Getting Conde Nasty

The other day I was confronted with an ethical crisis. Such a thing is rare for me, which probably means less that I am a very ethical person, than a very unethical person. Existential inauthenticity and it wasn't even 8:00 am.

It involved the use of a web page that I discovered a while ago: bug-me-not.com. This site gives out real usernames and passwords to sites that require compulsory registration, e.g. the New York Times, New Republic, etc. It even gives access to paid subscription sites. In this case I was going to use it to crack open Financial Times subscriber-only content, pursuant to a dossier I am compiling. It will be used to Bush bash from the right and from traditionally conservative sources (the WSJ, Economist) in order to draw and quarter my Uncle this Christmas. He would question the atomic number of Boron (five) if it were printed in the New York Times.

Uncle Steve will be sitting at the kid's table this year. And on pillows, such will be his ass-kicking.

But when I accessed the username and password, I realized this was a real person I was defrauding. Adam Poenikhooser or some such. I imagined a gentle Dutchman working in imports/exports. Are you Adam? a box on the margin of the page asked, If not please log off. No! I am not Adam! What thin, fiber-optic line of morality have I crossed?

I logged off without copping the juicy restricted-access article on how Bush's budget deficits are driving the dollar to new lows and scaring Chinese and Japanese FDI out of the US economy.

But if there were any justice, if that great Omniscient Narrator had any sense of humor, Adam would've turned out to be a real ass. I would have usurped his identity only to start receiving his outstanding child-support demands, get busted for his meth ring, and finally, wake up with his sexually-transmitted disease.

If I am to contract an STD it will be my STD, and it won't be from off some pole in the Champaigne Room. It will be in a bathroom at Conde Nast headquarters.