What Not To Say

Here’s something from the inbox.

The top 10 things not to say to your significant other’s parents when you meet them for the first time.

10. Gee, Pops, you’re not nearly as big an asshole as your daughter said you are.

9. Wazzzaaaaap!

8. The water in your toilet tastes funny.

7. You got a spoon and a lighter I can borrow? I left mine at home.

6. No. No. It’s OK. I kinda like it when your dog humps my leg.

5. Your daughter is attractive, but have you seen the tits on her friend Joanne?

4. Hi, Mr. Jones. I’m Bob. This is Chuck, George, Steve and the midget is Sam. Is Sally ready?

3. (While honking horn in driveway) Hey! I’m waiting out hear! Send the bitch out!

2. You should be proud, Mr. And Mrs. Smith, you’ve raised a good girl. I can’t get her to blow me no matter what I say.

And the number 1 thing not to say when you meet your boy or girlfriend’s parents for the first time:

1. Man, living under the same roof with a piece of ass like that, I bet you wish you were anyone else but her father.

Duh I Don’t See Any Problem with This, Sparky, Do You?

I’ve had the TV on way too much, because I heard something else that made me shake my head. A commercial came on for this place called Canada Reconnect. It gives prepaid phone service to people who, for one reason or another, have had their phone disconnected. Keep in mind that most of these people have had their phones disconnected for not paying their bills. So they’re probably under a heap of debt. This will become important shortly.

So, this company has a real special deal on right now. These poor unfortunate souls can make their phones ring, and make their pockets jingle once again with…drum roll please…a new credit card. No approval necessary, they’re just handing these out like candy. Does anyone see a problem with this?

Hey, I’m all for giving people second chances, but this just seems to be inviting doom. How about letting them start with a phone and work up to a credit card? Almost as funny is credit card companies setting up a booth in universities trying to get kids, who are most likely ass-deep in student loans, to get credit cards. But something about this phone-reconnecting company’s plan seems too weird, almost creepy. It’s almost as if this company is trying to lure these debt-ridden people into deeper debt under the pretense of giving them a chance. Don’t get me wrong, I know that these people can think for themselves and should be able to know to stay away from a credit card until other debt gets worked down, but desperate people do desperate and stupid things, and a new credit card might look like a temporary answer to their problems.

I went to their website, but it hasn’t been updated since April, so I can’t read about how this is supposed to work. Maybe if I could read that, I would understand. But as it stands, how long does anyone think this offer will last before the brilliant geniuses at the company start to notice that there are a lot of maxed out credit cards on their hands?

Money for Nothing

Some people have a lot of balls. I was messing around and found someone’s personal webpage. You know the ones. “Hello. I’m Skippy. Here is a picture of me. I just figured out that a monkey could pretty much put up a webpage now, so I thought I’d try my hand at it. Read all about me here. Here’s a list of my favourite sites to visit, here are the URLs belonging to my fellow monkeys, and here are a zillion ways to contact me.” You know the type. Hey I have no problem with that kind of site, I used to have one of my own. Sadly it has gone the way of the dinosaur, but it was fun while it lasted.

Here’s where my friend skippy the monkey has enormous balls. On his site, he actually pleads for donations so that his project can continue. Ok, what part of this project is costing him money? He wrote a few lines of code, maybe he’s paying for monthly hosting and a domain name that probably only asks for a fee once a year. Second, who in hell is going to donate to something like this? The way I see it, you have to *produce* something to earn people’s desire to donate, and even when your product is damn good, it’s next to impossible to squeeze hard-earned cash out of people. If he was running a radio show out of it, or putting up files that, when people downloaded them, sent his internet usage through the roof, it would be totally reasonable to ask for donations. Or, if he was providing a service through it, that would be another reason to ask for money. But for this, excuse me while I pick myself off the floor after recovering from the convulsive fit of laughter I experienced.

It would be another thing if he threw up a few ads and said click on them if you want. But he’s actually asking people to pay him out of *their* own pockets so his *personal* little wimp site can stay alive. Once you’ve browsed the whole thing through, really there’s no need to go back. He hasn’t changed the damn thing in years, so I guess he’s not getting too many cheques.

I just see that, and one word springs out at me. Actually three words do. Greed and laziness. I guess it explains how the spammers can trick so many people into falling for their scams. Here’s a word of advice for Skippy the monkey and all like him. It’s not that easy to get money. Try working for it and it might come in a little faster.

No Zits, or a Healthy Baby? Oo, Hard Decision.

I saw something on the news that made me flip out, what else is new? There’s a drug to stop acne, I think we’ve all heard of Accutane. It’s been known before to be related to depression and higher suicide rates. Ok, that’s freaky. But this time, people are freaking out at the company for something that seems a little ridiculous.

There’s a big uproar saying that Accutane should warn people that it may pose a risk to pregnant women because I guess some zit-ridden women just couldn’t bear to part with their clear complexion for 9 months while they had a baby, kept taking Accutane, and the babies had problems. Well no shit sherlock!

The part that pisses me off is the part where people are freaking at the company. Didn’t anyone go to school and learn that taking non-essential medications, drinking, smoking, doing drugs or any of those things that are bad for you while pregnant isn’t the smartest idea? Must every god damn drug tell you that it might not be a good idea to take it if you’re eating for 2? Why don’t people think for themselves anymore? Oh, oh, I know. Because it’s easier to sue after the fact.

Also, why are people so selfish nowadays? I don’t think in the old days, people having kids would keep taking something whose only purpose is to make them look prettier. I know that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the point is Accutane isn’t going to directly save a life, and stopping taking it isn’t going to kill a person. why don’t people use their common sense anymore and say, “hmm, perhaps for these 9 months, for the sake of my baby, I’ll just buy some clearasil?” I know that people who take acne drugs have bad acne, but for Christ’s sakes, unless the acne is obstructing your windpipe or cutting off the circulation to your heart and brain, make a god damn sacrifice!

I guess it just annoys me when I see case after case of preventable moronic behaviour. That Rubella outbreak caused by people who refuse to vaccinate, people falling for incredibly obvious scams, and all the stupid lawsuits in the world. It’s hard to be optimistic when there’s so much cause for pessimism.

You’re a Racist Prick, or You’re a Latent Racist Prick.

Something really pissed me off the other day. I was at this volunteer training, and part of the training is talking about helping people who don’t come from this part of the big blue planet we live on. In the room, there were white people, some black people, some people from Asia, people from the middle-east, and some East-Indians too. There were people from pretty much everywhere, which was cool. We got talking about racism, and how some people don’t realize they’re being assholes until someone points it out. I agree with that, some people have thought those things so long that they seem like facts rather than stereotypes and prejudices. But here’s when I get mad. I said that I didn’t think I was a racist. I think that I have a pretty open mind and I will call racism when I see it. But the first thing out of people’s mouths was, “You probably don’t realize you’re being racist, but you probably are.” And the funny part was other white people would say similar things, and they’d get that comment, but not the people who were black, Asian, or whatever. Ok, let me earn the racism tag before you stick it to me, please. If I say something to offend you, straighten me out and then call me a racist and I’ll except it. But if you’re already judging me to be a racist before I’ve said jack shit, isn’t that, um, just as bad? Isn’t that racism? It’s damn judgmental anyway.

I left the training session feeling like it was pretty intense, asked other people if they felt the same way, and they said they didn’t. So either I’m a freak or they’re all afraid to say what they really think. Either way, I think it’s pretty sad that the way some people have decided to fight racism is with something just as bad.

For Some Reason Moving To Denmark Suddenly Seems Like A Good Idea

This comes from
Ananova.com.

The Danish government is under attack for paying for its disabled citizens to have sex with prostitutes.

The official ‘Sex, irrespective of disability’ campaign pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.

The legal guidelines advise: “It could be of great importance that the carer speaks to the prostitute together with the person in their care, to help them express their wishes.”

But opposition parties have attacked the regulations, claiming it is an immoral way of spending tax-payers’ money.

Social-Democrat spokesperson Kristen Brosboel said: “We spend a large proportion of our taxes rescuing women from prostitution. But at the same time we officially encourage carers to help contact with prostitutes.”

But Stig Langvad of the country’s Disabled Association said the politicians critical of the plan are showing “double standards”.

He said: “The disabled must have the same possibilities as other people. Politicians can debate whether prostitution should be allowed in general, instead of preventing only the disabled from having access to it.”

I Have No Idea What To Call This Post

Happy Monday to everybody. I hope you’re all having a good day, and I hope you’re keeping cool if it’s hot where you are. It’s hot here, that I know for sure.

Canadian weather is just fucking weird, there’s no other way to describe it. A few days ago we were treated to some beautiful late Summer temperatures during the day, and ones that were creeping down into the single digits at night. But now, just as I’d finally come to terms with the fact that Summer was over and in a few short months we’d all be up to our asses in snow, July comes back. I don’t get how that works, but I’ll take it, at least until everybody starts spreading colds around because the climate can’t make up its mind. Oh well, you have to take the good with the bad I suppose.

Like the title says, I’ve got no idea what to call this post. I would have called it Random Things, but Carin used something similar to that in her last post and I didn’t want to do that again so soon. But yeah, various directionless randomness lies ahead, so read on.

I’ve come across some great news stories in the last few days that I thought I’d share with you, so let’s start there.

Secretaries sacked after cyber brawl If you’re one of those people who doesn’t understand why such a big deal is made about what you do with your email during work hours, this should explain everything.

British Office Compiles List of Odd Names All I can say is I’m glad my folks liked me.

Note to aspiring criminals: When committing a robbery, it is generally wise to
leave the kids at home.

And before I get off of the news topic completely, I have a question. What exactly is the point of gun amnesty programs? If you don’t know what those are, they’re drives that the police put on now and then during which people are allowed to turn in any guns they have that might be illegal, with no questions asked. But the thing I don’t get, and the thing that nobody has ever been able to explain to me in a satisfactory way, is who exactly are these for? Who are the people turning in guns? They certainly aren’t criminals, and they surely aren’t collectors or hunters who have all of the required paperwork in order. Then again, even if any of them were, there’s no way to know that because nobody’s allowed to ask questions. But it’s pretty safe to assume, given the fact that gun crime never goes down in the wake of one of these exercises in time and money waste, that the people we really need to worry about aren’t the ones taking advantage of the generously offered grace period. All that this gun amnesty crap is is another way to create an illusion of public safety, and of making it appear that some progress is actually being made in the fight against unlawful firearms possessed by people with evil intentions. So to the police, I say this. Stop wasting everybody’s time. Stop pretending that the problem is going to solve itself by bringing itself to your front door. Get out on the streets and do what you’re supposed to be doing, tracking down the problem where it lives. It might be more dangerous than sitting behind a desk waiting for Cletus to turn in his air rifle, but believe me, the results will be far more beneficial to all of us.

Ok, on to something else now.

I’ve been meaning to post another edition of “You Are Here?” for the last little while, but a lack of time and a lack of quality material has made that not happen. But since everybody loves it and since I’m cramming a bunch of different things into the same post, here’s a small sampling of recent search terms that have gotten people here.

This one’s for Carin, just because I bet she’ll find it funny.

11 Sep, Sun, 22:21:02
Google:
richer lapointe moron

If you don’t remember what this is about,
click here
to read her post about him.

11 Sep, Sun, 11:36:52
MSN Search:
rate my vomit

I might be setting myself up for bad things here, but before I could do that, I’d kind of need to see it first. And by the way, how do you rate vomit anyway. By texture? By taste? And on a scale of what?

08 Sep, Thu, 20:34:56
Yahoo:
i’ll crush your testicles

Now now now, just because I won’t rate your vomit sight unseen doesn’t mean you need to get nasty about it.

05 Sep, Mon, 19:26:10
Yahoo:
oversized testacles

I’ve
talked about the over-sized thing
before, though it wasn’t in a testicular context, so for the sake of space I dug that post up and I’ll let it say what needs to be said, unless what needs to be said is “why the fuck is somebody looking for over-sized testicles,” in which case it says everything but that. I think that sentence was far too long and not structured properly, but whatever.

A couple of quick plugs and then I’m out of here for now.

Salty Ham
has new forums as of yesterday, so feel free to check those out. For the most part they’re good people over there and we’d love for you to be one of them.

And since I don’t whore this out nearly enough, don’t forget to listen to my radio show on
CFRU
tomorrow. I’m on from noon until 2 PM Eastern time. Not sure what we’ll be talking about, but I’m almost positive that some of it has appeared here on the sight in some form at some point.

I also want to make mention of the station’s new
archive.
You can access the last 31 days worth of station programming by clicking there, and you can do it for free. the system isn’t perfect yet as some bugs are still being worked out, but it’s pretty good and it’s pretty fast, so check it out. Remember, the station is open format so you’ll probably find something you like.

Have you had enough yet? Yeah, me too, so I’m gone for now. More to come later.

Random Thoughts

Here we go, running through my crazy mind. I’ve been thinking about a few things, but they all seem small and insignificant on their own, so I thought I’d throw them together and see what happened. So here we go.

I was in a ZEHRS the other day, and in case you didn’t know, ZEHRS is a grocery store, when I heard something that frightened me. I heard, “Bill, please call electronics.” Electronics? In a grocery store? They already sell clothing and furniture in some of them, now they’re selling electronics? Why don’t they just become a mall at this rate? Now that I’ve said that, they’ll eat up the plazas they’re in and do just that. But seriously, why can’t a grocery store stick to being a grocery store? Must they all become Walmarts?

As I checked out, I saw something else that I always thought was kind of funny. This lady was checking out, paying with her debit card and having a jolly old chat with the store clerk. But sadly for her, the jolly old chat was ended abruptly when her card was declined. The clerk suddenly barked in the middle of her sentence, “You’re card’s declined.” The lady tried again and luckily it worked this time. But why is it that as soon as your card is declined, they make you feel like a shoplifter who’s going to be promptly arrested instead of a customer experiencing a minor technical difficulty? Those of you in stores, do you really get a ton of people who try to pay for stuff with money they don’t have, or use the declined card as some kind of a distraction and rob you? Seriously, whenever it happens to me, their demeaner changes so fast, and I always feel like the clerk has pressed a silent alarm and before I can say, “try again,”I’ll have my hands twisted behind my back and be dragged out of the store by force.

Then the other day I was in a convenience store and saw another example of people’s rudeness, only this time it was from the customer. Why is it that a lot of smokers, when they ask for their cigarettes, walk up to the counter, don’t say hi, hello, nice day isn’t it? They just bark what brand of cigarettes they would like. I can’t say this of all smokers, but I see it a lot, and it makes me sad. All you rude people, how can you expect to be treated courteously by people in stores if you treat them like that? And the sucky part is the effect mushrooms, so even all the people who *are* nice to the clerks have to pay for your rudeness.

Moving on from rude people, there are stupid people, and they seem to be coming out of the woodwork in droves in New Orleans. You know the deal, the hurricane, the flooding, the destruction, the dead people/chemical/sewage soup that’s everywhere in the city. And then some morons start looting, shooting, and causing more destruction. Seriously, I guess on the simplest level I can see somebody seeing this disaster as an opportunity to take what you can, every man for himself. But as my dad put it, how far can you swim with a TV on your back? It just goes to show how accurate the book “Lord of the Flies” really was.

And on a stupid but funny note, it always makes me laugh when you’re watching a TV show, and just before the commercial break, a voice comes on and says “Now you can own the show you’re watching, delivered to you on VHS for only $24.95.” Or, why don’t you save your 25 bucks and tape the damn thing? I wonder how many people actually think that’s a good idea and pick up the phone or click on the website and go buy the episode.

Even better are the old talk shows that actually sell transcripts of what happened. Who in hell would want:
Bob: Yes, I cheated on my wife.
Marg: You bastard! How could you?
mass chaos ensues.

Like come on. Really boring.

And that’s about all for now. I’m sure I’ll think of something more coherent later.

English As She Is Spoke

“English as She is Spoke” is quite possibly the worst English language phrasebook ever produced. It was published in 1883 by a Portuguese man named Pedro Carolino who didn’t even know how to speak English. In order to compile it, Carolino used a French-English phrasebook and a Portuguese-French dictionary, which leads to a complete mess once the final translations are complete.

The most interesting and frightening thing about it is that at one time, it was actually used as a school textbook, which makes finding the odd factual error or typo in the books being produced now seem like not such a big deal by comparison.

You can find more information and read excerpts from the book by clicking
here.

Believe me, this thing puts every one of those foreign translations gone wrong emails to shame.

Yahoo Instant Computer Polluter

According to
this story,
Yahoo has decided that they know better than you do what software you want to install and run on your computer and what you want your default home and search pages to be.

The latest version of Yahoo Instant Messenger, which comes as a “highly recommended” upgrade, comes bundled with something like 5 additional pieces of software by default, along with browser hijacking features that change your default start and search pages to Yahoo from whatever you had them set to.

From the article linked above:

By accepting Yahoo’s “typical” installation of YIM with Voice, it will also download Yahoo’s Search Toolbar with anti-spyware and anti-pop-up software, desktop and system tray shortcuts, as well as Yahoo Extras, which will insert Yahoo links into the Internet Explorer browser. The IM client also contains “live words,” which will automatically show an icon when the user highlights words online and then hyperlink to Yahoo search results, definitions or translation tools. Finally, the installation will alter the users’ home page and auto-search functions to point to Yahoo by default.

To avoid these changes, users must actively choose the “custom” installation and uncheck five boxes.

Yahoo spokeswoman Terrell Karlsten said that for avid Yahoo users, the included services are valuable and highlight the integration among all its tools.

“By setting it that way we’re giving people choices. For people who want to download software in one fell swoop, they have that option. If they don’t want it we give them the ability to customize it,” Karlsten said.

I suppose that’s technically true, but why then, instead of turning these installations on for us, couldn’t you turn them off and give us the option of turning them on ourselves? The answer to that question is a simple one. Yahoo and other companies that engage in this increasingly common practice understand very well who the average computer user is and how that person interacts with his or her machine. They realize that a large portion of their user base consists of people who, when it comes time to install anything, simply click next repeatedly until they see finish and their new software starts working. These people barely take enough time to read the screen let alone to look for options that it might be in their best interests to configure in a certain way or to look for unreasonable terms in a user agreement that they might want to know about. In short, the software developers realize that the same people who aren’t smart enough to turn something off are more than likely not smart enough to turn it on either. And if you’re Yahoo, which set-up is the better one when it comes to pushing new products and services on to the desktop of Joe User? That’s right, the bad one. Spyware and adware pushers opperate under the same assumption, which is part of the reason why those companies are so successful.

Yahoo, by doing what they’ve done here, has lowered itself to the same level as some of those companies, even if the bundled software is designed to help. What the software does or is supposed to do isn’t the issue at all. The issue is one of personal choice, the right for one to use one’s computer as he/she so chooses, without fear of some marketing company, no matter how well intentioned, violating that right. Under any other circumstance, this sort of thing is called either trespassing or breaking and entering. Why should it be any different when the private property in question is a computer?

I should also point out before anyone decides to accuse me of being a hypocrite for being soft on people who don’t pay enough
attention to things that my condemnation of Yahoo’s actions is in no way meant to give a free pass to anyone. Should people be more careful and more mindful of what they’re doing? Absolutely, but that doesn’t make Yahoo and companies like it any less wrong. Just because you tell somebody to do something doesn’t mean they’re going to do it. If the world worked that way, there would be no repeat offenders in jails around the world. For that matter, there wouldn’t be any first time offenders either.

My point is that responsibility is a 2-way street. The end user has a responsibility to watch out for himself and Yahoo has a responsibility to give that user what he asks for and nothing more. And that being the case, shouldn’t Yahoo be expected, given its apparent desire to make the user experience as pleasant as possible, to lead by example and hold up its end of the bargain even if it means that a few less people might end up using a certain service? That doesn’t sound unreasonable to me, and it even makes good business sense since the customers that end up using it are more likely to be happy ones, which over time would probably lead to many more people using the service if the product is good. Word of mouth is a powerful thing whether it be positive or negative, and if Yahoo and others could just think long-term, posts like this one would look nothing like posts like this one, something that I’m sure even Yahoo with it’s backward logic would have to agree would be a good thing.