Friday, June 09, 2006

2666: A Mildly Belated Milestone

So I'd like to bid a hearty welcome to visitor #2666, who arrived here a mere 3 days too late for the big 6/6/06 festivities. I think I forgot to mention that I was trying to run through the Seven Deadly Sins on the 6th, trying to complete the set within 24 hours. Quite an oversight; it was probably the Sloth part acting up. Sloth was pretty easy, really. As for the others:

Gluttony
Well, for lunch I wandered up the the Rogue brewpub and had a large Kobe beef burger smothered in bleu cheese and bacon, with fries, and a couple of beers. I could have picked out something even more expensive, but a Rogue burger was exactly what I wanted at the time, so that's what I did. As a bonus, there was no small amount of Sloth afterwards. And if we're going to read the Old Testament literally -- which is official government policy these days, so we'd better if we know what's good for us -- I seem to recall some prohibitions on eating pork, and on serving meat with dairy products. So I get a little extra credit for that, since I'm the one awarding the points here.

Envy
While I was walking to work in the morning, I couldn't help but notice a beautiful white Porsche 356 parked by the curb, and almost blundered out into traffic while I was staring at it. I wasn't feeing especially resentful towards the car's owner the way I would've if it'd been any other sort of Porsche. You know, slimy lawyer, trophy wife, coke habit, bad combover, etcetera. But there was still that lingering feeling that someone had lucked out, and it wasn't me, and the universe was terribly unfair. I didn't vandalize the car, and I didn't hang around the vehicle until the owner returned and lecture him (or her) about global warming, the way some Portlanders would. But I think this still probably counts as envy, of a sort.

Greed
On my 6/6 post, I did mention something about buying a pile of heavy metal CDs for the occasion, even though I'm not the world's hugest metal fan. I didn't originally plan to buy five CDs, but the "aww, just one more" impulse kept kicking in, which is textbook greed for ya. In this day and age, it seems decadent to buy music on physical media, and buying a whole CD when you haven't heard all the songs on it now seems risky and extravagant. I mention this part because it seems to me that it's somehow more "sinful" to be greedy like this over an idle impulse buy than it is over something you know you'll treasure forever. Maybe this is gluttony, not greed, I dunno. I was never 100% clear on the distinction here. But either way, I get extra points here too, because of the heavy metal and all.

Wrath
I'm not an especially wrathful person most of the time, but there was a little incident on the 6th that let me check this one off. It may have been a pure coincidence, but on that day this humble blog got a visitor from SCO's UK office. I mean, it can't possibly be a day devoted to ultimate evil unless SCO's involved somehow. This person must've read a post of mine over at the Yahoo! SCOX board, clicked on my profile to try to learn more about me, and found the link to this blog from there. That kind of pissed me off, so I immediately posted to the SCOX board again, reporting the incident and saying I was thinking about posting some porn here in hopes of getting this person fired for visiting that sort of website on company time. I didn't actually do it, because this is not that sort of website, but it was fun to think about. And it was certainly fun to imagine scaring the snot out of one of Darl McBride's lesser minions.

Lust
Did I mention this is not that sort of website? Well, it isn't. Because I said so. Also, there's such a thing as too much sharing, despite what the kids on MySpace might lead you to believe. Especially when the flaming eye of Ft. Meade is watching.

Pride
Well, duh, I mean, anybody with a personal blog is guilty of this to some extent. Unless you think your random notions deserve a global audience, why bother? In one 6/6 post on the aforementioned Y! board, I encouraged people to visit here so I could hit 2666 visitors on the 6th. That would've been kind of cool, no doubt about that, but there's also an obvious element of vanity and neediness. I mean, there's no reason to really care about that kind of thing, one way or the other, is there? But it's really hard not to. I freely admit that. And when I finally did hit the magic number, the hit came from a newly added link to this blog. So there. Ha. I still win. Yay for me. Oh, and I just got my first visitor from Luxembourg (that I know of), which is something. So I guess you can either feel bad about feeling good, or you can embrace it. Maybe it's time someone founded a "pride pride" movement, slogan "I'm proud, and I'm proud".

Even More Sloth
Ok, for the sake of completeness, I probably could've worked harder at the office than I did, and I could've gotten to work a bit earlier, and answered emails more promptly. I mean, if I'd wanted to. But it wasn't my fault -- the Man was making me work on a holiday, after all.



For a better treatment of the subject, you might enjoy Dan Savage's book Skipping Towards Gomorrah, in which he sets out to, yes, commit all seven deadly sins, with an entire chapter devoted to each. Chock full of fundie-bashing, highly entertaining, and highly recommended.

If you really want to see serious wrath and envy in action, you can't go wrong with the blog Merche The Reject, which I stumbled across as yet another of those "Next Blog" Blogspot referrer pages. The whole blog is devoted to bashing a Portuguese celebrity named Merche Romero. I have no idea what Ms. Romero did to incur this kind of anger, but clearly either she, or the blog's author, has a lot to answer for, and I'm not sure which of the two it is. It's also clear that by comparison I'm a total 3rd-rate piker in the wrath and envy department, which is fine, really.

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