Malfunction

I can't take holiday in this place. Seriously. First thing that happens upon my return is my near collapse at the sight of all the work that's just sitting there waiting for me to do it. Then, instead of just getting on with the workload, I am asked to explain, for the third time, my e-mail filing system. Apparently, "Final revisions" instead of "Final versions" is just too confusing to work out, and everything must be kept as hard copy because no one can use a Search function worth a good goddamn. And again, nothing has been done. For three days. Some of the e-mails have been looked at, but that's it. Bastards.

I wasn't supposed to worry, they said. James would be in charge, they said. Then again, James is taking calls from the Theatre Museum with some regularity (twice in the last hour) so I suppose he may not be long for this job anyway. He has been attending interviews...

I have a headache and I want to go home.

Censorship Blows

A Roman Catholic school is enforcing a ban on blogging. Seriously; the kids can't keep online journals under threat of suspension. And this, apparently, is supposed to keep them safe from online 'predators'. My question is, "How?"

The reasoning is that some people's user info includes photos, sexual preferences (by which I assume they mean 'orientation') and location. My counter-argument is as follows:

Photos: Is it an old photo? Have you dyed your hair since then? How much detail are you going to get from a 100x100 pixel image anyway? And that's if you're not doing what a good 90% of the bloggers I know do, which is use art for your avatar rather than pictures. Because, let's face it, Thessaly looks a damn sight cooler than I do.

Sexual Orientation: That gives a possible target for a paedophile or general pervert, but what's he going to do? If he comments to your journal, you report him to the abuse team and get him banned. You friends-lock it. And if he e-mails you, you just take your e-mail address off. No blogger has to take this kind of shit, and the ways to avoid it are listed quite clearly when you sign up.

Location: Always general. If you're putting your full home address on there, you deserve what you get, frankly. You can be as specific as you like, but surely it's a case for being as general as you can, for instance, saying "London, UK" instead of exactly what street you live on.

Besides, mostly it's the chatrooms that are the stalking grounds for pervs anyway; it's hard to be charismatic over e-mail, and that's what the 'predator' is relying on; to make the prey trust them enough to meet up with them somewhere with no parental interference. Convincing a kid to come meet you, when "Don't talk to strangers" has been rammed down their throats for the best part of a decade, is an exercise in charisma with the added advantage of the basic assumption by kids that people on these chatrooms are just like them and their friends. Online journals have that remove. They have the option of being vague and essentially anonymous. You can choose who reads it and who doesn't if you want to. You can't often control who's going to come into a chatroom, but you can friends-lock your journal.

But of course, they can't exactly police chatroom use. So instead they police the thing they can police, and incidentally stifle any voice of dissent that might come out of a journal. Once they graduate, they can maybe have their right to free expression back, but by then, aren't kids going to be so used to being oppressed that they'll come to expect it as adults? What is wrong with society that it deals not with the root causes of things, but legislates the piddling, barely related crap that has no effect but to show they're doing something? Is that so much easier than actually going out and stopping the perverts? It reminds me of something I saw when I was in the MDA, which I probably shouldn't talk about even after all these years because I did sign a non-disclosure agreement. Still, I can say that sometimes people take the option that will let them be most visibly Doing Something, even if it's detrimental in the long run.

I suppose I don't get it, but mostly when I find a problem looming, I deal with it head-on and try to get it at its source. It's like pulling dandelions; pull the root, no more dandelion. Pull the flower only, and it'll just grow back and you're spreading seeds to boot.

Hockey hockey hockey

I suddenly realise I have no one to rant sports with. At least, not in any major way.

I play Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey with tolshak and his happy band of hockey maniacs. Which is generally good, though I am bottom of the league because half the time I forget to update my starting lineup and wind up having everybody who's playing on the day on the bench and am therefore racking up no points. Generally, I am someone that someone else is playing. I don't contribute much, never ask for trades and just generally coast.

Until the manager of The Thugtuzzi Crisis, another team, asked for a trade. Marleau for Kovalchuk. So basically he wants to trade my absolute best player (7th in the League tables) for Marleau, 81 in the league with a slightly less impressive scoring record long-term. I had a look at the stats -- while they're pretty much even on scoring terms over a season, I discovered a trend -- Marleau peaks early and then keeps a relatively stable scoring record, while Kovalchuk tends to not do so well in the first little while but peaks mid-season. I could get a lot better mileage out of him long-term than I could out of Marleau, so I said no deal.

Well, not entirely no deal. I made a counter-offer. He can have Kovalchuk if he's willing to give up Bertuzzi. There's only a five-player difference between them in the league tables so I'm not losing out so much and he's a good scorer. I'll have to see if he takes it. (That's assuming the Thugtuzzi Crisis is a he.)

Damn. I suddenly realise that I have no idea how the hockey is going. I must check on the Habs...

We're at the top of the NE standings?!? ROCK ON! *squee* And we're still beating the almighty crap out of Boston; we always do. Toronto kicked our arses, the snots. And we play the Sens tonight. Must remember to check the score tomorrow.