Finding The News So You Don't Have To

It seems a lot has happened this week in the world of strange news. As I sit here scanning through the headlines over on
Ananova.com,
a few things are catching my eye, so since I'm cool like that, I thought I might as well share. Besides, the site is hurting for new material so this is a good excuse for me to post something. So before I waste any more of your time, let's get to it.

*A businessman in The Ukraine was arrested recently while he was
sunbathing.
The problem? His sun spot of choice was a busy city street.

The man reportedly stripped down to his underwear, folded his suit neatly beside him, and spent the next hour lying on the pavement in Leo Tolstoy Square before police finally arrived to take him away. When questioned about his actions, he told the arresting officer that it was simply too nice a day to do any work.

*Police investigating reports of a house in Holland having been broken into were surprised to discover the 2 burglars
having sex
in the home. The couple, a 39-year-old man and 35-year-old woman, said that they had broken into the house because they desperately wanted to make love. the best part? Police said that the pair would not be charged with any sort of crime.

*A new ambulance survice has launched in Chile exclusively for
dying plants.
No, you didn't read that wrong. Well ok, if you thought it said dying pants or something then you did read it wrong, but yes, I did say dying plants.

The fleet, owned by a company called SOS Express, consists of 4 green ambulances complete with sirens and flashing lights.

When they get a call from somebody with a plant in distress, one of the ambulances is immediately dispatched along with a horticultural expert who will do everything possible to save the day.

Question: Which of these 2 is a dumber concept, plant ambulance or pet psychologist? Personally, I'm torn.

*Researchers have figured out how late you have to be before you're
officially late.

According to their findings, at the 10 minute 17 second mark, it's time to put in a call to the place where you're supposed to be and let somebody know that you're not going to make it on time.

And while you're busy being 10 minutes and 17 seconds late for something, a lot of stuff is going on around you. Check out this snip from the article.

"During that time, 12 babies will be born in England and Wales, there will be eight road accidents, 3,804 people will board an aeroplane and 590 million e-mails will be sent worldwide."

It would be cool if they could narrow that email figure down to the number of them that have something to do with penis enlargement.

*I guess we can call this "Attack of the Bones."

Malaysian police are on the hunt for a man who has been
flashing women
while dressed in a Darth Vader costume.

I'll let this part of the original article set the scene for you.

"Priscilla, 33, a factory supervisor, said the man got out of his car, strutted about menacingly in his Darth Vader suit before flashing to 15 women workers standing at a bus stop at 7am.

"At first, I thought he was a die-hard Star Wars fan trying to impress us with his costume. But we were shocked when he showed us his private parts," she told Malaysia's Star newspaper.

The women were waiting for buses to take them home after their night shift.

When some of the women screamed, he jumped into his car and drove off.

"Next time it will not be Revenge of the Sith but revenge on a sick man if we catch him doing his act again," Priscilla added."

I'm digging the highly creative threat there.

This same man is also the prime suspect in another Darth flashing that took place at a second factory in the area.

*And we'll finish things off with a couple that caught my eye but that I'm not taking the time to write up.

*
Danish Brewers strike for right to drink
Because Apparently banning beer from the shop floor and the staff canteen is an invasion of personal freedom even though they're still allowed to drink 6 free bottles of their product a day when they're not on company time.

*
Japan builds bridge for monkeys
But how do they plan to get them to obey the signs?

Ok, that's it. We're done and I'm sleepy. I'll be back later, and Carin should be back again soon too, so check back for that.

Sellout Central

My favourite one man band,
Brad Sucks,
recently launched yet another website.

The site, called
Sellout Central,
features downloadable mp3's of hard to find independent songs by bands that are virtually unknown.

All of the songs are picked by Brad himself, and each new posted instalment will feature 5 or so tunes that he finds himself digging at any given time. You can download each track separately or you can get the whole shebang as a podcast if you're into that sort of thing.

I just finished checking out the first selections a few minutes ago and there's some neat stuff up there. The cool thing about it is that no song sounds like any of the other ones, so you'll be exposed to 5 completely different sounds over the span of just as many songs.

The best of the bunch in my opinion is a rocky sounding tune called "Drunk Again" by Adrian Mander. The guy can't really sing or anything, but since when was that a staple of a good song? He sounds like he's having a good time performing it though and to me that counts for something. In spots his voice sounds a little bit like Mr. Garrison from South Park, but maybe that's just me, who knows?

So go and enjoy the music, and I'll be back sometime later with something else.

I'm So Not Creative

Every now and then I sit around and think to myself, "self, you have some weird ideas sometimes." Then I'll hear about something like
this,
and I start to wonder if I'm really all that odd after all.

A 38-year-old chinese man has figured out that he can pull a car with his ears while walking on eggs. The kicker? He can do it without hurting himself or breaking the eggs. This same guy, who's name is Zhang Xingquan, also has the ability to pick up a 25kg bicycle using only his mouth, also while standing on eggs. He said that he started figuring out that he could do these stunts when he was just 8 years old.

Well, there goes my theory about him being some drunken colege kid saying to his buddies "hey guys, watch this."

I'll never understand how people come up with this stuff. I can almost get my head around the car pulling part of it, but when does breakfast food enter into the equasion? It just boggles my mind that there's a guy out there that hauling vehicles with his ears isn't hard enough for. And I have to wonder whether the egg thing was his own idea, or something that a buddy of his came up with? That would take some balls wouldn't it?

"Yeah Zhang, that car pulling thing is pretty cool, but some other guy probably does that already. Hang on, I'm gonna make this harder. Let me see what we've got in the fridge."

And instead of getting all pissed off about not being able to impress the asshole, Zhang would have had to have been all like "yeah, you're right, grab me some food I can stand on and I'll do it again."

I guess it's just one of those things that I'm not meant to understand, and maybe that's for the best. If anybody needs me, I'll be figuring out how to drive spikes through my skull without hurting myself, and pondering the best possible way to work grapefruits into the deal somewhere.

Hi

Hey everybody. Just popping in to let you know that I'm still alive. Sorry about the lack of posting over the last few days, but there's only 1 of us around right now and I haven't been very interesting this week. Nothing funny or thought provoking has happened to me over the last few days and nothing has pissed me off or made me laugh sufficiently enough for me to be able to write something even semi-interesting about it. when that happens, you either get nothing or you get this, so here it is.

I won
my Idiot's Argument
pretty handily. I don't think TCBT got a single vote. That doesn't mean he sucked though, it just means that more people agree with me which is cool because I'm right. But he stated his case well and it was hard to come back with something good enough to respond to all of his arguments. Good job buddy, it was fun.

If you didn't get a chance to read it, click above and you can. The voting has ended, but the column is still there if you're up for checking it out.

Somebody out there needs to run a virus scan, like now. I've lost count of the number of viruses or German hate Spam generated by viruses that I've gotten in the mail since the weekend, but I'd say it's pushing 100 or more by now.

I don't understand why some people still don't protect themselves against this crap. Even the newest computer user has to know that this stuff exists and that it's dangerous, so why not do something to protect yourself, your computer, and the computers of your friends and family? It's not that hard to install and maintain an anti-virus program, and it doesn't take that much time either. Once you get it set up, all you have to do is remember to update it regularly and use some common sense and not blindly open attachments that show up in your email, no matter where they come from.

Somehow we need to make it a crime to run an internet connected computer without a current and functioning anti-virus program on it. And if there was a way to do that without getting the government involved in it, that would be even better, especially considering how effective that fucking anti-Spam legislation the United States passed was. Good job guys, I've gotten more Spam than ever before since that thing became law. I suppose it's mission accomplished if you use the George Bush Iraq conflict definition of the phrase, but to the rest of the world, things have only gotten worse.

See, I told you there wouldn't be very much to this post. When nothing's going on it's hard to come up with material. I'll do my best though. In the meantime, if any of you have any topic ideas or interesting stuff to pass along, leave a comment or send it to me and I'll see what I can come up with.

Until we talk again, save the whales, and see if you can collect the whole set.

"Belief in sex-mad demon tests nerves in Zanzibar"

This is one of the strangest things I've ever read,
and I suggest that you all click over and read it too, even if it's for no other reason than that this might be your only chance to see the words "sodomizing gremlin" in a serious news article.

I'm not even going to try summarizing this one, because nothing I could possibly write could put any more of a weird spin on it.

Welcome To The Action Zone

I had some time to waste today so I decided to spend as much of it as I could getting caught up on my wrestling viewing, and I think I did pretty well.

I finally got around to watching Backlash, which was a pretty good show. The Jericho Benjamin and Benoit Edge matches were great, and Triple H and Batista in the main wasn't bad either. It was a bit slow going but it picked up for the finish and managed to hold my interest pretty well. I'm just not sure I like the idea of the one time that Triple H hitt his finisher being the one time that the ref couldn't count it since that leaves things open for a third match between the 2 which I really don't want to see. It's not that the matches are bad, it's more that I'd rather see somebody else get the next title match since watching the same booking patterns for the better part of 5 years tends to get a little old after a while. But over all there was more good than bad on the show and the bad was kept reasonably short so I was happy.

I also managed to get myself caught up on
TNA,
JAPW,
and just about caught up on
NECW.

but the most entertaining thing I watched today wasn't any of those, oh no, not even close. That honour goes to
NWA Virginia's Action Zone,
which might just be the funniest TV show around. Problem is, it's not supposed to be funny, which makes it even funnier.

The show is hosted by Rick OBrien, who is quite possibly the worst wrestling announcer alive. Seriously, if you watch Rick for a few minutes you'll never rag on Todd Grisham again. Yeah, he's that bad, and he's made worse by the mistakes of the crack technical squad who's job it is to make the show look good.

In the month or so that the show has been on the net, I've seen so many production train wrecks that I've honestly lost count. But here are a few of my personal favourites.

*OBrien's kid, or at the very least a kid that he got suckered into bringing to the show with him keeps bothering him while he's doing his best to call the action on the first episode, causing him to stop in the middle of several matches to quiet the little shit down and carry on fairly lengthy conversations with it leaving his rotating cast of colour commentators to handle the play by play as best they can and in one case even handle the kid because OBrien is getting way too flustered to deal with 2 things at once. And just to make a bad situation even worse, you can hear what he's saying off mike if you listen really hard. Eventually you even get to hear OBrien tell the kid to shut up before he has a chance to turn his head completely away from the microphone.

*OBrien forgets who he's talking to and keeps calling him by the wrong name even though the guy is sitting right next to him. We can lump this in whith OBrien's constant hesitation before saying anybody's name as if he has to look at his notes to see who's in the ring or what he's supposed to say next. To cover these hesitations, OBrien says "none other than" before he talks about anybody. It generally sounds like this:

"Coming up we'll here some comments that were made earlier by...none other than...Bad News Johnson. Yes...um...none other than Bad News Johnson had some strong words to say about...none other than...The Pain Master erlier on today and we will here those comments coming right up in a few minutes."

I gave some thought to trying out the Rick OBrien None Other Than Drinking Game, but scrapped the idea after realizing that 1 episode would probably kill me.

But speaking of Bad News Johnson and The Pain Master, they were part of my favourite Action Zone moment up to this point.

*The 2 of them were having a really bad match, a fact that OBrien was more than willing to constantly point out to all of us. They were messing up standing side headlocks, it was awful. But if there's one thing I've learned from the Action Zone, it's that nothing is ever bad enough and that they're always willing to go that extra mile to make whatever it is just a little bit worse.

During the match there is some sort of massive problem with the camera and the audio which causes the video and sound to disappear. Well ok, not all of the sound disappears, you can still hear OBrien who thankfully decides to do the professional thing and let all of us know that the regular camera guy isn't there that day and then wonder out loud why the substitute guy can't fix it.

We end up missing a match finish that OBrien does his best to call anyway, winding it up with what could very well be the best play by play ever. This is an almost direct quote, sorry if I mess up a few words here and there but you'll more than get the idea.

"What you all didn't see there while we were having our glitch was Bad News Johnson rocking and rolling his way to a rather forgettable win over The Pain Master who was making his NWA Virginia debut here tonight, probably the only time you'll see him here."

He then awkwardly throws it to a backstage segment and this is where things get really good.

"That match sucked," OBrien says, thinking that his mic is off. Then, realizing that it isn't, he adds, "you can edit that part out, right?"

[There's a short pause while somebody answers yes.]

"Ok good."

That episode also features somebody who I assume is the camera guy humming random tunes a little too close to a microphone during the main event and making noises like he's having a female orgasm whenever guys take certain bumps. The guy even does really bad "wooooo!"'s during chop spots.

I understand that they probably have a production budget that consists of whatever change they can dig out of their couches every week, but does anybody watch this stuff before it gets uploaded? I mean we're getting to Heros of Wrestling levels here, but at least the stuff that made that show such a friggin disaster happened live so there was nothing they could do about it and it only happened once. The Action Zone happens every week, and it's taped. They have plenty of time to do none other than a little bit of editing and none other than some content screening so that they could put up a product that people like me would watch for the wrestling instead of the comedic value. Believe me, a little would go a long way.

Seethirvana?

I've heard the new Seether song "Remedy" a couple of times now and I'm kind of liking it. It's pretty rockin', it's catchy, and it's got that unexplainable thing about it that just makes me like certain songs. But tell me something, am I the only one who thinks that they could have slipped that song onto a Nirvana album without anybody noticing? Seriously, everything about it just screams NIRVANA to me. The riff, the way Shaun Morgan sings, the drums, the melody, everything that can sound Nirvana-ish, does. I guess that's sort of a compliment since even though it lacks any kind of real originality I still like it, but maybe the fact that they sound like a kickass tribute band was the first thing I noticed about it should be some sort of warning sign for popular music that maybe we're running a little low on ideas here.

Happy Mother's Day

I'm a pretty open minded guy and my Mom is pretty cool, but I have to say that the idea of
getting her sex toys for Mother's Day
is pretty creepy. But as weird as it is, read this webpage anyway because the sales pitches are worth it, like this one for instance.:

"The Older Mom
Is your mother already entering her golden years? If your mom has already experienced or is going through menopause, she may have special needs. Because of hormonal fluctuations during the change of life, many women experience vaginal dryness, which can lead to soreness, irritation, and difficult or painful intercourse. Show your mom that you’re sensitive to this by getting her some silicone or water-based lubricant enriched with vitamin E. Not only will it improve her sex life, but she may even find that applying a bit of lube daily soothes those tender vaginal tissues. If she's starting to have a problem with dry skin, you can also get her some moisturizing sensual lotion or some massage oil for external use."

There's one gift presentation I'd love to be a fly on the wall for.

"Happy Mother's Day Mom, I got you something special. I figured your cooch is probably a desert by now so I thought I'd fix you up."

And that's not even the really good stuff. Scroll down and either laugh or cry when you come to the parts about picking the perfect vibrator for Grandma and getting some ass lube for Dad so he can handle the strap-on you got for your Mom.

I won't keep you any longer, since I'm sure you all can't wait to start placing orders. Happy shopping...I think.

That's Unfortunate

I'm not the type that would normally advocate children suing their parents, but I'm willing to make an acception
in this case.

Sure there's an extra letter there but it's still not very nice and I'm sure she's gone through a lot of trauma because of it.

The Idiot's Argument

Those of you who frequent
Salty Ham
are probably familiar with something called
The Idiot's Argument,
where 2 or sometimes 3 people pick a topic, take a side, and debate it. And a couple of you might have even heard of something called
CURRENT History,
a column written by a guy who calls himself The CURRENT Big Thing. Well, the 2 of us have put together an IA of our own, and we're arguing about wrestling, specifically whether or not the fans were right to crap all over the Goldberg vs. Lesnar match at Wrestlemania 20 the way they did. Big Thing wrote
a column
about it a long time ago, and a comment and some emails between the 2 of us started what would eventually become our Idiot's Argument.

Now that it's posted, it's time for you to
click here,
read it, decide who you think is right, and then head over to
the forums
and vote for the person you thought made the best argument. I'll leave now and let you get to it.

Stop It!

I'm getting really tired of all of the emails from people asking me to help them update their address books through some automated company or telling me that such and such a person wants to contact me, and that all I have to do to get in touch is click a link and fill out a form. I get several of these things every month and sometimes they're even multiple emails from the same person using a few different services.

The really annoying part though isn't the emails themselves, though they certainly get on my goddamn nerves. It's the fact that almost all of these messages are coming from people I know personally. Yeah, I said almost all. I've actually gotten email from people who's names I don't even know wanting me to give them all of my info. I figure they're either spammers, stalkers, people who read this site or
Salty Ham
or some combination of the 3. But whoever they are, that's sort of weird isn't it? But that's kind of beside the point so let's get back on track.

What I can't figure out is why, if you know enough about me to know my email address, do you need me to provide it to some third party company that can't be trusted? If you want me in your address book so badly, why can't you just put me there yourself? You have the time to sit there and send out the annoying email to every person you know and a few you don't, so would it really take that much extra time to just punch the email address that you already have into the system on your own? By the way, who needs the same set of people in 7 different databases? Are you really that forgetful/important/starved for things to do? For God's sake, go outside or something!

And don't even get me started on these companies. I decided a few months back that I would try to fill a couple of these things out as an experiment just to see what would happen. Jesus Christ, what a nightmare! They want more of your contact information than actually exists, the exact time date and location of the last time you took a piss, and a DNA sample from your first born child! And not only that, a lot of them won't even let you update your buddy's contact list without you starting one of your own so that you can spread the virus and bother all of your friends too because hell, why should anybody miss out on this much fun?

So please, everybody, stop using these services. They're useless, they're irritating, and they make people not like you. Trust me on this one.

This Post Has Nothing To Do With Politics

Ok, actually it does, but not if we use the Stephen Harper definition of the word. Let me explain.

Some of Canada's war veterans are upset and rightfully so that government officials including Harper and Prime Minister Paul Martin missed
Sunday's V-E Day Celebration in Europe
for political reasons, specifically the current situation that could see the Liberal government fall and an election called within a few days.

When explaining why Canada's political leaders arrived in Holland a day late, Martin had the following to say:

""Unfortunately, there were political events back home that got in the way. I'm very glad we're here today. I wish we'd been here yesterday."

To which Harper, taking his job as leader of the Opposition way too literally, replied, "This argument that somehow it was politics that prevented the Prime Minister from being here is absurd. The House of Commons does not sit on Sunday."

That would be a fine and dandy retort if not for the fact that it was already made public knowledge that the only reason anybody made it to Europe at all was a purely political one. Martin had decided to miss the entire trip to deal with his fragile hold on the Prime Minister's office because Harper among others had been turning up the heat and threatening to bring down the minority government. He eventually proposed that he would make the trip if Harper and the other leaders went with him so that nothing underhanded could happen while he was away. Everyone agreed to that deal, and off they went.

Now knowing all of this and especially since he was part of the decision making process, how can a seemingly intelligent guy like Harper say something so ridiculous with a straight face? You'd think that a guy who takes every opportunity that comes his way to make policy statements for his political gain would understand that the idea of political and non-political doesn't begin and end when you enter and leave a single building. If you're a politician, you're a politician 24/7, that's it, end of story.

Consider this. If everything that happens outside of the House of Commons has nothing to do with politics as Harper would like us to believe, why is he wasting so much time and energy trying to bring down the government over the whole sponsorship deal when none of the shady contracts were signed while the House was sitting? Considering that this was all behind the scenes stuff, it's completely non-political and Harper is wasting perfectly good work time that we the tax paying citizens are footing the bill for to worry about purely personal matters that are none of his business.

And when that election is eventually called, and it will be, Harper had better campaign from the House and the House only, otherwise he's just showing up in my city for no real reason other than taking a vacation. Unless he wants to have a beer with me and chat about sports and how my family is doing,, I'm not listening to him. Hey, I'm doing him a favour, because we wouldn't want politics crawling out of Parliament and finding its way into real life now would we?

Happy Holidays

A small town in Brazil officially declared yesterday to be
Orgasm Day.

According to the news story linked above, the festivities were intended to improve relationships between the town's married couples as well as to celebrate the orgasm in all of its forms. the day even included a panel discussion on premature ejaculation which unfortunately ended early when many of those in attendance left before it was over. Yes, I posted this just for that joke, I'm sorry.

Bye for Now

Well, I guess this will be it from me for a little while. You're probably happy that I'll be quiet for a while. Leaves more room for Steve to be funny. He's been whooping my ass lately anyway, so the ass-whooping can continue.

But I'll be off to guied dog school, I leave bright and early tomorrow morning. Rise and shine, it's a 7:00 train! So I'll be there until the end of the month. Maybe I'll be lucky and have a chance to write something up here, but I don't know what to expect from this training. I hope everyone will stay safe and well, and hopefully when I come back, I will have so much material to write about that I can whoop Steve's ass again. Na, that'll never happen.

Help Me Out Here

Welcome to flawed logic 101. Today's lesson is about a Rubella outbreak. Yup, Rubella. Ya know, German Measles. The thing we've all supposed to have been vaccinated against when we were itty bitty. Well a whole bunch of people in a nearby city who are part of a specific religious sect refuse to be vaccinated. And what do we get? 90 people all running around catching Rubella!

Now for most people, that's no big deal. Ya get a rash, a cold, ya move on. But if you hhappent to be pregnant, like one person is who has it, your kid is likely going to be fucked beyond belief. Deaf, blind, mentally handicapped, likely all of the above, sick, and might die before being born.

Do you know what the people of the community are saying? It must have been God's will to have a disabled child. "God's will." I love that phrase. Anything can be made to be God's will. Inaction is made excusable because God must have wanted this stuff to happen. If someone dies, no matter how they die, it was God's will to have him taken now. But then school shootings are said to be because we're asking God to leave us alone. Hold the pony. Weren't they God's will?

And I damn well hope that the people who say that it was God's will to have this disabled child, and I will add that these weren't the pregnant woman and her husband, chip in to help the parents. I hope that when the kid is rushed to the hospital, they're there to support them. I hope they give the parents lots of respite when the kid is driving them up the wall. I can't prejudge these people, but I know the church that my parents were part of were far from supportive when I was apparently hanging between life and death. But they can all happily sit back now and say it was God's will.

Hey, I'm all for personal choice. If you personally don't want to be vaccinated for Rubella, and you're not in contact with any expecting mothers, go ahead, knock yourself out. But don't go fucking up kids who aren't even born yet, who haven't had the chance to know what personal choice is before it's likely taken away. And I'm also not saying the kid shouldn't be born. But come on, all this crap caused by something as preventable as this? That's like standing in a toxic waste dump while expecting, breathing deeply, and then saying it must have been God's will for your kid to be fucked. No, it was your will. You could have avoided the toxic waste, you could have gotten vaccinated.

Now we've got the minister of health running around addressing the outbreak, We've got the media all worked into a tizzy, and we've got one possibly messed up kid to come, and who knows how many more. It just seems like a completely unnecessary turn of events. Come on people, if God didn't want us to have vaccines, they wouldn't exist. Go out and get vaccinated!

Green Day

Last night I went and saw Green Day in concert, and wow, that's all I can say. They put on an absolutely fantastic show.

The set was a really well put together mix of new and old and even though a couple of albums weren't as well represented as others, I have no complaints. Everything they did play was played well, and every performance had energy to spare. It always helps the experience when it seems like the band is having fun onstage, and if they weren't last night, they had me fooled.

They also did a lot to get the crowd involved. Call and response, sing alongs, getting people to come up onstage and play their instruments, it was all there. They even let the guy playing the guitar keep it, how cool is that?

So if you get a chance to see them when they come to your town, go, you'll have a hard time not having fun. Ok, so I saw 1 person not having a good time, but she's kind of a bitch anyway so who cares? Well actually she was probably dragging the guy she was with down and he's not that bad of a dude so I guess that could have messed up his night since I know he was stoked to be there.

My Chemical Romance was the opening band and they managed to pack a lot into their 30 or so minute set. They did their best to get the crowd going and for the most part it worked. People seemed to be into them, and even I dug their set though I'm not really a fan. I left with a bit more respect for them and their music than I had going in though so I guess you could say that they did their job.

The most memorable part of their performance for me wasn't a song, it was something that the lead singer said between songs. He was calling out to the crowd and getting the girls in the different parts of the building to scream. Then he quieted everybody down and said something that for some reason stuck with me.

"Ok, now that I've got your attention girls I want to tell you something. You're probably going to go to a lot of different shows and see a lot of different bands. Some of them may look like us, some of them may look like Motley Crüe, you never know. But a lot of these bands are going to come up to you and tell you the same thing. If you show us your tits, we'll give you a backstage pass. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to get right up close to them...and spit right in their fucking faces, because you're better than that! You're all better than that!"

I guess the reason that was so memorable to me is that I never thought I'd hear a guy in a band say something like that, and I thought it was kind of cool in a way.

My biggest complaint about their part of the show would have to be the sound. It wasn't horrible by any means, but I've noticed that for some reason concerts in arenas generally have one band that sounds a lot better than the other from an actual audio perspective. I'm not sure why that is, but the opening bands always seem to sound technically worse than the headliners. If anybody knows why that is, let me know because it's bothered me for years.

Before I get out of here I want to let everybody know that things might be slow around here for a little while. I'm out of town visiting my family for a few days and Carin's got a lot going on too so updates could be few and far between until at least next Tuesday. I'll try to get some stuff up here when I can and who knows what Carin will be able to do and hell, maybe Matt will even come back, yeah right. But keep checking back, things will be back to normal real soon.

Sticks and Stones...

You know the old saying, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names, or words, will never hurt me?" If that's true, then why is there all this political correctness bullshit? It's always bothered me, because it doesn't solve anything.

Let's think about this. Back in the old days, the actual technical terms, with no bad intent, for someone with a developmental disability were idiot, imbecile and moron. Then those words got stigmatized, so instead of dealing with the attitude, they changed the word. I think the next one was mentally retarded. And when you think about that word, there is nothing offensive about it. Mentally slower. That's all it means. It's the most honest word we've had so far. But that wasn't good because people started calling them retards. So let's change the word again. How about handicapped? Delayed? Nope, same problem. How about challenged? Special? Well let me ask you this. Ever heard the sentence, "You're special, in the olympic sort of way." Or, "He has...challenges." to describe someone who someone thinks of as stupid? What's happening, boys and girls? Different words, same stigma. And now the words' meaning doesn't even come close to what it's being used to describe. AT least retarded and delayed were honest words.

And, ever notice that an asshole can still be an asshole even if he uses the "right words"? Changing the words doesn't change the problem. And the funny part is, while it gives assholes the means to veil their attitudes in polite words, it makes the honest good people become too afraid to so much as speak to people who are different than them in any way, for fear they'll use the wrong word to offend them. Nothing is funnier than watching someone go, "So, have you been v-b-v-um, uh, that way since birth?" Or, "Can I say see and look and watch?" All political correctness does is make it very obvious who is different, and put up barriers.

I'm not saying we should use the old words. It's too late for them. But I'm saying stop making new words. Put the brakes on PC and let's start changing the attitudes! If we don't, we won't be able to say anything because anything could have a bad connotation.

Radio Is Stupid

I was just listening to the song "No Surprise" by Theory of a Deadman a minute ago. Everybody seems to hate that song, but I've been digging it since the first time I heard it. Maybe I suck, who knows, but that's not why we're here.

I noticed something about the radio edit of the song that I should have caught a lot earlier than I did. Whoever did the censorship on this thing must have been on crack. They cut out the word shit, but leave in fuck and bitch. What sense does that make? When did fuck become more acceptable than shit? I always thought it was the other way around. But whatever, my popcorn is getting cold so I'll let somebody else worry about it, I just thought it was sort of strange.

In Case You Didn't Know

I just got an email from someone who I thought knew better than to fall for this crap. He emails me and says, "Do you think this is real?" Below his excited message is one of these international lotto messages. Yeah, he won a million dollars and all he has to do is respond, give them all his personal information and pay some, um, well, legal fees. Yeah, right. It's a scam. So I figured I'd explain why in case someone else reading this might have happened across one of these messages for the first time and was considering replying and handing over all their info.

Ok, let's start breaking it down. First of all, and most importantly, if you didn't buy an international lottery ticket, how do you expect to win an international lottery? You know how a lottery works. You buy a ticket, you enter to win. How come in this case, people throw the rules of common sense out the window? "It came to me in an email. It must be legitimate. They mention lawyers in it, it must be legal." No no no! It's like viruses. If it's not expected, it's likely trouble.

Next, how did they get your email address? If they don't say how they got it, chances are pretty damn high that it was through illegal means or just random spamming. They didn't find you because of some promotional technique unless they tell you what that is. For instance, "you deal with company X. We are one of company X's affiliates, and as part of something you signed that allows company X to share information with its affiliates, we got your info." Of course, you'd have to actually deal with company X and you would have had to have signed something that they refer to for this to be valid.

Next, how do you even know who this person is, and since you don't know who they are, how can you just tell them all your personal information? Shouldn't there be something a little more official or formal than, "send all your stuff here"? Doesn't that make it way too easy for them to get enough information to, oh, say, commit identity theft?

And, don't you find it a bit odd that you're having to pay legal fees and they don't even tell you how much they are or what they will entail?

Finally, this email came from the Netherlands. That is the place where a lot of these international lottery *scams* come from. So if it's from the Netherlands saying ya won big bucks, chances are it's big bullshit.

I was just so shocked that this person, a smart person in so many ways, fell for this. So please! Everyone! Don't send money and personal information to people who claim you've one big international bucks. You haven't, unless you actually bought a ticket. That stuff doesn't just come for free. All that comes for free out of this crap is trouble.

No Thanks

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