I don’t have much to say at the moment. I’ll give you an awesome WTF, an hilarious Youtube vid which comes courtesy of the great guy I’m dating. Honest-to-god dating, with dinners and movies and hand-holding and stolen kisses. Which is probably the biggest WTF of all.

If you don’t feel like reading, in essence, both say this: a San Fran-based company, Rapleaf, has made a booming business of digital stalking. It tracks the online haunts of consumers on behalf of businesses like banks, lenders, and marketers, and compiles whatever data found–via tweets, Facebook updates, MySpace boards, whatever public digital trail one may have left behind–into behavioral profiles.

That alone should be alarming to anyone who has ever tweeted or status-updated in passing about an unwise purchase, looming medical bill, or tight funds. What makes this scarier is that they also track and compile data posted by your online network of acquaintances, reasoning that their choices will give insight into your behaviors, assuming like attracts like. This “behavioral tracking,” once turned over to a mortgage lender or credit card company, is designed ostensibly to help them better target and market to you, or at least that’s what the company’s founder asserts in the comments of the first article, and it’s what he is quoted as saying in the second. Just designed to make it easier for consumers to get approvals for credit and loans!

I call ENORMOUS. BULLSHIT.

Until I see a complete copy of Rapleaf’s standard contract for its business clients which, in impeccably crafted legalese, restricts use of the data compiled to marketing only, with severe penalties for transferring said data from the marketing department to risk assessment, I cannot believe these companies will not in turn use it as a sort of digital redlining.

Consider: many of us use our social networks to, you know, network. They often include people we don’t know well, or at all. But if those near-strangers are part of your public network, and display high-risk behaviors in their own networks, it could reflect poorly on you. Have a guy on your Mafia Wars Facebook friends list who frequently posts detrimental info in his own space, someone who also happens to be a client of the bank you’ve just approached about a small business loan? That bank, in possession of his credit info, which you may know nothing at all about, could use his irresponsibility or hard luck to profile you.

I don’t view this profiling as a casual threat, for a number of reasons. First, while it’s alleged to work to your benefit, we’re talking about companies that likely already have access to your credit history and financial records. That should be all they need to know about your suitability. While this profiling may help companies make marketing decisions, anyone who has ever read the fine print in a credit agreement should know these institutions generally give themselves license to use any scrap of information they find to pad their own balances, via interest rates and fees. Millions of Americans in this recession have already found that, should they hit hard times for a few months and prioritize rent over an outstanding store credit card, other creditors, even those that are still being paid on time, religiously, will raise interest rates to usurious levels, driving already strapped consumers further into debt. Second, while I can see these companies using your associates’ information to rate you more of a risk, I find it difficult to believe that anyone with a borderline financial history in a network of comfortable associates will be suddenly deemed less of a risk. And third, in a digital climate that is already showing evidence of segregation, it will encourage these segregated camps to become even more entrenched. If such profiling were to become common practice, there’s additional strong disincentive to associate with a professional, academic or social peer who may have similar interests, but an unknown or typically negatively stereotyped background.

I’m sure consumer protection groups will be watching this development closely, and if the practice does take off, odds are they’ll lobby for regulation. We can only hope. In the meantime, I’m glad I went the private route with most of my networks.

I like Bai Ling if only for her consistent ability to scare me and out-WTF?! herself.

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And now, watch this response video:

*walking away from the internets*

*coming back*

I would like to let it be known that I–

*giving up, walking away again.*

I choose to say “twenty-ten.” It’s short and sweet.

I welcomed the year in spectacular (or spectacularly dull) fashion: sprawled comfortably in my own rumpled, cozy bed. I had perhaps more opportunities for partying this New Year’s Eve than in any year prior, and instead I spent most of the evening alone in bed.

Now, that wasn’t entirely my choice, or rather it wasn’t my first choice. I’d have loved any of the other options–whooping it up in the ‘zoo with Divine M, crashing the catchy mash-up Girl Talk event KDC was attending, chatting with the many fine attendees of Doc Midnight’s New Years Eve-eve speakeasy-themed shindig. Any of it would have been grand. But I was ill. When I’m ill I become a capital asshole, asocial and charmless and, frequently, rather scuzzy to boot. (The ability to maintain appearances when I feel as though my head is packed with angry drunks and pudding just eludes me.)

So. Home alone. And maybe that was a good thing, a moral for the new year: learn to be at home, and at home with myself. Or maybe it was just a much-needed night in after holidays spent in my grandparents’ crowded house.

In any event, I closed out 2009 with lighter pockets than I’d have liked, but aware and appreciative of my general good fortune. I managed to stay afloat, enjoyed the friendship of some truly inspiring, wonderful people, learned Patience. Dragged my ass on stage in front of a bunch of strangers and played and sang to the best of my stage-frightened, barely mediocre ability. Twice. Got laid, usually a plus. Got my house in order in many respects, experienced necessary upheavals in others. Put the year to bed on a contemplative note.

I expect 2010 will be one of those itchy, sometimes uncomfortable growth years, one of learning. Guitar, Mandarin and web development. Perseverance, patience, and accepting visibility. As KDC beautifully states, risk-taking and magnificent, transformative failure. Maybe, just beyond that, success.

I think I’m ready. I’d better be. Time don’t stop.

Happy New Year. May we all get as much as we need, and a perk or ten besides.

From now on I’ll have to board my kitty at his vet whenever I leave town. I got lucky the first two times he got sick - I saw him straining. I can’t count on a cat sitter, in for 30 minutes a day, to figure out his toilet habits. (Fortunately, this option is actually more affordable than hiring a sitter over the holidays, and cat gets round-the-clock monitoring.) To prepare for his upcoming visit, I detoured to the herbal remedies aisle at Petsmart, in search of something to keep him mellow on the way to the vet later this week.

I came across this Calm Down! stuff. “Ooh, homeopathic!” I thought. “And relatively affordable! This is great!I’ll slip it into his water, easy peasy. Psychofelis will be kept naturally calm.” As I was about to slip it into my basket, however, I caught sight of the fine print on the back of the label. The stuff is 13% alcohol.

Thirteen. Percent. Alcohol. You’re basically giving your cat sake bombs. OF COURSE he’s gonna pass out. Shit, for that money, I can get us a bottle of OE, give him a thimble-full, knock the rest back myself, and have a rib tip dinner to boot.

Inactive ingredient my rotund posterior.

*grumbles*

“Liliana enjoys baking breads and pastries, as well as giving classes on the methods of cooking and preparing foods with little or no fat. She also enjoys making ribbons and hair pieces for little girls and young ladies.”

Answer here.

Repeat all steps as needed with questionable foodstuffs, taking at least one culinary risk per 90-day period, to keep gastrointestinal tract on its proverbial toes.

*Author is not a nutrition or healthcare professional and takes no responsibility for any illness caused should you actually be foolish enough to follow these steps.

Gabrielle Union.

John Cho.

An actual love relationship.

Yes, Hollywood. YES.

Incidentally, Hollywood, this does not get a certain group of you off the hook for that other petition that’s been going around. >:-/