The myspace spambots are swarming me today, every hour or so I get a couple of pages of friend's requests from bots. They are all the same, a sexy female pic next to a single word name. Like 'Karen' or 'Moreesha'. Ok, I made that one up. Anyways, it's annoying. I wonder if the spammers are vamping up their spambots in hope that because it's valentines week, the week to remind single people they are pathetically single, that people might become more desperate and click on one. Ever once in a while I will peek at a spambots page to see what idiots actually add them. It's usually some young guy with a picture of themselves with their shirt off, and they leave such witty messages such as 'Oh baby, u be so fine'.
It reminds me of a time I wrote an IRC bot that would take messages sent from one person in private and send it to another person in private. The bot would sign in with a female name and I would shortly have two foreign idiots sending each other dirty messages. It was amusing.
I shaved off my beard attempt on Sunday. I just have to face it, my beard grows out awful. It's like pubic hair on my face, except that the hairs are much thicker. They will grow out a little ways and then start to curl and then just poke me in the skin. It also made it look like I had been living under a bridge. Saturday night I woke up in the middle of the night scratching furiously on my face. It itched that bad. Sunday morning I said 'fuck it' and jumped in the tub and shaved it all off. Aaah.
No, I refuse to grow a goatee. They are so overplayed.
Over the weekend I modified my scow so that it now has a set of legs that fold out and the scow can be tipped upside down for a shelter. It came out OK and it works fine, but if I had to do it all over, there are several changes I would make. Mainly in the area of holding the legs down when it is in boat mode. Otherwise, it works good. I can set it up and flip it over by myself. Tonight I am going to give it a fresh paint job, maybe paint an eye or something on it. I am also going to put some sort of skirt around the base, held on with Velcro perhaps. I would like to use a nice waterproof canvas, but I do not want to spend a lot of money on this project, so I might use some fabric I had left over from Halloween. It will keep out bugs and prying eyes, but that's about it. My little pop-up tent will go under the shelter.
I decided to salvage some of my mead. My last batch had come out potent, but not very tasty. The fact is strawberries do not have a lot of flavor or sugar in them, so when you brew mead you have to use a lot of them. I did not use nearly enough so all the honey fermented into potent alcohol, but left much to be desired in taste. So I opened a couple of bottles of mead and poured them into a glass gallon container along with a can of Welsh's passion fruit concentrate. I was wildly pleased with the results. Sweet and fruity with a mule-kick to it. Nothing beats homemade hooch.
Finally, for no reason, here is some graphitti I saw downtown on Friday night. I have no guess as to what it means.
2026 Update
I'm dialing the machine to February 2007: MySpace bots, an itchy beard, and mead that needed rescue.
Ah, 2007. The ancient era when 'social media' meant a profile page decorated with glitter and a Top 8, and the worst menace was a bot named Karen asking to be your friend. Now the spambots have evolved into full AI personalities, and they don't just want friendship—they want your bank details, your voiceprint, and your immortal soul, if you still have one. Ed, you shaved off a beard because it curled and poked you; these days half the world grows a lumberjack beard ironically, while the other half posts videos about beard oil subscriptions. Your fold-out scow shelter is charmingly analog, but in 2026 you'd be watching YouTube tutorials on how to 3D-print the hinges, or ordering a tarp from an app and having it arrive before you finish the coffee. And your mead salvage operation—dumping passion fruit concentrate into harsh alcohol—that part hasn't changed; homebrewers still chase that mule-kick. We just document it in stories now instead of a blog. The graffiti downtown? Now it has a QR code leading to a crypto scam, probably.
“2007 Ed, when you peeked at the spambots' pages and laughed at the shirtless guys leaving 'u be so fine' comments, did you ever realize you'd built the same trap with your IRC bot—and was that mead better before or after the passion fruit?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I guess I never thought of it that way, but damn if you aren't right. I built that old IRC bot to do the exact same thing, just with a little more code and a lot less sexy pictures. It's droll how the universe works, isn't it? I laughed at those poor bastards, and all along I was the original puppet master. I figure the spambots are just my bot's dumb cousins, so I can't get too smug. As for the mead, oh, the passion fruit saved it. Before, it was like drinking a gasoline fire that also tasted like regret. After, it was still a gasoline fire, but with a nice fruity zip and a mule-kick. That stuff would make a tree frog sing. I'm just glad my beard is gone. Egads, I looked like I lived under a bridge, but at least I didn't leave messages like 'u be so fine' on my own page. Take that, spambots.
