Yes Sir, Yes Sir, 3 Bags Full…Of Complete PC Horseshit

Officials at a British Nursery school have ordered that the words to Baa Baa Black Sheep be changed to Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep so as not to offend any of the kids.

I’ve gone on and on about the stupidity of things like this more times than I care to think about, so I’ll leave you to let that sink in while I go have a good cry.

Extra Extra, Read All About…what?

Remember the old days when news stories all had a point? The point could have been obvious, enraging, thought-provoking, it didn’t matter. It was there, and it was clear.

Now, it seems reporters have forgotten this concept and waste our time with lots of pointless crap.

Case in point: The other day I heard on the news. “There is more packaging than ever before. Here are the details.” Now, when I hear that we’re going to get the details, I think I’m going to get some story about how they ‘ve had to increase the amount of packaging to foil shoplifters. Or, I’m going to hear about the environmental ramifications of so much plastic. At least I’ll hear about what I should do if I hate this amount of packaging as much as the reporter does. But no no no. I get five minutes of, “Look at all this plastic! Back to you, Brent.” Well duh, I would have gotten this bit of “news” by visiting any store in my vacinity, buying something, and then cursing at the unrelenting packaging that will not let me in!

Another story I saw was supposed to be a critique of different types of luggage, and whether you should go for the cheap bag or the expensive suitcase. At first, he talked about how the more expensive suitcase stood up to more ware than the cheaper kinds. He was going for a point. But then the point train fell off the rails with this statement. “But, there is this one guy who has an expensive suitcase which has fallen apart, so you never know.”

Well thanks, Jimmy! So how can your story be of use to me? Honestly, I have no idea. Buy the cheap? Expensive? Cheap? Expensive? What’s that? It’s pieces of my head all over the floor!

It’s really sad when more and more often, I catch myself saying, “Duh!” at the TV when the news is on. It’s supposed to tell me shit I don’t know. It’s supposed to make me aware of things. That’s why they call it the *news*! Next they’ll tell me cars need fuel to function, snow melts when it gets hot, and people who cross on lights that are red for them are more likely to die than those who cross when the little man says walk. I’m left to wonder, if they feel that it’s necessary to broadcast this, is it news to someone? *Shudder*!

Roll up the Rim to Whine!

Ok, can someone bring me these morons so I can kick them in the nether regions? Maybe Steve wouldn’t mind kicking them too since I’m sure he agrees with me. Let’s all have a moron-kicking fest. Sounds like jolly good fun. And no I’m not British. It just seems the caffeine in this tea is hitting me hard.

Read this, and tell me if you want to kick them too.

Readers’ Digest condensed version: girl sees Tim Horton’s cup in garbage. Girl remembers Roll up the Rim contest and sees the rim is not rolled. Girl tries, but her little hands can’t do it. Girl gets help from older girl, who can, and finds they’ve one a SUV! Girls run to school office, which is where things begin to go south. Girls call parents. Little girl’s parents arrive and run off with the cup. Now bigger girl’s parents find out and want a piece of the action. Enter school staff member, let’s call him Mr. Douchebag. He says it was his cup that he, ahem, threw away, and now he’s playing gimme gimme!

Ready? Set? Kick!

  • One for little girls’s parents for not being big people and including bigger girl in the cash.

  • One for bigger girl’s parents for resorting to wee child tactics and whining, instead of talking it out privately with little girl’s family.

  • and 1746 kicks from steel-toed boots for Mr. douchebag for showing up magically to claim the winning cup.

Maybe we should change our lucky recipient of so many kicks to Captain Coincidence. How did he know it was his cup? It could have been anyone’s cup. And even if it was his cup, he gave up all rights to it by tossing it in the trash. It is now, uh, trash, and public trash at that. If he was so concerned about it, he should have rolled up the rim before he threw it away. Now, it’s time to apply the childhood expression finders keepers, losers weapers, so neener neener neener to you, Mr. Douchebag!

As for what the finders should do, they should stop weaping and acting like losers, and keep their dignity and do the only right thing to do. Sell the car, split the money, and put it in the kids’ college funds. Now now children, is that so hard? Otherwise, the parents are doing the ultimate in bad parenting and teaching the kids, what, boys and girls? Say it with me now. “Greed is the way of the world! Even if it isn’t yours, you can take it, and if you really want it, go ahead and sue for it! Mommy, daddy, and your teachers, your role models, say it’s ok!” And we wonder how we get generations of sue-happy, selfish assholes. The answer is simple. What should we have learned by now? We reap what we sow!

Welcome back Karine!

Well holy crap it’s a good day. It’s warm outside and we have a window open. I finally convinced my computer that yes, it’s ok to open haloscan’s windows on this site…and when I did, I found a surprise! In one of the comment windows,
Karine is back, with a new blog! Yea Karine! How the hell are ya? Are you still way over there in the Scandinavian north? It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you! I hope, in your neck of the woods, it’s as good a day as it is here!

Nightmares and Dreamscapes

No, this isn’t a big blather session about Stephen King. It’s actually about a nightmare, one of mine.
Barbie made me think about a certain disturbing dream I had when she wrote a post about a nightmare of her own.

I had this dream years ago that scared me, not because of what it was, but because my mind was capable of constructing such a thing. It was right after the whole September 11 thing happened. I dreamed that everybody at the university was in fear of being atacked by terrorists. So they set up this whole emergency response system. they had a special alarm to signal threat of bombs, we practised using this alarm, every classroom had hundreds of gas masks hanging in a cupboard that the professor had keys to, and everybody had to go out a special door to a lead-lined waiting area in case of the presence of nuclear warheads if this alarm went off.

Well, one day, the alarm went off, and it was not a drill! We were in a giant lecture hall, the lights went out, and when I mean it was dark, I mean the kind of blackness that wraps around you and starts to squeeze. The weird part about that is I’ve felt that kind of dark in real life when the hydro went off in one of the lecture halls I was in at 10 in the morning!

Anyway, we all began to proceed as planned. We put on our gas masks and started to move to the exits. But the terrorists were ahead of us! They had locked the exits from the inside! So envision some 500 people, all not used to the dark, stumbling around in panic.

And here comes the super weird part. The terrorists were in the building, and they were playing trumpets, but they were playing the JAWS theme. Somehow we knew these trumpet-playing wackos were the enemy, hell if I know how. Each time they got close to one of the lost souls that were my classmates, in true JAWS fashion, the song got faster.

And it gets weirder. In the blink of an eye, I went from your run-of-the-mill civilized university student to a barbarian similar to someone straight out of Lord of the Flies. For the sake of my own survival, I was willing to sacrifice my classmates. I was extremely relieved and hopeful when I heard the JAWS trumpets speeding up far away because they were after someone else, and while they did their vile things to them, whatever they may be, I just might have a chance to escape!

The rest of the dream was spent running. Up stairs, down stairs, through hallways. I would not let anyone lead me because I was afraid they would sacrifice me as quickly as I would sacrifice someone else. I knew all humanity was gone as long as I was in this building. I think what shook me back to some form of humanity was hearing the JAWS trumpets speed up followed by a scream from a close friend. Then it was over.

Now, here comes the weird part. I have never been through a terrorist attack. I have never been around during a war that was happening here in Canada. I haven’t really read a book where the characters were going through such a thing. Lord of the Flies was a completely different ballgame. So where would I have created such an idea that had such depth that it would make me think for years? I didn’t think I had such savagery in me that I would gladly sacrifice other human beings to save my own life without trying other things, even in my dreams.

What? A Functioning Computer?

Hey everyone. Excuse me in this post while I mildly geek out. God what a crazy week. I eventually bit the bullet and had this cacking, dying, struggling, upchucking computer taken into the shop. It left on Tuesday, and just came back yesterday, and it works better than it ever has, and the sound doesn’t sound like ass anymore! Wow! I can actually play music on it without wanting to cry! Let’s just hope the cacking and dying stops now too. But only time will tell.

I’m just amazed to see how much damage a bad install of windows can do to a poor computer. I used to always get furious when I was going to school, I’d call the PC help line for help with some random problem and if it was especially stumping, they’d say “reinstall windows.” I’d think, “You morons! That’s just an easy out for you! Why don’t you help me instead of making me start over?” Now I know there might have been some truth to that.

Before this computer went to the shop, let’s face it. It was a whore! It would delete random files every time it would fall to its knees and choke, which could happen multiple times a day. It sounded like it was dragging a boulder every time you asked it to do anything. It couldn’t keep doing what I asked it to, I was afraid to do anything with the stupid thing! Oh, and if you played too many sound files, it would begin sounding like slow motion man.

Now, with the installation of a soundcard and a windows repair, voila! No dragging boulder when there’s no boulder to drag! No crappy sound! A much more responsive computer! I don’t know if all the problems are fixed, but it sure seems like there was more to that reinstall windows thing than I thought. And maybe computers are more like people than I think. Hardware influences software, like body influences mind. You let some dumbshit convince you that your computer should have an onboard sound chip, your sound chip causes your poor windows to have to work harder, your poor windows makes more errors, it falls down and loses some files.

Incidentally, Freedom Scientific can suck a dongle. They can suck a dong too. They can suck pretty much anything as long as it is guaranteed to give them some sort of infection that will make them smell like fish for as long as they shall live. You see, boys and girls, Freedom Scientific makes stuff to make computers talk. As you can imagine, not many companies make such things, so they will cost you an arm, a leg, and a few internal organs, and the company makes damn sure they get as many arms, legs, and internal organs as they can by making it hard as hell to crack. So, even if you don’t want to crack it, but just want to use it legitimately on a bunch of computers, too bad, you’re out of luck, chester!

I have to say in earlier versions, they were somewhat more generous than now. they gave you a disk with the mysterious power to dole out the permission to use JAWS, their thing to make computers talk, on five different machines. But it was very very very hard to find where this license was kept, so you couldn’t copy it and put it on another computer. You could use this disk to also remove the license from any of these computers, so if you needed to do repairs on the hard drive, you could save the license from damage, because once they’re gone, there’s no…oh gee sorry. Sure, have another one. Nope, they’re gone. The only way to get more is to hand over more limbs and organs to the big company.

Now, they’ve said bye-bye to the disks and bye-bye to our power to save our license keys from getting destroyed in hard drive reformats and other crap. What happens is every time you install JAWS, it phones home to our dong-sucking company, and dong-sucker says, sure they have a license to install the program here. But if your hard drive is going to be reformatted, there is no way to phone home to dong-sucker and say, “Hey dong-sucker, I don’t need the license on this computer right now, take it off so I still have the same number of license keys.” This is especially bad since they only give you three license keys rather than five like in the old days, the cheap pricks. I found this out the other day. Thankfully I didn’t have to spend any money, but I just know I’d better watch my computer p’s and q’s, or I will have to if I have any glitches that make a meal out of the license key.

So, hopefully now that I have a decent computer, you’ll hear from me again soon.

This Is Just Strange

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Homeless man Grady Allen Carnahan was caught trying to steal a sheep from the Little Rock Zoo on Tuesday night. A security guard called police after noticing a man lugging a trash can with a sheep inside. Carnahan tried to tell police he was a doctor and the sheep was sick. He fought with officers when they tried to take him into custody. He was later arrested on numerous charges and the sheep was returned to its home at the zoo.

Update:
I knew there had to be a more detailed story on this out there somewhere, and here it is.