Why All The Fear? This Isn’t Singapore!

I already know this, but I had it brought back to me today as I was walking around the mall. Maybe someone can explain this to me. Why are people so afraid of the white cane? I mean, I know why some people from China are afraid of the cane because it’s got some bad superstition attached to it. But I see completely white people jump out of the way as if fire and lightning bolts came out of the end of the cane with the ability to fry anyone in its path. Not once, but at least three times, I watched a seemingly terrified mother pull her children out of the way, and when one was back in front of me, she shriekd, “Aaaa! Insert child’s name. Look out!” So I know that warning shriek wasn’t intended for me. A while back, a friend of mine would walk far away from me so I couldn’t possibly hit her with the cane.

What is so terrifying about a white cane? I don’t even swing it around crazily or anything. Sometimes the tip doesn’t even leave the ground and people freak. Are they afraid of the cane, or is it me? If they’re afraid of me, they need to get out more. I mean, by the time these people’s kids reach age 10 or so, they’ll probably be taller than I am. Do they think that, if they don’t get out of my way post haste, I’ll start wildly clubbing them with my cane and steal their helpless kids? Granted my cane would probably hurt some if I used it as a weapon, but that’s not the point. That’s not what it’s intended for, and that’s not what I’m using it for. So, if you’re one of those people who are deathly afraid of my cane, or if you know someone who is, can you please tell me why there’s so much fear.

As an aside, would you believe that if you go to the right shoe-repair place, they’ll replace the lythium battery in a talking watch? That’s just mind-boggling, and I thought it might help someone who, like me, couldn’t even hope to make that leap of logic!

Enlighten me, Please.

I’ve noticed this weird trend with some of my friends who have MSN Messenger. You know how that works, right? You have a sign-in name and password that you can use anywhere that has MSN Messenger to go online and chat to your list of contacts that you’ve added to it. This becomes important.

I know people who have multiple MSN accounts for different places. Some have home and work accounts, some have an account for their desktop and one for their laptop. My question is a simple one. Why? We all know that a human being cannot be in two places at once. So there is no foreseeable reason to need multiple accounts because you talk to people from different places, since one of the cool things about MSN Messenger is you can sign into your same account from anywhere.

I could see it in the case of a home and work account if the person wanted only people they needed to contact quickly at work on the work account without having to deal with mesages from Uncle Bob, Cousin Frank, neighbour Tom and best friend Bill. But that’s not what these people with home and work accounts do. Oh no. They add everyone from their home account to their work one. Why make so much duplication?

I can even see people creating a backup MSN account because they’re going to ditch the first address and don’t want to lose their contacts, but this is even a little weird because they can save their list from their old account and just import it to their new one. But if they decided to do that, logic would then dictate that they wouldn’t sign in to the backup account at the same time as their first account, right? Well that’s not what some of these people do. I’ll be online and actually see them marked as online on both accounts at the same time! Then I have to ask myself, “How can they use them both? Do they have super powers and can fly between computers? Are they sitting between the computers and making themselves feel important by talking to the same person twice?” In either case, why bother? Why is this even necessary? Can somebody give me some reason why people do this so it makes sense to me? I can’t find it.

This Strikes me as Pointless

So I’ve been seeing on the news that a bunch of city employees have decided to go on strike. Because of this, libraries, rec centres, snow removal and garbage collection, among other things, have been shut down. And then of course, mother nature has to drop a load of blowing snow and freezing rain on us. Perfect!

I totally understand where the right to strike came from. But I feel like, along with the ability to sue, it’s totally overused these days. Striking and suing are supposed to be extreme mesures. Now, everybody does it for one reason or another. With striking, either they need a new contract, or they have something they want to demand from employers that may not be all that big. So boom! They go on strike. I think if people are getting extremely screwed on wages, there are unsafe working conditions that the employer won’t fix, or something else equally dire, then go ahead. Go on strike. But now it seems like unions set deadlines just to scare employers, and love walking the picket lines. And guess what? It loses all its power.

I know you’re staring at me going, “what are you talking about?” You need your garbage picked up and the sidewalks cleared and such.” Sure I do, but my anger isn’t going to make the city change its mind. All that happens is I get angry at the striking workers. Now you say, “but they’re going to create chaos by not doing the things that keep the city running smoothly.” Not this time. The city already employed other snow plough trucks to do the striking workers’ jobs. Somebody saw different coloured garbage trucks driving around. So I don’t think there’ll even be chaos. Ya see what happens when people strike too much?

Where there is chaos, there shouldn’t be chaos. Striking people are so desperate to cause trouble that they’re impeding people from leaving parking lots that are now available to be parked in for fre because the attendents are on strike. Um, explain the logic in that. I don’t think these people are trying to be scabs. Piss off. It’s your own falt they’re in there en mass. They’re also blocking buses from leaving. Ok, now you’re not working, so no one else should either? Logic is just thrown out the window here, and with it, my patience is gone.

And now you say, “well at least the public will be aware of the issues. Bzzz. Wrong. People see picket signs now and don’t even read them. Again, the effectiveness is gone!

So why do unions make people strike so much? They piss off the public, they piss off their employers, and at the end, they piss off the people they’re making strike because when you’re on strike, all you get is strike pay, chief. Tell me, who wins in this situation?

Does the Thought Still Count Anymore?

I know I’m a couple days late for getting this post up, but whatever. Every year I think this, I’m just finally saying it.
When I was a little kid, and Valentine’s Day came around, they always helped us make cards, and told us it was the thought that counted. It was the fact that you thought enough of someone to make them a gift or tell them how much they meant to you. Then, I thought, “Aww? What a cool day! It’s a day to make people feel good for no other reason than because you feel like it.”

Now I’m older, and I see these commercials telling people to buy diamonds because that’s the only thing you can do to show them you love them. And I see couples where one member, usually the girl I’m ashamed to say, gets mad if their significant other gets them something they consider cheap. Shouldn’t they be happy they got something at all? I can see feeling hurt if you get them something and get no acknowledgement of it, or your boyfriend/girlfriend never makes you feel special, and especially not that day. But I don’t know why people have grown to expect expensive gifts as some kind of proof of love. I have one thing to say about that. Bull fucking shit.

You wanna know what I did for valentine’s Day? I bought Steve an 8-dollar CD that he always wanted, he said he’d buy me a computer game of my choosing, and we went out for dinner using gift certificates from Christmas so neither of us had to pay. And we had fun! Isn’t that the point? And that’s more than we have spent some years. Once I got him a chocolate bar because he wanted to try whatever kind it was and hadn’t yet, and I think I might have bought him a stuffed animal. Like come on guys. It’s kind of like the way Christmas has gotten. It’s not about the sentiment anymore, it’s about how much you can spend to impress your friends. Can’t anybody find more meaningful ways to impress people?

Belated happy Valentine’s Day everyone.

If You Prick Him, Does He Not Bleed?

Why do people in general have a tendency to turn into stammering numbnutses when they meet someone famous? It doesn’t even matter if they’re extremely famous, or someone who they’ve seen on the TV a lot in some silly ad. But somehow I don’t think the reaction of most people on recognizing Canadian Tire Ted would be to stammer. But I digress. What is so special about famous people? When you get down to it, they’re just as ordinary as you or I. They still get up, eat, shower, piss and shit like everyone else. They were not dropped from the heavens as the chosen ones. They were born, just like the rest of us. Why do we treat them like some kind of gods?

I caught myself doing this the other day. I was standing in the lobby of a restaurant with some friends waiting for a cab. All of a sudden, this guy comes over to us. He says, “Hey guys. Did you have a good meal? I see you’ve got some food packed up to take home.” So we talk to him like normal. I just think he’s a friendly stranger or our out-going cabby. Then suddenly we turn collectively into a pack of either mutes or retards at the utterance of his next few words. “I’m Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party.” I’m desperately thinking of something intelligent to say, you know, like, “I voted for your party.” or “congratulations on getting a bunch more seats.” But you know what comes out of my mouth.? “Hi. Yeah I’ve seen you on TV a lot.” Ok, just hit me with the stupid stick. It seems fitting.

Is Something Out to Get Me?

Does anyone remember the myth about the fates? This is the way I remember it. They are 3 stone-faced old women who sit on a mountain knitting a quilt. Each thread represents someone’s life. If they cut a thread, that person dies. If the fates really exist, one is bent on cutting my thread, and another one is having a tug of war with her over the scissors.

Here’s why I say that. I have been almost hit by a car 4 times in the last two weeks. Once, it happened as I walked through a parking lot. Once it happened when the walk sign was up at a busy traffic light, one of the ones that chirps for us blind people to tell us it’s time to go. Once some moron decided to not look where he was driving and just plough out of a driveway towards the street. And the last time, I almost got creamed by a giant truck. This is not the usual for me. I swear someone really wants me to die by getting me hit by an automobile of some kind.

And that’s not all. I went to get money out of a bank machine. As I was finishing up, I heard, “Could ya spare a little change? I’m looking for a job with no success.” Since I have no change, I sheepishly say no and leave the bank. As I do, I think, “Do you realize how close you came to being mugged? Here you are getting money out of a bank machine and someone’s begging for change.”

All I can think is I must have a reason to be here because so many times I came close to meeting some kind of unfortunate fate, and all those times I’ve been rescued. Or, if there are a bunch of unseen beings up there controlling things, one of them is trying to scare me, or the one chosen to do me in is super-incompetent at it.

I’m going to Ottawa tomorrow. Hopefully I make it back ok, with only more adventures to talk about. I just hope these are the good kind.

I Hope He Can Hear Me Say Duh

Apple sued over overly loud iPod

I shouldn’t be surprised about this, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be annoyed, and I am.

Let’s forget for a moment that this lawsuit is completely stupid and baseless, which it certainly should be to anybody who takes 30 seconds to think about it. I mean for Christ’s sake, Apple tells you not to turn the things up too loud or keep listening to them if your ears start ringing right in the books that come with them, which should, in a perfect world, be enough for this suit to be tossed out before it makes it out the door of the lawyer’s office. But since we don’t live in a perfect world, there’s a chance, albeit a small one, that this goof might actually win and maybe even get some money out of it.

But that’s not even my biggest problem. What I really want to know is what ever happened to personal responsibility and good old common sense? And where do logic and reasoning come into play here? Seriously, think about it for a second. Maybe you use an iPod or something similar. Lots of people do, and every one of those people has to use some sort of headset. I’d like to think that most if not all of you would then be well aware of what happens when you turn up the volume on something. But obviously not everyone is, so here’s a tip for you if you are in fact smart enough to read. If not, get a big person to help you out here. When the volume goes up, the sound gets louder. And when the sound gets louder, you can hear it better. But sometimes the sound can get too loud, and you can hear it too well. And you’re not gonna believe this, but when you cram a fucking speaker into your head, it doesn’t take much for that to happen. that means that if you like to hear things, it’s your job to make sure that this doesn’t happen and that you try to keep things to a *reasonable* level, even if you really like the song. And if all of this is too much for you, that’s not Apple’s fault.

By the way, if I can hear what you’re listening to and sing along from 27 feet away from you over a crowd of people, it’s probably a pretty safe bet that we’re far past reasonable levels and it might be time to cut things down a little.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that what you do to your own body of your own free will doesn’t suddenly become somebody else’s monitary responsibility when things don’t turn out the way you want them to. Well that and do we really need to keep explaining the same fundamental concepts every time we change the look of something? Hearing loss has happened the same way from the caveman to the Walkman and now to the iPod. The only thing that’s changed is the means. Why do we need warning labels and lawsuits to help us figure that out?

Ads? Make Sense? Na! Never!

Man. I need to just tune out advertising. I should have a long time ago. But now it’s just getting ridiculous. It’s like a bunch of people just threw some words on a dart board and made their commercial slogans from whichever words got nailed.

Let’s take a commercial that I was half paying attention to. These are its exact words. “How do you know if food is good? Simple! It’s blue!”

Uh, has anyone eaten blue food? And survived? You tell me if it’s good. I found out that it was the President’s Choice Blue Menu, but when you’re not really paying attention, you just wanna hurl! Make that into a radio ad, and you’d be dooming your product. You think they wouldn’t do that? I remember a certain commercial for a cold medication that, on the TV, consisted of a violin song and some words on the screen spelled the way they would sound if you had a cold. So, the ad geniuses just took the violin song and threw it on the radio. Great ad campaigne.

Here’s another one that makes my head spin in complete confusion. “Lay’s. Get your smile on.” Get your smile on? It’s a bag of chips. Ya eat ’em, you’re done. I keep getting visions of either this deranged chip-lover eating a ton of chips with this maniacal grin on his face, or the advertisers didn’t think “get your gut on” was a good slogan. Come on, Lay’s, get over yourselves.

And here’s more of a trend in ads rather than a specific ad that bugs me. I’ve seen a lot of junk food ads that try and make you feel better about eating whatever fat-laiden pile of whatever they’re selling. “Now you can eat twice as much because we’ve cut the fat in half!” And then you will have bought twice as much and be just where ya were before we cut the fat in half, and with less money, you bunch of gluttonous pigs you, ha ha ha ha ha. Seriously, we wonder why we have a big obesity problem. We must have one if a big selling point on a food is, “Now you can eat more of it!”

All I can think when I see where advertising is going is, wow, it is true that our collective IQ is going down. Soon, the ads will consist of a bunch of teletubbies running around going goo goo ga ga, followed by the company’s logo. And it’ll work!

Breaking News! Some Old News!

Something came on the news the other day that caught my attention. It was a news report on a new, supposedly scary virus called the Kama Sutra worm among other names. When I say they made us feel we should be scared, we’re talking doom and gloom forecasts. The very animated reporter was claiming that droves of people were going to pay the price for an accidental click that was going to dump a horrible virus on their computer. And what was so scary and earth-shattering about this virus? Honestly, I don’t know, except it was the media’s chosen virus to use to strike fear into people. I’ll give them one thing. It does do ugly things to your files. But scary? I don’t think so.

Let me explain. The virus only comes by email. It doesn’t try to crawl through open ports. When it comes by email, it doesn’t try to exploit a windows flaw to open on its own. It doesn’t con you into opening the attachment by telling you it’s a message from your ISP’s tech support team and this file is one of the good guys. It doesn’t even use the trick of making the naive think the attachment is a safe file like .txt or .mp3 but put another extension behind that one that is the real extension. No no no. The messages crafted by this virus practically scream suspicious to me. Don’t believe me? Have a look for yourself. Here is a sample of the beautiful subjects and bodies that this worm is capable of creating.

*Hot Movie*
A Great Video
eBook.pdf
Fw:
Fw: DSC-00465.jpg
Fw: Funny 🙂
Fw: Picturs
Fw: Real show
Fw: SeX.mpg
Fw: Sexy
Fwd: Crazy illegal Sex!
Fwd: image.jpg
Fwd: Photo
give me a kiss
Miss Lebanon 2006
My photos
Part 1 of 6 Video clipe
Photos
Re:
Re: Sex Video
School girl fantasies gone bad
the file
Word file

Message bodies:

—– forwarded message —–
>> forwarded message
bye
Fuckin Kama Sutra pics
forwarded message attached.
hello,
hi
Hi. I send the file. bye.
Hot XXX Yahoo Groups
how are you?
i attached the details.
i just any one see my photos.
i send the details
i send the details.
i send the file.
It’s Free 🙂
Note: forwarded message attached.
OK ?
Please see the file.
ready to be F**KED 😉
Thank you
The Best Videoclip Ever
VIDEOS! FREE! (US$ 0,00)
What?
You Must View This Videoclip!

Now, seriously. Try and explain to me how anyone opening a file attached to one of those emails is accidentally clicking on the file. If you received any of those combos, given that you’ve probably seen a million of those in spam you receive daily, would your first reaction, without any thought, be, “Oh wow! I must open this right now!” Click clickedy click click? Even if you haven’t seen spam in your lifetime, and if you haven’t, I’m jealous, wouldn’t you wonder why your friend Dave or Uncle John was writing like an extremely formal non-English speaker? Wouldn’t you think twice when the computer said, “now chester, are you sure you want to open this?” Wouldn’t that give you time to go, “Hmm. Well that message looked weird. Maybe I should hold back a bit.” If you wanted to rip the attachment open without a second thought, I second the advice of that fictional tech support lady in that email we’ve all seen a million times. “Ok, put your computer back in its box, take it back to the store, and tell them you’re too stupid to own a computer.” I mean, think about it. Half of those subject lines were trying to convince you you were going to get free porn, and half of those bodies looked like they were written by ESL students.

And here’s another reason why anyone who manages to infect their computer with this worm is a moron. There has been protection for this worm available from most antivirus packages for over two weeks leading up to the supposed black day when it would descend upon our word files, zip files and other treasured files and eat them like a pack of ravenous vultures. Hey chief. Wake up. Smell the coffee. If you’re on the internet, you need antivirus software. This is a given. If you just bought your computer, I feel somewhat bad for ;you, but where have you been before buying your computer? Wouldn’t you ask whoever you bought it from where to go to get something to keep you from getting viruses? Any vendor of computers is irresponsible not to sell you antivirus software with your computer.

Another part of the news report that got me was when Chirpy the reporter turned to her interview subject that was supposed to give her credibility. He piped up and said that this worm was sprouting a new form of terrorism because now everybody has to be afraid for every day of the month, wondering if they had the virus lying dormant, waiting to strike. Hey Imbecile, most viruses have set dates and times when they unleash their payloads. If that’s terrorism, I have the perfect anti-terror weapon. Antivirus software. Get some, shut up, chill out.

So, after all that, tell me why the media has to start screaming like Chicken Little over this. If this virus is such a big deal, shouldn’t we have seen a complete media panic when Bagle, Netsky and Sobig broke out? Those were far more threatening than this, yet I don’t think I heard a thing about them on the news. If I did, it was a little wee five-second report.

I find this to be a problem with the media in general. They take non or close to non-issues, or subjects where nobody has a real answer, *cough* bird flu *cough*, and work people into a panic with them, and then, when there is a reason to panic, they sweep those issues under the rug. “We don’t want to cause mayhem,” they say.

It makes me sad to see their crap working on my parents. They sent me a frantic email asking if it was safe to even send emails because of this horrible worm that, in their words, was scary and even the TV said they should be worried. I don’t think my parents are stupid. They grew up in an era when the news was perhaps more believable. Now, they’re being taken for a ride. Please, everybody, think for yourselves! If the media wouldn’t try to think for us, and people wouldn’t let the media succeed, fear-mongering like this wouldn’t sell.

But Blog-spammers…suck a wang!

This piss piss pisses me off. First we got spam, then we got spim, and now we have what..splogs? I dunno what they call it, but you know what they say about a rose by any other name…except this is shit instead of a rose. What these useless bottom-feeding whores do is send their mindless zombi bots to blogs, scrawl “come see my pile of shit so I can fill with cash that I leeched from somewhere” comments and then wait for some unsuspecting sucker to click and get their computer filled with who knows what spyware/viruses/all manner of crap.

Ok, spammers piss me off enough. They clogged my university email account so badly that I have set it adrift. They made my parents’ internet experience a misery, granted they brought some of that on themselves, but still. And, they’ve made it harder for blinks to sign up for yahoo and hotmail accounts, join forums, and do pretty much anything that involves an email account because of those fucking blasted son of a bitch goddamn piece of shit graphical word verification thingies. If you can manage to sign up for an email address, some people may never get your emails because their anti-spam solution uses a method that involves, get ready for it boys and girls, fucking blasted son of a bitch goddamn piece of shit graphical word verification thingies. Can you feel the rage? And now, because of these stupid zombi bots, comment boards on blogs are starting to use the, come on guys, you know the drill, fucking blasted son of a bitch goddamn piece of shit graphical word verification thingies!

To the morons who think they’ve found the perfect gold mine by doing this shit, I say, You assholes are ruining the internet on so many levels. You’re filling it with useless crap and who knows what malware, you’re making it so that even little comment boards have to install security measures to keep this shit away, and you’re taking all the fun out of everything! Piss off! And to the equally moronic souls who buy things from these scumbags, I say, you numbnutses are contributing to the steady destruction of what used to be completely cool. If you’d just stop, the other half of the problem would magically dissolve into nothingness. You can piss off too!