Re: Wiretapping For Fun And Profit

1

That's really, really funny. Imagine if everyone's e-mail signature was, "We will kill all the infidels tomorrow!" (I am totally trying to infiltrate the cell this "Alameida" person belongs to, Mr. Watchful G-man.)


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 9:18 PM
horizontal rule
2

(Mr. Watchful G-Man, SCMT has already neutralized this cell's Shi'a leader. Don't fuck with him.)


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 9:24 PM
horizontal rule
3

I hope you like rice pilaf.


Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 9:36 PM
horizontal rule
4

When my brother was in China last summer, I would pepper my emails to him with phrases like "Democracy and Capitalism, now and forever!" and "The revolution will be swift and merciless". I kept hearing things about their internet monitoring, I figured I'd test it out with little risk to myself. Nothing ever came of it though, which is a shame. Imagine all the stories he would have had after spending time in a Chinese prison...


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 9:40 PM
horizontal rule
5

I had sex with someone who, shortly thereafter, became a covert FBI operative. Like, he carries a gun everywhere and can't tell anyone what he does or how he got involved. Don't ask if it's occurred to me that he might have already been an agent. I shudder.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 9:41 PM
horizontal rule
6

Did it occur to you if there might have been a causal relation? Have former lovers become markedly secretive?

Heheheheh…"secretive".


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 9:53 PM
horizontal rule
7

Ben w-lfs-n, would you please wait util I post my very clever comment? Thank you.

—And here I thought the Moment of True Happiness was just a plot device.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 9:55 PM
horizontal rule
8

Actually, it was a pretty stunning one-night stand that left all three of us reeling. I remember the gentleman in question saying, "But what do I do now? How can I possibly get any cooler than I am at this moment?" I guess heading into a death-trap was the only way out of the conundrum.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 9:59 PM
horizontal rule
9

SB, you misspelled "weighted util," and don't we think that's not the way to discuss happiness anyway?


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:01 PM
horizontal rule
10

Matt F's story reminds me of Mitch Mills, but I can't put my finger on why.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:04 PM
horizontal rule
11

Extra space is space enough for a thought to dwell in:


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:05 PM
horizontal rule
12

Furthermore, "weighted util" doesn't make sense. It would be like saying "let's consider this inch to be longer than that one". You could weight activities, say, and assign them greater utilia, but to weight a util? Preposterous! I'm really disappointed in you, SB.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:05 PM
horizontal rule
13

Not enough thought went into 11.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:06 PM
horizontal rule
14

I am filled with shame. Comes a noob with a spectacularly cool story and I divert the thread to typo-driven philosophogeeking. Accept my humblest apologies, AWB. And: three?

(b-wo, the weight is a diminishing function of how far in the future it is.)


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:09 PM
horizontal rule
15

While most utilitarian schemata may not have a typology incommensurate utils, surely we can imagine one which did. It would simply lead to a form utilitarian moral skepticism.


Posted by: washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:11 PM
horizontal rule
16

"typology incommensurate" s/b "typology of incommensurate"


Posted by: washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:12 PM
horizontal rule
17

a spectacularly cool story

On the contrary, that story is too damn hot for milk.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:13 PM
horizontal rule
18

By utility deserted,

he/she'd remember a faux chink,

and h/s'd find an extra space,

or a gap, in which to think.

ect ect ect.

And: three?

What could it possibly mean? The combinatorics alone are … breathtaking.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:14 PM
horizontal rule
19

On the contrary, that story is too damn hot for milk.

But is it too hot for unfogged?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:15 PM
horizontal rule
20

No worries, MW. Yes, three, and a once-in-a-lifetime circumstance, but one that inevitably leads one, afterwards, to stare down oncoming trains and think, "What if that was it, the high point?" Hence high-death-risk job, I suppose.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:16 PM
horizontal rule
21

But what happened to the third person? How was the body disposed of?


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:22 PM
horizontal rule
22

faux chink

It was the skilled driving that tipped you off, I bet.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:24 PM
horizontal rule
23

Hrm. I'm kinda pwned.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:25 PM
horizontal rule
24

I'd like to say she became a lesbian pornstar, but she joined a nunnery instead.

Ooh! I wish I could say a nunnery, but really I mean she went on with her life and is finishing her dissertation this year. She didn't even drop out of school or anything.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:25 PM
horizontal rule
25

pwned how, SB? Interstitial comments on a different matter are not pwnage even by my lax standards, and 22 was well done.

(AWB, at least you could suggest she's Jennifer Garner. This year she's finishing her dissertation... on kicking your ass!)


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:30 PM
horizontal rule
26

How was the body disposed of?

The receptacle as such is the dumpster; as the dumpster it holds in turn the disposed. The single individual, qualified as immediate, sensate, and post-coital, is the hidden. Thus his receptacle task is to work himself out of his hiddenness and to become disposed in the dumpster. Every time he desires to remain in the hidden, he trespasses and is immersed in spiritual trial from which he can emerge only by disposing of himself.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:32 PM
horizontal rule
27

Yes, the ideal end to the story would be each of us going on to carry arms as covert agents for three radically opposed world powers. Then there could be an off-Broadway show about our uncomfortable reunion, in which each of us was forbidden to say a word except, "Nice weather we're having," and "Do you think Santino will get kicked off this week?"


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:35 PM
horizontal rule
28

pwned how, SB?

Ben's "faux chink" was already a humorous referece to Mitch Mills (whose friend knew someone Chinese, or similar), and by joking on it further I betrayed my slow-witted ungrasp of Ben's epithetic chop-socky.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:37 PM
horizontal rule
29

ah, an autopwn. I join you in slowness.


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:41 PM
horizontal rule
30

As autopwns go, it could be worse. It could be a Escpbar.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-27-06 10:46 PM
horizontal rule
31

The ideal ending of AWB's story would have been not to have followed up on 8, leaving the third person shrouded not in jokes of winding sheets, but in the fog of mystery.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 12:17 AM
horizontal rule
32

reference to Mitch Mills (whose friend knew someone Chinese, or similar)

Who spent time (several years, I thought) in China. I am ashamed not to have come up with at least the next pair of lines.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 12:26 AM
horizontal rule
33

pwned


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 12:53 AM
horizontal rule
34

Agreed that AWB's story is very cool, and deserves to have a film made based on it; but I don't think she qualifies as a 'noob' per 14 -- I've seen her comments here for Internet-ages already.


Posted by: Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 5:57 AM
horizontal rule
35

Or both of the women could have become lesbian gender theorists, which is what happened to the other two in a threesome Bill Clinton had over in Oxford.

According to my source.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 5:58 AM
horizontal rule
36

Jerm-Oz, as far as I can tell, AWB first commented here a day shy of a week ago. She's still highly welcomable.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 6:12 AM
horizontal rule
37

Hm. I guess when I saw her first comment I constructed an alternate past in which I had been seeing occasional comments from her all along. Or mebbe she comments elsewhere that I've read and mixed that up with the Mineshaft.


Posted by: Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 6:19 AM
horizontal rule
38

My uncle was an Air America pilot (the CIA airline) in southeast Asia during Vietnam. When he was applying, he warned everyone in the family that their phones would likely be tapped for a while during the clearance process.

Mom, then in her early 20s, took to starting every conversation with her girlfriends with "Hello Eileen. Hello Mr. FBI man." and closing in the same way. I like to think this was incredibly irritating.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 7:30 AM
horizontal rule
39

I can't believe no one is paying attention to Alamedia's hilarious post, which has 300+ comment potential written all over it.

I blame AWB! AWB, just a tip: don't tell spectacularly cool (but only marginally on-topic) stories in the comment threads of good posts -- save those for enlivening the boring posts!


Posted by: Urple | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 7:33 AM
horizontal rule
40

LB -- your mother's girlfriends lived in a secret research facility where everybody is named "Eileen"? Take me there! Probably gone now, all the good stuff of our parents' era is...

Urple: at the Mineshaft, all posts are boring.


Posted by: Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 7:38 AM
horizontal rule
41

at the Mineshaft, all posts are boring

You must choose poor lovers. My post is a source of unending excitement, I assure you.


Posted by: Urple | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 7:48 AM
horizontal rule
42

a secret research facility where everybody is named "Eileen"?

Queens in the early 60's. Oh, the occasional outlier was named Mary Margaret (or, of course, Margaret Mary), but Eileen was a fairly safe bet.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 7:57 AM
horizontal rule
43

300+ comment potential

You say that like it's a good thing. When in fact it's just an excuse for Weiner to nab all the good odometric comment numbers.

43!


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 7:58 AM
horizontal rule
44

39: My story didn't do the bulk of the off-topicking here.

If we all followed Alameida's lead, wouldn't that be like everyone in class disrupting the substitute at once? There'd be no hope for regaining control and we could take over.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 7:58 AM
horizontal rule
45

Do we have a vague sense of how subversive a comment has to be before it piques The Man? I like to think of The Man obliging us by holding his hand yea-high, showing us just how subversive.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 8:08 AM
horizontal rule
46

Or both of the women could have become lesbian gender theorists, which is what happened to the other two in a threesome Bill Clinton had over in Oxford.

At long last, proof that Bill Clinton is the hero!


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 8:17 AM
horizontal rule
47

I've long thought that Christopher Hitchens' whole career since 1993 can be explained by this quote:

"We [him and Clinton] had a girlfriend in common -- I didn't know then -- who's since become a very famous radical lesbian."

IIRC the lesbian denies ever having been Hitchens' girlfriend. The thing is, Hitch has been pissed at Clinton ever since, and when Clinton became president it drove him insane.


Posted by: Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 8:43 AM
horizontal rule
48

So no one gave Angry White Bear a fruit basket? Did we all assume that she had gotten plenty in the course of the events described in 8?


Posted by: Tia | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 9:52 AM
horizontal rule
49

Re: Alameida's original post.

Do not tease the rhinoceroses! They have no sense of humor.

In the Far Side, the punch line was "Rhinoceroses don't understand the difference between 'laughing at' and 'laughing with'." But Alameida is definitely "laughing at" here.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 10:05 AM
horizontal rule
50

37: I believe A White Bear can be spotted at BitchPhd's. This may be the source of your familiarity.


Posted by: washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 10:44 AM
horizontal rule
51

Re #46: It just occured to me - is it possible that Apostropher is the Clenis?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 12:37 PM
horizontal rule
52

I found WB first! She's all mine! Mine, I tell you!


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 6:32 PM
horizontal rule
53

51: I am Jack's executive penis.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 7:08 PM
horizontal rule
54

That explains quite a bit.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 02-28-06 7:23 PM
horizontal rule