Balancing Act,18

How many of you, Gentle Reader, ever read the Urban Dictionary. How many of you would admit it? Do any of you find yourselves wishing that you didn't afterward? That is often my experience. Sites such as the Urban Dictionary, or, UD, exist of course to satisfy that one dominant characteristic that marks us as being incurably human: our relentless curiosity. I find myself hearing, or wondering about any vast range of things that really do not concern me, are none of my business, and certainly ought to be none of my business. Then a couple of days, weeks, months or years later, that little banked fire spits out just that one little spark and before you can say fire extinguisher you are in the midst of one raging bushfire. I have always known that I have had a relentless curiosity. Before the internet I was told that that was one of my defining characteristics, perhaps my single defining characteristic. Or to put it another way, if I had a previous life, I was probably a gossip columnist, which is to say that I will likely come back as a talk show host. My punishment. I was rather late in coming to the internet. I held out against computers for about seven years, till 2002, for the simple reason that I couldn't afford a personal computer, but also from the position of a neo-Luddite. But I was a neo-luddite with an insatiable, relentless and unforgiving curiosity. I always wanted to know, not just what, but how, and not only how, but why, and not only why, but who, and nut simply who, but when and where. But computers I found a little bit daunting. I have always been slow in the picking up technical skills department, and learning to use a computer with that absurd contraption called a mouse was just too much to think of. It was an employment counsellor I was seeing in 2001 who persuaded me to try the computers in her office. I somehow got stuck on copy, cut and paste, and I didn't really learn how to properly access Google search until sometime in 2004, or so, after one year or so of accessing the public internet computers in the downtown library. I already had email. I didn't get my own computer, a laptop until 2011, or sixteen years after the launching of the World Wide Web. Sixteen years. Why did it take me so long? Besides that it was a steep learning curve and because of my deep suspicion towards technology? Cost and expense, perhaps. I have always been a low-income earner, and only after my first nine years in my subsidized apartment, and seven years of gainful but low-paid employment, could I see that I had enough of a savings base in my bank account to accommodate such a luxury as home internet and my own laptop. I still don't have a smart phone, which I do not see as a necessity, though one day it is going to become a necessity and I will have to shove out and get one. Regardless the extra expense. Which could be one reason for so many Canadians claiming to be struggling financially even though they are not considered poor. It is from those goddam tech bills: home internet, wireless, phone, it all adds up. The computer and the internet, they have become necessities by default. You can't do anything without them. It's become impossible, unless you want to live in an Amish or Hutterite community, and that would involve just way too many tradeoffs. So now I have at my fingertips, Google, search engines, the world, the universe! Now I can give full play to my pesky and relentless curiosity. Except...I often can't think of anything to search for. Or I simply forget. Except for some things. There was an all female raunchy punk band that was pretty hot around twenty years ago or so. Their name? Stink Mitt. I wondered, for a long time, just what the hell that creepily suggestive name would mean. Then I forgot about it. For years. Then, the last few days, the name repeated on me like an undigested cucumber. I had to know. Yesterday, I looked it up. On the Urban Dictionary. I am not going to tell you what I read, Gentle Reader, and this is something that simply cannot be unread. I simply wish that I hadn't even bothered. Too late now. And don't expect to read on this page the definition of Stink Mitt. Not on this blog. You can look it up yourselves, on the Urban Dictionary. Go there only if you must, Gentle Reader. And don't say that I didn't warn you.