World of Suck

What else do you call someone that's a terrorist?

Dickhead.

FROM THE The Week

It must be true ... I read it in the tabloids

Adulterers in France can now enlist professional help in deceiving their spouses. A new agency, Alibila, provides clients with convincing cover stories for their trysts—calling their homes with fake emergencies, for example, or sending invitations to imaginary out-of-town events. For an extra fee, the company will also arrange for hotel rooms and romantic gifts for the mistress. The company says its services will actually help maintain marriages, because men “need a little freedom.”

Think they have gift certificates?

I hate Ticketmaster.

Their website just doesn't work. At least, not when I really want it to. Friday night I bought tickets for a show that wasn't close to sold out, and I had no problems. The site is fine for situations like that. But just now, I tried to buy tickets for a show that I knew would sell out, and the site completely failed me.

First, the tickets were supposed to go on sale on Saturday morning. At some point that was moved to Monday morning. So instead of buying from home, I was forced to do it from work. At least our web-blocking software doesn't block Ticketmaster.com. But it's still possible that the firewall caused some of my problems. Or it could just be Ticketmaster's incompetence.

The way the site works, you choose what type of tickets you want, then enter a queue. When your wait is over, you're presented with tickets, and you can buy them or search again. In theory. The way it actually works, the first few times your wait is over, you get an "Invalid request. Sorry for the inconvenience." error, and have to start waiting again. Do that a few times, and you can instead get the "No tickets found" error. They never tell you the show is sold out; they tell you they can't find tickets that you requested, and suggest you broaden the request. At least if they said "Sold Out" I'd stop trying.

After 15 minutes of reloading with multiple browsers, I finally got the search to complete. I was offered the worst seats in the house, for the second night of the show, which I don't even want to go to. As far as I can tell, both shows sold out in under 20 minutes. And even though I started the ticket search process within a minute of tickets going on sale, I was only offered the worst seats possible. And that's why Ticketmaster sucks. Now, off to Ebay!

Once again, or so the media exclaimed, silver is the most popular of car colors.

Well whoopie.

It's hard to bash consumers for favoring a "color" that is useful (digression: is silver really a color per se or a lack of color, along the same lines as black and white?). Useful meaning that it does hide the dirt, it's easy to touch up, hard to criticize as 'clashing', relatively cool in summer, etc. But on the other hand it labels the owner as a relative milquetoast.

"Well it was what they had on the lot."
"My last car was silver."
"I couldn't really decide on a color."

Excuses.

I hate it when people don't choose to use their brains to think. It's like "Well, I went to all the trouble to choose a manufacturer, and a dealer, pick out a model and haggle on the price but when it comes to color I'll just accept any old schlock." C'mon, it's your money don't you want something that looks different from all the other cars in the parking lot? So at least you don't have to read the license plate or look for the gum-wrappers on the floor to know its yours?

While there's a limited number of offerings, you'll note that car colors do vary, slowly yes, but they do. Back in the 80's blues and metallic blues were in. Late 80's saw the introduction of green. Maroons were all the rage in the 90s and then lately there's been a resurgence (thanks to the inevitable weirdness of aesthetics given to us by German brands such as Audi and Volkswagen) of grays, oranges and 70's era greens (avocado anyone?). Myself I was taken with the panzer-kampf-tanken-undercoaten color of the Audi TT's - truly a remarkable shade of gray that at once reminded one of the plastic in military models. Yes, it wasn't exactly a color - but unlike generic silver it was unique. It said something.

On one point alone I'll forgive silver-car buyers: insurance. Red and yellow cars are actually more expensive to insure, and silver is harder to track in traffic when they're trying to chase you down for speeding.

But still, couldn't you have chosen green or blue or maybe even beige?

From the Gainesville Sun:

Toward the conclusion of Kerry's UF forum, 21-year-old Andrew Meyer approached an open microphone at University Auditorium and demanded Kerry answer his questions. Meyer, a UF student in the College of Journalism and Communications, claimed that University Police Department officers had already threatened to arrest him, and then proceeded to question Kerry about why he didn't contest the 2004 presidential election and why there had been no moves to impeach President Bush.

A minute or so into what became a combative diatribe, Meyer's microphone was turned off and officers began trying to physically remove him from the auditorium. Meyer flailed his arms, yelling as police tried to restrain him.

He was then pushed to the ground by six officers, at which point Meyer yelled, "What have I done? What I have I done? Get away from me. Get off of me! What did I do? Help me! Help."

Police threatened to use a Taser on Meyer if he did not "comply," but he continued to resist being handcuffed. He was then Tased, which prompted him to scream and writhe in pain on the floor of the auditorium.

I've had to deal with disruptive, ranting individuals at public forums. I have never had a situation where I would considered tasering someone acceptable - and I have dealt with far worse and longer rantings than the one of this man. This was an open forum for someone running for President, right? New strategy to win votes? I personally don't think its a winner - just my opinion.

I have also had to deal with University Police - those wannabe cops who probably can't pass the psych eval to be allowed to carry a gun. They should be ashamed of their pathetic abuse of power, but knowing the mentality of most of these misfits, they won't see anything wrong.

No, no, no, no, no! Don't do it! Just don't do it!

President Bush said Wednesday that a law hastily passed in August to temporarily give the government more power to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign terror suspects must be made permanent and expanded.

[...]

"Without these tools, it will be harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to train, recruit and infiltrate operatives into America," he [Bush] said on a visit to the super-secret National Security Agency's headquarters in suburban Fort Meade, Md. "Without these tools, our country will be much more vulnerable to attack."

For the love of all things American, do NOT give Herr Bush a further extension on his attempt to reduce our rights and freedoms! It's yet another blatant power grab from an already overstuffed, dictator who has no respect for our country or the people it contains.

I realized the other day that there's a little-discussed aspect of MP3 players. It's the black-box, anonymity gained by putting a 'generic' face on something that is very revealing.

In the past you could get an idea of what kind of person you were next to by catching a glimpse of the CD titles in their car, on their desk, in their home...etc. But with the advent of all-digital, no-moving-parts music players these accidental insights are all but removed. Now the only revelation comes when someone chooses to share their playlist, and again, it's a choice.

I can remember raising an eyebrow when getting a ride to lunch with someone and seeing the cover of a cassette tape ("they still listen to Queen !?!" or "Whoa, My Sharona?"). There was a sense of peeping into someone's private self, sure they wear a tie Mon-Fri 9am to 5pm but once they get into the car they're howling to Stevie Ray Vaughan or having a moment with Tom Jones. Who knew?

Well for the most part, no one will - at least not by accident. With the enormous improvement in sound quality and portability it's hard, overall, to lament this change. Still there is a certain romance for those days when a show-tune 8-Track in the back seat meant you had a pretty good idea of whom you were dealing with and what to expect.

... Whodat? Why it's Alan Greenspan, one of the few men that can make women swoon just by the size of his... intellect alone. In his new memoir he lays bare the facts, without the comfy trappings of political rhetoric. And while he makes many points with razor-like clarity, I'm particularly fond of this one:

"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

You tell it brother.

Truth.

Now they can grow ovaries and eggs in mice. I know, that doesn't sound special, but they are HUMAN ovaries and eggs. Now do I have your attention?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296800,00.html

Although it would not be "ethical" to fertilize those eggs, just think of the possibilities . . . and how the religious wing-nuts are going to react.

Anyone know any really good websites to post this so we can beat some religious zealots into a total froth?

On September first I posted this brief blog:

Let China Solve Iraq

Today I saw this article in the times.... Interesting timing.

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Iraq Through China’s Lens
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: September 12, 2007

It is hard not to feel that China has spent the last six years training for the Olympics while we’ve spent ourselves into debt on iPods and Al Qaeda.

ROTTERDAM -- Two Schenectady women have been accused of brutally beating an 88-year-old woman, including throwing bleach in her eyes, after following her home from a town shopping plaza to rob her, town police said today.

Police said the women identified as Tiffany Tolliver, 21, of Albany Street, and Dominique Lucas, 21, of Maple Avenue, followed the victim to her Rotterdam apartment, leaving Tolliver's 2-week-old child in their car.

Tolliver and Lucas then allegedly went inside, beat the woman, stole her purse and threw the bleach in her eyes. A neighbor saw them leaving in a white Cadillac, which police found later at the Hannaford Plaza off Altamont Avenue in Schenectady. Tolliver and Lucas allegedly had already bought $450 in clothes from the A.J. Wright.

And it gets better . . .

Tolliver and Lucas have been charged with first-degree robbery and are being held in Schenectady County Jail without bail. Besides the 2-week-old found in the Cadillac, police later found Tolliver's 17-month-old toddler alone at her apartment. Both children were taken into the state's protective custody. Also, Lucas is eight months pregnant, according to police.

Plus, one had an outstanding warrant and the other pending charges.

So they are dirt bag criminals AND bad parents. Delightful members of society, huh?

Have you ever suddenly realized something about the way somebody speaks that instantly irks you so badly that you can never listen to that person again? I'm having one of those 'moments'.

With all the Media's attention now focused heavily on various candidates from both sides of the aisle it's inevitable that you're going to hear soundbites and interviews from all these tools even when you don't want to. With that being said I would like to point out to Rudy Guiliani that he uses 2 phrases so frequently to prefix most ANY sentence that he has pissed me off and I no longer listen to anything he says even in passing.

1.) "At the end of the day...."
2.) "The reality is.... "

Grrr!

We all have the things in games that drive us up a wall. Sometimes it's the insanely complicated maneuvers they expect us to pull off. Or the microscopic target mounted on the back of the gigantic titan. Or the stupidest AI in the world that we have to protect as it mindlessly wades through a horde of zombies.

Well, I get to add a new game to my list of games that irritate me. Medal of Honor: Airborne. It's yet another in a long line of WWII shooters. The big gimmick in this one is that you can parachute in to the level from above and pick your landing zone. Cute, but ultimately not very useful. Still, I love shooters in general, and WWII are generally worth my time.

Sadly, the game has three of my pet peeves in it.

The first is infinite respawning bad guys. I know Nazi's are evil incarnate, but even they draw the line as instant cloning of hundreds of soldiers. Well, I'm sure they would have done it if they could.. but that's not the point. When I clear a building or area, and my troops move up with me, I generally expect it to remain that way. More importantly, when I'm attacking a small 3 room building, I expect there to be an upper limit to how many times I have to shoot the machine gunner in the upper window. They don't have a company of people in there.

The second is a long standing complaint of mine and many MANY games are guilty of it. The protection offered by various forms of cover. For example, when being attacked by shoulder mounted anti-tank panzershreck, a thin wooden pallet is an unacceptable form of cover. Equally, a 55 gallon drum would not provide protection from that type of attack. This is a weapon that is designed to go through TANK armor. the thin sheet metal used there is not going to slow it down much. Even if it did stop the round, the concussive blast is going to hurt you on the other side. And finally, an M1 rifle is entirely capable of shooting through barbed wire. Hiding behind a roll of it isn't actually cover. It's not a wall. I can see your entire back and head. When I put 3 rounds on target, it shouldn't act as a wall. The bullet would got THROUGH it because it's a FUCKING coil with a large amount of air for the bullet to pass through.

The final one is the enemy. They should have to operate under the same rules as I do. If they can fire hundreds of rounds from their MG42 machine guns without reloading, I should be able to do the same when I capture it. But no, I have to reload every 30 rounds or so. If I take 25 seconds to reload my bazooka, they shouldn't be able to fire it four times in that same period of time. Rules must always be equalized for both sides.

Maybe my expectations are too high. It's just a crappy little shooter from Electronic Arts, I know. I should expect much. But damn it, I demand more. Maybe Call of Duty just spoiled me.

In the news today:

ANDERSON, Ind. -- An Anderson woman was arrested last week after her two sons -- a 6-year-old with Down syndrome and a 4-year-old -- were found playing in a street wearing only diapers, authorities said.

Concerned neighbors took the children inside and called the cops. We all know how long it takes for the police to respond to a non-life threatening call...

Officers didn't immediately find (the mother), who found out that they had the children three hours later, (the neighbor) said.

This is just days after:

INDIANAPOLIS -- A woman charged with neglect of a dependent after her toddler was found standing near a busy Indianapolis road said Monday she will do whatever it takes to get her daughter back.

(The mother) said she and a friend left the child alone as they went to get groceries. Before she left, (the mother) said she drank three beers. Police said she tested above the legal limit of .08 percent in a Breathalyzer test.

And last year we had...

Nancy Dyer slept as 3-year-old Damon Stewart slipped out the door of their apartment, barefoot and wearing only a diaper and a Superman T-shirt on Dec. 30.

Damon climbed through a hole in a chain-link fence, and motorists found him running on the freeway nearby on Indianapolis’ Northwestside. He was unharmed, but at least a half-dozen cars and a big rig swerved to miss him, witnesses told police.

Police traced the boy to Dyer and found her daughter Gabrielle eating the previous night’s spaghetti off the floor.

Is this just a trend in Indiana? Is there something magnetic about our roadways that attract wandering children in diapers? If only there were.

I think the biggest change in my life was a more acute understanding of just how blissfully ignorant the majority of Americans are. I know that sounds harsh, but in the hours and days following 9/11, I struggled to deal with the consistent strong emotions being expressed - especially the repeated phrase "I can't believe (or never believed) it could happen here!"

Anyone who has spent an hour of their lives contemplating the basic tools and knowledge available to evildoers knows that the only reason we are not besieged with terrorist assaults is because the terrorists (for some reason) have chosen not to.

We're not preventing anything; any fool with $1,000 and half a brain could bring down a large aircraft at any one of several key airports. The materials needed to construct rudimentary explosive devices are there for the taking. Most schools still have virtually no protection against any sort of organized suicide attack. I'm not a terrorist, yet I can see how easy these things are to accomplish - how much simpler the picture must be to someone who does this for a "living!"

More importantly, the steps taken to "protect" us since 9/11 have done so much to further empower and embolden those in authority over us, while providing no real security benefits to the vast majority of citizens.

I'm sorry to spoil the mood, but the sadness in my heart today is for my country, for how clueless and unaware we have become, and for the freedoms we have lost. Freedoms lost primarily because we, as a people, refuse to recognize that the world will always be a violent and uncivilized place, where strong men seek power, wealth, and position through the use of violence.

We used to know these things. More of us used to plan, train, and live accordingly. It's good to be in the company of a select few who still do.

Someone was visiting / meeting with a person who sits near me. I could hear his big mouth periodically through the closed door, but not enough to really bother me. Then I hear the door open, but I am not paying attention until . . . He talks, I mean shouts, into his cell phone. He was maybe 15 feet away from me. I figure 1) He is deaf, or 2) His cell phone is a hunk of crap. If it is 2), there were no less than 4 empty desks with phones surrounding him - any of them would have worked if his phone wasn't working right. However, I believe it was 3) He is a total fucking prick. Why? When he startled me I jumped and then shot him an annoyed look. Fuckwad then proceeded to pace, back and forth, by my desk. I will be asking who he was tomorrow and I will tell him off next time he acts like that. I don't care if he is the right hand man of God himself, there is not excuse to yell in an office.

AI.

Artificial intelligence. Leaving aside all the jokes I could make on the intelligence of clearly artificial individuals such as Jack Thompson and Paris Hilton (they'd make a great couple wouldn't they? let's give them a hand folks!) I have to wonder why all the fuss about AI?

2029. That's supposed to be the year when humans finally create an independant, cyber-mind capable of decision, rationalization, and moral balance. The fear that's being injected is the question "well what if it hates us?"

On the one hand humans are pretty easy to hate. We shit all over our environment. We kill at random. We're greedy, destructive and anarchistic. We rationalize our decisions with irrational motivations such as "religion" and blindly throw garbage into the space around our planet. Rarely we have artists and visionists who create something truly spectacular. More often than not if The Gifted aren't also rabid capitalists (e.g. Bill Gates) then we kill them, or steal their ideas to make the money they didn't.

On the other hand, there's the Butlerian-Jihad-esque idea that we need to pre-program any machines to never cross the threshold of in dependant thought. There's other sci-fi classic concepts of building in a respect for all humans. But I have yet to really grok the idea that a set of algorithms can actually "think" in the human/irrational/inspirational/creative manner as to pose a genuine and unique threat.

Think of all the chess matches, Big Blue, etc. Yes the computer has access to all the documented material and the speed to process all the possibilities. But it's limited to what humans have chosen to document and that which has been included in the accessible database. It's bounded by default.

Further, I don't believe that there has been any demonstration of 'spontaneous' thought by any algorithm, and just like irradiating plants to see if you can get a viable mutation, I don't think that randomly scrambling code will suddenly produce a viable sentience.

For all their trappings of science and education I have to laugh at the notion of a malevolent AI taking over the world. Here's why:

Vista 2029: Service Pack 1.

The only thing criminal about receiving an overly salty hamburger is the fucking retard who ate it all. Who's that? It's Police Officer Wendell Adams.

Get this, he arrested some poor kid who spilled salt on the burgers - one of which he got by accident. And it wasn't exactly like it was her decision either - she told her supervisor and a coworker who attempted to remedy the situation by knocking the excess salt off.

If you ask me the intelligence of police officers in Georgia is only slighly below that of a meat-patty. Anyone willing to yank some fast-food worker off the job and try and arrest them for serving a "too-salty" meal is a fucking retard.

Hell if you can't figure out not to eat something that doesn't taste right maybe you shouldn't be carrying a gun.

I'm pretty damn tired of the media powers-that-be waving the red flag over the latest story of excess. See that's just it - excess is *not* something most of us have to worry about. Take the latest headline burner "MAN HOSPITALIZED BY POPCORN FUMES". Well fuck, he ate multiple bags of the shit a day... A DAY. Apparently he'd cram his face into the bag and huff the fake-butter flavor too.

... and so he got sick. Of "Popcorn-Lung". Really. It's what they're calling it now.

Well hell, if you do any damn thing in excess you're going to get sick. I remember some health-freak when I was a kid who died of an O.D. of carrot juice. Apparently he even turned orange as well. I don't remember what exactly killed him, but basically it was another story of excess run amok.

Unless you're a professional lab-animal there's really no reason to freak out and toss all your food so long as you eat-within-reason. That's the key right there, *within reason*. Do anything to excess, even drinking water, will kill you.

Honestly some people just aren't bright enough to be called mammals.

Convertibles. The word conjures up wind, sun, and sky. Let's go back to that first one however, wind. Rag-tops are notoriously gusty, think of the women with scarves in their hair and men with their ball-caps on backwards. Of course that's the point, to enjoy the tactile sensation of speed through the air whipping and lashing all around.

So, please, would someone explain to me how in hell they can use a cell phone while driving along at sixty, seventy or eighty?

Seriously, how does this work? When I'm on my cell phone I typically have to turn down the radio, close the windows, shut the sunroof. Then I can talk and (naturally) be heard. And no, I do not have a convertible. How is it exactly that these people can communicate in gale-force conditions? I mean hell, putting aside wind, there's road noise, sirens, and the roar through underpasses where all sound gets tossed into an Oscar blender of cacophony.

I think the real answer is "it's just for show". Either there really isn't anyone on the other end, or the driver just doesn't care if they're listening or not. Frankly there isn't another explanation.

Nothing sucks worse in a friendship than empty promises.

Everyone has a friend of this kind of caliber; where in their presence everything is grand, everything is peachy and the time for doing {insert activity} is now, now, now! Effusive commitments are made, the chisels are taken out to engrave the engagement in stone. You make plans, arrange your schedule, wait… and…

Nada.

No call, no forewarning, and of course, no show. Why? Well inevitably the excuse is “I didn’t know you were serious.” Or “I thought you had something else that day.” Or some other equivalent schlock.

True, most of us know, when dealing with these types, that it’s best to have some sort of fallback plan but still, giving them the benefit of the doubt is just providing more rope to swing from in the end.

Still there’s a worse sort, imho. The type that are more insidious in their promises. These are the friends that *expect* you to keep after them when a commitment is made. Chasing them around with a handful of “Post-its” reminding them of what to do, and when to do it, and if you don’t then *you* were the one that wasn’t serious (because you know how forgetful they are).

The horrible, awful part about this all is the fact that really these are nice people whose company you do enjoy when you’re with them and so you’re willing to put up with the angst because: a) you’ve done it before and b) they really don’t mean you any harm. And it’s true, they don’t… but the better question is – why punish yourself by dealing with them in the first place?

Think about it next time, wouldn’t a good book be more rewarding?

I meant to complain about this when I saw the movie in the theater, but hey, sue me. I forgot. However, 'Superman Returns' just showed up on HBO and reminded me to do it.

I like the movie. I'm not a huge Superman fan in general, but I enjoyed the movie. Mostly. If you're planning on seeing it, don't read any further. Because I'm going to spoil the fuck out of it in a little bit.

You see, I don't get the story. If you turn your brain off and ignore the glaring plot hole, the movie is enjoyable and you come away thinking 'Hey, Superman rules'.

But I didn't do that. So I enjoyed the movie, but decided that Superman is a bastard. Basic idea goes like this: Superman left Earth to find Krypton. Five years go by and now he's back. Lois Lane and the merry band of reporters have all moved on with their lives. She has a kid with her fiance. About five years old. You see where this is going, right?

So Superdick comes back and expects everything to be the same, and is hurt when it's not. Boo fucking hoo. The villain does his thing, Superman saves the day, nearly dies and finds out the kid is his. Yay, heroic ending.

Think about it. This story requires Superman to fuck Lois, knock her up, and decide to run off into outer space. What a shithead. Seriously, Superman is a hit-it-and-quit-it type of guy? Really? Then, inside a few weeks of banging superman, she runs off and fucks her new man on the side (Richard). I mean, it had to be close enough that he thought the kid was his, right? They never say if she knowingly lied to Richard. Maybe she just underestimated the power of Super-Sperm. The end result is that she's either easy or desperate to cover up the bastard child. And since we see her hang all over Superman's jock once he's back, I'm betting she's just easy. I suppose she could have been involved with Richard while she was banging Superman. Still, not a set of choices that really casts her in a positive light.

But let's step back to Superman. The pillar of Truth, Justice and the American Way, right? Sleeps with a chick out of wedlock. Knocks her up, and the runs away for five fucking years. That American Way bit just isn't what it used to be, is it?

For additional points, I refer you to Superdickery.com Read it for a while. There is plenty of other evidence out there.

Superman sucks.

I've always thought it rather arrogant when people insist on pre-warming their vehicles before they get into them. I can understand when you have small children, perhaps warming up the car for a bit, since they're strapped into car seats barely able to scratch an itch. But for a healthy adult to warm their car for a good five to ten minutes before getting into it, well it's a blatant waste of energy.

There's a woman at work who insists on doing this with her SUV. I'd be walking out to my car, and always notice this empty, locked vehicle with the engine running. It pisses me off because not only is she wasting gas, polluting the air but because she's so spoiled that she can't stand being out in the cold for the time to walk all of fifteen feet from the door to her parking spot. Still, there's a little give there because I hate being cold, and it does take the engine a bit to start producing heat so fine, whatever.

The other day it was a balmy and beautiful eighty degrees. Perfect temperature to be outside, nicer even than being in the arctic ice-station of the building. As I walk out the door I'm dumbfounded. The bitch has her car running again! This time to crank the AC. Wtf?!?! Hello? It's perfect outside?

All I can say is Energy-Whore better be going through hot-flashes because there's just no fucking excuse for the fuel she's wasting five days a week.

They seem to have a way with developing nations, in fact ones that are in massive turmoil. They know how to do this *and* turn a profit. As a result my (albeit novel) solution to the Iraq crisis is to hire a contractor to deal with the problems and sort it all out for us.

And I bet they would, for the right price.