The other night, I had one of those “be careful what you wish for” moments. At this point, I suppose there’s no denying that I’m an Internet addict. I’m constantly checking my e-mail (when it works — which it hasn’t been lately — I can even get it on my phone), and whenever we pull into a hotel for the night, I pull out the laptop to see if there’s an Internet connection I can use somewhere. Preferably one I don’t have to pay for.

This recent trip to the Rio Grande Valley was no exception. The hotel in Edinburg was annoying–you actually had to plug your computer into an Ethernet cable. What Luddites!

When I got to Laredo, I was happy to see a wireless connection. I checked my e-mail and then made the usual round of the Web sites I check for updates on an obsessive basis: my blog stats, Facebook, and flickr. The blog stats were unimpressive (not terribly surprising, given that I hadn’t posted anything for a while). Facebook was full of the usual crap: friend requests I’m not sure I want to accept, invitations to events I don’t plan to go to (lately I’ve been invited to an inordinate number of things taking place–usually the next day–in Cairo), and invitations to accept pieces of flair, little fish for my pond, and other random things. (Note to Facebookers: I reject all of these. You can send them if you like, but don’t be insulted if I don’t send them back.)

When I got to flickr, however, there was an update. Two of my photos had been favorited! This makes me happy (for the un-flickr-initiated, that’s what happens when someone decides they really like one of your photos: they can tag it as one of their favorites, which means that they can then access it from their own account any time they want).

Then I saw who had done the favoriting.

I’m sorry to do the bad story teller thing here, but I’m not going to publicly identify the individual in question. I know for a fact that he trolls the Internet looking for people who mention him, the organization he works for, and the Web site that he runs, and I don’t want to do him the service of sending traffic his way, nor do I particularly want him or his minions reading my blog.

What I will tell you is that, in the field I work for, this guy is kind of in the Fred Phelps role. Since 9/11, he’s been one of a handful of neo-conservative nutjobs who’ve decided to use the atmosphere of paranoia, patriotism, and the general political climate of the Bush administration to go after academia. He’s one of those people who thinks that the best way to make sure that university students aren’t being indoctrinated by America-hating liberals is to mandate “balance” in the classroom through legislation. He’s even established an organization dedicated to “improving” my field of study by “restoring balance.” The fact that said organization has, in the five years it’s been operating, never once criticized anyone for being too supportive of his viewpoint (and, trust me, there are plenty of people out there who are) is, of course, completely irrelevant.

For a while, there, they managed to get people in Congress to listen. Among the many things they wanted to do was appoint a “supervisory committee” (which he and his friends expected to be appointed to run) that, when they proposed the idea, would have had the power to go through individual course syllabi and suggest revisions. When nearly every university that receives funding under the federal program in question basically told Congress that they’d rather not accept any more funding than accept such oversight — and, by the way, is this even Constitutional?–things went through various forms of revision until the entire committee idea was dropped altogether. Nowadays, of course, if anyone even brings up this little historical tidbit, it’s because we’re all “hysterical.”

So, I have to admit that when I saw that this particular individual had seen my flickr account and favorited a couple of my photos, my palms got sweaty. I immediately went to my profile. Dear God, I thought, what can he find out about me? Has he seen my blog?

I mentioned this to a couple of friends, and got some sympathetic noises, and I went to bed.

When I woke up in the morning, I did the internet obsession thing again … and then I noticed that, over the course of the night, he had un-favorited my photos.

And I was strangely insulted. So, what, are my photos not good enough for you? Are they too liberal? They’re good photos! Really. (OK, technically, they’re photos of photos hanging in a museum somewhere. Regardless, I did a lot of work touching them up.)

And then I came to the conclusion that I’ve always known was lurking just underneath the surface somewhere: I need help.

… happy Thursday?