Y'all know about live blogging, right? Well this is live blog cookin'. Tonight's special is called Macho Dip. I'll be making two flavors - one that works well as a depilatory and one for pussy wuss momma's boys.
Assemble the ingredients
Two pounds chopped sirloin (I don't know why it's called "ground" when it's beef and "chopped" when it's sirloin. I think it's just so they can charge you an extra 50 cents a pound. Anyway, use sirloin or 97% beef or whatever they call the good stuff in your neck of the woods.)
One big-ass block of Velveeta cheese. (I think it's two pounds. Use "Mexican Flavor" if they have it. If not, no big deal. It's not like this is real cheese anyway.)
Two cans Campbell's Cheddar Cheese soup. (They used to have "Nacho Cheese" soup but I haven't seen that in a coon's age.)
Two jars of salsa. (I'm using one mild and one hot since I'm doing the real one and a pussy variety.)
Anal-friendly sauces. (For the wuss dip.)
Anal-explosive sauces. (For the depilatory dip.)
Corn chips.
Beer. (Whatever variety you prefer to drink. It's not for the dip, it's for you. None of the wimmen folk will be bothering you while you cook for fear that they will frighten a man out of this strange 'kitchen' environment so it's the perfect chance to sock a couple away 'free of charge'.)
Begin Cooking
Get a big frying pan and put it on the stove.
Turn the stove on. Figure about 70% of maximum. If your dial thingy doesn't go to 10 you can use a calculator to figure out where to set it.
Put the beef in the pan.
Chop the hell out of it with your spatula so it's in bitty bits instead of the big rectangle o' beef. Use a spatula appropriate to your pan.
Drink some beer.
If the pan is non-stick and you used the barbecue spatula you will need to consume more beer now in order to weather the assault that will come later.
After a couple minutes use the spatula to whack apart the beef pancake that has solidified in the pan.
Drink some more beer.
If you started drinking prior to cooking (you know to build up your courage) you may need to pee now. Go for it.
Be right back...
Hey, this is just like one of those cooking shows only you don't have to send in two bucks for the transcript!
Drink some more beer.
When the beef is browned nicely (this is a French cullinary term meaning "healthy dark gray with earthy undertones") turn the stove down to simmer, or #2, or low, or whatever the next to the lowest setting is on your stove.
Strain the beef.
Put the Velveeta into the now beef-less pan. Make damn sure that you put that sucker on low. Velveeta is a space age polymer that resists all damage (including digestion) except heat.
Drink some beer.
If you did not turn the stove down you should begin pounding the beer at this stage as you just ruined her best pan.
Seriously, burned Velveeta is what they use to stick the tiles on the Space Shuttle. Don't burn the Velveeta.
When it starts to melt whack it apart with your spatula. Yes there is a lot of whacking in this recipe. Guys are naturally superior wackers after all.
Drink some more beer.
When the Velveeta is all nice and smoothly melted add the cheddar cheese soup to it. Mix well.
Beer.
Get out another skillet type pan. Oh, you thought this was a single pan dish? It probably is for you, you lucky bastard. Me - I'm making two flavors so I need two pans. Grmblrm...
VERY IMPORTANT! Do not forget which pan has the hot and which one has the not. If you're making two flavors like I am. Which you probably aren't. So ignore this part.
More beer, please.
Split the amazingly cheese-like substance between the two pans.
Add the beef to the two pans. Put more beef into the one that you'll be eating. They won't notice but it'll satisfy your inner gremlin.
Let it warm up a bit more.
You did turn on the burner under the second skillet, right?
Dumbass. Do that now. And have some more beer. Thankyou! Don't mind if I do.
Gotta pee again.
Don't forget to wash your hands after you pee. Thanks.
Okay, where the hell are we now? Right! Salsa. Add the cans of salsa. Mix up the pans real good.
Turn the brners up to 3 or 4 or "braize" or whatever medium low is on your stove.
"Brners"? Um...yeah.
More beer.
Warm up the concoctions for a little bit. Stir occasionally.
You should be able to finish a full beer right at this stage.
Add sauces to taste. For the wuss flavor you're probably okay as is. I'm using just a little chipotle and cheyenne. For the man's dish it is important to remember that everything you have done to this point was to create a vehicle for hot sauce delivery. I'm using chipotle, chili, cheyenne, habanero and scotch bonnet sauces.
I got the scotch bonnet sauce for Christmas.
Mmmm...beer...
It's from Jamaica. The sauce, not the beer.
Jamaica is now on my short list of places to visit. Hot sauce and ganja. What more could you ask for?
Put the stuff into bowls and scoop it out with the corn chips.
And don't forget the beer! As this food has no actual dairy content, thus no lactic acid, it is an incremental hot. That is, the more you eat the hotter it will get. Beer should be used to modulate the ambient heat level. You can easily work 2 more beers in during consumption.
And there you have it - Jim's Macho Dip.
Thank you, thank you. Oh, you're too kind. Too kind.
I'm in shorts and a t-shirt. We're going to burn stuff tonight in the big steel barrel. Outside. In December.
I love Georgia.
Me: I have a problem with the UI (user interface) on this program.Boss #2: What's the problem?
Me: It seems to have been designed by a team of near-sighted epileptics.
Boss #2: [silence]
Me: On crack.
Boss #2: [silence]
Me: During hurricane Ivan.
Boss #2: I laid that one out.
Me: The graphics are striking.
I am now tasked with defining and documenting UI standards.
I heard a story about Venezuela on NPR this morning. A political action group is being charged with treason for encouraging citizens to vote against the sitting president. The group receives funds from the US through the National Endowment for Democracy. The gist of the story is that American money is being spent to further American interests instead of bolstering a democracy.
Well...duh. (Issue 1)
Generally speaking a strong democracy is in America's best interests. As an ostensibly democratic nation we deal better with other ostensibly democratic nations. However, not all governments perform admirably in following our wish list, whether the government is democratic, oligarchic, despotic or other. American money should most definitely be spent to further American interests. One of our great interests is fomenting democracy so our money is very often spent supporting democratic causes but this does not and should not mean that we will spend money on supporting a democracy against our national interests.
Um...excuse me? (Issue 2)
How exactly is giving money to a party working within the democratic framework of their country not supporting democracy? Isn't one of the tenets of democracy the ability to organize change from within? The money here is being spent in support of a candidate in a democratic election. Since when is it not democratic to support a candidate in an election?
Conclusion
NPR really pisses me off sometimes.
Annette of More Than Words is moving to Atlanta. This shows that she has class and taste and some not insignificantly challenging mental issues. I joke - her writing shows the class and taste. The move to Atlanta only illustrates the mental thing.
Anywho, she's doing a photo scavenger hunt and needs items for the list. Pop on over and give her a few ideas of what she should shoot.
I should specify that "shoot" means with a camera. It won't default to gun use until she's been a Southerner for at least 12 months.
Generally speaking I work every Monday through Friday. The drive into work is pretty busy. It takes forty-five minutes to an hour (down to about a half hour at the moment with half of the workforce on Christmas vacation). I estimate that I probably see about 2,000 other cars on my way to work. That includes both lanes of traffic and a passing view of the bumper to bumper throughway. The vast majority of them have only a driver. Since this is a pretty rough estimate we'll just say I visually encounter 2,000 people on the way to work.
The ride home is even worse. Call that 2,500 people.
Sometimes I stop at the QT for gas, a danish, maybe coffee. On a busy morning I'll see 50 people there.
I work in a four story building. We've got about 300 people here on any given day. True, I don't interact with but a small fraction of them but we'll stretch the definition a bit and say they're part of my daily encounter.
I might stop at CVS on the way home to get some milk (they have Mayfield milk cheaper than any of the supermarkets and I loooove me some Mayfield). Another 20 people or so there.
Sometimes we might need something from the supermarket. A Wal-Mart stop might even be in order. That's easily another 1,000 people combined.
I also see the most precious people in my world every day. That's four more people.
How many is that now? Let's see...2,000 plus 2,500 plus 50 and another 300...add 20 and another 1,000 then top it off with my four reasons for living. I encounter somewhere around 5,874 people in a busy day.
Now let's say that on my drive to work there were no other cars on the road. None at all. And when I stopped at QT it was empty. Nobody at the pumps. Nobody to run my card for my purchase. When I get to work the parking lot is completely empty. There's no guard at the security desk. There's nobody in the hallway. Nobody in the breakroom. At my stop at CVS I get a deja vu of the QT experience of the morning. Nobody is there. It's the same at Kroger and Wal-Mart. These massive consumer edifices lie starkly abandoned. Normally teeming with people, they are now vacant and deathly silent.
When I arrive home there is no jumble of kids at the door yelling "My Daddy's home!". There is no Lovely Wife waiting to greet me with a kiss.
Say that this happened every single day for half a month. That is about how many people have died from the tsunami in Asia.
I've been trying to wrap my mind around that number - 77,000 dead. I'm afraid that I've managed to do so.
Y'all know the drill, right? The contest will be open until the end of the year or maybe a day or two later depending on how hungover I am. Best caption gets 5 points with another handful thrown around to the rest of the best.
It tolls for that stinking rat bastard*.
The battles were harsh and more than once our courage faltered but we finally got him using bacon in the traps. He was a valiant foe but he was not a match for the power of bacon.
All told he cost us a squirrel, two birds, several days of rat banquet service as he stripped the traps and a crawl space completely covered with scattered rat shit.
* This is not an empty disparagement. As Georgia in its infinite wisdom has modified its Constitution with limits on the definition of marriage we can be certain that this rat's parents did not form a legal union prior to his birth.
So I joined BlogExplosion*. It's a nifty idea. You surf through blogs and accumulate points which are then spent to direct other surfers to your blog. You spend 30 seconds on a blog to get credit for viewing it.
One notable problem is that although surfing through the blogs takes a manual click there's nothing to stop people from keeping the surfing window open and just returning to it periodically to click to the next blog without ever giving a site even a cursory look. Oh, well. There are asses in every crowd, no sense crying about it.
The cool thing is that you might actually find a couple of blogs that you like. I've got a half dozen in the evaluation stage now. That's sweet.
Another sucky thing is that you get exposed to a whole lot of absolutely horrible blogs. True garbage, presented on a bed of skank with a side of rotten. After a short while surfing I've identified several instant elimination criteria. Any blog that pops up with any of these gets clicked off right away. Yeah, that means no credit for viewing but my browsing time is limited and I'm not about to look at a piece of crap for half a minute when there might be something worthwhile right around the corner.
So what are these items that ring the death knell for Jim's surfing? I'm glad you asked!
Black backgrounds with blue text. Or any dark background with any dark text. Any light background with light text too for that matter. If I have to highlight text in order to read it the site is dead to me. Ditto for obscuring background graphics.Yet another female blogger set up with a pink background. Sorry, it's just too trite and common. I'm sure there are many fine pink-backgrounded blogs out there but the vast majority of these are full of inane posts and whining about terrible fate and the vagaries of being misunderstood.
The first post is a health complaint. Or the title is something along the lines of "My life with incurable rectal stenosis" or "My battles with chronic depression". Don't get me wrong now, I'm a compassionate person - I've got compassion leaking out of every orifice. I'm very interested in the travails of my friends and acquaintances. From them it is sharing and support. From strangers it is just depressing. Think of it this way; if you were on the subway and you had the choice between talking with the depressed guy with facial ulcers or the well spoken and cheerful accountant you'd probably pick the accountant. Unless you had some sort of ulcer fetish of course.
The first post is hard-line partisan. Strident tones from the right, left or middle. I like reading political commentary and opinions from every side but I'm fed up with the temper tantrums. Instant site failure.
sk8r kr@p. If u t1pe l1ke dis ur s1te sukz.
Too much crap in the sidebars. For the love of all that is holy, don't have so much crap on your site that it can't possibly load in 30 seconds over a T1 line. Animations, massive graphics, a hundred link buttons, busted java scripts, clutter, geegaws and toys. A weather pixy with a tagboard will get me off of a site faster than Michael Moore downs a Krispy Kreme.
And that's about it. It just comes down to the essentials really: have a site that is easy to load and navigate and doesn't immediately turn me off with depressing or angry content. And yes, I know that on any given day my site would fail one or more of these criteria. That's okay though, I already have the best readers in the world.
* Sign up with BlogExplosion through this link and I'll get 'points' as your referrer. That would be cool and would put a big smile on my depressed ulcerated face.
Comments are going to be just a touch different now. In an effort to defeat the spambots I've implemented this solution (pointed out by Pylorns). You'll need to preview comments before you can post them now.
Hopefully this, along with the comment script hiding that Pixy has already done, will keep these sumbitches at bay until I can move to MT3.
I'm under a constant stream of crapspam bombardment. I started to go through entries one by one to turn commenting off but that is just this side of ridiculous seeing as I have a bonifide shitload of posts.
How the fuck can I turn all commenting off on an MT blog?
Snowballs!
Something tells me that Claire won't be sending me an interactive Christmas card next year.
We went light with dinner on Christmas Eve. The whole day was full of snacking and egg nogging so a big dinner would have been a waste. In any case, the kids wanted to keep it light so they'd be in fighting trim for Christmas morning. The dinner itself was light and refreshing but the conversation was another story.
[The Scene] The Peacock Clan sits around the table eating spiced fries. Occasionally one or more children (and one or more adults) will break into a Christmas Carol. The mood is festive and gay.Bear: [sings] Jingle Bells! Batman smells!
Bacon: [sings] Robin laid an egg!
Bear: No, Grandma laid an egg.
Bacon: Did not!
Bear: Did so!
Burger: [sings] Grandma got run over by a reindeer...
Bear: [sings] Walking home from our house Christmas Eve!
Bacon: [sings] Robin laid an egg!
[A vocal squabble errupts wherin the relative merits of the Grandma and Robin versions are discussed at length. Eventually a strained silence is achieved.]
Burger: [Leans to the side in the "letting one sneak out" pose] I'm pooping!!
Me: No, you are not.
Burger: Yes I am! At the table!
Lovely Wife: Do you need to go to the potty?
Burger: I'm pooping in my pants! In my pull-up!
Bear: No toilet talk at the table!
[Chaos ensues]
They say that awareness of bodily functions is one of the critical steps towards potty training, so this is progress. That's what I tell myself, anyway.
I had a freaking long-ass drive home yesterday. Y'all benefit from my misfortune though because a new story wrote itself during my extended commute.
Three and oh is now posted over at Protomonkey. This is one of my better ones, if I do say so myself. It popped in the noggin almost whole and all I had to do was get it down in type.
Plus, in a stark departure from my normal Christmas fare, it isn't a horror story!
Merry Christmas!
Lovely Wife has the replay.
Ms. Coworker: Don't freak out or anything, but I had a dream about you last night.
Sir Coworker: A dream about me?
Ms. Coworker: Well, you were in it. You, me and Bob. We were in the telecon room talking with Kansas City and I looked over at you and you had this monstrous bugger [that's 'booger' through a hellacious accent] hanging out your nose.
Sir Coworker: Gross.
Ms. Coworker: Yeah. Totally. I tried to let you know without saying anything so KC wouldn't know but you just looked at me like I was a freak.
Sir Coworker: What about Bob?
Ms. Coworker: Um...I don't know. I guess he was just gone then.
Sir Coworker: Freaky.
Ms. Coworker: Yeah. But then I emailed you about the bugger so you would know about it, only I sent it to the group by accident. All the KC people were going on like "Ewwww! Gross! It's huge!" like they could all of a sudden see it or something.
Sir Coworker: Weird.
Ms. Coworker: Yeah. So you picked it and I was like "Gag", you know? But it wasn't really a bugger. It was your brain coming out your nose.
Sir Coworker: That is fucked up.
Ms. Coworker: Yeah! Then it got weird.
Sir Coworker: That wasn't weird enough?
Ms. Coworker: Okay, it got weirder. Suddenly I was you and you were me looking at me picking the brain bugger. It was me all the time only I was confused or something because my brains were coming out of my nose.
Sir Coworker: That is one seriously weird dream.
Ms. Coworker: Yeah! Oh, my microwave is done. See you later.
Sir Coworker: Later!
Me: [suddenly and conclusively no longer hungry]
Dusty has it all figured out.
At the four corners of most intersections there are usually light posts or some other weapon mounting system.
It's generic enough to work for just about any big city, too!
If your sentence begins with any of the following, please consider whether there is an actual need to relate the information you are about to divulge:
Don't freak out or anything but...
I probably shouldn't say anything but...
Don't get the wrong idea but...
In fact, if the "but..." conditional is anywhere in the opening sentence of your anecdote you may want to rethink the necessity of speaking whatever is on your mind.
And if you should decide that your personal world will stop unless you divulge your mental gem please, please, please verify that there is nobody within earshot who shouldn't, mustn't or doesn't want to hear what you are about to relate.
Especially if that person is me.
And you are talking about bodily functions gone awry.
Thanks,
Jim
You won't find it at Protomonkey. You will find a twisted little Christmas story by Michele though, accompanied by a Christmas thriller by yours truly.
And once your holiday jones has been sated you can take a well deserved breather with shank's first contribution. Don't breath too deeply though - his protaganist is about as sympathetic as mine.
Hmmm...that's a spooky Christmas story two years in a row for me. Does that make it a trend or a tradition?
Okay, so I'm getting pretty experienced with pain management. The crap I've got requires some form of external medication in order for me to function like a relatively normal person. I say relatively because, let's just face facts here, I ain't never gonna be accused of being normal. Hehe.
Anyway, the specialist I saw (the last doc I saw about whatever I've got) gave me Vioxx. This worked pretty well. When i was taking Vioxx I was pretty much back to regular function. General lack of pain, free body movement, wrestling with the kids, lifting heavy objects, stuff like that. The only thing it didn't really tackle was my feet. Still, it worked and I was in better shape for using it.
Then Vioxx was recalled because it kills people. People on Vioxx have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Fuck.
I kept taking it anyway, seeing as I didn't have that many left and am not in any particular risk category for heart problems. I looked forward to the day when I could see the doc again and get a prescription for Celebrex, which was the drug that Vioxx users were being switched to (in the majority).
In the meantime I needed something of the over-the-counter variety. I went to my old friends acetaminophen and acetylsalicylic acid. They'd carried me through many a hangover and headache. They sucked. Didn't really get rid of the pain at all. I tried ibuprofen. That worked pretty well but not for a very long time and I had to take a pretty large dose for it to work. It also started to make me violently ill.
Enter naproxen sodium. More commonly known as Naprox or Aleve. Aaaaaahhh!!! (<--- Angels singing)
It worked. Really well. Maybe not quite so well as Vioxx but well enough to function and no stomach problems, no need to overdose. I was happy and relieved that I had found something that worked to take me through to when I could get Celebrex.
Then late last week some problems surfaced regarding Celebrex. It seems that it kills people. People on Celebrex have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Fuck!
What the hell is up here? Now the FDA is looking into the entire class of drugs and it's possible that they might all be classified as unsafe. The entire class of drugs! This is the class of drugs specifically designed to get rid of the pain I've got.
Fuck!!
But wait, there's more. On my ride into work this morning I heard about a test that is being aborted because the drugs being tested were greatly increasing the risks of patient's suffering heart attacks and strokes. The drugs involved? Celebrex and naproxen.
Fucking Aleve, which has been on the market for 30 years, over the counter for more than a decade, regarded by all as one of the safest pain killers available, is suddenly found to increase risk factors for heart attacks and strokes but this isn't discovered until I need it?
Fuck you, universe!
I've got a new blogson and blogdaughter. Go say hello to the dynamic duo at Loggerheads. Or @Loggerheads? Whatever, just go say hi.
Actually, I don't know if I get to claim paternity. They were both established bloggers before. I just helped them get a modicum of anonymity for their newest venture. Harvey, can i get a ruling?
I don't think fear of heights is properly characterized as a phobia. I think it lies more along the lines of "proper appreciation for gravity". It's really misnamed anyway - isn't it really a fear of falling to a painful and grizzly death? What could be more rational than that?
My life would probably have been a lot safer if I had that common sense response. Unfortunately for my insurance company I'm one of those freaks who likes falling. That tickling feeling you get when you look down from a height? The one that happens when your stomach is trying to invert itself and crawl behind your kidneys for protection? I love that feeling.
I've been laughing myself silly at Boudicca's rodent adventures (Parts I, II, III, IV, V and Conclusion). She had a mouse move into her mini-van and she tells the story in fine style. Somebody was listening to my laughter. Karma, as they say, must balance.
Saturday eve I was standing in the carport waiting for man's best friend to finish her business and return to the domicile. It was cold. Damned cold.* I was shivering so hard my balls thought they were epileptics. My mind wandered a bit and I thought about what I'd do if I got locked outside of the house. I decided I'd be forced to skin Kota for her fur as I'd need something to wrap around myself for warmth once her body cooled and the blanket of entrails (a la Luke Skywalker in Empire) no longer sufficed.
I was brought out of my reverie by a skrinching sound. A sound remarkably similar to the noises that the homestead's resident rodent** makes when traveling about his cage. A sound of tiny claws on a hard surface. This sound was similar but had a different timbre. It included a bit of that nails down the chalkboard cringe inducing noise.
Tiny claws on metal.
I think of the odds against our meeting. What are the odds that the ICQ random chat button that you hit would come up with me? What if I hadn't had a funny tagline in my profile that caught your eye? What if you hadn't had the courage to cross an ocean for me, or if The Godfather hadn't been there to help you? The odds against us ever getting together mean we're statistically luckier than a PowerBall winner.
I think of the things we've faced. Family frictions, culture shock, enduring terrible solitude, relocating, hard pregnancies and health problems. The list of things that tried to break us apart is monstrous but we defeated or dealt with every one.
And then I think of the things we've built together. Trust, love, passion, friendship, a family, a home (and one freaking huge menagerie of pets). And that's when I thank you for the one hundred eighty nine million presents you've given me, because I treasure every moment with you like the gift that it is.
Happy Anniversary my Lovely Wife.
*KISS* *HUG* *NIBBLE*
This was a good one. What else would you expect when you use a picture of a guy with a pole through his ass?
Grand Prize: 5 points
John returned the pogo stick to Toys R Us the very next day.
Simon
First runner up: 3 points (selected by a dedicated (medicated?) team of hippies)
So am I going to need a tetanus shot doc? I hate needles.
Kenny
Second runner up: 2 points (selected by "enabler" Karl Rove)
Bob soon realized anal sex isn't all it's cracked up to be!
DeAnna
Third runner up: 1 point (selected by an elite team of French commandos)
New this fall on ABC ......Extreme Makeover/Monster Garage
Frick
Posted at Protomonkey.
Bad: The Dear Any Servicemember mail service I mentioned yesterday is apparently suspended. :-(
There are security concerns about anonymous items (anthrax, etc) being sent directly to the frontline troops. The anonymous nature of Any Servicemember made this a dangerous and uncontrollable vector for anybody who wanted to harm the troops.
Good: There are other ways to send smiles to our boys and girls overseas. :-)
Operation Dear Abby was started many a year ago to allow people to write letters to our troops overseas. The modern (security conscious) system allows you to send a note that can be read by any servicemember with internet access. Posts can also be printed off by division personnel with internet access to distribute to troops who aren't online.
For a more personal touch, join SlagleRock's Letters to the Troops campaign. A friend of Slagle's is being deployed to Iraq and will hand carry letters that bloggers post on their sites. Just write a letter and trackback to Slagle's post linked above and they'll take care of the rest. Be quick about it though - the deadline is today!
(My letter follows in the extended entry.)
I've got some friends who would love to receive one. Here are their addresses:
ANY SAILOR
USS NIMITZ CVN 68
FPO AP 96620-2820ANY SAILOR
USS RONALD REAGAN CVN 76
FPO AP 96616-2876ANY SAILOR
USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN CVN 72
FPO AP 96612-2872ANY SAILOR
USS HARRY S TRUMAN CVN 75
FPO AE 09524-2875
These are the carriers currently on deployment in the Pacific Ocean and Persian Gulf. Make a sailor's day - send 'em a card.
If you're afraid of the water you could adopt a platoon, or if you'd prefer a more direct contact consider adopting a soldier.
The little things mean so much more when far from home. Send a card to a serviceman overseas and you can make two people smile with each one. (One of those people is you.)
(Hat tip to Lovely Wife)
Protomonkey is reborn!
Protomonkey was my attempt to goad myself into writing more and better. Being the stubborn SOB that I am, I was unable to force myself to do so and the site languished. It has now risen like the monkey from the flames, changed into a new and stronger site.
What, you might ask me, is this wonderful new concept? Well, I say to you, it is now a group blog. It will be a collective home for any creative writing. Short stories, anecdotes, essays, you name it, it's welcome. For a more complete (and dare I say humorous) introduction see the FAQ.
Joining is simple. Just comment in the FAQ thread or send me an email and mention that you'd like to be a contributor. If you don't have my email address you can get it from the sidebar here or just contact your friendly neighborhood spammer. Apparently they've all got it.
So what are you waiting for? Get over there and look around. My short stories are posted over there and there's already a second protomonkey churning out goods for you.
I don't say that very often. In fact I don't think I've ever said it, so you know I'm not crying wolf.
Almost three years ago we almost lost little Burger. It was a fantastic collision of poor diagnosis, entrenched medical establishment and insurance company hell. Lovely Wife has written up the whole story.
When you're done over there you might want to read about the other medical calamity we went through. I wrote about that one last year.
Way back in the early days of 2004 I began the Tactlessly Correct movement with a rant about political correctness. The discussion in that post is still continuing.
The current debate centers on the replacement of "Oriental" with "Asian". That's got me thinking. I have a goodly bit of Asian blood in me (1/4th of the total amount, if my math is correct). Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Laub immigrated from Byelorus. Sure they were caucasian but Byelorus is most definitely in Asia. I'm going to start checking the "Asian" box now whenever the "heritage" question comes up on the government forms.
I wonder how that will work out. I'm as white as the pure driven snow but I can genuinely claim to be of Asian descent.
Actually, now that I think of it I'm not quite as white as the pure driven snow. I'm actually only as white as the snow the day after it falls since I can claim Indian heritage as well. Nana was 1/2 Iroquois after all and that makes me 1/8th native. Maybe I'll alternate between "Asian" and "Native American" on those forms.
Or maybe I'll just start selecting "Other" and put down "American". Claiming anything else as my "heritage" is just sophistry.
Why did the Founding Fathers (tm) use the phrase "several states" in the Constitution? Why "several"?
The term is used all over the document. It appears in the sections on formation and powers of the Congress, powers of the President, and the powers and responsibilities of the states themselves. It also appears in the 5th (amending the Constitution), 6th (supremacy of the Constitution), 14th (Citizenship rights), 16th (income tax), 18th (prohibition), 20th (Presidential, Congressional terms), 21st (prohibition repealed), and 22nd (Presidential term limit) amendments.
What does "several states" mean? It isn't hard to find out. The first definition of "several" at Miriam-Webster is this:
separate or distinct from one another
Separate. Distinct. A union of individual entities.
The balance between Federal and State powers has shifted grotesquely since the Constitution was written. It is both sad and dangerous that the states have traded their riding crops for a federal yoke.
Audio only:
Sultry female: Hey, what's that you're holding?Studly fella: A little something I call 'total happiness'.
Sultry female: Well you got some total happiness on your shirt.
Now what are you thinking right now? Yeah, that's what I though. You dirty, dirty bird.
With video:
Female suit walks up to an office building security desk.
Female suit: Hey, what's that you're holding?
Security guard sits up from his half-reclined position, holding a 12" meatball sub in his hands.
Security guard: A little something I call 'total happiness'.
Security guard smiles goofily.
Female suit gets the "what a jackass" look on her face.
Female suit: Well you got some total happiness on your shirt.
Security guard looks down at his shirt while the goofy smile turns into the "I'm such a jackass" look.
Switch to close up of sub on Subway wrapper.
Sometimes less is more.
(Lovely Wife pointed this one out to me.)
Trey's comments are busted so I, the proverbial swinging monkey of commenters, shall fling the feces of my verbosity from afar.
Congratulations!
Trey finished with the scholastic requirements for his Masters of Business Administration. You may now call him a "suit" and tremble before him. Seriously though Trey, a big virtual high five from Snoozeland.
My deepest sympathies
Please pass my regards and condolences to The Good Doctor.
How fitting
I can't think of a more fitting name for a town that volunteers to subsidize inflated prices than "Dorking". In fact, wouldn't it be just nifty if this practice itself became known as "dorking"?
Update: Trey has a related post about the general welfare clause in the preamble.
This started out as a comment at Random Pensees but got too big. As a rule of thumb, if your comment goes past 3 paragraphs you should consider making a post out of it.
RP gives a brief recap of how we ended up with our Constitution, pointing out that our country was not set up with a strong central government. Even when the Constitution was adopted the federal government was severely limited in scope and power. The Constitution specifically grants the states all rights not specifically designated to the federal government or not specifically prohibited to them.
RP uses the example of unfunded mandates to point out the failure of this protection of states' rights. I couldn't agree more. Actually, I could and do agree more. Y'all probably expected that, knowing me for the radical reactionary that I am.
The Federal government has been systematically reducing the rights of the several states since the adoption of the Constitution. Well, maybe not right after the adoption but definitely within a generation. There was one very notable pushback (the Civil War) but since then the Fed's stripping of State powers has been a legislative steamroller.
Like RP, I have a serious problem with unfunded mandates. I'll go further than that though. I have a serious problem with all mandates. The founding fathers were familiar with the idea - it's essentially the same as taxation without representation. We make the rules, you follow them and shut up about it.
The vast majority of federal laws could not pass a true constitutional litmus test. Oh, I know that they all have a line or two saying that they are crafted to address a concern of interstate commerce but that's just political hogwash for the most part. Federal laws are not crafted with the intent to regulate interstate commerce, they are crafted for agendas and then adjusted to give lip service to the interstate commerce requirement.
The most visible proof of the loss of state power is the election just past. Think about the television coverage you endured. How much of that was devoted to your state legislature, local mayor or even your governor? Not a drop in the bucket compared to the attention given to federal congressional and senate races. There is no attention given to state races because the balance of power is so far to the federal side that even the most powerful state position is just an also-ran.
I think it might be possible that our children have been replaced with evil clones. Or perhaps the natural evil aura of the kitten has infected them? Maybe alien implants. Whatever the source, we're talking pint sized packs of evil.
Don't believe me? Ask Bear. He's been warning us for the past couple months, saying "My brothers are evil". He also says that about the kitten, lending credence to the evil infection theory.
They talk in tongues too. It started with Burger and a nonsense phrase he was happily babbling to himself while riding his bike. From out of nowhere we heard "dar dar dar dar dar dar". Of course we thought this was hilarious. Our attempts to learn the source of "dar dar dar" have met a blank wall. We chalked it up to being a Burgerism.
Then it started to spread. At any time you might hear any of our kids or the neighbor's kids doing the "dar dar dar dar" chant. Just an innocent Burgerism? I'm beginning to think it's like the "beep" warning you get when your smoke detector battery is running low. Time for the aliens to recharge the brain implants, or something like that.
Not that the evil quotient seems to be reduced by any measure.
At the dinner table the other night Burger was doing the "dar dar" chant when he hit a clear patch of vocabulary with “I’m the fucking baby around here” followed smoothly by another round of “dar dar dar dar dar”. It was so smooth that Lovely Wife and I couldn’t be sure that we had heard what we thought we heard. So we asked him. And he proudly repeated it with an angelic smile upon his face.
I regret to say that discipline was spotty as both of us had gut aches from laughing so hard.
Evil. Cute, but definitely evil.
An announcement came over the intercom this morning. We are scheduled to have a fire drill. An actual fire drill. As in, stop working, walk down the stairs, go outside until they say we can come back inside.
It's just like being back in school! Just like in school they've waited to the coldest day of the year, too.
Oh, another announcement just came on. We can carry personal items but nobody is allowed to carry beverages down the stairs. It's a violation of the code. The code of what? A couple people just took their coffee and went down into the lobby via the elevators. I guess the code says that it is okay to bring beverages into the elevators.
I think the anti-beverage code must be a part time thing because I don't recall any signs or warnings on the doors or stairs themselves warning against carrying beverages. I use the stairs every day (going down only - the ground floor stairwell is locked from the outside so people can't sneak in the back door and go upstairs without passing security) but I guess it's possible that I missed a sign. If there's no sign there I'm going to put in an official request for one. Safety first you know, and who wants to be a code breaker?
I'm currently fighting a powerful urge to pull the fire alarm. What better time? Everybody's expecting it so nobody would panic but you still get all the benefit of sticking it to the man!
This will be my first fire drill since 1987. I thought that graduating from high school meant I had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that I knew how to exit a building.
Off to the pisser now. Nothing worse than standing around in freezing weather with a full bladder.
[Twenty minutes later]
Damn, that thing was loud! Annoyingly loud. And it was indeed cold outside. Very, very cold. And they kept us outside for over ten minutes. Sons of bitches.
Did I mention that I don't generally wear a coat? I don't really need one seeing as I go from the house to the car then the car to the building. Fucking cold.
Well, the building administrators can now rest assured that several hundred mature (to varying degrees) adults know how to walk down stairs and mill about smartly.
Jen has almost reached the magical 100,000 visitor mark. In tru diabolical fashion she is offering a bribe to the blogger who refers the magic visitor. In similar fashion (if you can't copy Jen, who can you copy?) I'll do the same. If you're the 100,000th visitor and you get there from my site I'll win the bear and you'll win your choice of either 5 Snooze Points or 1 month of free advertising at Zero Intelligence*.
So what are you waiting for? Get on over there! Don't you understand that I could win a freakin' bear? I already got an award today; winning that bear would make this a banner day.
* Yes, I realize I just established a market value of $2 for a Snooze Point. Does this qualify as an IPO?
The contest will be open until some time on Friday. Best caption gets 5 points with another handful thrown around to the rest of the best.
Click for big size. Presented as a thumnail to protect the wussies squeamish.
Screw the Weblog Awards, I won a Windie!
The Jimmy from the Block Award goes to the Jim who most remembers the little people.
See? I told you all that talking about dwarfs would pay off some day.
The 2004 Weblog Awards have closed. My site didn't win and none of the sites I endorsed won. I think you all can see what this means.
If you want to win in the 2005 Weblog Awards you damned well better not have me plugging your site. I will begin taking bribes to that effect. Just click the PayPal button in the sidebar and put the following in the memo section when you make payment: "2005 Weblog Awards bribe - For the love of God please don't plug my site."
Just like NPR, I offer various levels of contribution:
$5 - Snooze Button Dreams will not actively campaign for your site.
$10 - Snooze Button Dreams will not mention that we are voting for your site.
$25 - Snooze Button Dreams will not mention your site at all for the duration of the voting.
$50 - Snooze Button Dreams will eradicate any mention of your site, remove all links and trackbacks except for an active spin campaign where we will campaign against your site. We're pretty sure this will guarantee a victory for you.
The newest person in mine is Tiffany! Blown Fuse has been subborned moved into Munuviana.
And so we continue in our quest to take over the world, one blog at a time.
You're in your van and your two year old daughter is asleep in the back seat. You've got to stop and pick something up from the office. Do you:
A) Wake the tyke up and bring her inside with you?
B) Lock the doors and roll up the windows and go in alone?
C) Leave the van running and unlocked with your sleeping child inside while you go into the building alone?
D) A or B
E) Anything except "C". Really, just about anything you can possibly think of besides "C". Don't pick "C"!
If you picked "C", how would you feel while watching the van drive away?
Lovely Wife comments on a local woman who chose poorly.
The building where I work is four stories high and is shaped like the number 8. In the empty spaces in the middle are nice little park like areas with trees, bushes, flowers, gravel strewn walking paths and stone benches. Windows look in on these idyllic areas on all sides of every floor.
To all appearances there is no way to get into them. There are no doors to them. None of the windows in the building open, including the first floor windows where these gardens are located. I've been confounded by this since I started working here. The grounds are tended, bushes trimmed, paths cleared - obviously maintenance people are getting in there. I figured I was missing some obvious ingress and have been casually searching for them for a month. How do people get into these micro parks?
Today I discovered the answer. The maintenance people lower a scaffolding from the roof, much like the window-washer scaffolds on skyscrapers. There really is absolutely no way for people to get into these park areas. They are faux paths, unused and unusable.
Why in the world would they go through the trouble of creating and maintaining these areas while keeping everybody out? What brilliant architect came up with this idea? "Oh, I've got a good one! We'll put little park areas in the center of the building. Trees, bushes, flowers, bird baths, nice paths and benches to sit on - people love stuff like that. But to limit maintenance costs we won't let anybody get to them. That way we don't have to worry about litter and things like that."
With all of the rampantly moronic things I've seen in my life you'd think that new evidence of professional grade stupidity would cease to shock me. Fortunately I retain my childlike wonder that people can be this dumb and continue to function.
It just came to me in a flash. Mars Attacks is just a remake of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. I'm too stunned to comment adequately. It's like a piece of my youth has been used as a mung rag, peed on and then "taken" in the biblical sense.
I go now to cry softly in a corner.
And he's a Munu now!
It has been a few years since I traveled by plane. The last time I flew was before 9/11. Things have changed. Now when you go to the counter to check in there are self-serve kiosks to help speed the way. Unfortunately these require many of the same skills that you need to operate a microwave oven (besides pressing the "popcorn" button). Also very unfortunately the average traveler seems to lack so much as the ability to use a calculator. The net result is that it still takes the same amount of time to check in but now you are pissed at your fellow travelers instead of the counter personnel.
A cheeseburger and a slice of cake will cost $35 if you order it through room service. This includes tax, $2.50 delivery fee plus mandatory 19% gratuity. When you sign the slip to charge it to your room there is a line for additional tip. Yeah, right-o Buckwheat. Try again.
Michigan Ave in Chicago is a full strip of some of the greatest boutiques, shops and vendors you'll find anywhere. It can stand toe to toe with upscale merchant districts in any major metropolis in the world. The bag most frequently seen in my travels down Michigan Ave? The Gap. You can take the rube out of the mall but you can't take the mall out of the rube.
Elevator sign:
"Out of order - Men at work".
I press the button.
The screams, they are horrific.
I guess I'll walk down the stairs.
A "tanka", for those of you unfamiliar with the beast, is a poetic form similar to but older than the haiku. It has five lines of 5,7,5,7 and 7 syllables. Feel free to try some for yourself.
Nope, not back yet. Another Trickle post for your entertainment. See how much I love y'all? It's not everybody who'd go to these lengths to keep y'all amused, you know.
My fourth child turned a year old today. Of course the babe was adopted months ago but I'm still mighty happy to see the little bugger his the first anniversary mark.
Go visit adopting daddy Gary Cruse and see what the Bestofme Symphony looks like on its first birthday.
Ryan's post is hillarious but Joshua's comment on it takes humor down up to new levels.
Nope, I'm not back. This post brought to you by the wonder that is Trickle.
Well my friends I'll be incommunicado until Thursday as I brave the bitter cold wastes of Chicago. Fortunately my hotel connects to our office building so at least I won't be freezing my nads off walking to work.
Whilst I'm gone avail yourselves of this space, so generously granted by yours truly, to toss out ribald bon mots, incessant chatterings and other nuggets of your literary genius. I'll be quite sad if there aren't at least a half dozen terrifically naughty jokes here when I get back.
Coming next week:
Rebirth of the ProtoMonkeyAnother caption contest
The political party startup
Possible anecdotes about the Chicago trip
Tis true! Tin-foil hats are passe. They're so...so...so 1998. The modernly festooned brigade member wears this delightful accessory, cunningly crafted from layers of electrostatic insulating polymer shoved into a WWI Snoopy pilot's hat:
What better statement could there be to signify "I've got my shit together" than to have this ingenious contraption strapped to one's noggin? All of the mind protecting power of thin sheets of metal with none of the nasty crinkly noises. The future is now.
No longer shall they be known as the tin-foil hat brigade. Nay I say! From this point forward they shall be called the Velostat Visionaries!
That site does give us one gem of useful information. Specifically, never ever allow your children to attend Temple University. The Grand High Poobah of the Velostat Visionaries is a tenured professor there.
(Hat tip to Dopple-G)
Oh, there were some good ones. Some less good ones too but we can save them for reuse in the election commercials two years hence.
In case you forgot this was the picture.
And without further ado here are the lucky winners!
Grand Prize: 5 points
John Kerry Attempts to Ride Swiftboat Record to Presidential Victory
Craig
First runner up: 3 points (selected by the nutless dog)
"I think we will just tie up here"
Jeremy
Second runner up: 2 points (selected by a small child)
Excellent work! Now let's get some pole dancers onboard and make a party of it.
Spirit Fingers
Third runner up: 1 point (selected by a small, nutless dog child)
Alright, you can drive now.
Simon
Some things go together naturally and the symbiosis of the two is something better than the parts individually. Whether they're good or bad individually these blessed pairs become something onderful when added together. Take peanut butter and chocolate, Lovely Wife and I, alcohol and ladies of questionable moral fiber, or Michael Moore and a suppurating head wound.
On the other hand when some items are paired up they create a twisted melange far worse than either of the two taken separately. That's what we're here to discuss - things that go together...badly. Individually they may be good or bad but together they are horrific. I'll start us off, y'all chime in with comments.
- patent leather shoes + bunions
- morning wood + overcapacity bladder
- explosive diarrhea + plugged toilet
- Michael Moore + almost anything except a suppurating head wound
- thong Speedos + any male
- masturbation + mother-in-law
- Natalie Maines + a clue
- blogs + lists
- pedantic newscaster + documents revealed as forgeries after the most cursory inspection
- Paris Hilton + any recording device
Your turn!
I was thinking about this on the way into work today. I could really use some theme music. You know what I mean, right? The sound sample that plays whenever the hero walks into the scene. Shaft had that bow-chicka-bow-wow thing and James Bond has that snippet that's been around for 40 years and just says "BOND IS HERE". Theme music. That's what I need.
I was thinking a good one for me would be that part of Won't Get Fooled Again where
So I tried to think of music that would never have a chance of ever being adopted as a corporate jingle but the sad fact is that anything decent had a decent chance of being sold to pimp toothpaste eventually. I figured I'd have to take a chance that my theme music would eventually be co-opted else I'd end up with something from the B52s or Oasis and we just can't have that.
After much hemming and hawing, deliberation and debate (hey, if you can't debate with yourself then who can you debate with?) I settled on this one.
Now I've just got to find a decent boom box.
The 2004 Weblog Awards polls are now open, featuring yours truly and quite a few of the folks in my sidebar. I pulled out all of the Munuvians who made the cut and posted that over at the central Munuviana blog.
The campaigning and politicking for votes promises to be fierce. You won't find that here, of course. As exemplified by our failed presidential campaign, I am an incredibly lazy politician with almost no skills whatsoever in successful campaigning.
So without further ado, here's who you should vote for. Voting for other people in these contests will make me sad. I could possibly enter a pouting state if things get bad enough. You can (and should!) vote once each day in each poll. The poll category lines link to the actual polls, the blog names link to the blogs. You're probably reading all of these regularly anyway but I've included the links just in case.
BEST ONLINE COMMUNITY
Munuviana
BEST AUSTRALIA OR NEW ZEALAND BLOG
Ambient Irony
BEST OF THE TOP 100 - 250 BLOGS***
Bad Example
Patriot Paradox
BEST OF THE TOP 500 - 1000 BLOGS*
Snooze Button Dreams - This is the most important one!
BEST OF THE TOP 1000 - 1750 BLOGS**
Everyday Stranger
Boudicca's Voice
BEST OF THE TOP 1750 - 2500 BLOGS
Ravings of a Corporate Mommy
BEST OF THE TOP 5000 - 6750 BLOGS
Ilyka Damen
* Jen would have been in this category if she made the cut. Since she didn't get in due to some administrative oversite, thus giving me some small chance of victory a guarantee of victory in the face of all other blogs, I'm pledging to share my award with her if when I win.
** Both of these lovely ladies fell into the same category. Voting for either of them will make me happy. You do want me to be happy, don't you?
*** Similar to the ladies, supporting either of these two gents is goodness incarnate. Yeah, I know that this third footnote is referenced first. It came on an edit, okay? Live with it.
I meant to write this a while ago. In fact I started to write it several times. Each time I did it got bigger and more confusing and was abandoned. So here goes the ultimate stripped down version:
- The illness I mentioned casually here, the one I was taking medication for, is a bit more serious than I let on.
- Around the time I first heard that I was going to be out of a job I started to get sick. Pain all over. Very nasty.
- Didn't see a doctor right away - thought it was stress from the crap at work.
- Eventually went to the doctor when I could no longer NOT go to a doctor.
- Preliminary diagnosis of fybromyalgia (means "everything hurts") - I had every symptom, seemed a pretty safe diagnosis.
- Tests showed high levels of serum aldolase (muscle protein in my blood) indicating spontaneous muscle degeneration.
- Doc took about half of my blood (7 tubes! WTF?) to run a series of every blood test known to man.
- Doc gave me Ambien so I could get some sleep and Zoloft to restore my natural sleep cycle, which had been totally fubarred from the illness.
- Zoloft eliminated my creative writing abilities. And my imagination. It made me very lumpish. This was very disconcerting.
- Ruled out fibromyalgia. Possibly could be polymyositis or dermatomyositis, both of which sound way less "venereal diseasish" than fybromyalgia.
- My job was eliminated and I joined the ranks of the unemployed.
- Went to a specialist.
- Specialist took more blood, a load of x-rays and gave me Vioxx for the pain.
- Specialist ruled out the non venereal diseasish sounding illnesses.
- Specialist diagnosed the feet as having severe Plantar Fasciitis.
- Specialist injected molten lava (aka cortisone) into my plantar tendons. No, check that. Molten lava probably wouldn't have hurt that badly.
- I vowed to kill anybody who ever threatens me with cortisone injections. The jury will accept my assertion that it was done in self-defense.
- Began feeling progressively better.
- Tests came back.
- Serum aldolase levels getting lower.
- Specialist informs me that I have a genetic disposition to some bad bone problems later in life. Unrelated to current problems.
- Specialist gives me diagnosis of "spontaneous muscle degeneration, source unknown, possibly viral".
- Specialist loads me up with Vioxx because...
- COBRA insurance coverage runs out. No money to keep this going.
- Vioxx is recalled from the market.
- Ran out of Ambien.
- Got a job. Yay!
- Stopped taking Zoloft.
- Brain returned to normal function. Yay!
- I vowed to kill anybody who ever threatens me with Zoloft. The jury will accept my assertion that it was done in self-defense.
- Ran out of Vioxx. Yeah, I was still taking it. Choice between functional with chance of heart attack or non-functional. Functional won.
- Stopped feeling progressively better.
- Started feeling worse.
- Got insurance again. Yay!
- First day off will be in January. Will try to get Saturday appointment with docs before then.
And there we are. Currently I'm functional. I'm in nowhere near the shape I was in when I finally surrendered my stubbornocity and went to see my doc. (Incidentally, he had some choice words for me over my decision to wait so long before coming in.) I can walk around, just not real walking like we used to do. I can stand on my feet long enough to cook dinner. I can wrestle with the boys. I'm basically fully functional, just with limited duration.
Please do not be pissed that I didn't mention all of this months ago. At first I didn't know what was going on, then my normal obstinacy kicked in, then it was explained to me in no uncertain terms by a certain somebody who will remain nameless though you may recognize her from her supreme fisking skills (even though she hates fisking) that the view from outside is that of friends who care and are genuinely concerned and feel pretty shat upon that I played this so close to the vest so I decided that I would indeed let some folks know about it, then I figured I'd make a post about it, then the post got too big and complicated, then I basically relegated the whole thing to the back burner, then another friend inquired yesterday and I remembered just why I was going to make a post in the first place, so then I wrote this post that has gotten much larger than I was planning on writing but what the hell I'm at the very end now so it's finished and I can just publish it and call it a done deal.
RP inquired about Protomonkey a few days ago. There's been one post in the past 3 months and he was wondering when I might put up something new. I didn't answer right back because I really didn't have an answer.
The purpose behind Protomonkey was to separate my creative writing (tall tales, short stories, essays) from the rest of the stuff here at Snooze Button Dreams. I thought that if I set up a separate site with a goal of posting one item a week it would get me back into the habit of writing that type of work. Well, it didn't work very well.
Turns out that type of work either comes or it doesn't. I'm an abysmally poor 'on demand' type of writer. When the muse is with me the stuff pours out. When the fickle bitch smacks her ass on the way out the door I end up staring at a blinking cursor.
In my mind Protomonkey had failed. In fact when I posted that recent short story it went here without even a thought of putting it on the 'classy' blog. Can I force it to work? No, I don't really think so. I'm just not a performance writer. I'm not dogging myself here, I'm just acknowledging that my writing style isn't conducive to a regularly scheduled metered output.
If I just post the Protomonkey-type stuff when it happens to get written that site will never attract a following. People just don't follow a site that is scantily and infrequently updated. It would be a waste of effort to put my gems in a location where few if any people will read them.
So Protomonkey is doomed? Maybe not. I'm not the only blogger out there who writes the occasional story. Protomonkey could succeed as a team blog, if it had a decent amount of support. So here's my idea:
1) Protomonkey becomes a group blog.
2) Posts can be short stories, tall tales, creative works, etc. or links to the same type of post on other blogs.
3) Members can therefore post their own stuff or link to their own stuff or that of the people who they read.
4) Membership would be figuratively unlimited. In the event that it gets too big and unwieldy we can deal with such happy fate at a later date.
Thoughts? Comments? Anybody care for a mint?
The turkey's gone and the fat man in red isn't here yet. That means it's time for Blogosphere Awards!
The king daddy of 'em all is the 2004 Weblog Awards, organized by Kevin at Wizbang. Nominations are complete and voting starts later today. I shall annoy y'all for votes later if I make the category cut.
New for this year are The Edublog Awards, focusing on weblogs of an educational bent.
Last but not least are the 2004 Asian Blog Awards. This year they're hosted by our very own Simon.
It's like a disease - we just can't stop voting.
Lycos has invested a lot in anti-spam infrastructure for their users but spam is still a huge problem. How do you stop the spammers? Passing laws doesn't work - they just rent servers in places where there are no laws against spamming. The spammers themselves don't seem to be susceptible to anything.
But their customers are. Lycos has designed a tool to give those customers exactly what they want - traffic. Lots and lots and lots of traffic.
Lycos launches screensaver in fight against spam
Haarlem (pts) - The Internet portal Lycos http://www.lycos-europe.com has developed a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail. As the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk reports, the company is hoping to make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers rocket by keeping their servers running flat out. According to the Internet firm, if enough people sign up and download the new tool, spammers could end up having to pay to send out terabytes of data. By getting thousands of people to download and use the screensaver, Lycos hopes to get spamming websites constantly running at almost full capacity.
The individual burden isn't much (about the same as downloading an MP3 file over the course of a day) but the combined requests of thousands of trial users in Sweden have already had a dramatic effect. Response times from targeted sites have already dropped by 85 percent.
For the sites advertising through spam there are two damaging effects. First, they have performance issues. As huge numbers of requests come in their servers can't respond as quickly. Secondly, the Cialis and fetish gear merchant sites are using massive amounts of bandwidth - something they must actually pay for.
This is great. Spam is used because it is cheap. Make the use of spam expensive and people will stop using it.
Yay for Lycos!
(Tip credit to Dopple-G)
UPDATE
Kate has more, including a link to the download.
UPDATE: The wacky date on this post is intentional. It's going to stay at the top of the first page for a while.
It's starting right now. Current membership: Me, Pylorns, Peekah
I touched on it last week and the idea just won't leave me alone. You see, I want a political identity. I want to be a part of a group of like-minded folk. I know they're out there but they're in the same boat as I am - unable to fully identify with either of the majors or stubbornly claiming independence.
Here are the issues that need to be addressed, the forces that are making this party not only welcome but needed:
