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The other afternoon, my darling wife came home from some errands – and looked at little distraught to say the least.

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“What’s up?” I asked.

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“Do you know about whatever that is on the front porch?”

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I went right out to the front porch to see. Here is what I saw:

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Biohazard? Did I order a biohazard?

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The only thing I’d ordered for delivery recently was a number of books of sheet music from my affiliate, SheetMusicPlus.com. And “recently” was getting stale. I’d been waiting for weeks. The package was certainly taking longer than they estimated when it shipped. And sure enough, upon inspection of the tag that was securely affixed to the sack, I discovered that US customs had indeed been snooping around in the package, and certified that it did indeed contain something in the category “BOOKS / SHEET MUSIC”. What a relief. It was just my music books, shipped in a sack that had previously been used to transport, well, something that was a biohazard.

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My problem was, I wanted the books. I wanted them real bad. But I was afraid to even touch the sack. One of the books is the actual score to “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, which I have been dying to learn since we got a great deal on a wonderful piano some months back. But there’s that darned Biohazard sticker, telling me that anyone who touches this bag is setting themselves up for some nasty bioinfection that cannot be diagnosed, treated, or recovered from.

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So, for kicks, first thing I did was called the “Affiliates Manager” at the affiliate company, and filled him in on the gory scene that had unfolded on my front porch. He was almost speechless, but not quite. Claimed he’d never heard of such a thing before. I found that easy enough to believe. I apologized for picking such an odd place to begin my investigation, and then let him go. I Googled the phenomenon, and seriously got the impression that there are just not that many cases of people being surprised to receive a package in the mail that’s all festooned with a big, bright “BIOHAZARD” sticker.

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Now, the order came from some place in California. The sack, and the tag certifying the presence of “BOOKS / SHEET MUSIC” came from a post office in another place in California. There was, however, a weird little tag attached to the sack, which contained a number of numbers, the name of a town in Texas, and a “zip” code. So I Googled it. Turns out there are two interesting things in this zip code – A prison that uses biohazard stickers on the sacks containing the prisoners’ laundry – better safe than sorry, I guess – and a company that manufactures and distributes stickers, including, you guessed it, Biohazard stickers.

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So now I had enough information that I was easily able to construct the kind of narrative that really appeals to a person whose paranoia has been piqued. The sack itself was a “previously used” item, that wound up in a pile of mail sacks in California. Some customs agent, to prevent spillage of the contents of the box he had opened, grabbed a sack, stuffed the box inside, put the tag on, and sent it on it’s way without even noticing the brightly coloured “Biohazard” sticker. Maybe it was all just an accident. Maybe it was just a used sack, that had never even been contaminated. Otherwise, how could it possibly have even gotten across the border, much less delivered to my house?

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My next door neighbour to the south came home as I was inspecting the bag. Or puzzling over the bag, and trying to cook up a convincing scenario that would allow me to have the books, without becoming deathly ill in a really exotic kinda way. So I held the sack proudly aloft, told him what little of my story I had so far, and he said, “Oh, man, you GOTTA take a picture of that!” Clever idea. I took a picture – the one you saw above. And just to add a little bit more humour to the whole mess, my next door neighbour to the north came out for a smoke not long after – I showed her the bag – told her the tale – and she said “Well, that’s a Kodak moment for sure…” To which, I held up my camera and told her about how the other neighbour had beat her to that idea.

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Figuring that my paranoia about the actual threat of a “biohazard” was getting stupid, I mean, a postman DID deliver it, my paranoia turned towards all the places that sack had traveled between California and my house. In how many secret undisclosed locations was my name and address noted in a heavily distributed database, along with some comments about shipping biohazards, cleverly disguised as Christmas music, across the border? As a person in the throes of a wave of paranoia, it occurred to me that maybe a customs official in California was deeply unimpressed by the titles I had purchased, had a bag with a scary sticker close at hand, and decided to have a little fun with the Department of Homeland Security, and the Yokel in Canada with the dubious taste in music? By the time the package reached Canada customs, I probably already had a record a mile and a half long for the smuggling and importing of biohazardous materials. Then I laughed. A long, loud, belly laugh. No WONDER the darned thing took so long to get here!

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I got a big knife, cut the tag off the bag, dumped the box out of the sack, slit the box open with the knife, tipped the box over with the knife to knock the books out, and then carried the sack and the box to the garbage bin. I carried them with the knife, so my fingers wouldn’t touch any of the biohazards I had 99% convinced myself likely probably weren’t even there.

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That was two days ago.

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And so far, I seem okay…

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Though, I betcha a thousand computers at a dozen intelligence agencies will go “ping” when my article about importing biohazards hits the web…

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Anyway, I heard this song on there the other day, and it got stuck in my head something fierce.  I mean, really bad.  It gave me all these flashbacks to camping with my parents when I was wee, shag carpets, globe cedars, yup, it really really took me back.  And this video is a hoot – Kinda livish, and man, I have not seen a mullet nearly so wonderous as the one on that keyboardist for quite some time…

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You may notice I didn’t mention the name of the song.  I figger there’s a good chance you wouldn’t even try.  But you should.  It’s very short, and even more enchanting…

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNonCwUEuD0

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Say “Hi!” to Captian Claw for me.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1919127,00.html

So far for me, twittering is mostly an exercise in listening.  Of course I have very few followers, so if I do tweet something, it’s not like the whole world will hear it.  See, on a web page, like this blog, it may take zillions of years for everyone to see it, but as a tweet – it just vanishes into the ether.  Sure, the tweets are there for ever more, but unlike a blog, that’s not what they’re about.  They’re about right now.  And that’s really the only moment they have in their heyday.  I have 12-year-old web pages that are visited numerous times daily.  Tweets just ain’t like that.

Cindy uses tweets to “see the web”, as it were.  She follows links tweeted by people who scour for cool stuff, or follow other people who follow other people who scour for cool stuff.  That’s about all I can use it for so far, myself.

Oh, and I’ve learned how to tweet about a new post in my blog.

Me as a cowboy

Well, that went very well, I must say.  No muss, no fuss, got to add a caption, could even have linked it somewhere if I’d'a liked.  Cool.  That’s the pic I sent to my twitter account yesterday, now that I’ve decided to be a bit less, shall we say, anonymous….