trying to match his fevered tone as I edged back up the stairs. "For masochists!"

He didn't notice. At the rate he was going, I figured he might safely pass out in a few hours. At least until I heard another Jolt fizz open. Ol' Slop was bellowing, somewhat musically, something like, "Yo ho ho, I'm gonna rule the w-o-o-oooorld!", as I let myself back out.

I hadda admit right then, that insanity other than my own can be kinda disconcerting...

An alternative one, maybe

Living the good life on Bay Street, where Richcraft has finally been shamed into tearing down its derelict properties

Pinch Me

When I was a kid growing up in La Belle Province, if you did not wear green on St. Patrick's Day, your peers were allowed to pinch you hard. It was an English custom that I did not get.

I did not wear green today, and no one pinched me. When I mentioned the pinching to co-workers, they did not get it.

If I was more brazen, I would have pinched the fellow below for being so cute in his kilt.

Walk along Bank Street with me ...

Green Shamrock on a Mannequin

Green paint

Green Leprechauns

Green cookies

Green furry shot glass hat

Green cuties

The fabulous Sally in her green shirt accompanied by her fellow and her talking dog, Boots

The PM on YouTube

Beforehand, the Toronto Star described it as the PM going viral. Maybe because it was as painful as herpes?

The morning after, Canuck media were still aTwitter (heh...) over a guy, rigidly fiberglass of hair and manner, churning out pre-scripted blahblah in response to cherry-picked citizen questions on YouTube.

So, what was the real rationale? Ummm, lessee, most of us use YouTube to upload any lame crap we feel like. Oh, wait...!

That cell phone law

I held out some hope last fall when Ontario enacted a law banning drivers from using handheld cell phones.

Huh. Didn't make a damn bit of difference. Drivers still yak - and endanger lives - openly.

The observant among you may note the statute exempts police. I'm left to ponder why, since the law came in, every cop who drives past suddenly has a handset glued to their ear. How much back-channel chatter do they need? And why? I digress.

I've filed tonsa anecdotal evidence in my doggy rounds through Ottawa's mean streets. I hafta say, it proves to me that cell phone addicts make the streets meaner. Drivers, walkers, it doesn't matter - I've been mowed down by both, and my once-fine bushy tail is a stomped shadow of its former self.

People on phones do not see their surroundings when they look inward to channel the other end of the line. I have not figured out the mechanism by which drivers think they should continue to (ab)use phones when research suggests strongly that they're so gosh darn bad at it, but the conviction seems universal. Salient signs are a thousand-yard stare and a deep obliviosity to surroundings. So much obliviosity that pedestrian offenders' glazed eyes do not even flicker as they lurch against other sidewalk citizens.

I suspect the only reason everybody thinks they can drive and talk on a cell at the same time is because the very act makes them so heedless that they never register the carnage in their wakes. Recently, f'rinstance, some nit in a high-buck Teutonic conveyance was so other-focussed that he nearly splattered me across a red-lit crosswalk. The shock on his face after he screeched to a hasty halt was compounded when I planted my muddy paws on his window sill, stuck my pointy snout in, and conversationally suggested he turn off his fucking phone so as to forestall another near-murder at the next traffic signal.

Sadly, he was not so shocked that he couldn't whine back a shaky riposte. Along the lines of, "Oh yeah? Fuck you, too!" But we both knew it was the lamest of bids to save his red-lit face...