I apparently don't have as much of my hearing back as I thought. Earlier this evening, Jeff came into the computer room:

"That music's really loud."

"Hrm. This sounds like my usual volume level..."

Jeff shakes his head, gives me his best "I love you but you are one crazy deaf wench" look, and says no. Apparently I was shaking a few rafters.

Oops.

I have this half-finished entry sitting in another window of my text editor. I'd planned to tell you all about the lovely, yet still somewhat hush-hush, project I'm working on for dragon*con. It was pretty prose, prettily arranged. I might even use it, in another form, on another day.

However, I must interrupt this momentary rhapsodization to remind my five members of the listening public of this glaringly obvious fact: IM trollers, if I cared, would really, really annoy me.

Perhaps, as said to Colter, I did get up on the bitchy side of the bed this morning. Blame it a misbehaving Gallery install - no. I'm not playing that game. I blame the inane conversation provided to me by the person who can't even find the time for a two-second check of the profile of the person he's pestering.

"Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless!"

Ecclesiastes 1:2

While most people are amazed at the sheer volume of attempted pickups I see through instant messenging systems, I'm not. Matthew describes it as being like telemarketing; men target a specific demographic over and over because someone, out there, is biting.

Hey, baby, let's check me out. According to yahoo, this is me:

Nickname: domesticat (meow.)

Location: Huntsville, AL

Marital Status: Married

Gender: Female

...accompanied by a photo of Edmund.

(see full profile for yourself)

Remember, friends: those who have nothing better to do than to hit on random women online should be treated like telemarketers. If you've got more pressing issues to attend to, by all means amputate their noxious presence as quickly as possible.

But.

Not busy? Bored? Claws needing a touch of sharpen? Best thing you can do for your fellow mortals is to toy with your New Special Friend a bit. Every minute you tie them up in conversation is a minute a) they have to actually interact with another human being and b) they don't get to spend hitting up some other poor sap who probably doesn't have half your backbone.

Think of it as doing something good for the species.