World of Suck

I can appreciate enjoying a good solid evening of drinking. I can honestly say I’ve had a few hangovers in my life and even had to go to work for a few of them.

However, even at my worst, I can honestly say I’ve never let my work suffer for it. I suffered a bit, but I got my work done. I know some people slack off a bit with a hangover, but they’re still mostly functional.

Recently, I had the joy to encounter a coworker who was NOT hung over. He was still drunk. Apparently, after staying up all night drinking, he stumbled into work, smelling of beer and body odor. For those of you familiar with the stench, think Frat house on Sat. morning.

I rolled my eyes, and did my best to avoid him. Later, I found out that he took a nap in his car for while, and snuck out to go home and get a shower (can’t fault him, but still). He probably was at work for less than half a day.

I can’t abide it. It’s obnoxious, and it forces other people to do extra work to pick up the slack. And even worse, there is always the potential of management discovering the drunk (manager was on vacation this particular day) and deciding to be more strict with the entire group. As it is, we’re given a lot of liberties and we don’t have a lot of BS oversight.

I’m afraid this guy could be the end of that.

4 steps.

Blinker on.
Look for traffic.
Change lanes / Get into turn lane
Blinker off

That's all. It’s not rocket science

I don’t know why step 3 is such a hurdle for other drivers. Move over. It’s easy.

But for some reason, people don’t get it. Some of them just never finish the slide. They leave one set of tires in the original lane in perpetuity.

The alternative is just as bad. They do the world slowest drift into the other lane. Skilled practitioners can drag this lane change out over the course of three to four miles of highway.

I have many solutions to this problem. My preferred solution involves twin barrel .50 caliber rotating miniguns firing incendiary rounds. My girlfriend insists that this is illegal, for some unknown reason. One of my friends solution is to pass them as closely as possible, with bonus points if you can tap his side mirror with yours. Still another suggestion is to get as close as possible and suddenly rev your engine as loudly as possible, or to lay on the horn.

Somehow, it lacks the joy of miniguns. God damn laws.

HELSINKI, Finland (AP) -- Ever heard of the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championship? It was held in Finland this weekend. Old phones were supplied for contestants who were allowed to pick which kind of phone they wanted to throw.

The men's winner threw his phone 292 feet. The women's winner tossed her phone 167 feet, a new world record according to the organizers. She said she has tossed a cell phone a time or two before.
...
There were four competition categories: men, women, juniors and freestyle.

My suggestion? Let competitors snatch phones out of the hands of people actually using them (lets say in cars, theaters and restaurants) and then throw them. Bonus points awarded if you hit the original owner. Double points if you nail them in the Bluetooth headset…

That's right 13 pages.

2 pages of warranty info. 6 pages of button instructions. 1 page on the interface. 4 pages on everything else.

That's a break down of EA's instruction manual for Madden 2007. It could be worse I suppose. EA doesn't even bother with instruction manuals for the Sims.

I really think EA owns Prima or Brady Guides or something. Because instead of making their own manuals, they just push the guides on people. If you want to know how to change obscure settings or find out the how to do something, you're pretty much on your own unless you shell out the extra $20 they want for a guidebook.

Drives me up a wall. I'm not asking for a massive instruction manual, but you should have more than a paragraph for each game mode, particularly when so many things have changed from the previous editions.

So, here it is: Fuck you EA. I hope you die in a fire. If you need help figuring out how to do that, I'm willing to draw you a picture.

Reaching back into the vault for some old school ranting here.

I enjoy many roles when I play video games. In UT, I was a flag runner. And a damn sneaky one too. In 2k*, I moved into the world of flag defense. When I RPG, I switch between warriors, mages, clerics and thieves pretty randomly. In Madden, I go back and forth with all sorts of players. I pick a role and generally set about doing it to the best of my ability.

Regardless of my role in the game, I step back and consider my objectives carefully. I look at things from multiple perspectives. Not just how to achieve my goal, how my opponent will attempt to achieve his. Sometimes denying your opponent his objective is just as effective as a defeating him.

All of which brings us around to the point of the post: just because you can’t beat me doesn’t mean I’m cheating. It doesn’t mean that I’m lame. And it doesn’t mean I’m a one trick pony.

You see, if I’m defending a flag and you can’t seem to take it, it could be that your method of assault is flawed, or that you have not adapted a counter strategy to my defense. If my cornerback intercepts every other pass you throw, maybe you need to consider new efforts at disguising your targeted receiver. And just because I have a powerful RPG character doesn’t mean that I cheated or camped to make him that way.

Sometimes, things are the way they are because you failed to do your job. Sometimes it’s because I succeeded in achieving mine.

It doesn’t matter which explanation is true. Either way, I don’t appreciate being called a camper. Or a cheater. Botter. Hacker. Munchkin. Exploiter. Or any of the millions of other excuses I’ve heard over the years. None of them are true, despite your need to assuage your wounded pride. On top of all of that, I have a girlfriend of many years, a good job, a healthy social life, and I don’t spend all day playing games. I also don’t live in my mother’s basement and I’m not thirteen years old.

The truth is that I beat you. My game was better than yours. Maybe I was faster, quicker, or just plain smarter about it, but in the end, the scorecard tells the tale. So quit your bitching already. Suck it up. You lost. You can continue making excuses for why you got ass raped.

Alternatively, you can accept it, figure out what you did wrong and maybe try to correct it.

Until then, you’re just going to be a little bitch.

Well this is a real winner in my opinion. The Federal Government (read: Assholes at Large) have removed Evolutionary Biology from the list of accepted fields of study that receive education grant money. This means if you’re a low-income student you will NOT get money if you study it.

Uh, hello?

Apparently our fucked up administration has decided that they could “accidentally” remove it from the list. Accident? Hardly. No one, but no one is buying their statement that it magically and mysteriously vanished from the Department of Education’s list of approved majors. It’s just another example of the freedom our governmental administrators feel they have in simply doing what they want, regardless of the ethics, morals or sanity involved.

I think it’s criminal, on the same scale as Stalin, and Hitler, to manipulate scientific truth to suit political needs. The idea that scientists have to devote their energies to monitoring and justifying the existence of their fields instead of in actual research suggests nothing so much as the full force return of the Dark Age mentality. Driven by the clear arrogance of our President who sees fit to ignore the laws of our nation as he chooses, all agencies have embraced the notion that the rules and regulations exist only as a suggestion.

This is what you get when you elect a retarded, religious extremist for a leader.

Holy shit. I don't know what I can do but FUCKING SCREAM... All around town, every goddamn last billboard is plastered with the bloody advertising onslaught from First Choice Haircutters. They're all the same image of course, some guy looking at some girl with short hair, and you can't even tell it's for First Choice unless you look real hard, as in, almost causing a major traffic accident. Two stupid young people with the big, glaring text "First Glance" ..

WTF?

Now this isn't bad enough, no, it gets worse. On a certain strip of highway there are 4 billboards, Two of each facing both directions of traffic, if you looked at them from an aerial view, it would look like a < sign.

ALL FOUR BILLBOARDS HAVE THE SAME FUCKING IMAGE!! IF I WANTED A FUCKING HAIR CUT, I'D GO GET ONE!!@!! QUIT SHOVING THIS CRAP DOWN MY RETINAS.

I feel violated, I feel like I should sue First Choice for their relentless harrassment campaign, after all, that's what it is. Advertising Shmadvertising, this is a fucking harrassvertisment onslaught.

I have no choice but to take a long detour in order to avoid seeing these horrendous billboards.

What, you think I'm full of shit? All right, I'll take a fucking picture of the bloody thing then..

SIGH.

We all know that mp3 file sharing is "bad" because it "hurts the artist" (which really means it hurts the record company - don't mean to tell you what you already know, but this is what we call "the set-up"). Lawsuits and fines have been applied, people have been properly scared, so what's next? What now will the record companies want to impose their "creative control" over?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/technology/21ecom.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I'm too lazy to quote the article but here's the short of it. There exists many sites which provide hundreds and hundreds of files called "tabs". Tablature is how most musicians write music without learning to read music notation. It's very simple for guitarists. A six line bar represents the strings on a guitar and numbers placed on these lines represent the fret where a guitar string is meant to be pressed down. Line up enough of these and you have a melody or chord progression. If this melody produces a popular song, then you know have fodder for burgeoning garage bands every where.

Guitar magazines will often include tabs to popular songs as part of their regular features. Tablature itself is as old as the dickens. Finding massive collections of tabbed songs on the net back in '96 was a godsend for a guitar hack like me, whose ear is not so hot and perfect pitch is a dream.

But these days, it doesn't pay to share. It doesn't pay the record company at all. So now, after years and years of threatening legal action, The Man is getting serious and starting to shut down tab sites. The funny thing is, places like The Online Guitar Archive (which has been around for more than 10 years and remains pretty much unchanged) are community based. People submit *their own interpetation* of the artists work. They aren't posting mp3 files. They aren't scanning in sheet music. They're posting text files of chord progressions as they hear them and helping others to understand what they're hearing in their favorite songs.

So essentially, the record companies are claiming ownership of material created by people who are interpreting another persons work for informational purposes. This is like an art teacher being sued by an artist because they're teaching people to create art using the same tools.

So let's talk about hipocrisy and theft in the music industry...

Firstly, music and song are communicative traditions. Song and melody was something that was passed down - preserving a societies tradition, stories, beliefs and strengthening a community through the knowledge of its past. Most songs were never written down. More often they were memorized and then given to the next generation. Tunes we sing today - melodies that are familiar to everyone - most likely existed hundreds of years ago.

At the turn of the century, when recorded speech was really taking off and music was gaining popularity outside of the concert halls, there was a movement to document much of the tradition that came in the way of folk music. If I was more prepared, I'd have names for ya. But screw it. The short of it is that music publishers would go into the mountains, ask people to relate their long heritage of music to them and the publishers would copyright this music as their own!

Nevermind that these were generation spanning melodies. Forget that no one knows who exactly wrote what. The publishers took it for themselves, put a copryright date on it, and started making money from other peoples oral tradition. We all know June Carter - wife of Johnny Cash. Before she married Johnny, she sang with her family in The Carter Family - the "first family of coutnry music". Right. They were theives who co-opted the spirtual and cultural songs of "mountain folk" and made a buck on it. Their most popular music was probably carried over from Europe hundreds of years ago.

Who stole rock 'n' roll? Elvis? Fuck it. Rock was stolen long before Elvis stumbled into the recording studio looking for a cheap gift for his mother. No one really knows where the fuck blues came from. Shut up about "The Delta", religious "call and response" and field hollers. It's a good start, but consider this - when music publishers originally recorded Big Mama Thornton singing "Hound Dog" in the 1950s or even Mamie Smith singing "Crazy Blues" in the 1920s, the songs, the melodies, the tradition was most likely already 100 years old and evolving.

Which brings up that your basic eight bar blues is always going to be the same four chords no matter how you play it - no matter who sings it - no matter what record company puts its legal fingers around the throat of the artist. And to think - people were really freaked out by player pianos - claiming that they would be the death of the music industry.

God damnit - where's my point? Ownership of traditional art. That might be it. The record industry is really going too far at this point. They were hard on the tab sites ten years ago and it looks like they've ramped up their efforts. We all know that it won't do much good. As long as their are fans of music and musicians interested in learning another persons songs, the tradition of passing on music through instruction - authorized or not - will continue.

Ms. Arellano also posted a statement, saying if she is "arrested on holy ground", she will know that "God wants me to be an example of the hatred and hypocrisy of the current policy of this government".

The story here is that Ms. Arellano is an illegal immigrant that was sent back to Mexico and returned and has been identified as just what she is - and illegal immigrant. Her only rationale for staying is her son, whom she had here in the US. Her son has a "medical condition", and he gets better treatment here in the US than he would back in her home nation. That condition? ADHD. Yeah.

On the one hand I understand the need for immigrant labor in the US. From the stereotypical image of migrant farm labor to day laborers doing heavy lifting in construction. I understand the lure of coming to the US where we treat people with dignity and respect, even after they've broken our laws. The immigration authority knows where she is, they haven't dragged her away in chains. They'll get her to leave, I'm sure, but they'll give her a nice seat on a plane - far better I'm sure than the ride she took to sneak back into the US.

I'm mildly disgruntled about the whole "come to the US to give birth" thing. Anchor babies however are no news. Yes once you're born here you're a citizen, but does that give your parents automatic privileges to remain here? No, I don't agree. What it does give to the child is the ability to return to the US once they can travel on their own and fend for themselves. If the child has no American relatives, or friends to care for them here then it makes sense to send them back with their parents the people who decided to have them in the first place. This isn't a game, it's a child's life. I can't understand the parent willing to give up access to their child unless the child's survival was at stake. Considering his "medical condition" of ADHD I hardly think that's the case.

Boiling it all down what we have is a woman who had a baby here in the selfish hope that SHE could stay. When it came down to being deported she didn't think about what it meant for the child, just herself.

"I'm not a terrorist", said Ms. Arellano, who came to the United States illegally nine years ago and is facing her second deportation. "I'm only a single mother with a son who’s an American citizen".

And.... that still doesn't change the fact that you're breaking the law by being here.

All that aside the thing that really pisses me off, and sways me from mildly annoyed to "boot her ass the fuck out of here pleasenowktnx" is her judgement about the US. Excuse me but she's telling us what God thinks? Sorry bitch, the Pope you ain't.

Ok so she runs to a church. Huh. Last I checked Immigration Authority agents weren't pure-blooded Hungarians with an aversion to sunlight. The very idea that she can "pit God" against national policy is outrageous, and nothing more than a pathetic attempt to grandstand.

"I didn't allow them to deport me, and the community is supporting me," she said. "I'm not afraid of anything because I'm in the house of God."

Well bitch, that house of God is on American soil, and you're not welcome here any more. I suggest you move your operation to a house of God in a nation where you belong. And when it comes down to it, I'm confident God won't do anything to prevent immigration from busting your ass for no other reason than for selfishly calling on God to deal with your own bad judgement.

I am now no longer in need of knowing just where and what exactly confessed JonBennet killer Jon Mark Karr is doing at this precise moment. "Karr speaks to press" "Karr on plane for the United States" "Karr now in the country" "Karr held in LA Jail".

Jesus.

I bet he didn't do it and is some nut job who is so obsessed that he convinced himself that he did. Everything the press has said has been "he was in contact with the family and seemed to have known them" or something. There's an implied level of familiarity there. So when the police did the whole "is there anyone who may have wanted to hurt your daughter or seemed overly obsessed with her?" the parents MIGHT have said "Gee... I dunno... there's that creepy 30 year old guy who kept sending her letters, you might want to check him out".

But I suppose rational thought might have played a role since these were people who dressed their daughter up like she was a grown woman and made her perform like a trick monkey.

THIS JUST IN FROM ABC NEWS - "Is Karr Lying For Attention" ... gee... I wonder...Someone please wake me when all of this is over and the real story comes out.

This is an interesting article: The trouble when Jane becomes Jack http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/fashion/20gender.html. The main focus of the piece is the topic of women becoming men. Yes, women physically undertaking the necessary medical steps of going from female to male: mastectomies, hormone treatment, and possibly even adding (as Gene Wilder once poetically called it) a "schvansenschtukel". The most fascinating part of this article is the reaction of the lesbian society. In a nutshell, while it's ok to ~want to be a man, it's very much ~not ok to become one. Partners break up, women who raise child together break the family. Why?

One woman in the article says that while she's attracted to butch women, the underlying fact is that she likes women. I guess it's great for her partner to slap on a fake mustache or goatee, she can love that, she can kiss that, she can even fuck that - but when the facial hair becomes genuine then the romance is over.

Ok, even I had a hart time typing that with a straight face.

So that's the article in a nutshell, complete with snippets of interviews of women who have become, or broken up with transgendered ... uh ... people. Now, it's time for the editorial - the part that makes this a blog and not just a review of something someone else wrote.

What I take away from this is that love for these women IS only skin deep. In the most superficial sense these lesbians "loved" it when their partner wore a fake beard and a strap-on, but couldn't love the same person when they took the step of making it real.

Don't get me wrong, in no way do I think there's a problem if someone who, deep down is totally convinced that they were born the wrong gender, takes the radical steps to switch over. In fact it makes complete sense to me that someone who has been longing, emulating what that feels "right" to them, eventually becomes that image in flesh. I see nothing perverse about it, in fact I find it honest. These people weren't wannabes or posers, they were genuine in their commitment to become a member of the opposite sex. Genuine enough to undergo permanent (and I imagine painful) surgeries, to take pills regularly, convince counselors that this is what they really wanted. My problem isn't with them, it's with the lesbians.

Ok, maybe it's not with all lesbians. Women who love female form, well ok, it's not my cup of tea but I can understand it. It's the butch-loving lesbians that are crying foul when their bull dyke partners become men. Explain precisely how you can love someone who's packaged like a man but not love that same person (who USED to be a woman) when they become one? It's not like they don't remember being a woman. It's not like they don't have XX genes. It's just that the packaging is now permanent. Hello hypocrisy?

It may not be the case in all butch/femme relationships, but if I were a bull I'd check out if my lady's love were more than just skin deep before I committed to a serious relationship with them "Hey baby, would you still love me if I were a man....?"

I rant to relieve stress. I rant to voice concerns. I rant because it’s cathartic. I rant because sometimes I feel like screaming in frustration. I rant because the world deserves to be ranted about.

However, I can honestly say that tonight I experienced an oddity while I wrote my rant.

I suddenly felt that my rant might not be fit for publication. Not that it was flawed or incoherent. But that my readers might react sharply to it. Some would probably disagree dramatically. Others would only disagree a little. In all likelihood, everyone would feel as if some portion of it targeted their viewpoint a little.

About halfway through my fourth or fifth revision of my rant, where I was yet again attempting to remove some of the more dramatic areas of disagreement, I decided that it’s not worth it. It's current form probably won't set off the disagreements the orginal would have, but I don't want to water it down. A watered down version doesn't relieve my urge to scream at the sky.

I don’t feel like fighting to defend my point of view. I don’t feel like offending the readers and dealing with their complaints. And I don’t feel like watering down my rants to avoid either of them. So it sits quietly as a draft.

Somewhat to my annoyance, but probably for the best. Maybe typing my diatribe, just for myself, is enough. I suppose it will have to be.

Seriously people.

That face in your cheese sandwich... it's not the Virgin Mary. It's not Jesus. And it's not Elvis. I swear. That pile of melted chocolate... yeah, it's not Mary either.

I don't understand people who find these things. I can't understand why they tell other people. I don't know why those people don't laugh their ass off at the nutter. I don't get why still other people journey to see the cheese sandwich. I don't get why some of them fork over money to see it.

Sure, I can squint at the water stain on your bathtub or under a freeway overpass and try to see Mary there. Helps if I'm looking for it already, or just trying to figure out what the original nutter saw.

But really, it's not mystical or divine. It's a water stain.

I'm sure there is a mental disconnect that prevents me from understanding these things.

In the end, particularly with the Virgin Mary things, I’m just confused. Putting aside the fact that we have no idea what Mary looked like beyond the model that the Catholic Church made up centuries ago, I'm faced with a couple of other big hurdles between myself and enlightenment. First off, why are we paying homage to an idol? Pretty sure there were some rules against that. Second, even assuming you get past the idol thing, the chosen image is pretty vague and well... easily confused with a pile of melted chocolate. Finally, getting past all of that, what is the religious significance of Mary hanging out under a freeway or in a chocolate factory? What enlightenment does that give us? Unless we're thinking she just slipped in for a quick treat, proving that women have always liked chocolate?

No doubt, part of my disillusionment with it is that I don’t get a spiritual connection with Mary. She doesn’t represent a significant being in my religious world view. But even assuming a religious equivalent could be found dripped on the floor, I don’t think I would do much more than think that it was kinda neat. I suppose we could expect worshippers of Cthulhu to have intense reactions to a mini version of him. But I can help but think that I wouldn’t get worked up about it. Certainly not enough to notify the press and have a story run.

It's amusing that even though the British are the ones that actually foiled the plot to blow up aircraft, that our president is attempting to give the credit to his wiretapping program. To the best of my recollection while there might have been some assistance from the US and Pakistan, the USA was not the one that broke this scheme, or nailed the perps. Furthermore to say that their arrest is a direct result of the administrations illegal wiretapping program is...yes you guessed it...BULLSHIT.

While the president is borrowing a theme from Iran by dealing with the setback in parts with threats and arrogance, what the judge had to say was adamantly clear:

“There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution,” she wrote, rejecting what she called the administration’s assertion that the president “has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution itself.”

Abuse of power has been a hallmark of this presidency, and it has cost America in prestige, influence, power and security. The world is NOT a safer place today than it was after 9/11. America is at the losing end of a short fuse, even sadder because even if we weren't the one to light it - we're the one left holding the bomb.

It takes a helluva ego to justify why your own personal opinion is more important than the truth. As in the case of so many scientific "truths" George Bush and his powers of bullshit continue to impede areas of progress in any category he doesn't personally agree with. Plan B is a prime example.

First, for you pro-choice nazi fucktards, Plan B is NOT an abortive agent. One more time - taking Plan B if you're already pregnant does NOTHING. Ok? It's a contraceptive. It PREVENTS you from getting pregnant. I don't see the Right-to-Fascist-Lifers protesting condoms, diaphragms or the pill. The problem is they need a flag to wave and lying suits them just fine. The administration has already admitted that the reason they chose to deny public access to Plan B was to appease constituents. I think it's nice how the government of all Americans only caters to a select, albeit noisy, few.

Like most bureaus, the FDA has become a tool of the king of tools. Blatantly ignoring the fact that the FDA its self overwhelmingly approved the over-the-counter sale of Plan B the President and his flunkies has decided for women that they know better than the scientists and doctors with the actual degrees and experience in the field.

It's amusing that at this late a date Pro-mysogenistic parties are lambasting the administration for the fact that they've been dragged kicking and screaming to admit that they made the wrong decision. Of course, if the FDA had been allowed to approve this, as they originally recommended the anti-abortion-nazi's wouldn't have an issue to bitch about today.

Driving in to work today. I'm in a turn lane, there's a corvette convertible next to me with the top down. Inside the car a man is gesturing wildly, catching my attention because of the violence of the gestures. I watch more carefully, thinking that the man must be in an heated argument with someone in the seat next to him. I wonder if he's going to start hitting them.

The light turns green for the corvette, and as it drives away I can clearly see through the rear window that there is no one in the passenger seat. Not even a child.

People really do scare me.

Who else could I be talking about. Oh yes, it's Jack 'little bitch' Thompson. It's been a little while since I gave this man the ranting he so richly deserves. You might remember him from previous rants:

A Pox On Him I say
A Tool By Any Other Name
Hit the Road Jack

So, what has dick-for-brains done now? He’s filed a lawsuit against RockStar games. Yes, again. Nothing unusual, same old Jack-be-not-so-quick-and-not-at-all-nimble, right? This time, he’s demanded ala court order, that RockStar hand over a copy of it’s upcoming game Bully so that Jack can review it and determine if it’s fit for release. And if the court refuses to give that order, he’s going to seek a Congressional subpoena.

He’s a fucking idiot. And what’s worse, he’s acting as if he’s some sort of moral compass for the rest of us. Listen to this horseshit:

so that its content can be fairly assessed by someone, prior to its commercial release, other than a) a hand-picked member of the media and b) the ESRB with its history of, at best, ineptitude in analyzing the content of Take-Two products... If Bully is indeed safe for children's play, then petitioner (Thompson) will be the first to say so."

That’s from the legal request. He actually wrote that steaming pile of cow dung down and filed it to a court. I swear he got his degree from a crackerjack box.

I can’t even remotely figure out how he believes the court will grant this. He’s a private citizen. Rockstar is a private company. What legal statute would allow the court to force the company to give him the game before they release it? What’s he expecting here? The company is perfectly correct in telling him to go felch a goat. He’s not a moral guideline for their customers. Even if he somehow was, he specifically mentioned that he was demanding this on behalf of the children. Well, fuck nugget, if you think about that for a minute you’ll realize that like GTA and many other games out there, this game could be rated M for Mature (18+). So your pompous ass doesn’t need to worry about a mother fucking thing.

Sheep shagging mother fucker.

I just saw an ad for Kerry Healey, the Republican candidate for governor of Massachusetts. During the ad she attacked all 3 of the Democratic frontrunners simultaneously. (I guess she didn't want to wait until one Democrat was chosen before starting the attacks.) Then, a bunch of her policies flashed quickly across the screen. One in particular caught my attention: "Repeal the gas tax."

That is the worst idea ever! First of all, the only thing that will make people use less gas is having gas be expensive. Gas is cheaper here than in Europe. In Europe, people drive more fuel-efficient cars and use more public transportation. Coincidence? But it gets worse. The gas tax here is 23 cents per gallon. Eliminating the tax would be less than a 10% decrease in gas prices. And it would totally screw up the state's finances. Gas taxes are an important part of the state's income, and they're usually marked for spending on road repairs. So Kerry Healey wants to encourage people to drive more and stop repairing state roads. And this is a selling point for her campaign?

Maybe you're saying that it would help the poor. And that's a reasonable point. The poor spend a larger percent of their earnings on gas. But repealing gas taxes still doesn't help the poor that much. Want to help the poor? Give them health care. Decrease other types of taxes, like sales tax, which also disproportionately hits the poor. Hell, give poor people who drive a lot a tax rebate for some of what they spent on gas. But repealing the gas tax is one of the worst economic policy ideas available. And the fact that Healey is pushing it as a centerpiece of her platform is evidence that she deserves to lose very, very badly.

I know it’s a parking lot. I know there are pedestrians. Hell, I give you the Right of Way out of politeness.

However, there is a limit to my kindness. A fine line that I don’t accept.

So, to the overly fat woman, walking down the middle of the road, cell phone attached to her ear, swerving back and forth to prevent any car from getting past her, I say a pox upon thee. I know you’re on your cell phone. I know you’re a fat. But still, something less than a CAR WIDTH.

However, you’re in the middle of the thoroughfare. Not even an actual parking lane; this is the road to out of the parking lot toward the highway. There is a sidewalk, just 3 yards to your left AND right. Pick one and get your ass on it. Just because your ass is big enough for a bumper sticker doesn’t mean you’re afforded the right to take up a car lane.

I made a decision while sitting behind you waiting for you. Next time, I’m either going to push you with my bumper, or get as close as I can and lay on the horn so you die of a heart attack.

I don’t like people. Have I mentioned that?

Something about my personality abhors surrender. I don’t need to be the best or first. But I refuse to give up without doing my damnedest first.

This is particularly true when it comes to dealing with helpdesks and billing departments. When they lie to me, attempt to confuse me, or string me along in an attempt to get me to go away, I won’t. I become more annoying, but I don’t go away. I don’t have a problem demanding a manager or asking for a higher tier of service.

It works pretty well. It might take a little bit more time than you expected, but it generally works out.

I don’t understand people that give up or just deal with it. For example, I was playing the hilarious clip about the guy trying to cancel his AOL account today. And this guy pipes up with “Oh, I tried to cancel mine a year ago. I gave up. Still have the damn thing”.

My jaw dropped. I couldn’t help it. So, he spent over a hundred dollars on a service he doesn’t want or use because it’s too much of a pain to cancel? Over here in Rou-town, that doesn’t work for me. I mean, it’s wrong. Just wrong. Not only are you paying for something you don’t want, you’re REWARDING the company for having crappy customer service. You’re encouraging them to keep it up.

Don’t get it. Doubt I ever will.

I’ve read a number of posts, threads and comments recently with a similar train of thought. Various contexts, but same underlying idea: The US legal system is founded from the 10 Commandments listed in the Bible.

Honestly, the concept annoys me. Not just because I’m not a particularly religious person, but because it’s simply not true.

First off, of the 10 commandments, only 4 found their way into law: Murder, theft, adultery and perjury. Adultery isn’t even illegal across the board, and it’s generally not enforced as felony. Ditto for perjury. The other 6 are disregarded by most of the western world. I mean, if it was the basis, you’d think more than 40% of it would have become standard. Besides, Americans live to Covet. It’s part of the American Dream to want more than you have. Immoral perhaps, but hardly illegal.

Our nation was founded mostly by Christians, it’s true. But the guidelines they used were not religious in nature. Many of our legal structures paralleled laws taken from European law, specifically English Common Law.

The problem with accepting the Commandments as the ultimate source is this: the four applicable Commandments were considered illegal long before Moses got his slabs. The Commandments were given as Divine Law to the Hebrews around 1200-1400 BCE. Hammurabi’s Code, written in 1780 BCE, lists the punishments for murder, theft and adultery. Egyptian Book of the Dead codified similar ideas as the Commandments hundreds of years earlier as well.

Aztecs has laws against adultery, murder and theft. They were totally isolated from changes in the rest of the world. They didn’t get the benefit of Hammurabi’s Code or a Pharaoh’s decree. They came up with these ideas on their own. I suppose you could say the concepts followed them back to the tribal days predating their journey from Asia into N. America. But that still predates most of civilization and the Commandments.

I think that shows that these concepts can’t be narrowed down to a single source document. It seems to me that these ideas are natural ideas required for civilization to advance out of anarchy. Trying to tie them to a single religious point of view and then forcing a nation to accept it as the Source of Law is arrogant and misguided.

I don’t have a problem with people accepting the Commandments and living their life by them. For the most part, they’re not a bad set of guidelines to follow. But I don’t buy into the concept that they are the foundation of the US legal system. Perhaps they are a PORTION of the foundation, but not a keystone or origin. The evidence indicates that civilization has considered them crimes for far longer. And importantly, man considered murder, theft, perjury and adultery as criminal acts without needing to look at the Bible for a reference.

Alright. First off, I love this site. I get to smack down people that deserve it, and I don’t even have to hire a lawyer to get them to drop the charges.

However, I admit. I have one problem with this place. The blacklist. OMG. It kills me. It’s grown to a fairly massive size and it seems to have a handful or really innocuous words in it. I know, it stops spammers, which I like and all. But there really needs to be some way around it for authorized members or something.

I can’t explain how much time I’ve spent trying to fix a comment so that it will post. It would be so bad if it told you why it wasn’t allowing your comment. But instead it just says “Invalid comment”. Which leads to the whole abortion series we had a few posts ago.

I'm just glad I figured out how to do it myself instead of having to cry for help every time. Ditto with removing comment spam from the site en masse.

I dunno. Maybe a CAPTCHA or something similar. Those aren’t entirely effective, but the blacklist in its current state is only slightly better. I’m hoping the new version of b2e will be more reliable. I think it’s in beta now, so I’m crossing my fingers.

Balancing the annoyance of the protections use versus the annoyance of spammers is difficult, I know. And lord knows those little spamming bots can be a real pain in the ass.

I don’t want to sound bitchy, and my heart isn’t really in this for a full scale rant. Mostly it’s just a little venting about the blacklist’s overzealous nature from time to time.

Please don’t kill me u235!!!

The motherfucker who couldn't be bothered to assist with a project that should have been at its current state a MONTH AGO, now feels compelled to stick his grubby little fingers into every aspect of my work.

"Site X" uses a pre-fab web publishing system - something that has so many layers of templates, points of control and style sheet snippets sitting around that I gave myself a headache trying to change a simple font color yesterday. It's my job to skin this thing in a new design and have it ready to go in about a week. I'm designing on the fly because WHO KNOWS how many layers and tid bits need to be touched, given the extreme amount of plug-ins, whizbangs and fucknuts this software has.

And that's not even touching some of the custom mark-up that's in the templates themselves. Things like the "center" tag. And the "font" tag. Fuxkers.

I'm cruising along, meriily editing "the big stuff" when I notice that suddenly all of the table borders have automagically turned on - font sizes are changing and positions of elements which I sweated over shoving into CSS are suddenly changing. A quick email to said idjit garners a response of "Sorry - I'm out of the system now".

YOU DUMBASS - YOU'RE UNDOING MY WORK AS QUICKLY AS I CAN PUT IT UP! GO BACK TO COMPOSING YOUR OUT OF OFFICE REPLIES THAT I SEEM TO GET EVERY OTHER DAY!

For the last 45 minutes, I’ve been listening to a coworker complaining about her husband of 5 years. Apparently, she found his porn folder. Horrors of horrors it contained… pictures of naked women. She’s horrified. She feels betrayed. She thought about calling out sick today so she could try to get a grip on herself (her words; my pun). She’s nearly broken into tears a few times so far. She thinks he doesn’t love her. That he thinks she’s ugly. She’s afraid that he’s doing the 5 knuckle shuffle because he doesn’t want her anymore. She thinks it’s the same as cheating on her

Oh, it makes my head hurt.

It’s ok to look at porn. I swear. If it’s not your cup of tea, that’s fine. But there is a leap I’ve never really understood: why does one person’s desire to look at porn somehow detract from the relationship with the partner?

Now, I’ll give the caveat that there are people with ‘porn addictions’ that do have a serious problem in their relationship. But just watching porn or enjoying porn doesn’t mean that they hate you. It could be that they just felt like flogging the bishop or doing the two fingered tango (equal opportunity here) for a few minutes. Of course, I suppose anyone that has a problem with porn may not like pounding the pud much either.

I enjoy watching porn. I have a nice collection. It’s fun. It’s happy. It’s HARMLESS. So is wanking. I’ll take sex over it anytime though. But shaking hands with Mr. Happy from time to time never hurt anyone

So lady, sooner or later you’ve got to come to grips (haha) with the fact that your husband enjoys a perfectly normal pastime. And it doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you or isn’t attracted to you. It means he likes to look at naked women. Maybe strangle the serpent some. It also doesn’t come CLOSE to being unfaithful. Trust me when I say there is a WORLD of difference between the two. Rosie and her five sisters aren’t the same as picking up a bar slut and taking her to a motel.

I suggest you step back, and talk about it with your husband. I doubt you’ll get him to stop. Possible, but unlikely. More likely that he’ll just hide it better. But it’s important to let him know your feelings on it so both of you can understand each other. Mostly, I think you need to get over it.

PS: I don’t even want to think about the number of times I typed pron instead of porn and had to fix it. And yes, I was trying to work in as many euphemisms as possible is such a small article!

So we bought an IPod Shuffle from Best Buy a little over a month ago. Wouldn't you know, but the little fucker wouldn't hold a charge after the first three weeks. Drained it to zero several times, tried everything, nada. Ok well as I was checking out from Best Buy the lady at the register talked me into spending an additional few bucks for a "replacement policy". Two years, if it breaks bring it back and they'll replace it. See that's just what she said, however, as it's easy to guess that isn't quite how it works.

First off I saved the receipt. I always save receipts. It's virtually compulsive. So armed with the defective unit and the receipt it's back to Best Buy we go.... but no that's NOT how the replacement policy works. See they never gave me a brochure for the replacement, and the brochure says that you have to call this 888 number. Fine, then I call. From work. The next day. First thing the lady asks (after a 15 min wait on the phone because their automated system was "defective") "do you have your receipt"? Well no, I have it at home - and regardless of the fact that they can SEE that I bought the unit in their records and they can SEE that I bought a replacement policy they won't help me till I have the magic paper in my hands. Whatever, I'll call when I get home.

I get home. I figure I hate dealing with people, I'll just fill in the form online. I find the link, type in the number from the receipt, put in the cause of the defect as close as possible and hit enter. "DENIED". WTF??? I start the process again, this time I'm going to enter a DIFFERENT defect, but.... when I put in the number it tells me I already had a claim denied but if I think this is "in error" I should call their 888 number. WTF%$*)%@!&$!!! Ok, I go get the phone and I call, this time armed with the receipt and secure in the knowledge that I paid my money they WILL give me the replacement I was promised.

I get some youngish sounding male on the phone. He finds the product and the fact that I started the claim. He asks what's wrong. I tell him. This is where the bullshit REALLY starts:

me: The unit no longer charges, I need to get a replacement.
toady: I'm sorry that's not covered.
me: What do you mean that's not covered? When I bought the replacement policy the lady at the register said if it was broken or ceased to work that the replacement policy covered it. Well it has ceased to work, and I need a replacement.
toady: I'm sorry she didn't explain the policy correctly, but that's not covered.
me: How does the fact that it doesn't charge not get covered? It's broken.
toady: Well that's not considered normal wear and tear.
me: Well that IS covered?
toady: Well the item is covered if it broke during typical use.
me: This WAS typical use. We plug it in, it doesn't charge - that's typical use.
toady: Well, I'm sorry but it's not covered.
me: Fine then a piece broke off and now it can't be charged, is THAT covered?
toady: What piece broke off?
me: A piece that is needed to make it charge.
toady: No that's not covered.

Ok, now typically I'm polite to people when I'm on service/tech support calls but it was hot and I was pissed so I decided to kick it into full snarl and let him have it.

me: Look, I paid my money for a two year replacement plan. The plan covers the item if it is broken during normal use. I didn't use pliers on it. I didn't drop it. It's BROKEN. I paid my money and I want a replacement. If you can't help me I want your manager to explain to me why I paid money for a service I'm not getting.

toady: One minute please I'll get my manager.

....several minute wait....

toady: My manager is here now to help you.
manager: Sorry for the inconvenience, how can I help you?
me: I bought an IPod shuffle and it won't charge.
manager: Is it an external charging unit?
me: No. It's part of the IPod its self. You plug in the IPod and it won't charge.
manager: I'll be happy to send you the paperwork for the replacement.

Ok, so supposedly now I get a label to sent it in to Best Buy and I get a gift card for a replacement. I'm not all that happy - since I was told I could just bring the unit IN to the store and get a new one, but fuck - if this is what it takes then fine.

Honestly I don't understand why I have to deal with obtuse service toadies - unless of course Best Buy wants to put as many barriers in the way as possible before I can get the service I paid for. Which of course I'm sure they do. I'm certain the toadies on the phone get rewarded for every claim they can deny (probably have little stamps on their cubicles in the shape of a screaming stick-figure for each customer they manage to get rid of, like pilots have for kills on their aircraft). Maybe I'm not bitchy enough from the start. I try to respect the person on the other end of the phone, at least until it becomes apparent that they're deliberately trying to mislead me. Maybe the motto should be "Bitch first, explain later"... but I hate the idea of making that a policy when I prefer to think that people actually -want- to help me. But then again there must be a reason for the motto "the squeaky wheel gets the grease".

In any event, be forewarned. When dealing with Best Buy replacement policies: save the receipt, and ask for a manager right away. It will save you minutes wasted from your life better spent elsewhere.