I'd like an opt-out button for things other than email.

A few years ago, when I did the Club Med thing, they gave you a bright yellow wristband to wear so you'd know (and they'd know) you were pwned by the Club for your stay.

And really, I had no complaints about the whole stay there, except: It was damned hard to get frickin' left alone. I went solo, and brought along a huge stack of books, and planned to get through as many pages as possible, while optionally giving myself a bit o' the melanoma. (I scored on that last part; I gave myself a heat-related, itchy rash on the legs.) Anyway, if I was anywhere other than the beach, and alone, invariably someone working with the Club would come up and sit down and initiate chat.

And you know, if I have a book open in front of me, and I've picked the one empty table in the late lunch room, it's a fairly safe bet I'm there to be left alone. But it was like they had the Eleanor Rigby mandate — no, no look at all the lonely people.

I decided that next time, I want the "leave me alone" wristband. If you're wearing it, stay away.

Anyhow, all of that surfaced again recently when I finally realized that the last Harry Potter book is due out. (I'd realized this a while back; you'd have to have a brick touching your brain through your nostril to not know it's coming.) I'd like to read that book in my own free time, sometime after I've pored through the small stack of other reading I'd like to do. But because the Venn diagram of Early Harry Potter Readers almost entirely overlaps with Manic Computer Users and Frequent Blog Posters, I'm now going to be afraid to use the Interwebs until I've read it. Because some fool is going to make some kind of half-knowing, wink-wink remark in the headline of a blog post and All the Secrets Will Be Revealed.

(Or, as already happened: Someone posted a link to the main URL of a blog, not the entry's permalink, and I clicked over to read the entry. Alas, a new entry had gone at the top of the main blog — which decided to reveal all of the "Deathly Hallows" spoilers that were allegedly hacked (SPOILER ALERT IN THE ARTICLE) from the Scholastic computers. The eye, she was drawn to the words, and the words, they were remembered. If true: Oh, dear.)

So I despair of avoiding knowing ahead of time, which blows. I really don't want to know ahead of time who dies, who lives and how it all ends.

I need a wristband. ("Sing Blue Silver" fans, rejoice at the reference.)

Living in the Zeitgeist is a pain in the ass sometimes.

This post dedicated to Lynda, who claims zero interest in all things Potter.