From the ol’ Fleen mailbag:

Perhaps Jon Rosenberg is just being his usual bitterly funny self, but I don’t have nearly enough caffeine or alcohol in my bloodstream to figure out if he really is pulling the plug on SFAM or not. Could you be a dear and go clear things up for his loyal readers? I need to go have a bit of a lie-down. I’m really getting too old for these shocks.

First of all, thanks for writing in with a question this morning, as it turns out that the network access I have today is largely limited to what my phone can grab at a blistering 2G speed. That’s what happens when your worksite is on the lower level of a building that’s built into a hillside, I guess. Fortunately, emails are reasonably easy to access even at a whopping 0.18 Mbit/second.

Secondly, I’m happy to be a dear! In case you missed what the question referred two, Mr Jon I own Gary’s soul Rosenberg issued a series of tweets today that included the likes of:

Goodbye everyone! It’s been fun. http://amultiverse.com/comic/2014/10/27/dear-everyone/

and

Dear Friends, today I was fired from SFAM. http://amultiverse.com/comic/2014/10/27/dear-everyone/

Along with further discussions where he hopes that Chris Yates gets named as his replacement. Please consider the content of today’s strip, which is in reference to a burgeoning media/sex life/accusations of abuse scandal a-brewing to the north¹. Furthermore, the strip directly quotes tweets Rosenberg made last night that paraphrased said Canadian scandal, so I’m pretty sure that he’s not really quitting.

But I’m nothing if not thorough, and I sent Jon an email asking him to clarify the nature of his continued employment with the strip that he entirely owns. His reply, verbatim:

My lawyers have asked me not to comment until further notice.

Keep in mind who the lawyer in question is. Don’t make him notice you if you value your sanity and/or existence. I suspect that come Wednesday, we’ll see the first strip by the “replacement” in a style remarkably similar to Rosenberg’s.

Spam of the day:

Google

Check below, are some completely unrelated internet sites to ours, even so, they’re most trustworthy sources that we use.

True story: somebody somewhere on the Marriott guest network (not necessarily at my particular hotel) is running a computer that is making automated inquiries against Google, which has responded by blacklisting the entire damn network. If the miscreant has not be convinced to knock that the hell off, I will have no access to the single most useful site in my bookmarks for as long as I’m on that particular chunk of wifi. This sucks enough that I’m almost willing to clink the links that “Google” tells me they totally trust and use.

Almost.

_______________
¹ That was the least gross report on the situation I’ve found; at this point, there are a lot of people digging in heels, holding positions re: believing accusers in cases of sexual violence, believing that public personalities may be the target of unwarranted accusations, and the likelihood of true reports from (relatively more) powerful parties vs (relatively) less powerful parties.

It’s a mess and at this point nothing has been adjudicated and I don’t know what the hell really happened; I suspect that even the principal parties sincerely believe things that cannot be simultaneously true. But Jian Ghomeshi (whose radio work I greatly enjoy) has arguably come out on the attack and that’s rarely a good means of reinforcing the I’m innocent position.