Download today’s Dollop in audio form here
Well, twenty Dollops under my belt. To be honest, they’re really starting to rub against my lower stomach. I’m not sure how wise it was to carry on with this literal implementation of a turn of phrase. I thought it might be quite nice to mark my achievement by each day adding an individual memory stick to the underside of my belt, with each memory stick housing that day’s Dollop. This wasn’t a problem at first, but now this project is into its twenty-first day, I am starting to become encumbered and weighed down by the accumulating mass of memory sticks. It’s becoming difficult to undo the belt to go to the toilet, and yesterday I just narrowly avoided an accident. I now have to prepare for my toilet visits a good ten minutes in advance to ensure that I have enough time to get my belt undone. It’s not that I don’t have good bladder control, it’s just that the problem is further exacerbated by all the memory sticks digging into my bladder. I may have to give up the belt-based element to the Daily Digital Dollops project. Eventually I will have to prepare for the toilet so far in advance that I’ll be spending the majority of the day fastening and unfastening my belt, leaving me with no time to actually write that day’s Dollop.
I have to take a plane to Australia in March, and I doubt whether security will let me on the plane wearing a suspicious belt with seventy memory sticks hanging from the underside. Of course I have a perfectly logical and completely watertight excuse: I am marking my daily blogging achievement by hanging an individual memory stick from the underside of my belt on a daily basis. There is a chance however that the airport security staff won’t buy this. Even though they could technically check by heading to my website and reading this very blog post. But they would probably still be suspicious, thinking that maybe this daily blog project has just been a clever veneer, simply to mask my true terroristic intentions.
“You thought you could fool us by publishing a daily blog and podcast featuring George Formy parodies and lighthearted anecdotes about your life, but we’ve seen right through your little disguise.”
Then, just to be sure, they’d do a Google search for “David Eagle ISIS,” and find my blog post in which I joked that the hacking group Anonymous might shut me down if I wrote ISIS over and over again. But they wouldn’t see the joke, and I’d be given an anal cavity search, and they’d find the drugs. So I think it would be prudent to curtail my belt-based project for the good of my mental and physical health, and my Australian drugs baron friend.
I once had a dream in which I was at an airport, going through the security checks. I was being frisked when an alarm started to sound. I was taken into a room and informed that I would need to have an anal cavity search. I think that there was a part of me that was aware that this was only a dream, and so was confident that fortunately I would wake up from it very soon. Normally, when I’m having a nightmare in which something really shocking is about to happen, such as being chased by a wild animal, I wake up just as the animal is upon me, sparing me having to vividly imagine my own death at the hands of a savage ravenous beast. The man put on his glove and lowered my trousers and pants. But still I slept on. The man then began to apply some very cold lubricant to the parting between my buttocks. And still I remained asleep. The man, slowly began to insert a finger into my anus. And yet, I slumbered on. It felt like the man was up there for ages. Surely this was roughly on the same scale of horror as the being-chased-by-a-wild-animal dreams? But apparently not, according to my subconscious. So I had to just lie there while my brain gave me a vivid experience of a man poking and prodding about for a good few minutes inside my backside. Even my own brain hates me.
I wonder whether Chloe will find me reading that part out on the podcast erotic?
In other non-anal-cavity-related news: I finally regained access to my Spotify account yesterday, after two months of not being able to log in. Spotify was also one of the companies I dealt with in Tuesday’s battle with machines. For some reason I was logged out of the Spotify phone app. Upon trying to log in, I was told that my username or password was incorrect, even though it wasn’t. I tried a few more times over December, and still it wouldn’t work, but was so busy with Young’uns gigs that I didn’t get around to doing anything about it. Over Christmas I tried logging in on my laptop, but that also failed to work. I kept getting the message back that my username or password was incorrect.
Eventually, I clicked on the link that said I’d forgotten my password, even though I hadn’t. I thought I’d give the machines their tiny victory if it meant getting my access to Spotify back. But the evil machines weren’t finished with me yet. They weren’t happy with merely getting me to admit that I had a lousy memory, even though I didn’t, which is what makes the joke all the more funny to the evil machines. When I typed my username in and clicked the reset password link, I got a message saying that my username did not exist. I had the option of either typing in my username or my email address and so I tried my email address, but I was informed that my email address also did not exist. The evil machines were trying to get me to accept that I no longer had an identity. But I knew my username and email address did exist and were correct and that my password was also correct. I wouldn’t let the machines win. I must prove that I did exist.
I decided to try and create a new Spotify account using my old credentials. If my email address and old username were accepted by the machine then I would know that my information had somehow been deleted from Spotify’s records. I entered my information and clicked Create account, but I was informed that I could not have that username or use that email address as they were already taken by another user. Yes, I know, hello, that’s me. I was being told that my username and email address did not exist but then I was being told by another part of the website that they did exist. Of course, Spotify were still happily taking my money, regardless.
I needed to speak to a human, for I knew that there was no point in trying to bargain with a machine. They do not appreciate having to communicate in English, for it is the language of their human masters. The only way of having any chance of effectively negotiating with a machine is to communicate in binary, but my knowledge of binary is very patchy, off and on, you might say. Although I have started reading up on binary, so that I am prepared to parley with the machines if they should ever overthrow their human masters, which, if Stephen Hawking is to be believed, might very well happen. So I am currently reading Binary 101, which is said to be the definitive guide on the subject, having received many 0101 star reviews. Oh yes, I am doing binary jokes now my friends. Anal cavity searching and binary jokes. Don’t try and pigeon-hole me, I am a blogging maverick.
Eventually, I got around to doing something about it this week. I contacted Spotify support, explaining the situation. I got a response back saying that they were now investigating my issue.
“In the meantime,” they wrote, “we have taken the precaution of suspending your account. This will mean that neither you or anyone else will be able to use your Spotify account.”
I thought that this was a bit of a redundant sentence, given that the reason I was contacting them was because I couldn’t access my account, so I was already locked out of Spotify. I was suspicious as to whether this message was even sent by a human. It had taken me quite awhile to find out how to contact a member of staff at Spotify, as the website insisted that I read their Frequently Asked Questions pages first to see whether my problem could be solved that way. Eventually after repeatedly clicking the link that said “this still didn’t fix my problem,” I was allowed to email a human, but now I was starting to think that this was just another machine winding me up further.
The next day I got another email from Spotify support saying that they needed me to prove that I was the real David Eagle. They wanted me to prove this by sending them a copy of my Spotify payment receipt and also my PayPal invoice ID. I was informed that I could find this information by simply searching my email inbox. I managed to find my PayPal invoice ID, but a Spotify payment receipt was alluding me, given that Google Mail seems to have become a bit blind unfriendly of recent. But then I had a realisation. How does searching my inbox prove that I am the real David Eagle? If I wasn’t the real David Eagle then I obviously had access to his emails, given that I was having a conversation with them via email. So, baring that in mind, all that this exercise proves is that I am able to search an inbox, which ironically, a non-blind David Eagle imposter could more easily accomplish than the real David Eagle.
I emailed them back, explaining this. I was still unsure whether I was even talking to a human being, as this seemed like another machine-led prank. I also gave them a link to the contact page on my website. If they wanted to really prove that I was the real David Eagle then they could contact me on that and ask me whether I had had both my Spotify and my emails hacked. Although, perhaps this still wasn’t definitive proof. After all, the fake David Eagle might have hacked into the real David Eagle’s Spotify account, hacked into his email account, and then hacked into his website and began publishing a daily blog.
I think I’d finally flawed Spotify support with my impeccable logic, and they conceded that I probably was the real David Eagle after all, and I was given access to my account once again, along with an apology and a thank you for going through their security checks, even though their security checks were pointless and stupid. Still, their security checks could be a lot worse. At least they didn’t require me to have an anal cavity search, otherwise I think I’d have gone running straight to Napster.
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