Petal Pushers

Parking Ist Verboten
Originally uploaded by Gringcorp.

I have many email accounts; some of them, like the one I use for this blog, which do not contain information that would trace back easily to the real me. I've never been subjected to one of those angry Malkin-esque blog mobs that threaten to expose me to my employer, nor have I had much experience of anger full stop. But barring some kind of formal opinion from me boss about its permissibility, and remembering that anonymity DOES allow me to be more intemperate, I'm happy with the status quo.

In fact, some of my email accounts have kind of lapsed into a senescence leavened only by new and interesting kinds of spam, and these I torment by changing the profile names. Now let's remember that I never, ever, send emails from these accounts, and my Yahoo address is only used to receive mailings from the Film Forum and Kill Henry Sugar.

Now one of the things I do with my orphaned fake email accounts is change the name attached to them. Were I the sort of guy that used such an account for spamming or death threats, this would be a problem. But in the case of Yahoo I did it so that the greeting page would meet me with something incongruous. Thus, Yahoo has been trained to greet me with such epithets, at various times, as "You Brute", "You tosser", "Killer" and "Gorgeous".

It is the last that need concern us, since I had only had that one going - full name "Gorgeous T. Petal" - for a little bit before Mrs. Cutesome pointed out it was a bit weird, and I forgot about it. And then I started getting spam to the account addressed to "Petal", but I had forgotten that I had once called myself that name and assumed it was colourful West African argot.

It was only this morning that I got something addressed to "Gorgeous T Petal" that I made the connection. And I can come to but one conclusion, and that is that Yahoo got truly hacked about a year back. Interesting, eh?

The picture up top is of a no parking sign on Fourth Avenue before the marathon, which I snapped after leaving a new bar on the east side at St Marks called, wait for it, the 4th Avenue Pub (scroll). It's sort of a more grown-up counterpart to the Cherry Tree opposite, and has 24 beers on tap. Toll! Been open about five weeks now, so I won't be so crass as to claim it for Blighty.