The Sole Proprietor has linked to Rien's page in the past and was careful when he did with the spelling, hopping back and forth to his URL checking to be sure it was done right. He got sloppy and let this one slip.

Now, this is no big deal, right? Misspelling someone's name? Nobody cares about the small stuff. Right? The Sole Proprietor's attitude is quite liberal on the subject since his own name is pretty tricky too -- Sole, Seoul, Soul, Proprietor, Proprieter, Practitioner, Proctologist -- and it can be easily scrambled. You know, like Rien, "i" before "e"? These things are difficult, the Sole Proprietor knows from experience. "i" before "e" except after "c" and "y" and "w" and some others he forgets. "R" is in there somewhere too, right? He assumes anyone misspelling the Sole Proprietor's name is mentally deficient, of course, lacking the requisite chromosomes and manners to operate in the real world, addicted to barbiturates and opiates, most certainly caffeine and cigarettes, a prime candidate for the euthanasia boys in the black Ford government limousines, but otherwise OK. Right?

BaddGrrl is similarly tolerant of misspellings of her own name, the distilled essence of her attitude -- the lady has attitude -- on this subject is in her response to one low life hack reprinted here from her Journal (9/29/98):

Pet Peeve #2

My name is Lorraine. It is spelled L-O-R-R-A-I-N-E. If you send me a message or sign my Guestbook using my name, spell it right. Cut and f*cking paste it if you have to, but spell it right.

I once had a guy email me about 4 messages. Each one had a JPG file with a picture of a stuffed teddy bear or roses or some crap like that. Each note saying how much he liked me, blah blah blah. Then in the final email he goes and spells my name "Lorianne". Dude, here's a hot tip for ya... if you're gonna try to woo a girlie on-line, forget the gay-ass teddy bears and the sappy virtual roses. Spell her goddam name right!!!!!! Christ, just when you think they can't get any dumber.

Secondly, my webname is BaddGrrl. Not Bad Girl, not Badgrl, not badgrll, not bedgirl or whatever hell these trolls come up with. Two D's, two R's and yes, a whole hell of a lot of attitude. Thank you very much.

BaddGrrl obviously entertains a proper and similarly liberal attitude toward people who misspell her name. The gist of this being the Sole Proprietor feels badly about misspelling Rien's. If you don't think the Sole Proprietor wasn't careful in spelling "Lorraine" the few times he's done so since reading the above, you are living on another planet (and, as an aside, if you are living on another planet, how are you connecting to the web and what kind of bandwidth do you get?) -- Is this sufficient prostration and self flagellation, Rien? The Sole Proprietor does feel an apology is in order even though you said it was OK right off the bat.

(As an aside to an aside, if the Sole Proprietor knew Post better and understood he'd be amused by an attempt at an "IANTESTINES - BADDGRRL" approach to an intra Ring style apology, he'd write: "F*ck you Rhine or Rein or Rien or whatever you're f*cking name is, if you don't like the way I spell it you can go out in some of those f*cking wooden shoes you people are all so jacked up about and go down to the local f*cking court house and change your f*cking name to Rein or some other f*cking Dutch Boy National's moniker and like it!")

He would do that, but he's not sure how Rien would react to the Dutch Boy National part. Without any experience on the ground, the Sole Proprietor doesn't know if this stumbles over some social other side of the Atlantic taboo he's not aware of, so he'll can the "up front and in your face with attitude" approach until he knows better. There's also the pansy assed spelling of fucking with an "*". No aspersion on BaddGrrl, she's used the real thing when she's felt like it, its just as the Sole Proprietor said, you have to be careful, particularly if you want to make any friends, with how you handle things like that.

He noticed, by the way, when he tried "I tend to ramble" on the Journal Ring from the office that the company proxy server blocked it as being an undesirable sex related site. The Sole Proprietor dialed in from home this evening and couldn't find much in the way of sex, perhaps its hidden somewhere and he couldn't find it. Same with "Life, as I know it, is over". Is there something cleverly hidden in one of the jpegs the clever proxy server picked up on or is the Sole Proprietor missing something?

The "Life is over" site could be obscene for other reasons, the Sole Proprietor spent his high school Sophomore year at a private school in Massachussetts, for example, an experience that was in and of itself obscene, but he doesn't think the proxy server is clever enough to catch that. He's surprised the Journal Ring is letting these scatological sites into the membership, though. Or could it be our proxy server, parsing the "Life, as I know it, is over" url, (http://www.eccentrica.org/zoe/) and seeing "eccentrica" and not liking it, and OK, The Sole Proprietor can see that, but "I tend to ramble" at "http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Shores/6427/index.html" seems harmless enough with a title like "ramblings". The Sole Proprietor looked at the home page source code and found "mouseover" somewhat suggestive, although he's not quite sure why. Proxy servers are weird if ours is any example.

So, its Friday, and the Sole Proprietor has managed to offend everyone, including himself. Well, actually not himself. No need to feel offended with the weekend on the horizon and he's in possession of a few rolls of film. No digital camera yet.