i just read about the hubbub over the
supposed disappearance of south carolina governor mark sanford. two thirds of a page of my danish newspaper were devoted to the story this morning. apparently, the governor took a few days offline to go hiking in the appalachians. he had lost a very public battle during the legislative session and told his wife and his minders that he was taking a few days off. he was a bit secretive about it and his staff and even his wife and four children claimed not to know where he was. he finally called from somewhere on the appalachian trail and was shocked at the outcry over his disappearance, so he said he would be back in the office on wednesday. i have no opinion about gov. sanford, who has been talked about in connection with a presidential bid in 2012. well, not no opinion exactly, but he's a republican, so i could really care less whether this hurts his chances.
what's interesting to me about the story is that little thing we found ourselves joking about during
blog camp. do we exist if we're not online? because that seems to be the rub here. the governor didn't phone or text or tweet or update his facebook status for five whole days. therefore he, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. there's even talk of whether it's a violation of the south carolina constitution. i don't know that much about south carolina, but i'm going to hazard a guess that in the history of that state, there's been decades where governors were not online and times when it was difficult to reach them by phone or messenger or even pony express. what does it say about the times we live in that someone can't go offline? seriously, what important thing is going to happen in south carolina that it might fall apart if they can't reach their governor? last time i checked, they were on good terms with north carolina, so no danger of invasion and it's not quite hurricane season yet. leave the man alone, people.
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i think i've gone off flickr. i'm tired of invitations to contribute my photos to groups with elaborate rules about how you must comment on x number of other photos to the left of and just down from your photo, but only the odd numbered ones if it's wednesday and even ones if it's tuesday. especially the ones where they want you to use their stupid little logo widget thingie to comment with. if i have something to say, i'll say it. if i like a photo, i fave it. if i join a group, naturally i look at the other photos in it. i don't need to be forced by the flickr group police to do these things. if you really want my photo in your group, you won't have a bunch of crap ass strings attached to it. and if you do, you'll find that i won't be contributing my photo. not anymore. you bunch of asinine flickr nazis.
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i think maybe staying up late for the sankt hans celebration on the lake and getting up early this morning wasn't such a good idea.
