M. has been scouting us some digs to live in once I get to Silicon Valley. Man, I’m feeling seriously goose pimply with the excited anticipation.

I confess a certain anxiety on my part about the shades of surreal. Who would ever have thunk lil’ Nise-y here would have been planning a cross country trek to meet up with her boyo and do some housekeeping. Nutty, crazy world this here place is turning out to be.

On top of that, I’m feeling pretty OK about getting a sketch written out for the final show in town. Did a few read threws with a local actress and comedienne, whose website I would link to if only she had one.

Here’s a bit of trivia about my sick mind. Whenever someone tells me that I am a good writer (such as when I actually put a sketch idea on paper), my very first reaction is, “Yes, I try to be very careful with my typing and punctuation.”

I am absolutely positive “good writing” is simply that which is devoid of typos.

Man, what a pain in my ass, although for the moment it’s been salved.

So, the IP address on which my domain name resides has triggered some spam traps somewhere in the universe, possibly (but not definitively) because someone within the same server space is using it for spam. The result is the IP address through which I have been sending mail from dee-rob.com has been blacklisted by Spamcop and some other anti-spam vigilante sites.

Foolishly, I went to Spamcop’s forums to get some possible advice on dealing with a situation that is just hugely difficult given that I’m about to move and have no home-base ISP. I didn’t want to have to use Yahoo or Hotmail or Gmail, given that I have a perfectly good website of my own.

I say foolishly I went to the forums, because although some of the advice was good or reasonable (and, a couple of folks seemed to realize that blocklisting does create collateral damage among innocent bystanders), by and large the attitude was thickly pompous and condescending. Apparently, they feel quite righteous in what some of their threads hammer as the “war” against spam.

Frankly, I just don’t buy that attitude, any more than I buy the Patriot Act or roadblocks to stop drunk drivers or any number of things that fuck with innocent folks to snag the guilty. Yeah, spam sucks. It’s annoying. It’s pervasive. But, I happen to think my not being able to contact someone for whom I’m doing a web design or one of my oldest friends, because their ISP or hosting uses Spamcop, sucks more.

Worse than being guilty until proven innocent, I’m limited because someone in my ‘net neighborhood might be guilty. And, since I have no access at all to any of the reporting or background information or any control over whether the report is sound and whether my hosting company is responding appropriately, I just have to take it.

Maybe that would be an acceptable price to pay for some people. For me, it’s not.

But, more aggravating than any of the several conversations with my hosting company’s tech support has been the Charles Bronson smugness of the forums. My attitude and my rethinking need to be adjusted to see how Spamcop is helping, and I should be joining in on the blocklist movement to pressure ISPs and hosting companies to root out spammers.

While “helping” me, I got called stupid, my ability to research and think through the issue has been questioned, and it was suggested that since I paid my hosting company who in their eyes hosts criminals, I’m complicit in the criminal activity or at least tainted.

Problem is what constitutes spam is subjective.

Moreover, many within the Internet community disagree with Spamcop’s and others’ blocklisting approach. One of the best metaphors I saw on other websites likened Spamcop’s tactics to burning down a bakery in a mall or torching the entire mall, because the mall owners allowed a massage parlor to set up shop next door. The other one I liked was it’s like the post office in your home state stopping any mail from New Jersey, because a lot of junk mail comes from New Jersey.

At the end of the day, I have to lean heavily toward libertarianism and disagree that my losing my ability to confidently send email is a price I have to pay.

In other words, Spamcop is loaded with cocky motherfuckers who can kiss my ass with their self-congratulatory sense of right and wrong.

I am a sucker for signs and portents, and here is how my night fed into them.

Early on, I got a phone call from M. the fun to hang out with, who is Asian, by the way. He’s spending some of his spare time checking out apartments for us. I’m totally into the picture of the future, especially as he picks out places. (Places, incidentally that have an obvious predictability around certain factors. Most notably, proximity to movie theaters and places to buy coffee.

He talked to one guy today, who was Greek. My longest rental, because it was a rent-controlled, two-bedroom in Cambridge, handed down to me by my big brother and then girlfriend, now sister-in-law, was with a Greek guy.

So far, the signs look good.

Then, tonight, I did a late show at a theater in Somerville (see post below). One of the performers was a nice, but slightly crazy guy who was one of the first folks to chat with me at open mikes. I think it was because I would give him access to French fries.

Another performer, also crazy, was the first comic to ever treat me completely shittily. Every single chance he got he put me down, bullied me and just generally made it clear I was not welcome in Boston comedy or maybe even the world.

A third performer hung out in the audience. He was the first guy I would see repeatedly who would never make eye contact, look generally uncomfortable and never remember my name. He initiated me into the awkward, shuffling silence that is socially inept comics trying to appear sociable.

Later 2/3 of the three guys above went out for a beer with the group. I was uncomfortable. BUT, unlike 3-4 years ago, when I thought I would never fit in and these guys were people whose respect I craved, I didn’t fucking care. I was uncomfortable, because I knew with certainty that to various degrees these guys who I had previously been intimidated by are fucking losers. Sad, fucking piles of wasted opportunities and impotent dreams.

My life is so much better now. And seeing that small bit of the past fucking underscores that truth with a thick, permanent ink magic marker.

Oh and I forgot, I mentioned M. is Asian, because I can’t believe that two separate comics relied almost solely for large chunks of time on Asian stereotypes. At least I exploited his ethnicity with a somewhat open mind and some originality.

Check out Peter Dutton’s show tonight at Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway in Davis Square, Somerville.

$10, $5 for students, beer and wine available

There’s a Clean show first, Dirty show second and it’ll all be over by midnight.

I believe this is the list of performers, but I might be wrong:

Host: Peter Dutton
Clean: Baratunde, Peter Bowers, Rich Gustus and E.J. Murphy:
Dirty: Ben Joplin, Ku, Shane Mauss and Dee-Rob.

If I stay in this town, I will get caught up in some kind of prank leading to the unseemly ticketing or incarceration of a woman of my age. Reason being I hang out with young turks eager to test the bounds of society with fun and hijinks.

As evidence, what I think they called skidhopping in my youth and what the Walsh Brothers were calling bumping:

SPAM-wise, I’m essentially taking it as a two-way gang rape.

I had to spend a lot of time upgrading my weblog, because I was getting hammered with comment SPAM. (Most of it was caught in the moderation area. Still and all, it was mighty, fucking tedious deleting pages of crap.)

Now, it turns out I’m in the cross-fire of SPAM accusations. Fucking hell.

I guess some dick somewhere in the universe of my shared hosting server has been doing a little mass-mailing. As a result, my email IP has shown up on a couple of blacklists. Any site using those lists as holy gospel and bouncing any email from the vicinity are throwing the old baby out with the bathwater and tossing the emails of yours truly.

At least I got my IP addy off of big, bad SpamCop for now. That was really fucking up a couple of things.

My conclusion over all the shit is that, apart from wasting time I don’t have, SPAM really is a metaphor for life.

The problem with an unyielding blacklist approach is you might block something good. The problem with a completely free and unfettered system, the assholes will run roughshod over everyone.

Either way, the vast majority of us who are neither tyrants with maximum control or amoral bottom feeders, end up taking it in multiple holes and just begging for mercy.

Sorry for the title, it’s unworthy of HST this week, albeit accurate to my emotional state.

I’m at least plowing through some mental and/or housekeeping shit in order to embark on my great adventure.

I just got off the phone with VW service, where I’ll drop a couple of bucks to get a complete tune-up and all my fluids topped (I love that visual; I could use my own fluids topped on a regular basis.) I also joined AAA, which is incredibly belts and suspenders, since my VW came with some roadside assistance. But, I also ordered one of their famous “Triptiks,” for America’s highways.

Made sure to tell them I wanna see Santa Fe, NM and Arizona and the Grand Canyon. By the way, if anyone I know who lived in Santa Fe has recommendations on sights, sounds and food, I’m all ears. (Though, I won’t be picking fungus off cow patties no matter how good you say that shit is.)

I’m also trying to figure out what I’m doing performance-wise in the next couple weeks (or less, gulp). Nothing like the perversity of comedy karma to kick in the minute you plan on leaving.

I got two unexpected invites for shows this week, which almost never happens. One of them was even from someone whose email I didn’t have, so I couldn’t invite her to my various exiting galas, and she said she had to ask around to get mine for the show. I ain’t never been so popular as when I announced I was out of here.

Other than that, my mantra is “Think Different.” Among my Silicon Valley relocation fantasies would be to work over at Steve Jobs “house.” Although, I gotta say every time I think of the “think different” slogan, it grates a bit. Even though I realize that the phrase can be read two ways, my ear waits for the “-ly” to correctly form an adverbial phrase. Yeah, I’m an annoying grammar douche.

Meanwhile, Apple is running this picture series on their website:

Seeing the series together like that, I may have to work toward completing my set, which doesn’t go all the way to the right, yet.

So last night I successfully upgraded this part of the website to WordPress 1.5. Then, while playing with the changed features and trying to make my site look like it used to, I broke it several times.

So far, it seems pretty cool. I checked it across browsers and with PC and Mac and so far so good.

Other than that, I’m continuing to hyperventilate that I won’t get all of my shit together. My emotional response whenever I feel overwhelmed is almost complete and total inaction. I sit and do nothing and curse my lazy, fat ass.

Now that I’ve told everyone I know I’m going, though, I guess I’ll just have to get my shit together.

For now, I’ll hold in my head the image of my mother not killing my sister over one of her many moves. Since adulthood, my sister has had the most wanderlust of anyone in the family, relocating at various times to several different states and jobs and adventures. After helping with packing or moving or whatnot one time too many, my mother decided to pony up the change for professionals to grunt through the heavy lifting.

Nonetheless, there were last minute details and goodbyes, so Pat and I hauled up to NH to help out. We arrived to find a whole lot of stuff left unpacked, my sister hovering over various piles and a group of men waiting to lug boxes to their truck. In the end, accompanied by a dense and constant harangue from Pat (which, thankfully, I am spared) and, I’m sure, more than a few expletives on my part, the stuff got out of her condo and on the road.

If order was eventually made from that chaos, there is a pinhole light of hope for me.

This post is hella boring. I upgraded some shit on the software running this here weblog, and I’m trying to make it mostly look the same and work the same.

Not sure if I got it yet.

Hard to mourn a 67 year old man who lived and then died on his own freaking terms like no other.

I do mourn one crazy, rather uncompromising, deeply non-conforming voice no longer tossing some much-needed outrage out there.

For me, he was sneak reads of my older brothers’ books and envy when my middle brother brought the one closest in age to me on an outing to hear Hunter S. Thompson lecture at Salem State College. I was too young and way too unhip to hear his rambles, cocktails, cigarettes and couch on stage.

In my deepest fantasies, these pages are a nod to his gonzo style, when I try to go deep and go crazy and speak honestly. Funny that tonight I had dinner and worked on a couple of comedy sketches related to my own fuck you choice, defending my writing as something other than evidence of violent psychoses.

(Man, I was re-reading some of the most outrageous shit I wrote about the daily work grind. Some of that shit was fucking funny. Like this line:

If you’re sitting in a meeting and you can’t decide whether to stab yourself in order to get out of the room or stab whoever is inanely nattering just to make the noise stop, it’s a bad meeting.

I almost regret the unemployment, since not visiting such an asylum as that gig on a daily basis means less fuel for my funniest righteous indignation.)

But, back to Dr. Thompson. In ESPN’s obit they had the following quote from an AP interview in 2003:

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairy-tale artist. You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you’re writing about before you alter it.

That pretty much sums up a lot of things for me, including why I’ve arrived so late at the comedy/writing table. It also relates to why my eyes roll back and I feel painful pressure from exploding veins in my gray matter everytime I listen to the “insights” and wordplay of the countless, banal 20-somethings littering the comedy-club landscape. In my fairy tale, the kids would be getting laid, drunk, fucked up, broken, hurt body, soul and heart, and dragging themselves back up again. You know, living.