Kaycee Nicole was faked. Big time.

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Good heavens. The Kaycee story just took a turn for the bizarre. The media is on it already, and word is flying that it’s going to make the news.

From bonzo, on the MeFi thread…

Kelli Swensen and the N’Sync girls created Kaycee (probably to meet boys online, etc). Julie’s photos were used because she was the star player in a High School near the girls. She was a popular girl so they made her into a fake online entity.

Debbie (Kelli’s mom) found out about the fake girl. She took over and introduced the cancer to try to touch the world. Debbie made Kaycee into her third child. It went on for too long. She decided to end it. Debbie doesn’t think she did anything wrong. She claimed to never get any gifts or money. She refused to tell who spoke on the phone as Kaycee. Charges have been filed by different parties. Law enforcement is involved, including Postal Investigators and possibly other law enforcement agencies. Expect it to hit the mass media in a few days.

I’m chatting about it now in the Kaycee-Nicole Yahoo Group chat room.

Run up 23 Floors!

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I had lunch with Tiff in her office today. Only two out of four elevators were working, each with an impenetrable crowd of people already gathered around the doors. So, I went and took the stairs. Right up to the 23rd floor at a run. Oog.

This doesn’t refer to me: Paulo Loves Eva. I wonder who this Paulo Volpe person is and why he’s going after Eva? Eva seems to be in the Philippines. One thing, Paulo, we do not have any “Filipino kung-fu technique.”

strong TV signal = more votes

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A hilarious election report from the continuing farce that is Philippine politics:

THE UNDISPUTED topnotcher of the Senate race didn’t make it in Batanes, the only province in the country that voted 13-0 for the People Power Coalition. And Noli de Castro smells something fishy. “Nadali tayo doon (They placed one over us there),” he told the INQUIRER. The ABS-CBN TV anchor expressed surprise that he only placed No. 14 when he was certain that the TV network’s signal is strong even in Batanes, the country’s remotest point in the north.

Wow, Ka Noli! Are you saying that strong TV signal = more votes? Golly, I doubt the average Filipino voter is that stupid. (Well, not in this case anyway.)

Impact a Bit Better

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Please ignore my previous complaints about Impact ISP. Their service is better again, and it no longer aggravates me halfway to Neptune everytime I dial in. Wow, I’m reaching speeds as fast as 24 kbps! :P (Actually, that’s the best speed the phone lines in my village can handle. I’m open to any kind soul willing to provide me with free DSL service. Anyone? Anyone?)

Wesley!

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By the way, if you’re a Star Trek fan like me, you probably couldn’t care less about Wil Wheaton (aka Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation). But in case wou were one of those teeny-bopper fans at the time who actually liked Wesley, you can go here to follow his post-ST:TNG career. Apparently he became a programmer for a short time.

Jet lag can cause brain shrinkage. I’d better remember to regulate my sleep patterns next time I travel, then.

Netscape 6 Letdown

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ARGH! What a letdown it is to view my own site in Netscape 6. Is it my markup at fault? Or is it the browser? I know that when I code, IE5 almost always displays my layouts accurately, down to the pixel. NS6, on the other hand, is a constant trial of misaligned columns and poor CSS. Didn’t our tribulations end with Netscape 4.x? Isn’t the new Netscape supposed to be more compliant? Then why aren’t my shorthand CSS declarations being applied? Why do my layouts continue to break? How frustrating.

Let’s see… Noelle has redesigned; much more straightforward now. And shiloah, too. And wedgie. `Tis the season?

Was Kaycee Nicole faked?

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I don’t want to be callous, but this is pretty darned interesting. Some individuals have pointed out that Kaycee Nicole’s death could have been faked.

Is it possible? I don’t know. It doesn’t work to say, “Oh, whether it was a hoax or not, what matters is that she was real in our hearts, for having touched us with her spirit and bravery.” Nuh-uh. She was real and she touched us, or she was fictional and she fooled us. Any middle ground is a self-deception. Read this MeFi entry for some of the financial perspective on that.

I am not about to launch into a full-blown investigation into each entry and picture that ever got posted on her website, and whether these were faked or doctored. But personally, I can’t find it in me to think that it was fake. There was simply too much investment of heart and soul into that year-long blog for it all to have been an elaborate fictional hoax, and not even the cruelest individual would try to take advantage of other people’s sympathy with such intensely touching material.

Fonts and Theft

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Looking for freeware fonts? Font Paradise is my regular haunt, well-organized, with an all-original selection of fonts, sample previews, and a fast, easy-to-navigate interface. Fontalicious also has lots of excellent original fonts.

Oh, dear, Michele and her neighbors have suffered some serious theft. Raffy also has a very disturbing narrative about thieves breaking into his home almost a decade ago. That line about his sister, “O, idadala ba natin ito?” is definitely chilling.