Interesting weekend

Friday night, I finally made good on a promise to L, to attend a meeting for her business. It's a network marketing business, and I'm a potential part of her network. Because of my feelings for her, I agreed to give it a fair listen, and I did. I'm still not sure I'd want to start a business of my own, subordinate to hers, but I don't see much problem with using equivalent products from her business to replace things I already buy.

Saturday evening, I went to a silent and live auction for a local charity as my friend J's (female friend J, not Medifast J) date. Apparently, I was something of a minor hit, as J has been told that I'm welcome anytime. This wouldn't be unusual, except that it is unusual. Not all of J's companions to such functions seem to have made a positive impression. Of course, me being a graduate of her dad's alma mater might have something to do with it too.

I hate being the buzzkill brother

Yesterday, my sister B sent me (and about 100 other people, looking at the To: list) a pretty cool-sounding email:

Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting August.It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will maximize on Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65M miles of earth. Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am. It will look like the earth has 2 moons. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Share this with your friends as NO ONE ALIVE TODAY will ever see it again.

Now, I'm a pretty big sucker for cool space news. I've woken my daughter up at 3:30 in the morning to go out onto a near-freezing patio to lie on sleeping bags and watch for meteor showers, so this sounded interesting. I Googled it, hoping that Space.com or someplace similar would have specifics about the best viewing time for my part of the country.

I suppose in retrospect, I should have guessed what I'd find. "Share this with your friends" should have been a big clue, and the breathless (and all-caps) admonition that "NO ONE ALIVE TODAY" would ever see this event should have thrown up red flags. But it still took me by mild surprise when a snopes entry for it came up. And of course, if I were as big an astronomy buff as I made myself out to be, the inclusion of the time (12:30 AM) without a time zone (e.g. 12:30 AM GMT) or a location (12:30 AM in the Central U.S.), or information about where it will be best viewed from should have been the final nail.

So naturally, I had to send mail back to my sister, telling her that it was untrue. In the past, I've been an asshole and replied back to her and everyone she sent it to, but she ripped me a new one the last time I did that, so I just sent her the link and told her that I was only sending the information to her, and she should do with it whatever she wanted. She sent out the retraction, "My brother brought it to my attention that the 2 moons message I forwarded is an internet hoax" to the entire To: list of her original message.

The weird part is that I feel bad about it. I can comfort myself knowing that no one will be looking at the sky on August 27, expecting to see a big-ass Mars (turns out the whole "two moons" illusion is a misrepresentation of how Mars would appear if you used a 75x telescope to look at it at that 34M mile distance...it would look as big in the telescope as the Moon looks to the naked eye, as I understand it). But, I know most of the people on that To: list, and I'm probably the only one who'd actually mark his calendar and try to see it, and I already knew it was crap. I feel like I just pissed in everyone's Wheaties, because thanks to me debunking B's message, the world is a slightly less-wondrous place.

So, the question to my imaginary readers is this: should I have just sat on the information, maybe use it as interesting dinner conversation at Thanksgiving (the next time I'm home), or did I do the "right thing?

Public Service Announcement

Over the years, as my life has become increasingly digital, I've wondered what would happen if I died suddenly. Who would suddenly get no answer to an email or an IM? I mean, I know who those people are, but very few other people in my life do. Would they (or could they) access my accounts, and notify the people I stay in contact with?

The answer to that is probably "no". Think about it yourself. How many people would you be giving the cosmic dial-tone to if you passed?

I don't have the answer, short of updating my will to include all my online friends' contact information. I wonder if there's some way to escrow that sort of information...a single place to aggregate all of my contacts, that I could "permalink" (as it were) in my will? Am I six years too late with this sort of existential navel-gazing? Some research may be in order.

Funny ol' thing, life...

Loreene, I miss you.

I found out about your death today, almost a month and a half after. I Google'd your name, and there was the obituary I copied in the previous post. You might ask why I'd copy it, and I'd answer:

Because newspaper obituaries come and go. If I'd waited a few more days, I might not have found it. And I want people to find it. People who knew you. People who loved you. People who might have fallen out of close contact with you. People who went on about their lives, assuming that because you were so young, they had plenty of time to write or call and see what you were up to.

People like me.

People who other people might not know to notify.

We had always done the "you dead?" emails, usually when I got busy at work and didn't have time to check my e-mail. The last time I got mail from you was in May, and ironically, it still had the "you dead?" subject line. I've replied to that email twice since then, checking on you. I can't begin to imagine what kind of sick joke the poor guys at your company thought I was pulling, if they saw that mail. I think you'd think that was hilarious, and if I wasn't missing you so much, I'd probably agree.

I don't know what made me pick today to check. I don't know what thought process said, "hey, she hasn't emailed back in a really long time, maybe you should google her and see if something happened." That's a joke. We both know what I was googling for. Hospital admissions don't show up that way. But obituaries do.

You know, the sack of hammers that hits you when you read a memorial for someone you love doesn't get any softer when you know you're half-expecting it.

You were my only fan here. You kept coming back, day after day, checking to see if I'd updated this piss-poor window on my life. You were my sounding board, my voice of reason, my cheerleader and my confessor. While there may be things I didn't tell you, there wasn't anything I couldn't tell you.

I don't pray alot anymore, but I pray you've gone to the reward you deserve. Life might have knocked you around, but you took it all with a grin, and a belief in better tomorrows that never failed to inspire me.

Damn, I'm going to miss you, darlin'.

Goodbye, Loreene

From the Denton Record-Chronicle:

Loreene Anderson-Stoker

Loreene Anderson-Stoker, 41, of Denton, TX passed away Wednesday, June 6, 2007. She was born January 24, 1966 in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Mrs. Stoker married Neal Stoker on March 1, 2003 in Denton. She was a former volunteer for Festival Ballet of North Central Texas.

A memorial service will be held Monday, June 11, 2007, at 1 p.m. at Denton Funeral Home Chapel.

Loreene is lovingly remembered by her parents Stuart and Patricia Kerr; husband, Neal Stoker; her two sons, Kyle, and James Anderson; sister, Maggie Akhavan of Coon Rapids, MN; four brothers, James Sipp and family of Rochester, NH, John Sipp and family of Somersworth, NH, David Sipp and family of Lewisville, TX, and Andrew Sipp and family of Nyack, NY. She also leaves behind numerous nephews, nieces, and friends.

Memorial donations can be given to the American Cancer Society.

Services are under the direction of Denton Funeral Home and Cremation Services.