3 days later I couldn’t handle the pain anymore (nothing really helped) so I went to a local dentist who could see me plus give me an xray for $35. The appointment took all of 15 minutes and I left with the knowledge that I had a cracked & impacted wisdom tooth:

Incidentally (heh pun intended) I discovered a dark side to dentistry. Apparently the dentist I originally went to is a “meth dentist”. Meth heads pay a pittance to come in and get a quick prescription for painkillers they can then use OHP/Walmart to get cheap meds to sell. Neato eh? “but they’re only trying to help people”. bah.

Anyhow, I notified the Dentist’s office that I was on unemployment, had no money to spare at all until my tax return came and was told “no problem we can work with that”. Went in for an initial appointment and was told that my top wisdom teeth needed to go as well but shouldn’t be an issue even though there was an added cost. Sadly I wouldn’t be able to get nitrous oxide since the dentist charges so much for nitrous, but no problem again right? If only that were the case.

Today arrives with much excitement as I know my horrifying wisdom tooth of agony +2 will be removed once and for all. I hopped a bus and arrived for my appointment only to be told “If you can’t pay $1500 up front then we can’t help you”. uh what? I was told the payments would be small enough to be manageable. If I had a spare $1500 laying around I’d have dealt with this weeks ago when it first became an issue.

Apparently because I didn’t have enough I’m not worthwhile of “emergency treatment” which is what the dentist told me I needed. Last I checked if it’s an emergency they’re not supposed to turn down patients without the revenue. Shows what I know.

What’s hilarious is if I’d been in Canada, the UK or anyplace with socialized medicine I’d likely have gotten in to see a dentist the day the pain started and then once antibiotics kicked in I’d have the teeth removed no harm no foul. Instead under our awesome capitalism based healthcare system I got to wait a week and a half for no treatment. Last time I checked the GOP morons always say that you wait for socialized healthcare and you never wait for medical care here. How delightfully backwards those cute little republican idiots are.

Funny how you’re only a person anymore if you have money. It’s never been a perfect egalitarian system but years ago you could count on the medical community helping people, now it appears in the day of the HMO that if you have no money you are persona non grata. I think they used to call that the fuedal system.

Ironically I’m pretty sure that this is how my family ended up emigrating from Ireland over to the US originally. They were tired of being peasants that continually got the sharp pointy end of the stick. Happily I learned at a young age to not get mad, but to just get even. This is why I’m going to find a new dentist, one with ethics and more concern for patient care instead of being interested only in money like the asshat I went to this morning.Once I find this new dentist I’m going to do everything in my power to bring him more patients.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go take my goddamned tylenol 3 and hope my jaw stops hurting. Also fuck you George Nowland. I just had to call the 5 people I referred to you and tell them to find a dentist that isn’t a soul soliciting pigfucker.

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1. How did you get the moniker Unreliable Narrator?

I gave it to myself, in an undoubtedly bootless effort to forestall ex-friends and ex-lovers and ex-employers staggering onto my blog and emailing me angrily about how wrong, Wrong, WRONG I got everything—reminding us all, “Hey, this is just one crazy chick’s temporary take on what happened.” It’s my optimistic prophylactic against self-bludgeoning as well.

2. You mentioned you were in school? What’s your major?

“In school”–that sounds so fun! I’m a graduate student and teaching associate at a ginormous ugly football university in Arizona, seeking my terminal degree–an MFA in creative writing (poetry).

3. What is your all time favorite word? why?

Thinking about this idly for the last couple of weeks has yielded only the realization that I like adverbs way, way too much–especially poly-jointed Latinate ones with lots of prefixes. Cf. “an undoubtedly bootless,” above.

4. If you could take only 4 items to a remote place for a month, what would they be and where would you go?

Dude can I just say first? that sounds SO FUCKING GOOD.

I probably wouldn’t want to go to Mexico or Italy, usual fantasy destinations—I’m feeling right now like someplace simple and scorpion-free. The Professoressa has a summer place on an island in Wisconsin—in my dream world, there. Deeply rural Western Massachusetts, maybe. Somewhere grassy and numb and totally silent.

Assuming the Brujo is not an item and therefore can’t come, I would take….a very long DSL cable! KIDDING.

a) relatively unscathed purple-batik journal, which I started last year before being devoured by State School
b) new blue fountain pen (needs to be aggressively procured from Santa Fe pen shop who repeatedly fail to deliver it)
c) Featherweight sewing machine with stack of fat quarters tucked in the case (breaking rules of 4 items) and
d) a picture of Pyewacket to remind me of HOW NICE IT IS NOT TO BE AROUND HER WHEN SHE’S MIAOWING.

5. What did you most aspire to when you were 10 years old?

Publicly, within my family, I said I wanted to be an entomologist. I was fascinated by insects and had a murderously thorough butterfly collection (which now horrifies me to remember). I hadn’t yet become obsessed with musical theater, the ballet, the opera, Shakespeare, concert piano—all those yearnings which would torment me through adolescence.

I specifically remember visiting, for some reason, the agriculture/science building of the junior college I would later attend at 17, and seeing the fetal pig embryos in jars and what have you. And imagining that someday I would be a PROFESSOR OF SCIENCE, sweeping through the doors to teach my class, wearing (for no reason I can explain) a gray Harris tweed skirt and pantyhose and silver strappy high heels. Hey, I was ten. Though I don’t think my fashion sensibilities have much improved.

When the Brujo was about five and was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he replied serenely, “A Chinaman.” And I similarly (but less openly) *really* wanted to be? An Indian. A princess. A time-traveller.

And a starship captain’s girlfriend, so I could hang around in sleazy outfits and eat blue snack food.

6. Would you have considered your present self someone to look up to when you were 10?

Bwahahahaha! Well, maybe.

7. I notice you listen to Ani Difranco. Do you remember how you discovered her music?

Weirdly enough I just told this story to the Brujo. I had acquired, somehow, a paper catalog to a music store called Ladyslipper Records. This was in, like, 1989, loooong before teh Interwebs. It had this hippie-looking purple watercolor painting on the front and was filled with “women’s music”—the real deal, like Cris Williamson and Holly Near and Ferron and artists to whom mostly no one listens anymore, mostly because they were mostly terrible. I could never afford to order anything, though; those were the Lost Years and I made $5 an hour at the bookstore. Actually maybe that’s where I got the catalog—the guys in the record half of the store were always giving me freebies and posters and stuff.

Anyway I would pore over the fairly elaborate descriptions of the recordings for HOURS. And they had I think two tapes by this shaven-headed big-eyed girl—Ani really was a girl then, maybe 16 or 17 herself. But what really drew me to them wasn’t her pictures but the reviews of the music as being completely ferocious and unprecedented. I was really into the Indigo Girls at that time *shudder* and was teaching myself to play every single Suzanne Vega song on guitar, but I also loved Sinead O’Connor and was CRAZY about Melissa Etheridge. I basically could only fingerpick but I was frustrated with how sweet and tiny that sounded, and I desperately wanted to know how to make a big loud sound, but without strumming.

So when I was at the Women’s College in 1993 and Ani finally played Amherst, my girlfriend kimba and I went immediately to hear her—I seem to remember paying with a roll of laundry quarters, which of course you couldn’t do now. And I remember that she opened with “Fourth of July,” I was standing about ten feet away, we were *surrounded* with entranced guitar guys, and I was like, “Uh-huh. Yes please. That.”

So in a period of a few years I went to a dozen of her shows, talked to her at summer folk festival camps, learned scores of songs, etc. In the late nineties I quit going to live shows because I couldn’t handle her audiences any more—either their size or their attitudes—around the same time that Ani herself started writing songs about her frustration with audience, oddly. Conversely, I have never heard Tori Amos live, ever, though I dream about meeting with her and talking to her and playing for her all the time—almost on a weekly basis; her persona has long been an inner mentor to me, completely unknown to her.

Hanging out the laundry yesterday I was thinking about why Ani and why Tori. I used to be fond of mangling Eliot’s bromide about Shakespeare and Dante, and saying that Tori and Ani divide the world between them—there is no third. (I didn’t discover Joni Mitchell until very late, for some reason.) They cover different territory within me and within many listeners—just think of their nicknames: The Little Folksinger and the Queen of the Fairies. Tori spaces herself all over that numinous inner landscape which is at times nonsensical and at other times insane; her lyrics aren’t representational, and very literal hearers find them bewildering. It probably sounds moronic, but listening to Tori taught me how to read Dickinson. She is often a language poet, if you’ll let me get away with that, while Ani is very much a formalist. Ani favors those 3- and 4-line stanzas, very square song structures, repetition with significant variations, and has that trademark politicized realism, with a kind of fearless, bawdy Chaucerian humor.

But I think the real reason why their music has spoken to me so richly and accompanied me through so much is for the very simple fact that they’re both a few years older than I am. And through the reality of how long it takes to write songs, record them, distribute them….I wind up hearing lyrics and music that directly address what I’m going through, in a sometimes uncanny way. So they had abortions/miscarriages/girlfriends/bad breakups/divorces/parental separations/reevaluations of work/artistic crises etc. in roughly the same timeframes as I did.

Having, basically, immensely talented big sisters has been invaluable in the sense of predecessors, or permission-givers. (“I can SAY that?! I can MAKE that kind of move?!”) And obviously sometimes it’s depressing/paralyzing, too, the way it can be when you have really cool older siblings—when you’re saddled with any anxiety of influence.

8. Is the change in voice from 1st person to 3rd person and vice versa something intentional or a personality quirk?

By “personality quirk” we hope you’re not thinking that we actually walk around all the time addressing others and ourselves like this? Because that would be SERIOUSLY ANNOYING. Technically, though, that’s the change from singular to plural so she thinks you do mean the change to third person. And she’s not quite sure, honestly, why or how she stumbled on it—probably via poetry—but she did notice pretty quickly that it enabled her to write about all kinds of things she couldn’t have touched with a bargepole in the first person. Yet another unreliable subterfuge tactic.

9. Favorite album of all time.

That would have to be Joni Mitchell’s Blue, which I think contains Whitmanian multitudes. I spent one unemployed summer learning every single song on both guitar and piano, though now sadly I can’t play any of them.

10. What one thing do you regret most?

Only one?!?

Honestly, tonight…and many times since then: I regret not waiting until I got to the top of Atalaya to swallow more pills with more brandy, because then I wouldn’t have been able to get back down again no matter how fucked up and turned around I wound up getting.

I know, that’s horrible. I would never have met the Brujo, never have started corresponding with oleoptene, and there’d be three fewer years of verbiage hurled at the aether. And, you know. I’m supposed to teach in four hours and tonight it’s true. I was curled up under my desk earlier; I have my period; I haven’t even started grading papers; it’s a bad night.

11. What do you wish you had invented?

The bicycle-light generator! Actually I *did* invent it, my first year at Cambridge, and I described it excitedly to all my new British friends who listened politely and then told me it had been invented sometime before the first world war.

12. What is your favorite sound.

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”

13. Coffee or tea?

Tea, always—until the State School slammed into me sometime around last December. Then, at the advanced age of 38, I was like, “What is this marvelous drug which turns me, on three hours sleep, into a PAPER-GRADING MACHINE?!?” And I’m such a cheap date—all I need is half-a-teaspoon of the Brujo’s thick indigo brew, with about a gallon of milk, and I’m wired all day.

Lately I’m addicted to this horrible coffee that comes from a machine in my office building on campus—for 75¢, it dispenses what it calls an “International Coffee” which is mostly corn syrup solids. Maybe February was so hard this year because that machine broke down, and of course Walt Whitman and I are the only people who ever use it, so they didn’t fix it for weeks and weeks. I just wish I could put my mug under the spigot but it insists on dropping down a wasteful little paper cup every time.

14. Describe using just 6 words your favorite food.

Maguro, tekka maki, sake, toro, ebi.

15.Do you have any irrational fears (zombies, werewolves, pirahanas in the toilet, etc).

Ghosts—is that irrational? I don’t know. I saw one when I was about three or four years old—I was up past my bedtime reading in bed and I was completely terrified (although it seemed harmless, mainly curious, just an amorphous glowing purple blob with eyes, but it moved *fast* and I knew it was not at all something I was supposed to be seeing). Ever since then I have, perhaps deliberately, NOT seen ghosts—but any film about that stuff scares the beejeebus out of me: The Sixth Sense, for example, or in fact A Christmas Carol, when I was about 8 or 9 years old. For MONTHS after I see one of those movies I’m all jittery and haunted and refuse to look in mirrors when I’m alone in the loo at night. And then there was the weird certainty I had one summer at Chez Zen that a dead priest was trailing me all over campus, which was unnerving, to say the least.

16. Earliest memory?

I remember being in my crib one evening or morning—Texas, rainy, gray, dim outside, an overhead bulb—and watching my mom put the diaper cream down on my changing table. It was a white tube with dark blue square letters outlined in red, and I realized that the letters on the tube meant the name of it—DESITIN. That the word was the name of the thing.

Well that wraps up the interview, thanks to the Unreliable Narrator herself, and Mirrorpond IPA for helping discovered the questions I needed to ask.

Ok that was fairly fun. I had a great time doing this and almost want to interview lots of people now to get a birds eye look into their heads.

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This list will require that you have Firefox & the Greasemonkey extension installed.

1. Do you get email with a lot of attachments? Ever wanted to see at a glance what those attachments are right from your inbox? All you need to do is install this little script http://userstyles.org/styles/5545 and suddenly you’ll have a clearly recognizable icon for each different attachment type.

2. Print from gmail often and don’t want to waste color ink (at $8,000 a gallon it can get pretty bad) This script will solve the problem by hiding the gmail logo: http://userstyles.org/styles/2909

3. Have a massive screen with a huge number of emails? With the row highlighting script you can see exactly which email is currently highlighted, all you need is this script: http://userstyles.org/styles/4725

4. Power user time: Macros. If you’re an email power user, mobile warrior or any other buzzwordy user you’ll eventually stop using the mouse for everything and want keyboard shortcuts to make your life easier, faster and just plain sexier (your mileage may vary on that last one, but one can hope yes?) with the Gmail Macros script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/14189

Case sensitive keys (overrides any gmail shortcuts using that key):

• ‘g’ –> ‘go to label’
• ‘l’ –> ‘apply label’
• ‘L’ –> ‘remove label’
• ‘N’ –> ‘create and apply label’
• ‘e’ –> ‘always archive’
• ‘E’ –> ‘Mark as read and archive’
• ‘f’ –> ‘focus: loads all inbox/unread/starred messages in the current label’
• ‘i’ –> ‘move selected messages to inbox’
• ‘T’ –> ‘Mark as read and move to trash’
• ‘t’ –> ‘trash’
• ‘r’ –> ‘Mark as read’
• ‘R’ –> ‘Mark as unread’
• ‘X’ –> ‘Select’
  • ‘+a’ –> all
  • ‘+n’ –> none
  • ‘+s’ –> starred
  • ‘+S’ –> unstarred
  • ‘+u’ –> unread
• ‘O’ –> ‘Open all conversations in the current thread
• ‘,’ –> ‘Mark as read, all unread’
• ‘U’ –> ‘Update current conversation’

5. Filtering assistant. If you’re anything like me you’re a big fan of organizing that massive amount of email automatically so you don’t have to wade through 500 messages every morning. While there’s always been a filtering assistant this little script moves it into the email itself and makes things a lot cleaner feeling. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7997

All in all 5 easy simple ways to make your gmail experience quite a bit faster, better and more productive. Feel free to post your gmail time savers and usage optimization tips below, I’m always on the lookout for new improved tools for my tasks.

For those of you not familiar with Gmail I can’t imagine a service without all of the following:

• Better spam filtering than any other service I’ve encountered
• True instant search (for those not in the know it’s almost exactly like Spotlight on OS X)
• Conversation based email (much easier to follow the thread of a conversation than emails in order of receipt.
• A truly clean fast interface for mail on the go. Mobile mail is a anything but a chore with gmail.
• Over 6gb of storage (and always growing, in fact when I got my account it was only 2.5gb)
• New features just launched include:
  • An optimized iPhone interface
  • Group chat via the integrated google chat app.
  • AOL Instant Messenger support right in the main gmail interface
• Plus dozens more features

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So 8 years ago I had service through AT&T, my contract was almost up and I was about to start a job working for Sprint. One of my last deeds as a “loyal” AT&T wireless customer was to refer my parents. At the time they were offering $50 per line for referral activations. This would have brought my account down to the point to pay off the remainder of my contract would have been under $50 nice right? Well too bad for me since AT&T never actually gave me the referral bonus. I was taught by my wise and cynical mother when it comes to corporations to NEVER throw money at a problem so I told AT&T until they fixed the issue I wasn’t paying them anymore or using the service either. Well the kind folks at AT&T customer service said no problem it would only take a few days to resolve the issue.

Let’s fast forward now to last July when I bought my iPhone. I was as excited and giddy as a young schoolgirl (pay attention and get the thoughts of those plaid skirts out of your head) as I plugged my iPhone into my Macbook Pro and awaited the iTunes activation. I entered in my SSN and omg! declined. What the hell I thought and called AT&T to find out why. Apparently I owed them over $400.00 for some reason. Wanting to learn more I got a copy of my credit report and discovered not one but two separate (yet identical) debts on my credit report. It seems that AT&T charged me a full $300.00 disconnection fee plus money owed with interest.

At this point I called AT&T back and asked them to look into it (I also notified the credit bureau of the double listing and they said it was verified that I owed both companies? (wth??)). Hilariously enough I was told that the records from that far back probably don’t exist so there is no way to honestly resolve the issue with full information.

Fast forward to this year when I tried to move from a gophone account with my iPhone (yeah I had to get a pay as you go plan which is really code for “gouge the people with bad credit plan which doesn’t actually improve their credit while being gouged” which is a mouthful and makes perfect sense as to why they shortened it), anyways I wanted to add Zoe (my wife) to my plan and make it a contracted family plan (which means her buying a phone and them earning more money off of us both on a contract since I bought my iPhone at an Apple store.

DECLINED! (or we could pay $400 per line deposit). The gentleman I spoke to at the AT&T store said no problem we can get the deposit waived. This sounded excellent. So thus began the dreaded 6 hours at the store. Everyone there was fairly helpful except the asst. manager on duty refused 2 hours worth of requests for a chair for the aforementioned wife (who is 7 months pregnant).

This same assistant manager also made a habit of frequently interrupting and even better ignoring politely worded questions. Amazingly (especially to the 5 or 6 customers who saw my treatment) I managed to keep a clear calm head until the bitter end when I did drop a harsh word the last time he interrupted me. I was trying to ask for his manager’s number as well as the district manager’s number to complain about him and he interrupted to tell me “he was done helping me”. I said continued interruption of a paying customer who wants to give the company more money is a really douchebag thing to do. At this point the elderly security guard told my wife and I to leave since we were hurting the feelings of the staff. At this point 2 of the staff members volunteered to go on record that my family was ill treated by the asst. manager.

Fast forward to me calling customer service the next day to make a complaint. The customer service rep took my complaint and said that behavior wasn’t tolerated and then offered to call another store saying “it’s an easy situation to override a deposit and give a waiver”. I said sure and he contacted the downtown Portland branch. The salesperson and he talked for about 5 minutes and then I was warm transferred to the salesperson and he got my email, mobile number and name and said he’d get back to me within 3 days. Excellent I thought finally some resolution.

3 days later I received an email from this salesperson letting me know that the PacNW operations dept said no. At the bottom of the email (which also contained the email to and from the operations center I noticed:

• My full legal name
• My mobile number
• My home address
• My internal customer id number
• MY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

I immediately called the store and asked for a manager was told “none were on duty” and so called customer service who said that there was no way to take a complaint about email.

So I searched the consumerist.org website until I found the CEO’s office and called. The person who answered the phone put my call through to an executive care specialist who could barely speak english (no accent just not that coherent in his speech patterns) who told me “yes that’s against policy but there’s not anything we can do besides say we’re sorry”. Sorry? I’d like to buy a home soon and with the possibility that my SSN was sent in clear text and to who knows how many departments and I have no way of knowing who has my SSN now? For the record I gave the sales guy my email over the phone with no one ever verifying my identity. So apparently you can get SSN’s from AT&T by simply social engineering them now. Hooray for security.

To think this all started with my simpleminded idea that I’d be able to sign up to give more money to the corporation. It’s sad that AT&T is the only company in the US able to offer the iPhone. The worst part is I paid full price for the iPhone. Not subsidized by Apple or ATT like most other phones are. If AT&T had paid for part of the phone then I’d see it from their side but asking me to make a deposit almost equal to the cost of the phone is ludicrous.

I’m not a greedy person I just want to be able to talk to my wife regularly without having to pay a ton for the privilege. At this point however I do have some specific terms that AT&T can fulfill to keep me as a customer and to make right on a horrible run of bad customer service. I just want the plan I originally wanted, no contract, 6 months free (for the 48 hours plus invested that seems fair) and for risking my SSN an upgrade to a 16gb iPhone. All told it’s vastly less then the courts have awarded other people who’s SSNs have been released by corporations.

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From WikiLeaks.be:

Wikileaks Press Release

WIKILEAKS.ORG DOWN AFTER EX-PARTE LEGAL ATTACK BY CAYMAN ISLANDS BANK

http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks.org_under_injunction

Contacts: http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Contact

Mon Feb 18 00:00:00 GMT 2008

The following release has not been proofed due to time constraints.

Transparency group Wikileaks forcibly censored at ex-parte Californian
hearing — ordered to print blank pages — ‘wikileaks.org’ name
forcibly deleted from Californian domain registrar — the best justice Cayman
Islands money launderers can buy?

When the transparency group Wikileaks was censored in China last
year, no-one was too surprised. After all, the Chinese government
also censors the Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers and New York
Based Human Rights Watch. And when Wikileaks published the secret
censorship lists of Thailand’s military Junta, no-one was too
surprised when people in that country had to go to extra lengths
to read the site. But on Friday the 15th, February 2008, in the
home of the free and the land of the brave, and a constitution which
states “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press”, the Wikileaks.org press was shutdown:

BANK JULIUS BAER & CO. LTD, a
Swiss entity; and JULIUS BAER BANK
AND TRUST CO. LTD, a Cayman Island ORDER GRANTING
entity, PERMANENT INJUNCTION

WIKILEAKS, an entity of unknown form;
WIKILEAKS.ORG, an entity of unknown
form; DYNADOT, LLC, a California
limited liability company; and DOES 1
through 10, inclusive,
[..]
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:

[..]
Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting
records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the
domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or
any other website or server other than a blank park page,
until further order of this Court.

The Cayman Islands is located between Cuba and Honduras. In July
2000, the United States Department of the Treasure Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network issued an advisory states stating that there
were “serious deficiencies in the counter-money laundering systems
of the Cayman Islands”, “Cayman Islands law makes it impossible for
the supervisory and regulatory authority to obtain information held
by financial institutions regarding their client’s identity”, “Failure
of financial institutions in the Cayman Islands to report suspicious
transactions is not subject to penalty” and that “These deficiencies,
among others, have caused the Cayman Islands to be identified by the
Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (The ‘FATF’) as
non-cooperative in the fight against money laundering”. As of 2006
the U.S. State Department listed the Cayman Islands in its money
laundering “Countries of Primary Concern”.

The Cayman’s case is not the first time Wikileaks has tackled
bad banks. In the second half of last year Wikileaks exposed over
$4,500,000,000′s worth of money laundering including by the former
president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi (see
http://wikileaks.be/wiki/The_looting_of_Kenya_under_President_moi
which became the Guardian’s front page story in September 2007 and
swung the Kenyan vote by 10% leading into the December 2007 election
and http://wikileaks.be/wiki/A_Charter_House_of_horrors reported
in the Nairobi paper The Standard and now the subject of a High
Court Case in Kenya).

To find an injunction similar to the Cayman’s case, we need to go
back to Monday June 15, 1971 when the New York Times published
excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg’s leaked “Pentagon Papers” and found
itself enjoined the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the
equivalent of forcing the Times’ printers to print blank pages and
its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found
the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.

The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint
and is clearly unconstitutional. It was granted on Thursday
afternoon by California district court judge White, Bush appointee
and former prosecutor.

The order was written by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer
lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or
representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several
Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior
to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust
structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.
The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by
offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman
Island’s operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks
servers which are based in several countries, the order was served
on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the ‘Wikileaks.org’ name through — California registrar Dynadot, who then
used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for ‘Wikileaks.org’.
The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order
from from even linking to the documents.

In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup
sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.de (Germany)
which remain active. Wikileaks never expected to be using
the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of
all places, the United States.

The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction.

Wikileaks will keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of
suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication
of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.

Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney’s in S.F on roster to deal with
a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice “by email” prior
to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation
California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a
personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.

White signed the order, drafted by the Cayman Islands bank’s lawyers without a
single amendment.

The injunction claims to be permanent, although the case is only
preliminary.

Wikileaks remains available publishing from non-US, non-Chinese
jurisdictions including http://wikileaks.cx/ and http://wikileaks.be/.
See http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Wikileaks:Cover_Names for more.

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Bank_Julius_Baer_vs._Wikileaks

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/images/Dynadot-injunction.pdf

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Die_Akten_des_Hurricane_Man

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Clouds_on_the_Cayman_tax_heaven”

Here’s a letter from former Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich that’s quite appropriate to the topic. We’ve hit a point where it’s not about political affiliation anymore. Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives should all gather and watch as the founding principles of our nation are systematically destroyed (think I’m exaggerating? check out sites like rawstory.com (mainstream media in the US rarely broadcasts anything that goes against Bush anymore).

“Dear Supporter,
Today is the sixth anniversary of my “Prayer for America” speech. Please take a moment to read the speech or watch it on YouTube:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8528466337 …

In light of the events that have taken place since I wrote and delivered it on February 17, 2002, you will see that long before anyone else in Congress saw the danger our country was headed toward, I spoke out — truthfully and forcefully.

I need your help to continue to be the voice of the people. My primary election is on March 4th, just a little more than two weeks from now. Today’s newspaper is reporting, once again, that I am being outspent heavily in my efforts for re-election. What is not said is where the money is coming from: Corporate interests whose narrow concerns do not allow for peace, for health care for all, for workers’ rights. I can and will continue to speak out with your support.

The working men and women of my district are working hard to protect this seat, which belongs to them. They are going door to door throughout the neighborhoods of the Cleveland area. Just yesterday, hundreds of dedicated citizens from all walks of life fanned out all across the District to spread the word about the importance of holding on to this Congressional seat so their voices will continue to be heard and represented in Washington.

With a million dollars being spent against us on negative ads, false claims, and misrepresentations, we need additional funds to make sure that our message gets on television, radio, and through the mails.

Please contribute as generously as you can at http://www.kucinich.us/contribute.html to ensure that the people continue to be represented in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Let our Prayer for America on this day in 2008 be one of determination that we will save our government — and this Congressional seat — from corporate control.

Dennis”

Great words from a true American. On the positive side the internet is ours. By ours I mean every free thinking person on the planet with access. We will NOT be stopped. There are already dozens of mirrors of wikileaks and every other site dedicated to telling the truth. Strike one site down and hundreds will rise to speak out against tyranny, fascism and other anti-freedom acts. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m getting back to teaching my son what America is really about (it has nothing to do with worshipping the government blindly).

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MacAppADay is your free source for apps for your mac. Throughout December, each and every day, we’ll give away 5000 copies of a popular mac application. Even if all the apps were only worth $5.00, that’d be $150.00. And some of them are worth a lot more. Oh, and this is not a competition. Everyone gets every single application. All you have to do is remember to visit the site each day from the 1st December. And there’s a bonus on New Years! We’re not joking.

If you’re a Mac User enjoy the apps, if you’re not a Mac User get yourself one for Christmas (and pass the link on to your Mac using friends.

MacAppADay

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The entire issue started with it overheating enough to cause a small burn on Zoe’s hand. After 3 trips to the apple store and being told “there’s nothing wrong with it”, Apple recalled the batteries of an additional 1.5 million units. I went back to the store and let them know yet again that an injury had taken place and was told to “call tech support” again.

Well knowing full well that I had a planned trip to San Jose I realized that I could just drop by the Apple campus and plunk myself down in the lobby until the issue was resolved. Initially I was put on the phone with someone from the “office of the CEO” named Melissa who said that my only recourse was to call tech support. I gave her my number to have someone call me that day and then went back to the lobby desk and asked for someone to meet with me face to face. About 20 minutes later I was called by Nathan Phillips with Corporate Executive Relations who came straight down to the lobby once he discovered I was still in the building.

I explained the entire story to him and gave him the paperwork and reports I had regarding the initial overheating problem, the response from the Genius bar at my local store as well as showed him the red area on Zoe’s hand (2 months after the burn). He let me know that Apple was not happy with the way I was treated and contrary to protocol took my powebook in order to get in the hands of engineers as quickly as possible.

He let me know that in the event it could be repaired that I would get a new machine. With a quick handshake and a promise to get to the bottom of why an injury claim was processed in an expedited manner we went home.

The next morning around 9am I got a call from Nathan asking if I would mind going through the very lengthy checklist of questions regarding the battery issue and the injury as well as letting me know that it would take Apple’s engineers 2-3 weeks to start examining the unit, so would I be ok with waiting that long to get some sort of resolution. I made sure to tell him that since I hadn’t been able to use the powerbook for two months waiting another month was unacceptable. I said having a working machine as soon as possible would be necessary. He promised to try and figure out a solution and would call me back.

After that call I went back to packing up all of the gifts Zoe received at the baby shower we were in San Jose to attend. About 10:15 in the morning Nathan called yet again to ask if it would be acceptable to get a 17″ machine in lieu of a 15″ macbook pro since I had an 8x superdrive and the 15″ macbooks did not have that feature. I of course said “that would be fine” and after asking a few other questions said he’d call me back.

A few hours later while out at lunch he called to let me know that a 17″ Macbook Pro with all of the options would be waiting for me at the Santa Clara Apple store. I then asked him about getting a new case since my old case liner was for 15″ powerbooks or smaller. He said that it would be unlikely and he was already at the limits of what he could do. I got to the Apple store and identified myself to the manager Ron and he handed me my new Macbook as well as asked if I needed a case to go with it. I said that would be great.

So after all was said and done I did manage to get the issue resolved, Zoe’s hand is fine and I have a brand new $3000 piece of gorgeous dual booting (yay base camp + vista) Macbook Pro as well as a neoprene case to transport it in. Yesterday I received a call from the store manager from the local Apple store to ask me who I dealt with at the store that dropped the ball. I received a very heartfelt apology from her as well as a free year of .Mac service plus Apple Pro Care for a year as well. I’m still waiting though to discover if any data can be recovered from my powerbook and the 2000+ photos in iphoto I hadn’t had a chance to backup once it died.

Thanks to Terry @ the Portland Apple Stores, Nathan Phillips at Apple and the 3 folks at tech support I spoke to. in resolving this, now if you’ll excuse me I have older backups to restore as well as my ipod to connect to the new machine.

Here’s one of the “unboxing” shots I took while opening it:

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Today while perusing Boingboing.net with my morning coffee in hand I discovered that joy of joys my powerbook has a battery that may cause overheating a possibility of burns and even of exploding. Now mind you as a typical male I do have a normal fondness for things exploding. $2500 notebook computers however do not fall into that category.

It really pisses me off that this recall (which had to have taken longer than a few weeks for apple to prepare for/announce) is likely the cause for my exact issue with my powerbook. The fact that they didn’t automatically call me about this from the local store (there is a nice database that allows them to look that stuff up quite easily) and also dismissed my issue as being “nonexistant” (did I mention the fact there is a slight bulge in the battery itself near the pins?)

I doubt Apple will make good on it but since I’ve had a prior to this recall report of impaired performance from my powerbook as well as a minor injury from it I think I’m entitled to something more than just a replacement battery. This seems like a case for warranty exchange of the entire system.

YABR (Yet another battery recall): Apple recalls 1.8M Sony units
Battery Exchange Program iBook G4 and PowerBook G4

UPDATED!!
Apple makes it all ok again

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Here’s the list:

• PHPStudio: PHP Studio is a complete, elegant, and hugely usable PHP code editor. It isn’t an extension to your PHP development workforce; it is your workforce. – $25.00 or try it free
• CastLife: Easily create RSS feeds that update whenever you “cast” audio, video, photos, and more. – $9.99 or try it free
• AppZapper: The un-installer Appler forgot. – $12.95 or try it free
• Soulver: A buttonless calculator that’s all intuition and no confusion – $12.95 or try it free
• World of Where: “Great way to learn the capital cities and countries of the world.” – $11.95 or try it free

All in all a really great selection of apps. I’m personally most excited about PHPStudio. I’ve had my eye on that for awhile but hadn’t taken the time to buy it yet. Thankfully my laziness pays off yet again as I get it for 1/5th the normal price.
All told my $5 investment has netted me a windfall of $72.84 worth of great software. I likely won’t use all of these applications but I’m thrilled to have participated in the MysteryZot and can’t wait for the next one.

For more amazing deals head over to MacZot.com and see what all the fuss is about.

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What is a mystery zot you may be asking, well according to maczot.com it’s:

On our 5th Myztery ZOT we ‘ve decided to make a great offer — a $5 offer. The trick: These are great apps. Don’t ask what’s in the bundle. If you can risk $5, you’ll love it.
It’s a complete mystery. You’re taking a chance. Most people love these. Some can’t handle the pressure. Will you buy? or Will you break?

I can’t wait, discounted Mac apps is always a bonus to me.

If you have a mac and you want to spend $5 on a great bundle (whatever it is) head here: macZOT!

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