Revenge of a Nerd / Channeling an Intergalactic Council
I have defeated LaLiga, single-handedly, without anyone's help. And I channeled The Nine.
Last month I wrote about LaLiga, Spain’s national football league, and how they had messed up my Internet experience.
And not just me. An overbroad judgment vested these jocks with the authority to turn the Internet on and off for the millions of residents here in Spain. Why? Nobody really knows. I get the impression that LaLiga themselves don’t even know. “Just because” seems to be the most likely explanation, based on all available evidence. While the Spanish government didn’t invite me to comment in Espanglish at their public hearings about this (¿y por qué no?), I have been informed that my activism, via blog post, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Now, you may be thinking, “You’re a liar. Nobody knows who you are or cares about your stupid post.”
All of that is true, but may I present to you Exhibit A?
Exhibit A: Haha
Recently, a report by Álex Moreno was published at Demócrata titled, Congress will act against massive IP blockages by LaLiga. And that’s just what the Spanish government has been doing, working to put an end to this farcical Internet whack-a-mole. Across the political spectrum, amendments to the Digital Services Act have been submitted to rectify the situation. Everyone’s on the same 404: Not Found page that blocking random web services is weird and annoying. The aforementioned report notes possible endangerment as well:
Weeks ago, a citizen criticized that the geolocation application he uses to assist his father, who suffers from dementia, became overloaded when sharing a server with infrastructure flagged by LaLiga.
That same infrastructure is part of an app I made. Can you use it to track someone with dementia? No. But consider this: the joy it brings to at least a dozen nerds from all across the world.
And how do I know that? Considering I don’t use highfalutin analytics, I needed another way to know what joy I bring to others. So, I channeled The Nine. I held a séance, using my phone, and The Nine answered. Success depends on belief, which is why laboratory conditions need not apply. I need you to let your guard down, fully, right now. Simultaneously, I need you to consider giving all of your money to Bebop Libre. The reward? A good word with The Nine.
Let’s move on to Exhibit B, or what The Nine has shared with me.
Exhibit B: Betwixt Fact and Fiction
OK, you’re being way too closed off for this to work. I told you to let your guard down. Why are you not following my commands? Go get a massage, or eat an edible food item. I’m sure you can find other ways to relax, too. You know what I’m talking about. I recommend doing all of these things, and then we’ll talk about The Nine. By the way, they’re always watching you. They report their findings to LaLiga, who have considered turning off your Internet.
And just who are The Nine?
Well, you know how in Stranger Things there’s a secret facility where psychic experiments are conducted? Whether or not you do, it seems to be based on the exploits of a man named Andrija Puharich, specifically his ‘space kids’ project in the 1970s. Involved in MK Ultra and the Stargate project, he also repeatedly tried to contact The Nine: nine non-human intelligences heading up an intergalactic delegation on a spaceship that loiters within our solar system. Allegedly.
The more you know: if you are reading this, you are now among the very few who know that Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, participated in Puharich’s sessions to contact The Nine. Proof? The tapes are kept at the Centre d’Archives et de Recherches in France.
Contact with The Nine is quite simple. I skipped the mediumship protocol, calling them on a phone number provided by a private data broker. The going rate was 0.0009 BTC. Here’s a 100% authentic, non-fabricated transcript of our illuminating conversation that I did not make up just now:
9: You are presently speaking with The Nine. We request for you to share what it is you would like to be called over the course of this transmission.
R: Me llamo El Señor Reese.
9: Do you prefer we communicate in Spanish, El Señor Reese?
R: Uh… no. Anyway, I was wondering if you could tell me about my future.
9: It has been foreseen — your astral body will exit the corporeal soon. Ages will pass, but not from your perspective. You are to be reborn on another world as a gastrointestinal parasite with hundreds of spiny bones that will pierce you from the inside whenever you move. You will only feel pain. In this form you shall persist for several human lifetimes, afraid and alone in the colon of a tusked, sewer-dwelling crustacean.
R: Looking forward to it. Switching gears, on this timeline in which I have gloriously defeated LaLiga, I was also wondering the extent of joy, if any, I will shower upon others.
9: You know only confusion. What we call you is a colloqualism to satisfy your reductive mind, and it is there that you harbor the illusion of separation between self and other. For the joy others feel, you too feel.
R: So I bring joy to others?
9: That’s not what we indicated. We said it is possible.
And there you have it, folks: the butterfly effect in action. I think it’s clear based on that transcript — truncated slightly so as not to burden you with extraneous information such as God’s existence and the meaning of life — that I have steered our species into a higher density plane of consciousness by single-handedly defeating LaLiga. Yet Puharich proclaimed Uri Geller to be the savior of humanity.
Can you believe that?
Back to Earth
When I’m not torturing you with my bizarro autofiction, I like to walk in the park.
I often bring my reading materials there. Right now, there’s a book fair in el parque de la Alameda, near the reopened convenience shop, with no shortage of curious passers-by in spite of intermittent drizzles. The rain makes it pleasantly cool for those on their feet, I’ll add. As we proceed into the summer, more and more pilgrims make their way along the winding hills of Santiago de Compostela. And with increasing frequency, pilgrims-to-be march in unison upon rocky paths, walking poles in hand, mainly within the aforementioned public space.
I’ve observed that those preparing for their camino are determined, whereas those completing it are deliberate. Obviously, walking for untold kilómetros across difficult terrain takes its physical and emotional toll, but there is a prize to be won: equanimity. Visage and gait alone reflect the degree to which one has integrated with the path, rather than merely walking on it.
Relatedly, I’m happy to report that my zapatos impermeables nuevos, new waterproof shoes, make walks across the parque and ciudad far more comfortable than the flat ones I originally brought to Spain… What can I say? I’m a stubborn cheapskate. I even tested my new shoes the other day while lugging a packaged office chair to my apartment from the department store. I “walk the walk” of car-free life when I can, and I choose to enjoy it for its own sake.
Psychodrama about national football leagues and aliens, I find, is difficult to manufacture in Galicia — because, desgraciadamente, life is just too good here. Information wars carry proportionally little sway in lands where the tech oligarchs have not reprogrammed the populace. We in Galicia prefer independent news outlets to stay informed about what’s happening in the world, such as InfoWars. All of us in Galicia watch this programme everyday in order to hone our critical thinking skills.