Wow. I can't believe I've made 70 entries in this ol' blog. I wanted to do something special for the 70th entry, because in a lot of ways, 70 is the number that I feel best describes me, out of every single number in the universe. Anyhow, I lost interest in doing something special about halfway through typing that last sentence, so I'm just going to do the same old stuff. You know.. Quote some stuff here. Insert a little bit of a comment there.. Mebbe change the quote a little for posterity. Sounds good!

Hmmm, I see someone else has been fleeced by the Nigerian e-mail scam. I'm sure that most of the people reading this have already been nailed by this scam multiple times, so this should be of particular interest to all of you. Let's jump right in.

In a windowless room, in a nondescript house on the other side of the world, Rupert Sessions glimpsed his fortune.

He and a West African associate were there to collect the $21.5 million in the case. But he was concerned because the bills looked discolored. Don't worry, officials told him. That's just a security measure - we paint the bills pink like that so that no one steals them! We can clean up the cash later.

Well, I like the way this has started. Already I'm convinced that this Nigerian money dealy is the way to go for me.

Finally, Sessions thought, it's ours.

There was, of course, no $21.5 million. Sessions, a 73-year-old retired electronics specialist, had been fleeced by what may be the most widespread, and blatantly obvious fraud on Earth. He had poured more than $300,000 into a Nigerian 419 scam, the label describing the legendary e-mails that promise millions but deliver nothing.

I've seen these e-mails, and they say things like "Please help me with my Nigerian 419 e-mail scam!" I found it pretty easy to avoid falling victim to them.

He sold stock, got a second mortgage and hocked his two cars. For more than a year, he gave virtual strangers every dollar he had. He bought them gold pens, cell phones and a laptop computer. Sessions spent so much that he now fears losing his home. "If I don't lose my home, I'll be so happy, because then I can give it to my friends in Nigeria, who have promised me that, this time, they're really going to give me millions of dollars, provided I just give them a house first".

Still, Sessions was so mesmerized by the well-spoken West Africans that to this day he does not think he was scammed. He ignored police warnings that he's retarded if he believes in the deal and instead blames his losses on corrupt foreign governments, "because that's easier for me to believe than the obvious truth." He has not filed a complaint with authorities, and he keeps on his coffee table the carved wooden elephant and antelope given to him by his "associates." "I consider them my friends," he says. "They're not criminals, unless you count the fact that they stole $300,000 from me."

Yes, I would probably count that as being criminal. Let's see.. $300,000, the guy is old and befuddled... Best judge show would have to be either People's Court, back when they had Ed the confused old man Koch, or Judge Mills Lane (retired war vet).

Authorities say "actually, we do count $300,000 being stolen as theft," and that these friends are part of a long-running fraud that takes its name from Section 419 of the Nigerian penal code. The scam emerged from that country in the 1980s, with swindlers sending letters and faxes. E-mail broadened their reach to millions of targets.

So he responded. Tell me more, he said, but don't ask me to do anything illegal. No worries, his prospective associates replied. The deal was risk-free. Trust us, they said, which obviously meant they were trust-worthy.

I like that last line, because you know it's accurate. If someone ever says "Trust me", especially a stranger that has done absolutely nothing to earn your trust other than randomly e-mailing you, you know that you can trust them! I've been at parties where people have offered me random pills and said "Hey, take this". I look at them skeptically and go "What is it?" and they reply with "Just trust me!".. "Well, when you put it that way, why not!"

And Sessions did.

They earned his confidence, saying in one e-mail, "God has brought us together as brothers." Which is another way to tell that you're definitely not being scammed. That message hit home. "I think the Lord uses people to do his work," Sessions said. "Also, in retrospect, I think the lord was really pissed at me, so he sent these guys to me. Anyhow, with that money, we'd be comfortable, and we could do some good things."

Aw man, I hate that shit. I really don't have a problem with people that believe in a given religion. Power to them. But I hate it when people use that religion as a crutch to lean on, or a way to make decisions like this. Trust in god, but lock your car. Just because some stranger says "I feel that god has brought us together" while he's robbing you at gunpoint, it doesn't mean he's all good. If you don't believe in god, it's just another word that you can use to achieve whatever end you may have in mind.

A month or so into the correspondence, the deal got sticky. The bank, his partners claimed, would need a medical certificate from Sessions, because "Banks in Africa refuse to give any money to people that aren't in good health". It would cost $5,000.

By this point, Sessions was a true believer. "They had said the word god in at least eight of their ten e-mails, so I knew they were legitimate".

You go Sessions. It's really hard to feel sorry for these people sometimes, perhaps because I'm overly cynical, or because I haven't been in a similar position. I'm not sure. Anyhow, let's see what other stuff this guy does.

He had no idea the dead-executive story had been around for 20 years. He didn't know that the scammers routinely exploit a victim's faith in God. And he never noticed the "government documents" looked more like certificates a first-grade teacher might hand out. One of them even said "Haha, this isn't even a real certificate, this guy is a moron" right on it.

Instead, he blamed -- and still blames -- corrupt government officials. If only they paid off the right people, he thought, the money would be released. "With every move, the government comes up with another ridiculous fee," he said. "It's incredible." His investors were thinking the same thing, being quoted as saying "We've come up with every single imaginary fee we could think of. We even charged him with Ninja tax, and he bought it! At this point, we're trying to see how far we can take him!"

Ninja tax? Please. Pirate tax, maybe, I'd pay that in a second, but not ninja tax. Pfft.

Most victims aren't taken for as much as Sessions was; the typical amount people lose is $3,800, according to the FBI, at which point one of their relatives hurl a brick at their head and they smarten up

They also need a victim, and in this case they had a good one. By the time Rupert Sessions boarded a plane for the Persian Gulf in February 2003, he had spent almost a year preparing for the role. When he checked into Dubai's Marriott Hotel, he was more than ready.

I'm getting excited! How will this exciting tale conclude?

The biggest sting

But before Sessions could celebrate, officials delivered the bad news: They had run out of cleaning solution. They could make more, but it wouldn't be cheap. The chemicals and continued security would cost $285,000, plus, all of the people involved in Africa would need new Gucci suits to properly clean the money. Sessions was stunned. But he was already in for so much that he felt he couldn't turn back now.

Well, you can't be expected to clean money in a pair of over-alls!

So Sessions took a $25,000 cash advance on his credit card -- one of about 16 he'd gotten -- while his associate promised to stay in Dubai to ensure the deal worked out. The gesture impressed Sessions.

Sessions still won't accept that his contacts were crooks. He says they're victims. When shown a report describing the "black money scam" -- a sleight-of-hand trick at least 70 years old -- he shrugs it off. To him, the scammers are corrupt foreign governments. His "friends" and the money are real. "There was never," he says, "any attempt by them to defraud me - I blame this entirely on Jesus."

Sure, blame all your problems on Jesus. Take that easy way out!

The response is unbelievable but not uncommon. Paul Elliott, a Jacksonville Secret Service agent, said it's too painful for some victims to accept that they've lost everything to a fairy tale.

"I have to figure out a way to pay the bills," he says. "I thought this would help do that. Instead, it's ruined us."

Yes, yes it has. Okay, so seriously, it's sad that this guy lost his money, but really, you have to be pretty damn dumb to fall for this. What are some of the indicators that you're in for financial rape on these e-mails?

Well, first of all, you get this e-mail, completely randomly. Surely if the money is this important, and there's this much of it, they're going to try for something less random. Second of all, does this idea sound just a LITTLE too good to be true? If anyone is reading this, and thinks that an idea like this is even remotely reasonable, I would strongly recommend that you go and read Flim-Flam by James Randi and Thinking Critically (I'm not sure who wrote this, but you can look it up at The Skeptic's Dictionary.)

The Skeptic's Dictionary is actually one of my favorite sites - The guy that does it is very intelligent, and the site is an extremely good resource in terms of teaching yourself to think critically - an invaluable skill.

Christmas is almost here! Woot! Christmas presents ahoy, Eggnog, poor eating, all that other good stuff! I'm excited, even though I'm working right up until the very day. Oh well, no rewards without effort.

I'm a little distracted, because Christmas is so close, and so I seem to be having a lot of conversations like this one:

[10:57AM] [LaserNinj] "Did you ever want the delicious taste of meat, in a mint format? Well, now, with potted meat products, you can!" "Just buy one our meat pots, and then crush it to the size of a minute using you standard car compactor. Now you've got a delicious meat mint, that can easily fit in your pocket"
[10:57AM] [LaserNinj] Hmm, "minute"? "you standard car compactor"?
[10:57AM] [elus] do you do all the marketing yourself?
[10:57AM] [LaserNinj] Who the fuck is editing these lines
[10:57AM] [LaserNinj] Most of the marketing is done by myself. I go on publicity tours a lot, which is why I haven't had a chance to meet you yet elus.
[10:58AM] [LaserNinj] Jack Lelaine and I go on tour a lot together.
[10:58AM] [LaserNinj] He told me that he's been wearing the same shiny jumpsuit for 50 years.
[10:58AM] [elus] hah
[10:58AM] [LaserNinj] We're trying to do a product cross-over, where we'll show that you can use potted meat in his juice machine, and create a delicious meat smoothy
[10:59AM] [elus] why not go into meat fragrances
[10:59AM] [elus] im sure a lot of people want to smell like their fave meats
[10:59AM] [LaserNinj] Because that's the worst idea I've ever heard of.
[10:59AM] [LaserNinj] Meat reacts with atomizers.
[10:59AM] [elus] WELL SORRY
[10:59AM] [LaserNinj] Apology accepted.
[10:59AM] [elus] this discussion is over
[10:59AM] [LaserNinj] Leave the product development to me kiddo
[10:59AM] [elus] jerkoff
[11:00AM] [LaserNinj] You're just going to be the pretty face on the box.
[11:00AM] [LaserNinj] You see, I'm implying that you're pretty, because I'm attempting to win you over with flattery. You're probably actually really ugly, but that doesn't matter. The truth value of my statement doesn't matter, as long as you feel flattered.
[11:00AM] [LaserNinj] Did it work?
[11:03AM] [LaserNinj] Elus?
[11:03AM] [LaserNinj] Please come back.

As you can tell, these sort of conversations are very rewarding for the people involved, like Elus, who learned a lot about himself. This is my way of doing volunteer work. You know, getting out, talking to the people. That sort of stuff.

Anyhow, work is calling, and I must get back to it!

Oh, yah, if you feel upset for this dumb guy that got scammed, go to 419Eater and read through some of the letters. This guy is leading the scam artists on, and getting them to take hilarious pictures of themselves. He has one guy holding up a piece of paper with the words "My Semen Stains" and a black stain on it. Pretty good stuff.

Well, it's been over four days since my last entry, mostly because I've been so busy at work lately. The end of the term must be near, because that's when things always seem to pick up. They say that works expands and contracts to meet a given deadline, so if you consider the end of the term a deadline, it makes perfect sense.

In any case, the weekend passed by relatively uneventfully, except that I got all my Christmas shopping done (minus a few odds and ends). As I walked through the congested mob that seemed to have spontaneously appeared wherever I was shopping at the given moment, I started to ask myself what the worst sort of gifts to buy would be. It seems to me that you could have a lot more fun giving people the absolute worst gifts possible, and video taping their reactions, than if you just got them stuff they wanted. Present for my dad? Pink sweater with a huge picture of a cat on it! We'd be watching that video for years to come!

Anyhow, that made me decide to look for articles that would describe this, and here's what I found (good old trusty MSN). Let's check it out.

15 worst holiday gift ideas

Take two Advil and keep reading because the only cure is to become Jehovah's Witness and stop celebrating Christmas. This is the whole reason this religion was conceived. Barring that, you can try reading this article and spot the pitfalls early. The following primer will help you save yourself some angst -- and quite a bit of money -- by avoiding these classic gift-giving faux pas. (And your nearest and dearest will be ever-so grateful when don't try and give a fifteen pound turkey as a last minute stocking stuffer.)

If I caught Bay trying to stick a fifteen pound turkey into my stocking, I would laugh so hard I'd need new underwear, and thank her for the greatest gift ever (incontinence).

The not-so-subtle suggestion

There's nothing quite like watching the expression on people's faces when they open one of these: a set of meditation tapes for Mr. Type A, a book titled "So, you're hideously overweight, and you're also fat" for your sister, a jockstrap for your great-grandfather. Just don't be surprised if they all go in on a gift for you next year: a one-way ticket to hell where you will be devoured by daemons with nothing better to do.

I like the imagery used there. Talented author, no doubt.

The useless gadget

Everyone has someone on their list who is seemingly impervious to gift giving. It might be your boss, your dad or some other (inevitably) male relative, because I'm a raging feminist and refuse to believe that women may also be difficult to buy gifts for. Men suck! Anyhow, they appear to have no interests, no style, no obvious needs. So, you punch them really hard in the kidney, and get them a dialysis machine. Why. Why, why, why? Just buy him a block of cheese. Take it from me, a reknowed man expert - Men love a huge block of cheese.

You go raging feminist! You know men better than we know ourselves!

The lingerie trap

My husband passes along this lesson learned from hard experience: Never buy lingerie for a man, unless he has ripped out the page from the Victoria's Secret catalog and circled the exact item himself. If he opens the box and sees something that looks like a black satin hanky, it just opens up a can of worms: "Why does she want me to wear that? Doesn't she know I love big blocks of cheese? Doesn't she like me the way I am? Next thing you know she'll want me to stop eating cheese altogether! You can go from surprise to that scene in Mortal Kombat where Johnny Cage does the splits and punches Goro in the yin-yangs, in five or six mental leaps. Way too expensive on sooooo many levels.

Since Goro has two extra arms, would he be extra endowned in the genital region? Would that make it more painful to be punched in that region? These are some of the thoughts that I think were going through Johnny Cage's head right before fighting Goro.

The deadly weapon

My editor admitted that he briefly considered buying his 12-year-old son a fully automatic assault rifle (because he wanted one himself, of course). But after reflecting a bit on the damage that an assault rifle can do to unsuspecting passers-by after traveling 500 feet from his back yard to a nearby road, he decided against it. Unless you're just dying to test the limits of your liability insurance, stick to semi-automatic weapons.

And remember, you can't hug a child with nuclear arms. You need to use either your own ones, or specially made fiberglass arms.

One for the price of two

You really want that Bobbi Brown lipstick for yourself, but your wife doesn't like it when you wear lipstick. So you get it for a friend and talk yourself into believing that he will share it with you, when what you're unconsciously hoping is that he will invite you to that Kenny G concert he has tickets for, and you can gaze into each other's eyes all night. Of course, he doesn't and you end up sitting at home eating chocolate with your wife. So after Christmas you end up hitting him in the back of the head with a tonka truck you stole from some kid at a park, thus spending twice as much time in jail as if you had just stolen the Kenny G tickets from your friend in the first place.

I think the moral of the story here is that Kenny G causes serious problems in all aspects of our lives. He must be stopped!

The maroon mistake

It's almost always a bad idea to give clothing to someone when you've got god-awful style yourself. You'll invariably buy either the wrong size or the wrong color or both, because we've all seen the way you dress. Lesson: Come up with a reason to stop being this person's friend (accuse them of sleeping with your wife) so that you no longer have to buy them gifts.

Interesting. I would have just bought them clothes anyhow - the pink sweater with a huge picture of a cat on it is always fashionable and always in style.

The guilt-edged party gift

Ack! You're invited to a holiday party at the last minute and you don't have time to even pick up a bottle of wine. But you do have time to throw some ribbon around those earrings your dad gave you last year and give them to the hostess? Is this worth the thousands it will cost you in therapy bills to overcome your guilt? Consider the cost -- especially when your dad meets said hostess at your own holiday party a year later , and she's wearing your earrings. Just go back in time by running around the world really fast, like Superman did, and then buy the wine. Then, go back forward in time, so that you don't have to wait, and drink the bottle of wine to yourself. Ditch the Christmas party, it would have sucked anyhow.

More excellent advice. I give this piece of advice a nine, only because there's no mention of ZOD in it. Kneel before Zod!!!

The joke's on you

Why buy a mere book when for the same money you can give a tome? That two-thousand-page volume of the sixth installment in the life of Lyndon Johnson is MUCH more desirable than a book someone might actually read. Sure, the megabook can be read by those with more time than taste, but it can also serve as a weapon to hit you in the back of the head after you open a gift that doesn't suck. Whenever buying a gift, you must carefully analyze it and determine if it could be used as a weapon to attack you with. As a consequence, the best gifts to buy are stuffed animals, marshmallows (just get a big huge bulk bag for everyone to share), and pink sweaters with huge pictures of cats on them.

So much for there next piece of advice not sucking. Kneel before Zod!!!

Gifts made by your own $40-an-hour hands

At some point, the Spirit of Frugality will pin you to the floor and tell you that the best way to save money during the holidays is to make all your gifts by hand. Resist this impulse - you suck at crafts!! First of all, just because you don't have money doesn't mean you have talent. Second, handmade gifts always cost more than it does to just give people gifts like bags of pasta, or a jar of oatmeal.

I'm not really sure what to say about that one. Please no one buy me pasta for Christmas.

Things that can't be exchanged on this planet

Resist the urge to go down to your local gravel pit and buy your sister a bag of rocks. Rocks are difficult to exchange, and as we mentioned before, make a good weapon to hit you with after they've opened the present. If you insist on buying a bag of gravel, keep it for yourself, and use it to mug people coming out of shopping centers so that you can take their gifts. They've probably got better taste than you anyways.

Put 'em in my pocket, put 'em in my socks, I collect rocks!

Yakov Smirnov's comedy tapes

The only people that should get these tapes as a gift are people you hate. Yakov Smirnov pretty much sucks eggs, and comedy routines of his on tape are best only given as a present if you're trying to break up with someone. The one benefit to this gift is that tapes make a poor weapon, so you can walk away relatively unscathed.

Treasures from King Tut's tomb

It's always so tempting to buy from those slick museum catalogs. How can you go wrong giving a replica of something that has been rotting in a museum for centuries? But unless you know that your cousin in Denver loves Egyptian artifacts, sending him the embalmed right hand of a mummy probably isn't the best gift. Warning: If it looks tasteful, keep shopping.

I don't get that last warning at all.. If it looks tasteful, keep shopping? When do we stop shopping then? When we find something totally tasteless and tacky?

The pro-am present

Absolutely no idea what to get someone? Give them the antidote to the poison you slipped into their coffee the night before. They'll be so relieved, they'll totally forget about the attempted murder charge they could slap you with!

Whoa! If any of my friends are reading this and having a tough time figuring out what to get me, just ASK. Poisoning me is not necessary.

With these 15 rules in mind, you can easily avoid the worst gift-giving mistakes, by always giving everyone pink sweaters with huge pictures of cats on them. You'll save time. You'll save money. And you will thank me when your credit-card bill comes in January and you notice that I have stolen your identity. Hahaha!

Happy holidays losers!

What a delightful way to end the article. This is all moot anyhow, because if you've still got a lot of Christmas shopping to do, you've only got three days to get it done, and you're absolutely crazy. Even though getting the right toys and stuff on Christmas Eve is near impossible, it's definitely more peaceful in the malls on the 24th of December compared to the weekend before Christmas and the 23rd.

I think that completes everything I had to say. Christmas is almost upon us, so that means I might have extra time for updates and taking some pictures, or have less time. The holidays are weird that way - they often give you the illusion of having more time than you normally do, all the while taking up all your spare time plus more with chores, tasks, and visiting.

I've taken a bunch of pictures lately, but haven't had time to put them up into a gallery. By that, I of course mean I have had time, but have been too lazy to get it done. Sometimes, when you've been out shopping for Christmas presents all day, or staring at a computer screen at work for 8 hours, I've got no motivation left to go through pictures and write summaries for all of them. Maybe tonight will be different, since this is the relaxation week for me - no time at the gym, save for some squash, and loads of chocolate eating. I'mma get fat!

That's right, I've been there and back, and it's time for me to talk about it. You all know what I'm talking about. The Kinga Stinga Crew's Homepage! What, you've never checked out these awesome wicked guys? Well, we better get started. Be warned - their page is like being visually raped while someone shouts about the stock futures of pork bellies over and over in your ear, so only proceed to the page if you're incredibly brave, or like that kind of thing.

Here's an opening quote from their intro: Welcome to tha Legendary KiNgA StInGa CrEw Homepage. You are presently on one of tha most hectac sites on tha web, this site is about a group of some of tha most INTENSE guyz around, so sit back relax and enjoy.

LEGENDARY!!!!! These guys are so legendary, I haven't even heard of them! That's awesome! TO THE MAX! Seriously though, let's cut them a bit of slack, because their site is one of the most hectac sites on the web. To ensure that you're aware of how legendary they are, they set it so that their text is flashing. Like this: I'm a moronic web designer that thinks flashing text is cool. Pretty damn obnoxious hey? WRONG. It's not obnoxious, it's cool, and we know that, because these guys are some of tha most INTENSE guyz around. You can't just title yourself that... you have to have that bestowed upon you. Somewhere out there on the net, someone must have awarded these guys with the "Most INTENSE guyz around" web-award. You can't just make web-awards up. That's an internet rule. Here's a quick image of the crew hanging out:

Yes, that guy IS wearing only a vest

So, at this point, I already want to punch my fist through my screen, but because I'm a bit of a masochist, I'm going to read on a bit. The next link to follow is obviously the profiles. There's gotta be some good stuff there. Let's start with The Shocka! By the way, all of the members of this elite force have cute little nicknames for one another than end in "a". So like, there's The Shocka and The Toucha and The Faja. How touching. Anyhow, onwards to The Shocka! Let's check out his picture:

Check out this wicked shadow puppet I can do!

The Shocka is clearly the epitome of cool. First of all, his name is reminiscent of a taser, the likes of which being zapped with is remarkably similar to talking to The Shocka for more than five minutes, only less painful. Let's check out some facts about him.

His favorite color: Baby Blue.

How sweet! I can just see him curled up in a baby blue blanket cuddling with Tha Bona.

What about place to go with his girlfriend: Airport (roof of parking garage).

Ahh yes. Good times. Nothing says romantic date like the roof of a parking garage.

What does he do in his spare time: Write lyrics with my buds Stunna and Gunna, Cruise, experiment new things, and chillin' out with tha KSC.

Rad! I love to experiment new things. What exactly does that mean? Is he a scientist? Is he experimenting anything? Could he be a little vague on this? Is heroin included in this list? Well, it doesn't really matter, because I'm certain it is. Lets check out someone else..

The Golfa! A name that inspires fear into the hearts of his golfing enemies! Shiver and quake as you look upon the picture of this most deadliest of adversaries!

I'm homeless. If I do your fruity little sign, can I hang out with you guys?

Tha Golfa is the young boy of the group. He's not as into crazy things like "writing rap lyrics" or "hanging out with his girlfriend". Let's probe into his life a bit more:

Place to Chill: On his computer

By making fun of him, I'm making fun of myself, but I don't care. He's a DORK!

Dream Date: Jenny

It's left up to us to decide which Jenny he's talking about. My guess is Jenny Jones.

Spare Time: Internet

Nothing else. New name, El Dorka.

Here's Golfa's favorite quote (apparently): "Let me think about it".

Rock on brother.

Well, clearly Golfa is the cooler, more homeless person of this crew, and if you go to Ontario, you can probably see him in the streets somewhere, fighting with another bum over a slab of meat.

There's some other really cool sounding members in this crew, my personal favorite being The Shita. Wonder how he got that name?

I like the frequently asked questions for the crew as well (apparently, everyone asks these questions by yelling, since they're all in caps):

WHO ARE U GUYS? We're the Kinga Stinga Crew! We aint no gang! Just some friends with a name.

Sounds like the great opening song for some TV show starring these guys, where they go around, give each other nicknames like Tha Wanga and then go cuddle.

HOW MANY MEMBERS ARE IN THE CREW? Presently we've got about 16 members but it alwayz fluxuates.

Zpelling your zhit with z's inztead of s'z makez you look like a dork.

WHAT DO YOU'S DO IN YOUR SPARE TIME? Tha majority of us attend university but when we all hook back up at Christmas and in tha summer it's just one big bash

bash, orgy, massage train. It's all the same to these guys, because they're some of the most intense guys around!

WHAT THE HELL IS "KINGA STINGA"? Sorry thats enclosed information. Inside thing, started in 1996

Enclosed? Enclosed in what? Is it enclosed in an envelope I was sent? I'm confused!

HOW CAN WE CONTACT ORIGINAL MEMBERS? Send them e-mail and if they don't get back to ya then they are probably not interested

I'm sure there's a TON of people out there trying to get a hold of the Kinga Sting Crew. I've already signed up each of the members to thirty different mailing lists! Haha, kidding! Maybe.

HOW DO I BECOME A MEMBER? YOU CAN'T!

I wonder how many times this question has been asked. I would be willing to give almost anything to get my very own authentic KSC nickname! I'd want to be called Tha Assa or Da Jambalaya-a

Anyhow, all this talking of gangs has reminded me of my velcro gang, that none of you pansies wanted to sign up for, SO to sweeten the pot, I'll make a velcro gang homepage once I get enough members, and host it on my own computer. We can rival the Kinga Stinga Crew, and we too can do things like go and hang out at the "Cattage". Sign up now to be part of one of the most intense group around!

Seriously though, I saw Return of the King last night, and it was definitely a great movie. I only have a few complaints, none of which are really with the movie itself, but with the events that happened in the books. That's neither here nor there though, the movie itself was fabulously well done, with an extremely good epic battle scene, and a satisfying ending. Do yourself a favor and go watch it.

In case anyone was wondering, there was no blog update yesterday because things are getting pretty hectac here at work - plenty of stuff to get done before the holidays start, so I'm definitely being kept busy. If entries get sparse, that's why, but I'll try to keep them coming along. Three more days until the shortest day of the year, and then four more days after that until the most fattening day of the year! Yay chocolates!

Argh, my eyelids keep doing that irritating closing thing, where they close and I wake up in a puddle of my own drool, with the side of my head stuck to my desk. Does anyone know how I can combat that? I already tried drinking a bottle of NyQuil, as that normally solves any medical problem I'm experiencing at any given moment, but that didn't help either. Woe is me, my life is sooooo difficult!

Well, whatever, instead of talking more about that, let's talk about identity theft, specifically, the fact that your identity has probably already been stolen, and while you're sitting here reading my blog, you're identity is probably somewhere in Rio getting an STD. Obviously something like this warrants further looking exploration, so follow this link if you suck, or read below if you're cool. By the way, clicking that link will put a super virus on your computer. Onwards!

If you're wondering whether or not someone can steal your identity, the answer is unequivocally yes — and quite easily, too. In fact, we've just stolen your identity to buy a bunch of porn. The question is, are you an easy target? The answer is, again, yes.

Identity theft happens when someone co-opts your name, Social Security number, driver's license number or e-mail address, then uses it fraudulently or criminally. This often happens after you have done something like click on a PI symbol on a webpage. These thieves can get your personal information in many ways. For example, they might send you a spam e-mail message asking for verification of credit or account information. It is also quite simple to get Social Security numbers from the Internet, or by calling your house and asking your parents for it.

After seeing The Net (which is probably the most realistic portrayal of hacking EVER), I never EVER click on PI symbols on a webpage. It's just too easy to get screwed these days.

Identity information routinely consists of three elements: what you know, such as trivia, like former presidents and the capitals of all the states; what you have, such as a cold, some drugs, or leprosy; and what you are, for example, your essence. Once criminals have this vital information, they can impersonate you, obtain credit cards, get drunk at cocktail parties and tell people that they are you, buy goods or worse.

Oh man, that is THE worst. I'd rather have all my money stolen than to be seen hammered at a cocktail party.

The Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC), which tracks online-based consumer fraud statistics, estimates that 500,000 to 700,000 Americans fall victim to identity theft each year. According to the FBI and the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), ID theft has become one of the nation's fastest-growing crimes. Consumers lost $17.8 million due to online fraud last year alone, and the IFCC notes that 70% of complainants were morons, volunteering their credit information to virtually anyone that asked.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) identity theft hotline logs 3,000 calls per week, with additional 400 complaints to its Web site. With numbers like these, it's not likely that each complaint can be investigated. Also, the FTC doesn't really care. Lastly, a lack of laws and cooperation among foreign law-enforcement agencies make it extremely difficult to track and arrest perpetrators. "The best solution is to not be a moron, and not give out your credit information online", says Joe Grolsch bluntly, "Just this last week, we had 10,000 complaints from people that had all given their credit information to a guy with an e-mail address named JoE-RilEy-The-BanK-TelLeR@haxord00d.net".

Oh shit..

You need to take matters into your own hands. First, become educated and aware of the issues. Second, don't thrust your credit information at anyone that asks you for it. If someone's e-mail address looks like a three-old did the capitalization for it, they're probably not the best credit venture. If a stranger comes up to you and says "Random credit information check", it's probably in your best interest to spit on the back of their neck and run away.

You'd have to get them to turn around first.

The good, the bad and the ugly: your grandpa

However, these benefits can come with a severe price, such as your firstborn son. Also, the open nature of the Internet can facilitate ID theft and fraud. If you're not careful and you become affected, the impact on your life can be overwhelming and long-term, or pleasant and short-term. It's kind of neat that way, because identity theft is different for everyone, a lot like doing acid and getting high.

Aha... I see. So giving away your credit information could turn out to be the most profound experience of your life, or hopelessly mess you up like that Shane guy on Degrassi High who had that kid with Spike. There was a happy family. Did anyone else think that Spike's friend was hideously ugly? I never understood why Joey Jeremiah bought condom's going over there to study with her, unless his intent was to wear one under his pants the whole time so that he didn't have to worry about catching an STD from being near her.

Jayne Hitchcock, a freelance writer, started by informing us "No, I'm not related to fucking Alfred Hitchcock, I hate that cocksucker!". She's also the author of "Net Crimes and Misdemeanors" and president of the Working to Halt Online Abuse organization, experienced this firsthand. "I was impersonated online," she says. "My e-mail address was stolen, e-mail addresses were created in my name, my grandpa was taken out of his home. They tried to ruin my reputation and my life!" Of course, the fact that someone who has written a book about avoiding Net Crimes and Identity Theft has had her identity stolen doesn't really help her reputation in the first place.

Hitchcock was victimized after simply answering a spam e-mail that seemed to be a legitimate business, which is typically the first scenario presented in modern day IQ tests. John Olreud, international IQ tester says "Usually, if someone answers yes to the question 'You receive some e-mail asking you to enter into a business agreement. Do you reply to it and check it out further?', we assume we're reading the test of someone that is comatose." "I didn't know what to do [once I discovered that it happened]," she says. "So I decided to write a book giving people advice."

Be sure to run out and grab that book right now!

Spam: A tool of the ID theft trade

"The new trend in spam is to just tell people you'd like to steal their identity, and to ask for them to enter their credit information. Most people using the internet have become so retarded that they just hand over the information, then come and complain to us about it. Jimmy Doyle, retired detective sergeant of the New York City Police Department's computer-crime unit and an expert in online-based fraud and identity theft. "Once a person has fallen victim to identity theft, they typically try and sue the government, and then the internet, hoping that they can blame their own stupidity on someone else. At that point, we usually set the dogs on them."

That would be satisfying. I think that help-desk employees should be able to do this as well, so that problems could be trouble-shooted this way:

Helpdesk: Hello, helpdesk
Bitchy Customer: Hi, my computer isn't working, and I JUST BOUGHT IT. This is all your fault! My kids are late for soccer practice now, and it's ALL YOUR FAULT.
Helpdesk: Have you tried turning your computer on?
Bitchy Customer: How do I do that?
Helpdesk: Ma'am, our computer has determined that you're a heinous dumbass, and has automatically dispatched nine wolves to your house. Computer problems will no longer be at the top of your list of worries. Have a good day.

I'd want a helpdesk job if you could do that.

Minimize your risk: Don't be an easy target

6. Never pay "up front" for loans or credit

How the hell would you pay up front for a loan? Wouldn't that mean you'd pay back the loan before you got it? Wow, I'm glad they gave me that advice.

7. Always reply to spam e-mail and ask to be removed. The law of the internet is that you have to obey whatever a stranger with an e-mail address tells you to do, so if you write them and ask not to get any more spam from them, they have to obey, or face justice at the hands of the internet consortium of justice (ICOJ).

8. Use your work e-mail address for everything you do online. Since work e-mail addresses sound more official, identity thieves will avoid touching them. They don't want to get their hands dirty with an e-mail address like CEO@microsoft.com. They stick to the low key stuff!

That's why my e-mail address is lordadam.. People don't mess around with lords.

9. Secure your computer against other risks, such as viruses, hackers, by keeping the power off. If your computer isn't on, it is immune to viruses and trojans, so this is easily the best way to avoid any trouble. An easy way to remember is to think of computer viruses like unwanted pregnancies: A condom can stop pregnancies 99% of the time, but the only way to truly avoid a pregnancy is to abstain.

Great analogy! In that analogy, the firewall or anti-virus software is a condom!

Anyhow, I've finally gotten the second computer here at work, so I've begun installing RedHat Linux on it, which will probably require a good portion of the day, because nothing is easy when it comes to Linux/Unix.

I've pretty much watched the entire Saved by the Bell first and second season by now, and am just about ready to start from the beginning again. After I've watched them through a second time, I may be ready to give them some reviews, though I don't know if that would be worthwhile, because X-Entertainment already has some excellent SBTB episode reviews in their archives. We'll see how things go.

Time for some Linux installation magic to happen.

Yes, yes, I know everyone else is discussing it to, and you can read about it on any crappy news site out there, but I really feel that it's time for me to get serious with you all, and talk with you about how you can tell if your two-timing good-for-nothing husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/sister/uncle is cheating on you.

Read on for a little hilarity, a bit of mirth, some solemn discussion, a sprinkling of expletives, and absolutely no mention of Saddam Hussein's capture (except for right there).

Okay, so, it's finally happened. You've come to the assumption that your useless mate is cheating on you. Why? I don't know. Maybe they come home reeking of man-musk, or perhaps your husband is now carrying around pictures of younger, more attractive woman in his wallet. Whatever the reason is, I'm 100% certain that you're being cheated on. All the same, follow this link to read a stupid article that is actually just a letter some schmuck wrote to a guy called Doc Love. Here's my first piece of advice for the day: If someone ever tells you "Hi, my name is Doc Love, and I am a real doctor", punch them as hard as you can in the kidney, and get the hell out of there. He's probably already picked your wallet out of your pocket.

So, let's see how things turn out.

Hey Doc Love,

The night after we got back from vacation, she called me to say, "We need to talk." When she got to my dorm, she told me that she thought we were getting "too close" emotionally and physically, and that she was getting "scared." Throughout the conversation, she kept using air-quotes wherever I've put quotes in the last sentence. I knew straight away that she was either cheating on me, or she had become an asshole over the break, since those are the only two situations I can imagine someone using air-quotes seriously.

I fully agree with that last statement. Air-quotes, BAD.

Then she told me that during the break, her friend Nick had kissed her and that she had kissed him back, spiritually. When I asked her exactly what she meant, she told me that she and Nick had had a threesome and that she had cheated on me with Jesus, and that she was now bonded to him in ways that I couldn't possibly imagine. I went on a rage and shattered a few of her plates on the floor.

This guy, Nick, used to date one of her roommates, and I never trusted him because of the way he always "claimed" to be going out every Sunday morning for church or something. Isn't that just a little bit too convenient? He just happens to be part of some weird group that meets every Sunday at the exact same time? He was clearly going to orgies, and I told me girlfriend that she was a moron if she didn't agree with me. She said I was being possessive so I immediately backed off. Now, I found out my misgivings were warranted.

Straight up. I bet you this Nick jerk uses air-quotes too.

Her news upset me very much and I let her know how much it hurt me. She tried to assure me with: "The whole time I was thinking about you," and "I'll never see him again," which totally made everything alright. "Honey," I said unbuckling my belt, "you can have sex with whoever you want, provided you're thinking about me!"

Later, while we were making out, she said, "You're so much better than Nick" and "He doesn't kiss like you at all, and you don't scream out 'Oh Jesus, thank you for coming into my life' when we're having sex!." This was definitely not what I wanted to hear, so I gave her a look of death - a technique I learned from Shidoshi Tanaka during one of the flashback sequences that should have occurred at the start of this story when I was staring at a sword. She started to leave, so I blew up a brick by staring at it, and she turned back and listened to what I had to say.

Ah yes. Shidoshi Tanaka train meh. He taught me to open my MIND. I like to throw a little Jean-Claude to the V D into my articles when I can. The VD stands for venereal disease!

I told her that it just bothered me when she talked about how another guy kisses. She said she understood, and that eventually we would work things out and that we should think about our relationship over the next few days. She then kissed me, and told me she was heading over to Nick's for a while. "No problem honey, call me when you get home," I said.

Kevin - who wants to know if he's being too uptight

Ahhh Kevin. Well, my first advice to you would be to grow some testicles so that you can start to feel some testosterone flowing through your system. Once that happens, go to a gym, and work out your upper body really big, and then go kick Nick right in the bible. Let's see if Doc Love prescribes the same advice as me.

Hi Kevin,

It was bad enough that your girl kissed another guy -- but thinking that you would believe she was "thinking about you" the whole time his tongue was down her throat was truly nuts, which she probably also kissed! I know a lot of women in our culture hug their men friends, but kissing cannot be done so casually.

I wonder what sort of underwear Nick wears?

Part of your anger, Kevin, comes from your inability to comprehend her lack of empathy for you -- and the low opinion she has of your intelligence. The question to ask yourself now is: Am I really stupid? Is this the first time you've "accidentally" come across her "bible" lying on the "floor"? Has she asked you before if she could "read you passages to the bible while you're asleep"? Could this situation have been prevented?

In the early days, when you first became aware of your girlfriend's suspicious relationship with another guy, you had a great opportunity to exercise your self-control and find out how much she really cared about you. The least you could have done is told her that she's pregnant. Now she's got your kid to think about while she's cheating on you as well. Throw a wrench into the gears of her operation!

That's a new one..

Instead of putting her "friend" down and appearing weak, this was the perfect time to stay silent, smile...and go out with other women! You know that hot Jehovah's Witness that keeps coming by your place? Now's the ideal time to head on down to the Kingdom Hall, talk about how you too think it's important to distinguish between the fact that Jehovah's Witness isn't a religion but rather a way of life, with a theological belief on the side, TOTALLY different from a religion! Give it twenty or thirty years, and in no time, your girlfriend won't be the only one getting some tongue-action!

Then, when she calles you on the carpet for dishonoring the relationship, you could tell her that they were only "friends"! If your girlfriend had sufficient Interest Level* [the level of interest that the woman has towards a man]

Just had to jump in there to say thank god they took the time to explain what Interest Level means. Is this some kind of coined term of theirs? I present AskMen.com with the stamp of retardality.

in you, she would have proposed new rules about spending time with friends at this point. Just think of it: she tells the bird dog to take a hike and believes it's her idea and all you had to do was become a Jehovah's Witness for thirty years of your life! How great is that? (Really great, because loving Jesus is the best feeling of all!).

Yay!!!!

In spite of this missed opportunity, Kevin, you were still able to find out some good information about your girlfriend. You discovered that she's more interested in attacking you for your perceptions than in giving up her other boy toys (like Nick and Jesus) so much for caring and loyalty!

Second, taking time to "think about the relationship" only gives a woman time to research the most convenient ways for her to dump a guy. Trust me on this one , there's absolutely nothing else that a woman might need time to think about. NOTHING. So why stick around?

Wow, this guy sure is smart. No wonder he's a doctor! I have a feeling that the doctors working at AskMen.com are the people that get turned down by Bosley Medical.

Third, after a relationship has been destroyed by disloyalty, there's nothing left to "work out." Get the idea, Kevin? Am I being too subtle for you? Let me tell you, I've never been accused of that before! Haha! Your girlfriend's promise to never again see the other guy doesn't address why she spent so much time in his dorm room to begin with when she already had a boyfriend (you)! In answer to your question, Kevin: you can only trust high Interest Level and integrity; this girl has neither. (I bet you don't even remember asking that do you? Well it doesn't matter, you did. Trust me).

Ugh, it's barely worth making fun of this article, it's written by such a moron...

I know you are angry, Kevin, but at this point the best use of your energy is to figure out what weakness within you impelled you to put your lips on this girl again after she broke your trust. You need to stop trying to be a "nice guy" and start applying the severe beat-down to her bible.

So, hopefully that answered your questions completely and 100%. Remember, above all, I am a doctor!

Man, what a piece of garbage. Seriously, go over to the link I provided above and read through the hunk of steaming ass that AskMen.com tries to pass off as advice. This Doc Love guy is a total dipshit, and doesn't have a clue what the hell he's talking about. This is total stereotypical male bullshit, and it drives me nuts. I shudder to think of the poor guys out there that are actually taking this advice to heart, or worse yet, the assholes that are passing this advice off to their friends.

He honestly does say that "time to think about the relationship" means a girl is just trying to think about how she can dump you. Is there perhaps a remote possibility that there are other things in a relationship that bear thinking about? HELL NO! The good doctor knows that any healthy relationship just consists of having sex and beating your wife right? What a moron.

There's a bunch of trailers outside my office this morning that are just clearing off. I can't really figure out what they were doing here. I figured it might have been for a movie or something, but then I'm not sure why they'd be clearing off after just one day of filming. Surely the communist garden outside my window is worthy of more than just one day of filming!

Two days until Return of the King, and I remain relatively unenthused. Bay and I watched The Two Towers extended version on Saturday night, and although Graham was very enthusiastic about the movie, I didn't find that it really added much to the movie, save for fleshing our Borimir's brother, Faramir, a little bit better. Other than that, most of the scenes did little to speed the progression of the important parts of the movie, or to add much needed background. I thought that they did a good job with the initial release of the movie, and with it being three and half hours to begin with, the extra scenes pushed that total dangerously close to four hours, which, in my opinion, is simply too long, no matter how good a movie is. Even if I was watching Bloodsport 1 and 2 back to back, I would have trouble staying excited unless I was pursuing some other activity at the same time. Oh well, to each their own.

No gallery update this weekend, as Sunday was devoted to watching Saved by the Bell episodes instead of going out taking pictures. The weather was pretty bad anyhow, so it wasn't a huge loss, and besides, nothing takes precedence over SBTB. Anyhow, enough for today.

Oh, just a little disclaimer, in case some stranger is reading my blog and gets upset - I don't hate Jesus, Christians, Jews, Muslims, or any other religion out there. I find religion to be a fascinating subject, and while I myself am agnostic (I'm willing to believe that there MAY be a higher power, though I don't see evidence to support that at the moment, and I'm willing to believe there MAY have been an initial creator, though if there was, I don't believe he actively dabbles in our universe after having initially set it in motion), I try to have respect for everyone's individual spiritual beliefs.

If you find yourself getting upset because I'm poking a little fun at a particular spiritual belief, perhaps you should ask yourself why - Poking fun is my way, and if you're reading the blog, you should know that. If a little good natured fun gets you upset, perhaps you're not as secure in your beliefs as you think you are. All the same, if you still feel the need to get vindication upon me, go ahead and post a comment making fun of my beliefs and telling me how I'll burn in hell!

That's right, I'm cooler than you. And not just a little bit cooler, a WAY lot more cooler:

I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm ... so.. scared! Help me Zach!

Yah, that's right. Christmas shopping can be tedious, so I recommend shopping like I do and picking up a little treat for yourself now and then. So I'm now sitting in front of the computer, enjoying good times with Zach and the gang. Right now, Kelly is asking Slater to teach her how to wrestle. What a whore!

Anyhow, the bboy competition was pretty bland, but the night was great fun. We started out the evening by watching some Bloodsport 1 and 2 and drinking some beer. The competition was meant to start at 9pm, but it actually didn't until 10:15. Some old friends of ours were throwing it, but I have to say that it really wasn't very well put together. The DJs were two guys that I wouldn't normally expect to be spinning at a bboy competition. On top of that, neither of them showed up until 10pm, so for the first hour, instead of breaks being played (which is what you'd normally breakdance to), 2-step garage was played. Eventually at 10ish, one of them showed up, though the other guy didn't come at all. On top of that, there were only about 6-8 breakers there in total, so the contest was pretty weak.

The benefit was that there was tons of room to dance, and the floor was ideal for popping on. For Graham and I, it was basically an opportunity to practice our moves for an hour and a half or so.

We'd had a few beerezzZzzZzz before hand, got there, stuck around for a bit, then decided to come back to my place and drink a little before going back. By the time we headed back the second time, Lexi and I were good and buzzed, so it was a little (lot) more fun. After that, Graham went home, and Lexi and I headed over to Ashley and Ben's to hang out with Bay and Ashley. Good times, good times!

Well, it's Friday. That means that the weekend will begin in approximately 11 hours (being at the gym does not count as the commencement of the weekend). Looking out the window, I can see nothing but clouds as far as the eye can see. It's like I'm in an emotional prison with the clouds acting as the bars! (+2 poetic points, -1 sounding like a mellowdramatic teenager point). Anyhow, looking outside makes me long for days on the beach. And longing for days on the beach makes all of us think about the same thing. Guys in thongs. That's right, even if you don't admit it to yourself, you're probably thinking about that right now, imagining someone like Ron Jeremy walking around the beach in a hot pink thong.

Anyhow, thongs aren't the only thing that we need to discuss today - it's underwear in general. I've got a dumb article here talking about men's underwear. This is the first result that came up when I searched on Google, so that's what get's quoted. Horray!

I know half the world is sitting out there reading and waiting for me to tell them exactly what sort of underwear they should wear today, so let's get started!

If you made it to Student Activities Fair two weeks ago (and why wouldn't you have?), you might have spotted me holding up a pair of bright pink lace “boy-short” panties, harassing innocent passersby, and getting threatened by the local security guards.

“Yeah, you'd look better if you wore them over your face.”

Interesting. Does this apply to all women, or was this woman just particularly ugly?

Last week I borrowed and wore a pair of "The Boyfriend"’s boxers (I use quotes because I totally don't have a boyfriend. I just tore them off some guy that was at the gym). Roomy, machine-washable, relatively cheap, and best of all, they were already warm because the guy had just been wearing them.

Still, men aren't always quick to pick up on the subtleties of proper undergarment wear. They have a tendency to select underthings like so: Put some masking tape on genitals. Go out. Remember that you need to wear pants. Come back. Put on pants. Go out. Yep, some guys need just a little more guidance.

I don't find that masking tape gives me the support that I need, and it hurts too much when you take it off at the end of the night. Does anyone have a better solution that they'd care to offer here? Thousands of men are depending on you!

“Oh yeah,” my 19-year-old brother wanted to know, “but why should I care?” (It should perhaps be noted here that this brother does not actually buy his own undergarments, he just borrows mine, which works out quite well, because, as I said earlier, I just tear mine off of guys at the gym.)

Well, baby brother — and anyone else borrowing my underwear — you should care simply because it will affect your sex life. If that’s not enough of an incentive to clean out your underwear drawer, perhaps me breaking your legs will be. Haha! Just kidding. Sort of.

Bit overzealous about changing out underwear drawer around, isn't she?

Good! So let’s get started!

I think it’s fair to say that not many guys want the first reaction after they remove their pants to be utter destruction.

Well, yes, that is true I suppose.

Thong

Although I’ve never personally encountered this regrettable bedroom spectacle, my girl friend Bridget hasn’t been so fortunate. One of the men she hooked up with last year had a habit of wearing thongs overtop of his jeans. "Every time I saw him, I would think 'Who the hell is he, Britney Spears?'". We hatched a crafty plan to get him to stop wearing them by putting itching powder in it.Bridget and I laugh, looking back on that event, "He thought he had scabies for four months!"

Great joke guys.

Commando

Hard not to attach a visual to that. And then the resulting questions: Is that even comfortable? Would you like to go for dinner with me? Can I borrow and smell your pants?

Nothing like smelling a stranger's pair of unwashed, free-balled-in pants!

Boxer-Briefs

Still wavering? Well, if teenage girls continuously squeal “Oh my god!! Your car is so rad!” you’ll be fine.

That's fair enough. I don't wish I lived in Langford, but walking around just wearing boxer briefs is totally my idea of a good time.

Boxers

- Don't wear underwear with stains. A good rule to follow is "If they have a stain, I must abstain". Pretty clever hey? I thought that up just now.

If they have a stain, I must abstain, if they have a stain, I must abstain. Must remember that. If they have a stain, I must abstain.

I may swipe a few more pairs of "The Boyfriend"’s boxers (tear off more boxers from that guy at the gym) for sleepwear, although a guy friend of mine thinks that’s odd.

“I don’t like looking at girls wearing my boxers,” he says, “It kinda weirds me out, because I don't always wipe as thoroughly as I should” My brother agrees, “If I just finished using my cat's litterbox, I don't really want a girl tearing my underwear off me and putting them on.”

Well, what a fantastically irrelevant article. So the only thing this article taught us men is that we should keep wearing boxers for as long as possible. Big deal. We knew that already.

I feel that the author didn't delve deep enough into the world of man-thongs though. For those of you that find that word makes you uncomfortable, perhaps you should click here. Now, for the rest of you that are man enough to stick with me, let's read on about man-thongs.

First, let's take a look at the sort of anecdotes that man-thongees have to talk about:

My husband looks so nice in a thong swimsuit and has no problem with wearing one. I wish more men would wear them. We are going to Jamaica and just wondered how often you see men in thong swimwear. All the time, occasionaly, or seldom. Hey girls...are you like me and love seeing men in thongs? Thank you for your responces.

--Jill

Well Jill, let's start by making fun of your spelling. It's spelt responses. Next up, your husband looks nice in a thong eh? Has anyone else ever had the occasion to walk down the street and see some dog looking like a total dipshit wearing one of those sweaters, even though the owner thinks it looks like the cutest thing ever? How about someone telling you how cute their baby is, but it in fact looks like this. Perhaps this is the same situation we are experiencing, where the wife thinks her husband looks great with his pasty ass packed into a thong, while the rest of the world feel that it looks like sausages being squished out of the sausage machine.

Let's see what the next response is:

Jill, I'm a straight guy and work out daily. I'm in pretty good shape ( 6',175lbs) and have become very comfortable wearing a thong in public. I like to wear my thong to work at McDonalds, and on the beach and enjoy the attention it gets me. I don't think I've offended anyone. I was in Negril for a week last month and was in a thong all week. I loved to walk the beach and watch the stares. I stopped counting after about 30 photos were taken of me (even a few videos!). 90% 0f the photos were taken by women, some coming down to the beach to get a close-up as I walked by. I even posed for 3 women (front and back views) that wanted to take my picture. So I would say, that based on my exerience, there are a few woman that don't mind a fit guy in a thong.

--Sunny

Yes. A FEW woman. Meaning, on earth, there are a few woman. Or maybe there's a whole bunch of perverted woman out there that like a guy in a thong. I'm not sure. Either way, I have to admit, if I saw a guy strutting around in a thong, I would probably want to take a picture too, so that whenever someone owed me money, I could go over to there house, and glue open their eyelids and force them to stare at thongy until they paid up. I'm willing to bet that it would take no more than five minutes for any given debt, two minutes if I didn't photoshop out the hair on the guy's ass.

Next:

Good for you Sunny. Last year in Playa del Carmen on one particular day my husband had chose to wear a very skimpy rio back suit from "HE Swimwear" instead of a thong and a women at the pool came over dissapointed asking him "Where is your red thong". We all got in a small dicussion about men wearing thongs. This women was definetly was a fan of men in thongs. However, as I said before to each there own. I just think with so many women wearing them, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a fit man wearing one also.

Brief interruption to say how much I agree with that statement. Also, since that's the rule, I think there's nothing wrong with guys wearing short shorts, crop tops, bikinis, and dresses.

This whole gay thing is just wrong, don't male strippers wear thongs and g-strings, doubt most of them are gay. Please understand for anyone not liking guys in thongs, that's fine. I understand and respect your view.

--Jill

Very true, and don't female strippers get dollar bills stuffed down their g-strings? Based on this logic, it should be perfectly fine for me to go and stick dollar bills down the bra of a woman. I tried this with Bay and she gave me this look though, so maybe that logic doesn't quite pan-out. Let's see what the reply from that is:

Jill, when I was in Negril there were quite a few women topless and in thongs. I only saw one other man, besides me, in a thong. Like I said in my previous note, I really don't think anyone cared what kind of swimsuit you wore. My thongs are really more like g-strings and cover very little. The women that asked to take my picture wanted both front and back views. This was really a "turn-on" for me. I felt so comfortable and confident in a thong that I did a snorkeling tour in a boat with 11 strangers wearing my gold g-string only. After the initial stares and vomitting (which I can only assume was due to sea-sickness) every one was very pleasant, though I could tell that I was looked at and subtly photo'd as much as the beautiful Jamaican scenery. What a compliment/turn-on for me. Your husband should not worry about wearing whatever he wants to wear. Have fun.

Wow, fascinating. That's the beauty of a man-thong - you can use it to ruin any kind of event for any number of people. Someone you don't like having a wedding? Wear your man-thong. Going to a chess competition and want that extra edge up on your opponent? MAN-THONG him into submission. Hell, Graham's wearing a man-thong to the bboy competition tonight, and I'm sure he'll be the belle of the ball!

One last post to finish things off:

Hey guys, I love walking around in a thong. I often wear either clear thongs, or silver thongs with sequins. I never feel more confident than when I'm hanging out at the beach, wearing my thong, doing stretches in front of some young women. They usually pretend they don't see me, so I bend down extra low to make sure they get to see everything they want to see. I find that for best results, men should turn the thong around the other way, and do a lot of back-arch type stretches, as well as pelvis rotations.

--Adam Lord Man-Thong

Ha, what a dork!

To finish things off here, I'll include a little anecdote I found on The Thong Wearers Message Board. I don't even know why I'm bothering to provide that link, I'm sure all you perverts already have it book-marked anyhow.

I went thonging at the beach last week and layed out next to two other girls; one who was also in a thong. Later on, they left and I was now in close visual range of two other girls who were laying out on their other side (not in thongs, because they're obviously bitches). Up to that point, I had not gone walking and stretched in front of them and neither had they so they didn't know what I was wearing. When the first two girls left, I was actually laying on my back but the fact I was wearing something with a "bikini" front had somewhat captured the two "new girls" attention (one was staring quite intently and poking at me with a stick!). Well, I decided it was time to get up and when I did one of the girls starting grinning from ear to ear and quickly found her camera. She pointed it towards the ocean for a few seconds then straight at me for more than a few seconds! She handed the camera to her friend and said "get a load of this guy" - which obviously was a compliment. What else could it have been?

This was my first experience of "catching" someone taking my picture. It almost bothered me at first but when it became apparent that they were really enjoying themselves, I took it as a compliment. I really blew their minds by getting up and standing about a foot away from them and stretching. I made sure that my scantilly covered rear was only inches away from their faces for a good portion of my stretches, which I think they really appreciated - Thong on, friends, thong on!!!

Wow, this guy really has it all together, and knows exactly how other people perceive him. My question is "How could you perceive people laughing, pointing, and poking at you with a stick as anything other than a compliment"? It's obvious these girls wanted this guy, and they wanted him bad.

The moral of the story? Thong on, friends, thong on!

Apparently my computer is already fixed, which is handy, because it means I can do stuff on it this weekend, instead of not doing stuff on it. The diagnostic was: "Your fan was no longer cooling your CPU and that resulted in random reboots". Wicked, that's precisely what I thought was happening, so I'm obviously a computer genius. She didn't once mention the words "chainsaw" or "walrus" though, so I think the technician has a little ways to go before she's on the same computer guru level as I am. Part of being a computer technician is coming up with colorful analogies for stuff like this. Or maybe that's part of writing too much in your blog. I don't know/care.

There haven't been any photo updates as of late, because I left my camera at Graham's, which sucks, because it means I can't take any impromptu shots, which are fun. This weekend holds Christmas shopping and hopefully a photo session, so look in the gallery for updates on Sunday.

Update tomorrow on how the bboy competition went, which will likely be pretty bland. No worries though, it's something to do on a Friday, so I can't really complain. I'm out for now - later.

In Soviet Russia, litter box poos on cat!

So here we are, the start of a brand new day, ready to talk more about cat poo. Yes, that's right, I'm providing a degree of continuity to these blog posts. That's the beauty about being me. I can write whatever the hell I want here, and none of you can do anything about it (except to stop reading). If I wanted to, I could dedicate this entire blog to nothing but the correct decisions to make when choosing cat litter, and I would still come off more interesting and capable than a good portion of the people writing in the blogs I've read lately.

So, I think that's enough text for me to be able to jump right into cat poo now. I usually like to give an opening paragraph to sort of warn people "Here comes the cat poo talk". That way, people can jump ship if they're a bunch of wimps and cat poo makes them queasy. Me? I love talking and reading about cat poo.

Yesterday we discussed correct placement of litter box - specifically, put it on your bed, because your cat will poo there anyhow. Today we will look at the sort of questions that only die-hard cat freaks could possibly want to know the answers to. As an aside, a lot of you have been writing me and asking me why the hell I'm writing about cat poo anyhow. It's because I'm trying to capture the crazy cat lady niche of readers. There's so many web sites out there these days that it's damn near impossible to compete with the likes of Slashdot, Something Awful, X-entertainment, and Yakov Smirnoff (in Soviet Russia, blog posts you!) - so I've had to find a niche that no one else has grabbed a hold of yet, and make it my own. And so began my quest for the crazy cat lady niche. I haven't turned back since I made that decision (yesterday).

Let's get on with it already! Here we go. Again, for those of you who suck, the actual link can be found on yesterday's entry. I'm too lazy to type it out again.

Size and Type of Litter Box

If you have a cat that tends to go over the side of the box, move the box over a bit to whatever side she's normally going over. This way, the cat will come to use the box, and try and go over the side of the box, only that, now, since you've moved the box, over the side, is actually directly inside the box. If this doesn't work, surround the box with a moat, so that going over the side just means the poo will be washed away. Some cats like the extra privacy provided by an opaque box that can’t be seen through. Others prefer a clear box so they can check out the world while they "do the do". If unsure, try both. Your cat will show you if she has a preference.

I know exactly what "your cat will show you if she has a preference" means. It means she's laying a deuce right there on the carpet. Then I switch back to the previous box, and she once again shows me her preference by dropping another load on my carpet. Where's that damn air horn?

Covered litter boxes

Some cats do prefer covered boxes because of the privacy. If you use a covered box, you should scoop it out twice daily. You should also provide an open box in close proximity, thus completely defeating the entire purpose of having a closed litter box.

Yah, that last bit is retarded. That's like saying, if you're going to put up an air freshner in your car, make sure you hang your sweaty gym sock up nearby. If you're going to flush the toilet after you finish going to the bathroom, make sure you also leave some of your "elimination" in the garbage can nearby. Excellent advice.

Automatic litter boxes

On the other hand, self-cleaning litter boxes are great for finicky cats that won’t use the box if it is at all soiled, and many cats are not at all disturbed by the noise. The key is to provide at least four other regular boxes in addition to the automatic box in a different location. If you notice inappropriate elimination (your cat poos on your bed more than three times a day) or agitation (your cat poos, then tries to throw it into the box, rather than just pooing in the box) at the noise, I recommend not using the automatic box.

Wow, if you could just get your cat to place her poo in the box, that would cut down drastically on the little pieces of litter that your cat somehow manages to launch fifty feet from the box. Seriously, back when I had Zeus the loose juice moose (Zeus for short), he would launch pieces of litter all over the place, and with deadly accuracy. I once saw him kill a bird with a piece of litter because he was too lazy to actually chase after it.

Type of Litter

The new crystal litters are another option. They absorb urine and its odor completely but still need to be scooped daily. Most cats will only urinate in them, so another box with a different type of litter should be provided for defecation, this one preferably lined with diamonds.

Well, anything less is clearly unreasonable...

Do not use scented litters or deodorizing products in the litter. They can irritate a cat’s paws and the odor is generally offensive to cats, whose sense of smell is much keener than ours. Even baking soda can be objectionable to cats. Urine causes it to fizz, which will make a very fun and cool pee volcano. This is a great experiment to do with your kids, and cat's like nothing more than going pee with six people staring at them.

Find a litter your cat likes and stick with it. If you have to change litters, sit down with your cat, and give a long thorough explanation of why you've switched litters. Your cat may want to pee on you, or scratch your furniture. This is okay. Let her do it. Afterwards, air horn her a couple of times while she's falling asleep, and you'll be considered even.

I love this air horn idea, it sounds almost as much fun as laser pointers and cats.

Litter box Liners

Litter box liners sound like a great idea, but I find them a nuisance and don’t recommend using them. They tend to pull away from the sides of the box, which renders them useless, and when the cat scratches, they get caught in the claws. Cats don’t like them, and scratching also tears holes in the liner, allowing urine to seep through the holes and increase odor. If you would like to use a liner, a better technique is to just buy more litter boxes and stack them on top of each other. When the top litter box is ready for a change, just throw it out, buy a new litter box, and add it to the bottom of the stack.

So you'll essentially have a big tower devoted to your cat's poo. Well, I'm sure the cat expects nothing less anyhow, so why not?

Cleaning the Litter box

If you are using clumping litter, scoop five or six times daily, or, if you enjoy the task, even more. Wash the box every one to two weeks. We recommend industrial strength floor stripper to clean the box with. Never use citrus scented cleaning agents, ammonia, or pine cleaning agents. These odors are offensive to cats.

Yah, but where are we going to find industrial strength floor stripper?

Note: If you have to sterilize the box - for example if your cat was sick with an infectious agent passed in feces - use gasoline and burn the box and the litter. Do not flush liter down the toilet, it will grow up to become super huge mutant litter, and may one day break down your front door to extract revenge upon your cat (you'd be pissed off if you got pooed on daily too).

If using clay litter, don't forget that you can make some really beautiful sculptures with the litter after your cat has finished with it. Remember to bake your sculpture in a kiln when you're done.

I made this sculpture for you using a little bit of clay, a little bit of cat poo, a good deal of cat urine, and a whole lot of love. Happy anniversary honey..

Litter Tracking

To help control litter tracking around the house, place super sticky tape all around the litterbox, or better yet, use fly paper. Inspect your cats paws whenever she leaves the litter box, and if she still has litter on them, shake your head, and let her have it with the air horn. She'll learn soon enough that you can't just go tracking kitty litter all around the house. Or she'll just start pooing on your pillow, which she'll most likely do anyhow.

The moral of story is clearly that if you want to buy a cat, you might as well buy a new set of pillows as well, because your old ones are going to be coated in a layer of poo from this day forward.

I can remember that some crazy cat friend of mine once told me that dogs have owners, whereas cats have servants. I told that friend to shut up already, and that their stupid cat dog joke wasn't funny, and that I'd be leaving poo on their pillow pretty soon, if they didn't quit bringing up their cat every ten seconds in a conversation.

The fact is, this article is completely irrelevant, because we can solve all of our cat poo woes with a simple instrument - a cork. That's right. Once you've corked your cat, you needn't worry about issues like "Oh no, is there poo on my pillow again?" and "How did she get the poo up in that corner of the ceiling?". All you need to do is uncork your cat once a month, and let her run around your neighbours yard.

[Insert segue here]

One of the main characters in the book I'm currently reading (A Storm of Swords by George R. Martin) just got slaughtered, and yet amazingly, I got to sleep on time. Normally that means I read at least another 30 minutes or so before going to sleep, but last night was not the case.

The series itself (titled the fire and ice series, which, although fitting, is the most cliche title I could have imagined) is adequate. It's not bad, it's just unremarkable. It's got battles, betrayals, dragons... Everything you would expect from a fantasy fiction book (or science fiction as they seem to be billing it today. Poor categorization!). The thing is, for me, there's nothing about the book that makes it especially great, unlike the Wheel of Time series, or Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (which, although not fantasy fiction, are a fabulous set of books).

That all kind of ties in with one of the reasons I really don't care for Lord of the Rings - the series just strikes me as totally average fare for a fantasy fiction book. None of the characters really made me sympathize with them any great deal. In fact, they struck me as totally archtypical - Frodo is the stereotypical underdog hero, Gimli the stereotypical dwarf (proud, gruff, big on honor, etc), etc. There's not a great deal that happens in Lord of the Rings that surprises me - Sure, Gandalf falls down a chasm with the Balrog, but then, what do you know, he's back again!

While Lord of the Rings has all of the requirements that need to be met for an epic fantasy story, its plot strikes me as almost completely linear, with little deviation, which is one of the saving graces of the FIRE AND ICE SERIES (I have to do it in capitals because it's cheesier that way) - I'm sure it totally irritates people that get attached to specific characters (which is one of my favorite parts about a good book), but things can be going along in one direction, having you feel as though you know what's going to happen next, and then one of the most important characters in the book gets completely slaughtered.

The only trouble here is that Martin seems to really be keen on doing this, and so as the reader, you become weary of any character, and hesitate to get attached to them, and become suspicious that every incident means their iminent death. Perhaps that's a good thing, because it definitely simulates in my mind what ancient war times would be like. Every person you meet could be a friend or an enemy, or a friend one minute, and an enemy the next. You'd probably also be very hesitant to get attached to someone new, because they could be dead or your enemy in less than a week's time.

I guess it's a fine line, and as Graham said, where plot twists like this keep your book from becoming too predictable, doing them too much brings you right back around to the start, where the plot twist itself becomes predictable.

Anyhow, I don't mind reading the books, but I'm looking forward to getting started on a new series Graham has been raving about (I'm sure you've heard it mentioned a hojillion times if you read his blog) called something like The Malazan book of the dead to end all time and provide a jolly good read indeed. Or something like that. I remember that it had a very long-winded title and the word Malazan in it. In any case, that book sounds a little more up my alley, with more fantasy related elements (magic, sorcery, mythical creatures and mysteriousness playing a much larger role, more interesting characters, etc).

Hmm, looking back, this entry turned out to be a thesis on cat poo and a book report, rolled up into one convenient package. Oh well. Don't complain, or I really will turn this into an all cat poo blog. Cat poo, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Bboy competition tomorrow, so anyone that is interested in checking that out (tickets are $10 presale, $15 at the door), let me know. The ferries are currently striking, so it'll likely just be local breakers, which isn't particularly exciting, but I'm always down with supporting events like this, and it means that Graham and I get to go and pop, lock, and boogaloo in the back corner, helping to ensure that the funk styles never achieve popularity here in Victoria.

Yes, that's right. Today we will be exploring the world of cats, and the gravel that they poo in. A lot of my friends come up to me and tell me things like "Hey Adam, my cat is cool, look at these fifty pictures I took of it doing stuff". What I like to do is take fifty pictures of my grandfather doing stuff, like trying to bend over, and then corner these friends and go "Hey, Bungwad, my grandpa is geriatric, check out these fifty pictures of him getting a sponge bath". This technique works for a lot of other things as well, like getting rid of homeless people, Jehovah's Witnesses, Ninjas, etc.

Anyhow, if you happen to be one of my stupid friends that is always boring me to tears with your stupid cat stories, I guess this article is for you. I don't care either way, I just wish you'd stop showing me cat pictures.

Number of Boxes

The general rule of thumb for the number of litter boxes is two boxes per cat, plus an extra box for yourself. Translated, this would be "Une boite pour toi, et deux boites pour chaque chat chez toi. Mange d'la merde!" This means one cat should have two boxes, two cats should have three boxes and a cubicle, and so forth. If it is possible to have the boxes made out of silk, and to line them with your dress shirts, your cats will be all the more happy.

The truth is that it doesn't matter how many boxes you have, nor what you use to line them, because your cats are going to poo wherever they damn well please, and that will inevitably be on your pillow or towel, as a little treat for you to discover when you come home late at night, drunk from being out at the bar, and pass out on your bed.

Location of Boxes

It is important to provide your cat with a place to "eliminate" (poo) in a location where she feels safe and comfortable. Choose a peaceful area where she won’t be startled and that provides privacy. Make sure that you have soft music playing there, such as Enya, or Kenny G. The laundry room where the spin cycle or dryer buzzer can erupt and startle her out of her wits does not classify as safe. An ideal location is in the middle of your bed. This location has an added benefit - your cat is going to poo on your bed anyhow, so you might as well put the litterbox there. If Kitty feels unsafe in the area you’ve provided, she will find somewhere more suitable—which might be in the back of your closet on some soft laundry. Her pleasant experience in your closet may prove far more agreeable than her “scary litter box” and she may make it a habit. She may also find that she likes the feel of laundry or carpet better than the litter and choose this material on a regular basis. If this happens to be the case, carry an air horn with you, and blare it at your cat whenever it looks at your laundry. If you're feeling spiteful about the poo on your laundry, blare the airhorn whenever your cat starts to fall asleep as well, for hours of entertainment.

That's a very good point, and something we can learn from our pets - if you're having trouble remaining regular, try putting on some Kenny G, and going and sitting in your roommates laundry and pooing there. Laxatives aren't the only answer available people!

Other things to consider when choosing a location for the litter boxes.

Solution: Line the litterbox with nice cushions and a blanket, and sleep there. This is the only way to guarantee that the cat won't poo where you sleep.

That is very good advice. Another good piece of advice that isn't mentioned in this article is to not use your cat's litterbox, and instead, just go to the bathroom like normal people do.

2) Keep Fido away from the box.

Solution: Throw your dog out.

Short and simple, I appreciate that.

3) Don’t put the litter box near Kitty’s food and water.
Do you eat in the bathroom? Kitty doesn’t like it either, although she has no problem whatsoever pooing on your silverware. Cats do not like to drop a deuce where they eat and drink. Also, as mentioned earlier, the box shouldn’t be near Kitty’s bed, it should be near yours.

That's just redundant.

4) Don’t place the box near a door unless the door is generally left open.
If Kitty is using the box in what she thinks is a nice quiet area and the door suddenly slams open and someone walks in right next to her, she is likely to feel startled and uncomfortable, and to then go and scratch the shit out of your furniture. Preferring privacy in bathrooms is a trait many cats and humans have in common, excepting of course for the fact that a cat has no problem sticking their ass in your face when you're petting them.

I hate that. It's like some bizarre notion cats have, where they're really enjoying you petting them, so they reward you with a brown star in the face. If you just poke at it with a stick, they usually turn back around pretty quick.

5) Place two boxes side by side.
Many cats like to urinate in one box and drop a load in another. You wouldn't want to do both of those in the same toilet would you? Of course not, you drop the kids off at the pool in the toilet, and pee in the sink. Your cat should have the same level of comfort. Providing two boxes close to each other but not touching gives Kitty options. "Hmm," she'll think, "Do I want to poo on my owners bed, and pee on his carpet, or poo underneath the sink, and scratch his furniture?"

Bay's cat does all of those things, plus has recently added vommitting into the mix. Such a multi-talented cat!

6) A litter box on every floor of the house.
If you live in a multi-story house, be sure there is a litter box on every floor your cat can access. This is especially important with arthritic or geriatric cats. If you have stairs in your house, put a litterbox on every stair.

Totally reasonable.

7) Don’t place the litter box on carpet.
Often the feel of the carpet is more attractive than the litter, so put the litterbox on top of 9 inch spikes.

Better yet, cover your entire house in 9 inch spikes, and the cat never poos anywhere other than the litterbox, guaranteed. Unless she has really good balance.

8) Don’t move the box around.
Find the best spot for the litter box and if Kitty accepts your decision, don’t move it! If you absolutely must change the litter box location, buy a new cat. Then, put the new box in the desired area and go buy an air horn.

Sounds like a pretty fair deal to me.

That will conclude the first portion of picking your cats litterbox out. These are all very good and important rules to follow, so I hope everyone is paying attention and reading along. Not doing so could even mean DEATH, so if you didn't read this entry in its entirety, I suggest going back up to the top and reading it four or five more times.

Sorry about the late entry today, I was out last night and came late into work, and had to get a bunch of stuff done before I could take a second to compose my thoughts about cat-bum-gravel.

In other news, my main computer needs to be taken in because the fan isn't working properly. When I turn it on, it sounds like someone is chainsawing through a walrus, which is a rather unpleasant sound, if none of you have ever had the opportunity to actually chainsaw one yourself. While that's going on, I'll only have ICQ, because I can't get the msn client I normally use on my Unix box to work properly. As a result, I won't be able to talk to many people, because everyone migrated to MSN for some reason now, leaving ICQ pretty lame. Also, I can't watch any of the episodes I've downloaded, nor play any cool games, so I'll be very miserable and in a bad mood. If you see me, I suggest you shut the hell up, because I'm liable to punch you square in the teeth.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the next exciting installment about kitty litter! Horray!

Yes, it's true - we all know there's nothing more satisfying than a good session of beefing out your cake. I'm talking of course about working out, the opportunity us men get to go to a gym packed with steroid filled monkeys, and check each other in shorts. It's a good, totally non-homoerotic activity. However, word is, some men take this to dangerous levels, obsessing over there body shape, and crying themselves to sleep because they have low self-esteem. I think I've actually read some of their online journals..

Anyhow, as I just finished saying, there are some guys out there that are upset with the way they look. This article is for you losers! Here's the initial link for you, but if you're all hopped up on 'roids and can't muster the patience to wait for the link above to load, just read on!

Obsession, for Men

Copyright infringement, Calvin Klein. Busted.

Most women who know Josh describe him as a walking poster child for the tall, dark and handsome. He has a gym membership, but with his demanding work schedule and active social life he doesn't get to work out as much as he thinks he should, so he's no doubt fat. But after a recent trip to the flea market on an especially hot, sticky day, the 31-year-old says he realized just how badly he needs to get in shape.

"There were all of these guys walking around without their shirts on, and wearing those short jogging shorts with the slit up the side; they were all buff and exuding sexuality. I think I got some on my clothes," Josh says. "I was so hot, but there was no way I was gonna take my shirt off. No way Jose. Adios muchachos."

Okay, Josh sounds like the typical pansy that me and my humongous steroid using friends all hang out and make fun of. Often times, the Chuckinator will bench press 600 lbs or so, then we'll sit around in our little shorts and make fun of people like Buckwheat, or whatever this jerk's name is, and comment on how he's obviously a big pudgy loser because we don't see him in the gym 7 days a week. Hahahaha! Oops, time to go shave my forehead.

Josh can rattle off his list of his perceived body imperfections: thinning hair on his head, growing woes with unruly back, crack and nose hair, man-boobs, love handles and lack of a six-pack set of abdominal muscles. When asked if he thinks about his body every day, Josh rolls his eyes and nods.

"I think about it as soon as I look at myself in the mirror in the morning; getting in and out of the shower; when I eat, when I'm on the bus, sometimes when I'm in an airplane, and once when I was watching a movie about Gladiators. And when I'm out and see guys that are more attractive than I am," he says "I imagine myself being the guy wearing no shirt and those little shorts with the slit up the sides".

Love those shorts. There's gotta be one factory outlet that is churning those relics from 70s out on a regular basis. I don't see them for sale anywhere, so there must be some secret location where vile men go to purchase these shorts.

Josh went through an especially hard time lately, but he seems relieved that his lack of an appetite has helped him lose weight fast. He hopes to drop another 10 pounds and says he is positive that getting rid of his love handles will help him have better self-esteem.

That's right kids, going through a hard time and not eating at all is the key to losing weight and hapiness!

Josh refuses to let me use his real name for the story, but I'm more muscular than him, so what the hell is the pansy, Mark McGillamy, going to do? Nothing. After I tell him I'm going to use his real name, I prove my point by bench pressing him a few times and eating part of the phone book for fiber. Josh whines that people finding out about his body image worries is "the last thing he needs.", but I reassure him by saying "Grow a penis and be a man, you baby".

According to Adonis co-author Phillips, professor of psychiatry at Brown, or some other equally prestigious sounding University, Josh represents only one of the milder cases amid millions of men struggling with body dysmorphic disorder, a disorder where people spontaneously break out into the Lindy Hop.

The Lindy Hop was named after Charles Lindbergh, for those of you keeping track for the trivia contest.

She says that the numbers for guys struggling specifically with extreme shame and embarrassment about their muscle tone or lack thereof, totals more than 100,000 in the United States alone. In Adonis, the authors describe one man who was fired after refusing to stop blending protein shakes at his cubicle at work, despite co-workers' complaints about the disruptive noise, and another who refuses to kiss his girlfriend because he fears that her calorie-laden saliva will lead to unwanted pounds.

What a bunch of dorks. I saw this one guy working out yesterday who was a little slighter of frame than myself (not that that really matters), and we left the gym at the same time. It was funny though, because he went straight to his locker, took off his headphones (which had some hardcore music playing), and immediately tore out his little protein shake thing, shook it up there, and then guzzled it in one gulp. I got the impression he was almost trying to be extra manly or something. In any case, the image of a guy, who's even smaller than me, listening to hardcore music, and slamming back a protein shake, made me feel very dysmorphic, and want to do the Lindy Hop.

Since Phillips began her residency 15 years ago, she has made it her life's work to build model airplanes, and was thus fired quite quickly from her first job. In order to keep the income flowing, she decided to write some self-help books for men with body-image woes. She and her co-authors named guys' unhealthy obsessions after Adonis, a half-god, half-man from Greek mythology who was the peak of masculine beauty, gorgeous enough to win the love of the goddess Aphrodite and so irresistible he started an ugly cat fight among the women of the Pantheon. "I have a poster of Adonis above my bed. My husband doesn't like it, but I don't care. When he starts to look like Adonis, then we'll talk".

"This is a disorder that affects as many men as women, yet people assume this is just a woman's problem. Men die from these various forms of Adonis," Phillips says. She cites steroid abuse, poor taste in fashion and turtles as relevant information, most of which we think she just pulled out of nowhere. "This is not to minimize the suffering that women experience, but to say that men suffer way more, and that the suffering that woman experience is minimal."

Ahhh, good old doublespeak!

During their research the authors found that 45 percent of American men surveyed say they are dissatisfied with the new white meat chicken mcnuggets at McDonalds. After answering this question, the authors followed up by saying "Aha, trick question. You obviously eat a lot at McDonalds, so why don't you do yourself a favor, eat less junk at McDs, and work out more, fatty?" "We're making people more aware of the fact that they might be hideously obese." They also found that straight and gay men seem equally afflicted, despite popular stereotypes that gay men are more concerned with appearance. Even more surprising, there are more gym monkeys that own shorts with the slits up the sides, than gay men that own the same kind of shorts.

I want to get a tuxedo with those slits up the sides. How cool would that be?

To penetrate verbal taboos and make it easier for guys to talk, the authors posed as easy woman at local nightclubs, and got the men really drunk. Once that was done, they created a series of computerized body image tests involving rows of male bodies of increasing muscle size. In these tests, men picked models averaging about 28 pounds more muscle than they have as their ideal mates. Authors call this syndrome "bigorexia glandopedia", a disorder where sufferers believe that steroids aren't so bad, once you get past having to shave your shoulders and ears twice daily.

"Now we've come to realize that the rise of 'bigorexia glandopedia' is a warning signal," Pope says. "It's a bellwether of what our society is doing to contemporary men's views about their bodies."

You're all wondering what exactly bellwether means aren't you? Doesn't matter, I'm not going to bother looking up a definition. I could make one up though I guess.

Word: Bellwether
Word type: Compound Normative Verb-puncture
Definition: A large utensil used in the making of custard and oysters.
Use it in a sentence: Hey, there's my bellwether. Horray!

Good enough. I'm tired today. I'm just about to get started writing a presentation for what I saw while I was in Phoenix, so that should be exciting to the core.

Tonight is also my old staff Christmas party, so it'll be interesting to see how that works out. Christmas parties, as I think I already expressed in a previous entry, are fairly boring for me, so I don't know how long that'll last for.

Oh, and in other fabulous news, my stupid computer at home has been screwing up again. I bought the thing from UVic computer store, and it's like they gave me the shoddiest parts possible. It's pretty ridiculous - the hardware on a computer shouldn't be having drastic issues within a year of purchasing it. Grr.

I was thinking today about blogs - I had actually been reading this one blog in particular and finding myself getting nauseous reading through the posts. Each one of them is filled with self-pity, and complaints about the things that the blogger did the previous night, and how next time, she should not do them, etc. Pretty standard run of the mill stuff, although I have a very difficult time understanding why someone would make that public - seems like something better suited to a journal, or a private diary. That's neither here nor there though, I covered that in a previous entry. In any case, I posted an anonymous comment on the blog, because I found myself fed up with the "woe is me" style entries, and recommended she take her own advice. The response back was pretty typical - "Don't judge me, these are my own thoughts and provide no context!".

My thoughts on that response are mostly:

- First of all, I don't think I really made any real judgement, or at least, I don't think I expressed one in my initial comment - I merely said that it was easier to complain about your problems and say what you should do, rather than to actually take the steps necessary to solve your problems. Next time you're offered a choice where you know the right course of action to take (based on the number of times I've seen mention of "I know I shouldn't have done [arbitrary drug], but I did anyway. Why? WHY???????", I think it's safe to assume that the right course of action is known beforehand), make the right choice, rather than just thinking "Oh, I'll regret this later, but it's easier to do make the bad decision now. Next time, I'll really behave though". Is giving advice judging someone? I guess it is, but would that advice have been regarded the same way if I had put a positive spin on it? I doubt it.

- If you put your thoughts into an online journal, that you've made public, you're gonna get judged. Just like I expect to be judged by some people for the words that I write in this blog, so should everyone else understand that whenever you make comments in a public medium, be it a blog, an internet forum, a book club, or even a class at school, you're opening yourself up to be judged. That's part of what sharing an opinion is about.

- Would it be any different if it was Hitler's blog I was reading, and it said things like "I hate all jews", etc.? I don't think so. He could still argue that there was no context for his thoughts, but that's irrelevant. I still believe that if you're expressing words in a public medium/forum, you better understand that other people are going to be reading them, and that if you want to provide a suitable context, that's up to you to do.

- Someone else ended up posting a reply saying "Yah, that's what I hate about live journals". Might I suggest keeping a personal journal then? Or setting up a password to prevent people other than your friends from accessing the journal? This is taken right from the livejournal feature sheet:

Privacy
* You control:
o Who can see each individual entry.

Anyhow, that's about all I have to say on that I think. Feel free to post comments judging me and my jaded view of the world - it's your right!

Sometimes, when I need a break from it all, I like to join chatrooms on IRC, and ask inane questions, and see how far things will go. This activity is actually called trolling, and is named after the fishing activity, where a fisherman dangles a line out of a boat and slowly coasts along, waiting for the fish to take the boat. Trolling on IRC is essentially the same concept - you same something stupid, and wait for people that have nothing better to do to jump at the chance and start either attacking you and your point, trying to make fun of you, trying to make you feel stupid, etc. Of course, trolling is the height of hypocrisy, because the very act of doing it says that I have nothing better to do with my time than troll in the first place, so why am I criticizing these people for jumping on the troll? Fact is, I'm not criticizing them, I'm glad they're there. I don't troll to prove a point - I think that's stupid. I do it because it makes me laugh, and that's what I'm about - making myself laugh.

Anyhow, I logged onto IRC for a quick break, intially only intending to try and get some other information, and felt like doing it under a pseudo-name. Once I logged in, I adopted some poor spelling and a slightly naive/ignorant manner to further mask my identity and things took off from there. Everyone likes the opportunity to pounce on someone they perceive to be less intelligent than themselves (I'm guilty too), so naturally there was no shortage of people that wanted to get in on this. Here's the latest fruits of my labour, if you can call it that, along with my own comments interjected between the log. Be forewarned, this is a fairly long log:

[01:42PM] [Tigerbaby] is this the forum for ravevictoria
[01:42PM] [subtext] hi
[01:42PM] [Tigerbaby] hlo
[01:42PM] [Tigerbaby] is this the ravevictoria chatroom?
[01:42PM] [_42oKru] haha they are making this guy eat fresh frog for a guitar
[01:42PM] [narc-] whois subtext
[01:42PM] [narc-] tes
[01:42PM] [subtext] haha
[01:43PM] [narc-] yes
[01:43PM] [narc-] somwhat
[01:43PM] [subtext] i'm trying to figure out who you are.
[01:43PM] [Tigerbaby] is this the ravevictoria chatroom?
[01:43PM] [Tigerbaby] can anyone here me?
[01:43PM] [_42oKru] NO
[01:44PM] [_42oKru] I doubt anyone can here you

First person to take the bait is Ryan. No surprise here.

[01:44PM] [cheekyafk] no, why would you assume that rave.vic would have anythign to do with rave victoria
[01:44PM] [cheekyafk] thats just dumb
[01:44PM] [Tigerbaby] is 420kru the resident witty guy?
[01:44PM] [LeftyBSD] no, he's the resident idiot, ignore him.
[01:44PM] [LeftyBSD] this is the rave victoria chatroom.
[01:44PM] *** xcessa (~person@h24-108-255-87.gv.shawcable.net) has joined channel #rave.vic
[01:44PM] [Tigerbaby] well he plays the part well
[01:44PM] [_42oKru] Stfu wanker
[01:44PM] [Tigerbaby] thanks lefty
[01:44PM] [narc-] ROFFLE
[01:44PM] [cheekyafk] and the fun begins
[01:44PM] [cheekyafk] haha
[01:44PM] [LeftyBSD] welcome, tigerbaby
[01:45PM] [xcessa] i hate it when i'm disconnected
[01:45PM] [Tigerbaby] some1 told me that i should ditch bad boy bill and go to the PR for some party
[01:45PM] [xcessa] but I don't find out until I try and talk
[01:45PM] [Tigerbaby] is the party worth missing bbb for?
[01:45PM] [_42oKru] bad boy bill will be the dope
[01:45PM] [_42oKru] I wouldnt miss it for anything
[01:45PM] [narc-] This is the http://www.ravevictoria.com/ chatroom
[01:45PM] [xcessa] pr = pressroom?
[01:45PM] [Tigerbaby] i think so
[01:45PM] [Tigerbaby] can anyone tell me about the pr party?
[01:45PM] [xcessa] why would nanaimo EVER be better than bad boy bill
[01:46PM] [LeftyBSD] I'm going to have to vote for BBB
[01:46PM] [cheekyafk] thats what i was thinking emmy
[01:46PM] [_42oKru] Well given none of us are the promoters of it
[01:46PM] [Tigerbaby] are you a promotr 420/
[01:46PM] [_42oKru] we cant exactly tell you more than what is on rave vic
[01:46PM] [_42oKru] yes.
[01:46PM] [Tigerbaby] so you must be famous!

Haha, Ryan jumped first, so I give him a jab and see if he takes any more of the bait.

[01:46PM] [narc-] BBB is a Benson & Hedges Gold Club thing
[01:46PM] [_42oKru] not in vic it isnt
[01:46PM] [_42oKru] or it hasnt been advertised as it
[01:47PM] [_42oKru] and i do the promo work so i would think i would know
[01:47PM] [narc-] well in not so many words
[01:47PM] [Tigerbaby] is anyone going to the pr party then?
[01:47PM] [narc-] Benson & Hedges aren't allowed to promote it as a B&H event
[01:47PM] [cheekyafk] no, nobody is going
[01:47PM] [cheekyafk] not one single person

My friend Lexi's being a smartass here, although she says she suspected it was me all along. Doesn't matter though, I'll ham it up for her :)

[01:47PM] [Tigerbaby] nobody at ALL?
[01:47PM] [cheekyafk] would you like a name list of everyone going to BBB?
[01:47PM] [Tigerbaby] how will it succeedd then?
[01:47PM] [xcessa] we don't go to parties
[01:47PM] [cheekyafk] alphabetical?
[01:47PM] [Tigerbaby] i would like that please
[01:48PM] [cheekyafk] i hate people who ask stupid shit like this
[01:48PM] [xcessa] so fuck off, raver.

Now Emmy's getting frustrated too. The best is when your friends get in on this sort of thing - that's when you know you're doing a good job.

[01:48PM] [cheekyafk] who is going to this, who is going to that
[01:48PM] [elus] hah
[01:48PM] [cheekyafk] WHO CARES
[01:48PM] [Tigerbaby] wow, you girls are clearly menstral

PMS is an ignorant topic to bring up in general, and especially when you've just been burned for asking stupid questions, so naturally this was the perfect opportunity to do just that.

[01:48PM] [cheekyafk] go wherever you want to go
[01:48PM] [cheekyafk] haha
[01:48PM] [elus] Tigerbaby yeah
[01:48PM] [narc-] Tigerbaby: do you goto raves?
[01:48PM] [Tigerbaby] i rave
[01:48PM] [elus] they're not getting enough dick tho
[01:48PM] [Tigerbaby] sometimes
[01:48PM] [cheekyafk] haha emm
[01:48PM] [xcessa] menstral! ? hahaha
[01:48PM] [Tigerbaby] elus: totally
[01:48PM] [elus] that's awesome btw
[01:48PM] [elus] narc raves too
[01:48PM] [elus] he's like a rave king
[01:48PM] [Tigerbaby] im awesome
[01:49PM] [narc-] <--- hardcore raver promoter
[01:49PM] [elus] and bad boy bill is his raving queen
[01:49PM] [Tigerbaby] so your not going to pr party cheekyafk?
[01:49PM] [LeftyBSD] rav0r
[01:49PM] [elus] well you're not hardcore
[01:49PM] [cheekyafk] hell no
[01:49PM] [elus] she's going
[01:49PM] [cheekyafk] i'm not going to bbb either
[01:49PM] [elus] she's going to that as well
[01:49PM] [LeftyBSD] I'm lying

I'll just keep poking at Lexi and see what sort of reaction that'll net me. Asking the same question over and over is an excellent way to make someone snap.

[01:49PM] [Tigerbaby] maye i can get a ride with you cheekyafk
[01:49PM] [cheekyafk] i can listen to one of his cd's for free at home
[01:49PM] [xcessa] I'm going to bbb and doing mad ebombs there
[01:49PM] [xcessa] who wants to join me
[01:49PM] [cheekyafk] and not pay $18 or whatever

Second time I ask the question..

[01:50PM] [Tigerbaby] can i get a ride with you chekyafk?
[01:50PM] [elus] hah
[01:50PM] [_42oKru] she said she wasnt going numb nutz

And Ryan taking the bait full on, of course.

[01:50PM] [_42oKru> [01:50PM] [Tigerbaby] did you just call me numb nutz?
[01:50PM] [cheekyafk] you can ride my foot when i shove it up your ass

Good burn by Lexi there.

[01:50PM] [_42oKru> [01:50PM] [cheekyafk] OH YA
[01:50PM] [cheekyafk] hahaha
[01:50PM] [cheekyafk] i want crazy bread, i'm hungy
[01:51PM] [Tigerbaby] cheeky: was the foot up ass analogy meaning you wont give me a ride?

Third time, and no it's a really REALLY stupid question.

[01:51PM] [narc-] Tigerbaby: do you still make candy?
[01:51PM] [cheekyafk] no, it meant i would love to give you a ride
[01:52PM] [cheekyafk] i like to talk in opposites
[01:52PM] [Tigerbaby] narc i cant make candy
[01:52PM] [Tigerbaby] opposites? so you dont talk in opposites then?
[01:52PM] [narc-] off a cliff
[01:52PM] [Tigerbaby] i tried to make taffy
[01:52PM] [Tigerbaby] but it sucked

Candy is this ugly bracelets and necklaces that ravers make for one another when they first start partying. I take the ignorant route, but it doesn't generate any more attacks.

[01:52PM] Signoff: _42oKru (Keep yo mind off them bitches, eyez on yo riches)
[01:52PM] [Tigerbaby] that signoff message has no plur

(PLUR is raver talk and is an acronym for Peace Love Unity and Respect)

[01:52PM] [xcessa] lets see your signoff message
[01:53PM] [xcessa] :)
[01:53PM] [cheekyafk] thats tupac man
[01:53PM] [Tigerbaby] "love and respect for all, it is a good day"
[01:53PM] [cheekyafk] thats classic
[01:53PM] [Tigerbaby] classic?
[01:53PM] [Tigerbaby] paul oakenfold is classic tupac is a jerk
[01:53PM] [cheekyafk] hahahahaha
[01:54PM] [xcessa] hahahahaha
[01:54PM] [Tigerbaby] hahahahahaha
[01:54PM] [Tigerbaby] thats me!
[01:54PM] [cheekyafk] this is lame, i'm really afk now
[01:54PM] [Tigerbaby] whats afk?
[01:55PM] [Amanday] someone is misusing the uvic computer lab.

Amanday made that comment because she did a /whois on my nickname and got my hostname back. Let's play stupid.

[01:55PM] [xcessa] i agree
[01:55PM] [Tigerbaby] im in the uvic computer lab
[01:55PM] [Tigerbaby] my friend is in csc!
[01:55PM] [elus] hahah
[01:55PM] [Amanday] yeah we know
[01:55PM] [Tigerbaby] cool are you here with me?
[01:56PM] [Tigerbaby] hold up your hand and ill come saye hi!
[01:56PM] [elus] she's in the puter behind you
[01:56PM] [Amanday] here I am!
[01:56PM] [Tigerbaby] i dont see you
[01:56PM] [Amanday] must have missed me.
[01:56PM] [Tigerbaby] do it again then?
[01:57PM] [Tigerbaby] could you be in a nother lab?
[01:57PM] [Amanday] maybe.

Haha, classic.

[01:57PM] [xcessa] so tigerbaby who is your favorite dj
[01:57PM] [elus] aside from oakenfold
[01:57PM] [Tigerbaby] hm
[01:57PM] [Tigerbaby] are you guys really interested?
[01:57PM] [elus] yeah
[01:57PM] [elus] we like to talk about music here
[01:57PM] [Tigerbaby] cool!
[01:58PM] [Tigerbaby] i used to really like sash

Sash! was a pretty cheesy artist Graham and I used to listen to. He's definitely not a DJ, at least, not in comparison to people like Tony Humphries and Sasha. I still like his music though.

[01:58PM] [xcessa] sash
[01:58PM] [xcessa] or sasha
[01:58PM] [Tigerbaby] sash i think with an exclamation mark???
[01:58PM] [xcessa] rofl
[01:58PM] [xcessa] i used to love sash
[01:58PM] [xcessa] ECUADOR!
[01:58PM] [Tigerbaby] sorry exclamation mark!!!!
[01:58PM] [Tigerbaby] ya!
[01:58PM] [Amanday] I used to love Wham!
[01:58PM] [elus] i used to hate people
[01:58PM] [Tigerbaby] wham isnt' a dj
[01:58PM] [Tigerbaby] DUH
[01:59PM] [elus] but she used to love them!
[01:59PM] [Tigerbaby] oh
[01:59PM] [Amanday] but they have an exclamation mark.
[01:59PM] [Tigerbaby] ic
[01:59PM] [Tigerbaby] what r ur favorite djs?
[01:59PM] [Tigerbaby] hi?
[02:00PM] [xcessa] like ones ive slept with? or other ones?
[02:00PM] [Amanday] man
[02:00PM] [Tigerbaby] youve slept with djs?
[02:00PM] [cheekyafk] hahaha
[02:00PM] [Amanday] both of those lists are long.
[02:00PM] * cheekyafk highfives Amanday
[02:00PM] [elus] rofl
[02:00PM] [Tigerbaby] hey how do you high five??
[02:00PM] [Amanday] I fucked paul oakenfold
[02:00PM] [Amanday] he's a moaner.
[02:01PM] [elus] ^5
[02:01PM] * cheekyafk bitch slaps Tigerbaby
[02:01PM] [Tigerbaby] i dont believe you
[02:01PM] [Amanday] I have scars to prove it.
[02:01PM] [Amanday] I got his name tattooed on my ass
[02:01PM] [Tigerbaby] scars?
[02:01PM] [Amanday] yeah
[02:01PM] [Tigerbaby] you must have a big ass
[02:01PM] [Amanday] he's also a biter.
[02:01PM] [Tigerbaby] yes?
[02:01PM] [Amanday] I do.
[02:01PM] [Tigerbaby] ecuador right xcessa!
[02:02PM] [Amanday] look for the girl in the computer lab with a big ass
[02:02PM] [Amanday] that's me

Conversation is veering away from my display of ignorance. Time to add some more into the mix.

[02:02PM] [Tigerbaby] im not even ment to be in the lab
[02:02PM] [Tigerbaby] my frend just brought me in with him
[02:02PM] [Tigerbaby] so dont tell anyone
[02:02PM] [Amanday] haha
[02:02PM] [Amanday] I am going to tell on you
[02:02PM] [elus] oh WE'RE TELLING
[02:02PM] [Tigerbaby] are you in here too elus?
[02:03PM] [xcessa] i cant remember if i fucked sash! or not
[02:03PM] [elus] admin@cs.uvic.ca
[02:03PM] [xcessa] that was a long time ago
[02:03PM] [elus] no
[02:03PM] [Amanday] how did you log onto the computer then Tigerbaby?
[02:03PM] [Amanday] Yeah, you were pretty high xcessa
[02:03PM] [Tigerbaby] my frend loged me in
[02:03PM] [Amanday] I think you might have just given him a bj
[02:03PM] [Tigerbaby] whats a bj?

Bad question by me - this one is too obvious, and if you come off as TOO naive when trolling, it makes the people feel bad about flaming you. That's exactly the opposite of the effect you desire.

[02:03PM] [xcessa] you are
[02:03PM] [Amanday] naivete is only funny for so long.
[02:04PM] [elus] speaking of long
[02:04PM] [Tigerbaby] ?
[02:04PM] [elus] 8=============D
[02:04PM] [elus] im really fuckin bored
[02:04PM] [elus] wishin my marks would come out. i hate waiting
[02:04PM] [Amanday] I wish my sister was here
[02:04PM] [elus] for mathematics, calculus three
[02:04PM] [Amanday] so I could get my dad's phone number
[02:04PM] [Tigerbaby] so can any1 tell me about the pr party?
[02:05PM] [elus] you have recieved a b.... minus
[02:05PM] [elus] heh
[02:05PM] [elus] it's cancelled
[02:05PM] [elus] i just talked to jim
[02:05PM] [elus] who was helping throw the show
[02:05PM] [Tigerbaby] whos jim?
[02:05PM] [Tigerbaby] oh
[02:05PM] [elus] one of the guys
[02:05PM] [elus] you know
[02:05PM] [elus] yeh
[02:05PM] [Amanday] everything you need to know
[02:05PM] [Tigerbaby] what was the party for?
[02:05PM] [Tigerbaby] serra? serra who?
[02:06PM] [elus] i think it's spelt cera
[02:06PM] [Tigerbaby] serra cera?
[02:06PM] [elus] they spelt her name wrong
[02:06PM] [Tigerbaby] whats her last name?
[02:06PM] [elus] tops
[02:06PM] [xcessa] whats your last name
[02:07PM] [Tigerbaby] vitrone
[02:07PM] [elus] are you italian
[02:07PM] [Tigerbaby] part
[02:07PM] [xcessa] elus what is your last name
[02:08PM] [Tigerbaby] but dont worry im not like the sorpranos!!!!!
[02:08PM] [Tigerbaby] LOL!!!
[02:08PM] [elus] oh phew
[02:08PM] [xcessa] speaking of long .. ;)
[02:08PM] [elus] yeah i was really scared there for a minute
[02:08PM] [elus] :D
[02:08PM] [Tigerbaby] haha!
[02:09PM] [Tigerbaby] asl?

Things are finally starting to wind down - it's tough to be a novelty for very long when you're trolling, so I have to drop the final bomb - asking asl, which stands for Age, Sex, Location, is typically THE lamest thing you can do in an internet chat room.

[02:09PM] [elus] wtf
[02:09PM] [elus] 18/f/vic
[02:10PM] [Tigerbaby] wtf?
[02:10PM] [elus] do you pick up chicks on the internet
[02:10PM] [narc_] since when was this #teenchat
[02:10PM] [narc_] a/s/l/
[02:10PM] [narc_] Tigerbaby: r u m or f
[02:10PM] [Tigerbaby] im m
[02:10PM] [xcessa] ok i'm nauseated
[02:10PM] [xcessa] i'm outtie
[02:11PM] [Tigerbaby] i dont normally pick up chicks on net, but if ur askin
[02:11PM] [narc_] is msn down
[02:11PM] [cheekyafk] my msn was fucked a little while ago
[02:11PM] [elus] no im really a dude
[02:11PM] [elus] im not into "greek"
[02:11PM] [Tigerbaby] then why did u say u were 18/f/vic?
[02:11PM] [elus] because only idiots ask
[02:11PM] [Tigerbaby] but i asked
[02:11PM] [LeftyBSD] because 90% of the people in this channel are shitting you
[02:11PM] [LeftyBSD] and the others are idle
[02:12PM] [elus] hah
[02:12PM] [elus] left0r
[02:12PM] [Tigerbaby] shittin me?
[02:12PM] [elus] come out have some drinks tonite?
[02:12PM] [elus] drink thor
[02:12PM] [elus] er
[02:12PM] [elus] bring*
[02:12PM] [Tigerbaby] where?

To finish things off, I'll invite myself along to a get together that obviously wasn't directed at me.

[02:12PM] [elus] not you
[02:12PM] [elus] talking to LeftyBSD
[02:12PM] [Tigerbaby] y not?
[02:12PM] [elus] well fine
[02:12PM] [elus] come out
[02:12PM] [elus] what time can you be in surrey by?
[02:12PM] [elus] we'll wait for you
[02:13PM] [Tigerbaby] surey bc?
[02:13PM] [Tigerbaby] im at uvic can we meet neer there?
[02:13PM] [elus] dude you're the one begging to hang out
[02:13PM] [elus] you come where the party is
[02:13PM] [Tigerbaby] i didnt beg!

At that point, people had all but ignored what I was saying. narc_ had the kindness to message me and let me know that I shouldn't bother paying attention to most of the people in the channel, because they were always that way, and it was just how they fleshed out newbies. I thank you for the effort narc_.

In any case, although a lot of people think it's assinine (which I will definitely agree to), trolling still takes a certain level of skill. It requires that you be able to gauge the reaction of people, and continually apply more and more pressure to the right buttons until someone blows up in frustration at you. If you push too quickly and too hard on someone's buttons, they will ignore you quickly, and that's the end of that. If you push too softly, or don't increment the amount of pressure you're applying, people will get used to you, and you won't annoy them enough to generate the desired reaction. Lastly, you have to be able to root around and find the right activators for someone's buttons. Some people are driven up the wall by ignorance, while others hate repetition. Some people don't have any problems at all with typing all in caps, while some people will boot you immediately. The secret is to gently probe around at the start of a troll, trying to get a feel for how people are reacting to what you are saying. Once you have a good angle of attack, you can drop a few choice items for bait, and then take things from there.

What should you do? A lot of people will suggest that you go and get legal counsel. That's bullshit - don't listen to those people, unless you can get a Kleins-Lyon lawyer. You've seen their commercials, they go something like this:

Man-secretary: Sir, it's the Jenkins family. They're pursuing legal action.
Evil ruler of corporate conglomerate: Big deal, send over Guido and have him break their children's legs. Who'd they get anyway?
Man-secretary: Klein-Lyons.
Evil ruler of corporate conglomerate: Oh dear sweet lord, it's anal raping time. Let's just declare bankruptcy right now.

The intelligent thing to do is to defend yourself, and choose the right judge show for you. Televised judge shows are notoriously fair and just, because they're televised. The judges can't be shitty or biased, they HAVE to be fair, it's the law of TV. Be that as it may, not all TV judges are created equal. For example, Judge Ed Koch (when he was doing The People's Court) was born without any male genitalia at all, while Judge Judy was born covered in fur and foaming at the mouth. Fortunately they managed to clear up the fur problem.

So how can you figure out what judge is right for you? Well, you can do a bunch of research on the internet, and determine the strengths and weaknesses of each judge, and where their sympathies lie, hoping that you can find the right judge that will be able to see past your pending triple homicides, and see the beautiful person that lies within you, or you can just read on below, and assume that what I'm saying has some truth to it. Good luck with that triple homicide.

The Bitch

Might as well start at the top:

Judo chop!

Judge Judy's angle is that she's bitchy. The show's name is Justice, with an attitude. If you want to go on Judge Judy, better make sure you don't have any skeletons in your closet, you're wearing a nice suit, but not too nice, you don't have any cowlicks in your hair, you've brushed your teeth, you can speak articulately, but not too articulately, etc. If you do anything poorly, or too well, Judge Judy will suddenly remember that she has 23 years of shitty childhood to make up for, all of which she will take out on you, solely because she doesn't like the way you did your hair this morning, or because she thinks you spent too much time making your hair look as nice as it does. The only way to guarantee a victory with Judge Judy is to dress just like her, and style your hair in the same ancient coif that she's got herself set up with. That way, even if you lose, which you inevitably will, you can still take solace in the fact that you have won a moral victory for us all, by forcing Judge Judy to take a bias against her own look! Haha! Suck it legal system! In terms of viewership, Judge Judy is aimed at middle-aged women that are bitter because they were forced into being a house-wife, and are sick and tired of taking orders from their husband, who quite frankly, has a job that requires no more than the IQ of a carrot.

The Wrinkled Old Man

Next up is the mostly irrelevant People's Court.

I'm only 21! This is what being married to Judge Judy does to a man!

People's Court used to be the bomb, back in the day when you had Judge Wapner presiding over the court. He'd drop mad court-room science on all the bitches that came up in his crib, but even since he left, People's Court has been struggling to recapture their market share of the reality court-room ratings.

Initially, the strategy People's Court were using was to appeal to the ancient man demographic, failing to realize that most geriatric men are only interested in watching the news, and then complaining how things were better when they were young, several centuries past. Nevertheless, in an attempt to grab a hold of this niche, People's Court stuck Ed the confused old man Koch, on the bench. Ed Koch used to be mayor of New York, so it's no surprise that he was a bumbling fool. After wetting himself for the third time in a row, he was replaced with Judge Judy's 21 year old husband, shown in the picture above. I'm surprised he looks as young as he does being married to Jude. Anyhow, the People's Court used to be great if you wanted a fair ruling, but wanted to get the old man taking pity on younger people angle. They've blown that all to shit though, because the new People's Court judge is a younger woman (evidently they're still trying to grab the geriatric men market share, they're just trying to go about getting it another way). So now your best bet is probably to choose this show if you're a dashing young man or something. Unless this judge has been screwed over by a dashing young man, in which case you should instead be ugly.

The Stern Black Man

I can't say, "hold on guys, my constipation", at my job, so I use Diablast to stay regular.

No one really knows where the hell Judge Joe Brown got his judging certificate, although many have surmised that he purchased it from an internet spam e-mail. In any case, his show seems to try and appeal to the crowd of people that like to see a stern, yet fair judge. However, with poses like the one shown above, all that watching his show really does is make me want to go to the bathroom. If you're being charged with a crime like homicide, but you did it for a good reason, like your wife would always make snide comments about the way you drive at cocktail parties, Judge Joe Brown is probably your man, and will most likely see the necessity for the crimes you have committed.

Embittered Divorced Woman

I judge you guilty of being a man. Turn over all your assets to your ex-wife. Next.

I don't know what the judge's name on Divorce Court is, but I remember I used to like the previous judge a lot more. The new judge has the tendency to listen very intently to both sides of the argument, then to hoop the husband out of all his assets. I'm pretty sure she also eats live rabbits. The best way to determine whether or not this judge is the best choice for you is to do the following test:

• Put your finger on your belly button.
  
• Trace your finger down towards the ground.
  
• If you feel a dip or a groove, then this is the judge for you.
  
• If you feel a bump, then this is not the judge for you.
  
• If you feel both a bump and a dip/groove, Ed Koch is the judge for you.
  

The Army Vet

Hi, you may know me from some of my other acting roles, such as Skeletor on He-Man

Judge Mills Lane had his show cancelled, but I'm including him here for good measure, because I've heard that you can still hire him for the price of a bowl of soup. I'm told that he can be found in the back alley behind the courthouse in Los Angeles where his show used to be. In any case, Judge Mills Lane was an attempt to capture the viewers that wanted a hard assed judge who wouldn't be afraid to sentence someone to the death penalty for committing petty theft. It was originally planned that they would televise Judge Mills actually pushing the switch on the electric chair, but this actually ran into copyright violation problems with Fox's new reality show "So you want to kill a celebrity" (which, in other news, received 10,244,528,452 votes for Kathy Griffin to be the first celebrity that got "whacked").

The Crusty Old Sea Pirate

Fetch me a tankard of grog!

Judge Mathis represented a new niche in the court-room reality shows - the stern, no bullshit, crusty old sea pirate that is black and also a judge. Judge Mathis took no bullshit, and would go along with people weaving their lies, letting them continue on with their stories, until eventually, Judge Mathis would kill them with his hook. If you know that the person you are going to court against is a liar, Judge Mathis is the best man to go with. The only catch is that if Judge Mathis ends up killing your opponent, you probably won't get any money from them, since they're dead.

Judge, Jury and Executioner

I am the law!

Perhaps the least well known of the judge TV shows, Judge Dredd's TV show lasted only a few short seasons, even though it was the most popular one at the time. Most of the episodes would end when the plaintiff or defendant would start talking, go on for too long, and then be vaporized on the spot by Judge Dredd. In some of his court-room proceedings, he would use his fabled double-whammy shot to annihilate both defendant and plaintiff, declaring himself as the "winner", and collecting the "winnings" (all the assests of the defendant and plaintiff) for himself. If you have a kevlar body suit, Judge Dredd is definitely your man, since part of his contract dictates that he while he may use his double-whammy shot, armor-piercing shots are out.

I think that concludes our excursion into the excited realm of reality court-room TV shows, so I'll finish off with the daily update.

Nothing really huge is going on right now - on Friday Ashley and I (and Bay later on) hung out and watched Survivor, which made me happy, because John keeps becoming even more of a bastard than the episode before. Up to this point, he has lied and told everyone that his grandmother died so that he could hang out with his friend, and then, this episode, sworn on her grave. Pretty smart if you ask me, because if she's not dead, swearing on her grave really doesn't mean anything.

On Saturday, Bay was busy writing a paper, so Lexi and I rented Glitter and watched it. For those of you that suck ass, Glitter is the movie that Mariah Carey starred in. We were excited because we figured it would be a movie that was phenomenally sucky. Instead, it was just boring, and was basically filled with two hours worth of Mariah Carey trying to do things like emote sadness or whatever.

The premise of the movie is that at the start, she's dancing at some retarded club where everyone wears leopard skin clothes, and then some guy comes up to her and her two friends and says "You guys are good. Can you sing?" Of course they can sing dipshit, they're dancing at the club aren't they? Anyhow, they get hired as back-up singers for some shitty singer, who's not even remotely good. Seriously, I could sing better than her. Then some DJ in a club hears Mariah singing and thinks she's amazing and somehow makes her super duper famous. I have friends that are DJs, and when they say "Hey, you're good at [arbitrary activity], it generally means that you're going to wake up with an STD the next day.

Haha! I'm not implying that my friends are all sleazy DJs, nor that they have STDs. Or am I? Who knows. I've lost interest in that already, so let's move on.

Sunday Bay and I went to Carmen and Graeme's to create the ultimatest (it is a word, bungnut) gingerbread house EVER. All the co-op groups at UVic get together for this annual Christmas party, and this year, instead of reciting idiotic jokes and poems, we're having a gingerbread house. Everyone got a gingerbread kit to make their house with, but we deemed that house puny and unacceptable, so we made the giga-gingerbread house, one that was roughly eight times the size, and would satisfy even the likes of MORBO (I will destroy you puny earthicans!).

Anyhow, that's all the information I care to divulge about my personal life right now, so yah.

Just a quick evening update to post a few pictures from the past week.

Me, on a break

Ring

Ahhhh, fat beats

Apparently this person thinks they have it worse than you. So get over yourself, and read about her exploits as FOOD SAMPLER AT COSTCO.

After I graduated from college I needed a job. I had loans to pay off, rent to shell out, and a monkey on my back that I couldn't shake. I needed my fix. Badly. I just needed a job - any job would do, provided it didn't involve sponge-bathing geriatric men.

Since I had gotten my degree in Greek Philosophy, I was destined to take a low paying secretarial job. Naturally, I signed up to work for a temp agency, and they immediately sent me out on my first assignment. I was going to work at a wholesale food distributor (let's call it "Bostco", even though I really mean Costco) as one of those ladies who offers free food samples in the aisles, at the price of you having to listen to me yammer on about the product and try and gloss over the fact that some of its side effects include pre-mature births and painful death. I could tell right from the start that this job would be challenging the limits of the knowledge I had gained from my degree, and, they were paying me $8 per hour and I needed the money. It was almost too good to be true. Little did I know, that was exactly the case. I was okay with it; although I am sure Socrates would not have been impressed, bceause he was a huge communist, and I'm sure that, were he alive today, he would would be storming around outside Costco wearing a burlap bag holding up a protest sign. What a dork.

Not just a dork. A dorkus malorkus! MAha!

I arrived at work the first morning greeted by Debbie, a short and pudgy woman who reminded me of a female version of Newman from Seinfeld. She was also fat. She was scheduled to give me a brief orientation and also let me know what kind of food I would be offering, but instead, we sat around and watched soap operas. The temp agency told me that I could eat as much from my sample tray as I wanted, so I was excited to see what I would be gaining weight from eating. A friend of mine had once given away samples of chocolate bonbons so I was hoping for something similar.

Sounds like the beginning of an exciting life-long journey that ends at the climactic story of Peggy Bundy.

Debbie walked me to my booth in the stock-room, between boxes of fish-heads and ostrich burgers, where she informed me that I was going to be the sample lady for "Mmm..Mmm Good Clam Chowder." Great - I am a strict vegetarian, meaning I complain whenever I see or think about anything related to eating meat, and now I have to hand out clam chowder. So much for getting to eat bonbons all day.

Umm, just so you know, Miss Vegetarian, Bonbons are made from 100% pure beef, just like McDonalds hamburgers.

I was given strict instructions: when shoppers walked by I was supposed to say, "Excuse me miss/sir, but can I interest you in some Mmm Mmm Good Clam Chowder?" "Why would the customers be in the stock-room", I asked Debbie, who immediately hit me with a horse-whip. "I ask the questions around here!" I started to sob, so she came over and consoled me. "The truth is, you only have a bachelor's degree. That's pretty much useless. The more prominent sample ladies have either Master's degrees, PhDs, or have worked at Bosley's Medical Hair Care Center for Men. Watch out for the rats, when they're hungry, they're mean."

I wonder if a computer science degree will get me into Bosley Medical. It's been my life long dream to wear a white lab coat and do hair plug transplants.

I am not sure who made the decision to put the lady giving samples of free hot soup in the stock room, but at that moment, I swore a pact to rain vengeance down upon her head the day I met her. I knew was as cold as a sled dog in the Iditarod. Don't know what the Iditarod is? Ha, I guess a Greek Philosophy degree IS good for something, dumbass. On day two, I came into work wearing my ski suit, boots and mittens. I don't think Debbie was impressed, because hit me with the horse-whip a few more times.

On the rare occasion that a customer actually walked by, I would get a chance to quickly hand him some delicious chowder before the security guards came down and hit him with the tazer a couple of times. Most people were as horrified by the thought of pre-packaged clam chowder as I was and declined the offer. However, a few brave souls actually accepted, only to be carried off by the rats.

This job doesn't sound that bad really. If nothing else, you could pick their pocket after they'd been hit with the tazer, and make a pretty hefty profit that way. Sort of like a mandatory gratuity added to the bill of a free sample.

I wasn't entirely alone in the basement. I drew a face on one of the boxes, and named it Higgins. Higgins and I shared a lot of good times together, down in the stock-room. There was also another sample lady named Teresa who was working the across from me. She was in charge of giving out pizza pops and had been doing so for 8 months. Within about 2 minutes of talking to her, I could tell that she was totally deranged - she didn't believe Higgins was a real, and she was convinced that there was a sample lady hierarchy at the company and was determined to make her way to the top. She decided that the number one sample lady slot in the store was the Swedish Meatball booth. She came to this conclusion because it was located near the front of the store, and in her words, "those balls are by far the tastiest item in the store."

Love those balls..

Teresa also claimed that the woman who had had the clam chowder slot before me, had just been promoted to be the Swedish Meatball lady because of an affair that she had with the deli manager, Harold. Teresa insisted that Harold ruled the deli counter with an iron fist, insisting that the hams be shiny, and the pepperoni be no shorter than a regulation length that he himself had imposed. Due to the raw sexuality that he exuded, she also felt he wielded a tremendous amount of power when it came to the placement of ground beef products in the store. As a result, whenever he walked by, Teresa would stop talking to me and begin flirting with him shamelessly, oftentimes complimenting him on the shininess of the latest hams in the store. When I realized that my co-worker, a sample lady for pizza pops, was trying to sleep her way to the top of the sample lady world by having an affair with Harold the deli man, I knew that I had hit rock bottom.

Even though being a sample lady was my first paying job since selling chocolate covered almonds door to door in grade school, I just couldn't go back. I bought a house next door to a senior center, and haven't looked back since.

Truly a touching story about how a wayward wanderer found her lucky mugging-old-man star in the sky, unlikely as it was. The beauty of this story, I find, is that it teaches us not to listen to our inner voice initially. If you look back, Joanne, or whatever her stupid name is, is saying how, at the top of her ramble, she didn't want any job that involved bathing geriatric men. But is her current line of employment (stealing pension checks from old people) really that different? I think we've all learned a valuable lesson here, and that is that Paris Hilton sucks.

The weekend is almost here, and the excitement is palpable. I almost spelt that palpitable, which may or may not be a word that means "Bringer of light and destruction". Seriously though, the weekend should be a good one, because I have plans to go Christmas shopping with Graham on Saturday (Bay's ditching me to go do some studying or something dumb like that!), and I'm also going to go practice some squash on Saturday. There's nothing like a good squash practice - it involves hitting the ball endlessly against the wall, trying to make my shots not suck, which is quite the endeavour, let me tell you.

I also plan to go and take some pictures sometime this weekend, and when I've done that, I will naturally grace the gallery with them, at which point, you, the public, may proceed to go and view them. That is the cycle that keeps everything running smoothly. If one weekend I should neglect to do this, the whole system would break down, and I'm sure that I would in some way be responsible.

And we can't have that, can we?

Yesterday I was talking about how even crumply paper can look cool. You be the judge. Or don't. I don't really care.

The signs are all there - People running around stressed out of their mind, commercials every second of the day pumping some new toy that will cook eggs for you, and, in a few weeks time, people wearing the ugliest sweaters you'll ever see. These can only be symptoms of the vile plague known as CHRISTMAS.

Haha, I'm only kidding. I like Christmas as much as the next homeless person, but I sure hate some of the chores that it brings, like going out into crowded malls to shop for gifts and then having to arm wrestle some heavy-set woman for the last Artic Crusader toy that I wanted to buy my son. Haha, I'm kidding again! I don't have a son! I do arm wrestle a lot of heavy-set women though.

Anyhow, another formality I've never been uber fond of is the Christmas party - socializing with strangers has never been a huge joy of mine, mostly because I'm a disfunctional human being.

Nevertheless, there are certain rules of ettiquette that must be followed at these parties, and I'm here to help the rest of you disfunctional human beings get through these difficult times. Fasten your seat belt for the merriment that follows. Oh, original article can be found here. In case you're wondering Myron, it is another MSN article, and you're more than welcome to suck it if you have a problem with that! I'm spreading Christmas joy! Horray!

It's prime time for that yearly forced folly: the corporate holiday hoopla. Do you think that's a dumb name for a Christmas party? We think so too, but our editors insisted that we use it. Our editors are dicks. Anyhow, what can you expect during these oh-so-joyful weeks that begin with the gothic costumes of October, wing through the turkeys of November and collapse in the confetti of New Year's? How about a bunch of visual metaphors? If you were hoping for a pretentious article, you came to the right spot!

For those of you reading in Canada, our we both begin with gothic costumes, and wing through the turkeys of October. There's nothing I like more than sitting down with the family for a good turkey winging. "Wing that turkey son! Yeehaw!"

What could the worst part of Christmas possibly be?

You will attend events that host clients, impress customers, thank vendors, honor staff and introduce family or significant others. You'll be required to suffer the hyperactive, sugar-dosed little children, who'd rather be anywhere else. You will be invited to all-purpose merry dos designed to reunite the tribe, be that corporate, professional or collegial.

Anyone else wondering what a mary do is? Don't worry, I tracked down a definition:

Word: Mary Do
Compound Prejectiary

Definition: Much like the John Deere and Joe Bloggs of present day, Mary used to be a generic name used to refer to any arbitrary person. The Mary do was a type of hair cut that was quite popular in the early 1700s, in which the hair was designed to look like Queen Elizabeth. It usually took about four hours to complete the hair-do, but was often deemed worth the wait.

Use it in a sentence: Mary does not look good in that Mary do. On Mary, it should be called a Mary don't. Burn!

Such functions, with preparation and forethought, can be worked to your advantage. Do some homework on the guest list and, determine who will be the best targets for pickpocketing. When you arrive, make a subtle beeline for the free hooch, and get hamboned. Then go and talk to the client or CEO who previously refused you the time of day. If they won't talk to you normally, you can definitely irritate them by leaning on them, breathing heavily, and spitting on them when you talk.

Not to talk business — oh no! Bringing up business at a business party is crass and inappropriate, much like taking off your pants. But you can connect to big enchiladas as a fellow soccer player. What? You don't get the mexican food/soccer player metaphor? Clearly you're a moron, and you probably shouldn't even be at this party. You're nothing more than a nacho ordering sychronized swimmer!

This is making me hungry.

Just be forewarned. This is not really your time for fun. These may be social situations but that doesn't mean you can whip out your giant bong and start taking hits on the hookah.

Social etiquette is based on chivalry, meaning that setting up a jousting tournament is a good idea. Also, these are based on the concept that women need care and protection, says Hilka Klinkenberg, a lady recently voted into the Guiness Book of World Records for having the name that most indicated that her parents hated her when they named her, and founder and managing director of Etiquette International in New York. Business etiquette, on the other hand, has military origins, so watch a bunch of episodes of MASH, if you can make it through the theme song, before going out to an office party.

Oh man, that theme song is lethal. If I was a torturer, which I'm not, my method of breaking subjects would just be to play that theme song, over and over again. I'd also bore into their head with drills. By mostly the theme song.

Special rules apply during the holidays. You may have noticed that off-sides in hockey aren't called during Christmas. In basketball, you're actually allowed to walk while holding onto the ball, instead of having to dribble it. There are also rules for office ettiquette that are special during the Christmas holidays, but we haven't really researched them, so uhhh, be careful!

Wow, handy advice!

Career-limiting mistakes

Even if a party winds down without you having made an ally of the boss's husband or the customer's wife, the least you can do is get through each and every one fully clothed. Positively horrific blunders that can't bear the light of mornings after are typically caused by getting too aroused or suggestive. Avoid this at all costs by dumping ice cubes down your trunks throughout the night.

The ol' ice cubes in the pants trick. If it worked for Jughead when he was around Archie, it can work for you when you're around someone mildly attractive at an office party.

Now get set, on your mark. And before you actually go, make sure you don't fall prey to any of these absolute no-nos. Besides making a pass or passing out, the seven worst things you can do at a business holiday party are:

1. BYOB. Bring your own baby, that is. It doesn't matter if the sitter came down with a case of bubonic plague. Make alternative arrangements. Leave your baby at home if you must, or in the talented hands of a soup-kitchen employee. Do not - repeat - do not strap on the Snuggly and bring the baby to the ball, or I will personally come to the function and harvest your baby's organs.

Whoa, that's a bit harsh. Did Kathy Griffin write this article? HAW HAW HAW! Some of you may have noticed that I make a lot of fun of Kathy Griffin. Well, that's just because I hate her more than anything else on earth, and because the producers of Average Joe stuck her on that show and so I'm essentially forced to watch her weekly on TV. If any of you suggest not watching Average Joe as a solution to my problems, I'll personally send Kathy Griffin over to your house to live with you for a few weeks.

2. Wear a Christmas sweater. We all know your wife bought it for you a few years back. And we all know that you think the reindeer are cute. If you wear that sweater, you will be fired instantly, and then punched in the kidney repeatedly. By me. And two of my friends.

Yikes... Okay, so half my wardrobe is out. Got it.

3. Pull rank. Never ask a subordinate to get you a drink, or give up a seat, because they will inevitably spit in your drink, or pee on the seat before getting up. Also, this will inevitably come back to haunt you in ways obvious (the subordinate burns down your house) and/or subtle (the subordinate hires someone to burn down your house).

So remember this rule with the simple heuristic: A drink is good but when filled with spit is bad, and if you sit on pee, you'll be mad.

4. Criticize your partner or spouse in front of co-workers. Before showing up, make a pact with each other - something like, you won't throw oranges at her in the party if she won't belittle the size of your manhood. Or use chloroform to knock out Mr. or Ms. Loose Lips before the party, so you don't have to worry about them telling everyone that you embezzle funds from the company. These are the little things that mark the difference between a good relationship and a bad relationship.

Bay and I have a good relationship! If only I could figure out where she's hiding that chloroform though - I think it's starting to affect my cognitive processes.

5. Gossip. This means about anyone or anything. If you indulge, you will be killed, typically. Usually, instead of gossiping about someone at the party, it's better to just slam someone like Paris Hilton. "Hey, that Paris Hilton is one ugly hag hey? Is she grotesquely skinny or what?" "Haha!" your coworkers will say, edging towards the door. If you must say something bad about someone, say it to their face. That guy in accounting - do you hate his face? Slam back your glass of Jim Beam, and go tell him that. Do you think that secretary is showing too much cleavage? Go and tell her, and then stick your hand down her dress to prove your point. There is absolutely no negative consequences that can come from this action!

Oh, that reminds me, Paris Hilton achieved new levels of ass-suckiness last night - juicy information nuggets to follow.

6. Bring up your championship season. No one at work cares about anything you do. Don't push aside the tables to perform the tango routine that - amazing! - you still remember. Don't send the bread barreling across the room to reproduce that record-breaking pass, unless it ends up hitting some secretary in the head, in which case that is hilarious, and you will be hailed as the office hero. Don't demonstrate your prowess at spelling eight-syllable words, and don't recite the first 80 digits of PI, because only bungnuts think that is cool.

I've pulled the ol' throw bread into the head of a scretary at an office party before, except that instead of bread, it was a squash ball, and instead of a secretary at a Christmas party, it was Graham's back on a squash court. But I laughed about the same, so it was all good. Stupid Graham is going to go and buy squash goggles now though, so my fun is essentially boned.

7. Run your ideology up the flagpole. OK, listen. We don't care that you're a vegetarian, libertarian, Rotarian or Scientologist. We further don't want to hear an evangelical lecture about gardening, macrobiotic diets, Broadway musicals or anything else that has ever happened to you, because, quite frankly, you're boring as shit. We don't even like your face. There, we said it, it's out in the open. We're pretty sure you don't even work at this office, so why are you at this party?

I like the blunt approach. From now on, no more guarding what I say! I'm going all out! I can't wait for the next Christmas party!

In other news, Paris Hilton is a total bitch! Insanely hard to believe, I know! Last night, her and her sucky friend got set up with a job to work for some dairy farmer. They complained a whole bunch, then set about doing things they didn't even know were possible (like waking cows up with a bell! Good god! What a time to be alive!). As the review I posted before said, they did shitty things like dump a bunch of water into the milk bottles to make it look like they'd done more work than they actually had, and hid milk bottles so they had less that they had to fill up. Then they spent a bunch of time sitting in a hot tub and sleeping on a couch, like you would in any normal job.

Seeing Paris in a bikini really made me realize that California is a lot like communist Russia was, in that you can't get food very easily at all. Paris has clearly been starved by her parents all of her life, and it amazes me that with all of that money from the Hilton fortune, they can't even afford to import some food into California. Poor Paris.

Because she's so starved, she's barely got enough energy to walk across the dairy, so it's hardly her fault that all she really was able to do was cheat the innocent dairy farmer's customers and sit on the part of her pelvis where a normal healthy person's ass would be.

I think we should all start a Feed Paris Hilton's Boney Skeletal Body fund, and send her a bunch of food. On each hamper, we'll include a card that says "Bitch. Eat a donut".

That's it from me today..

We may look stupid, but we're actually ULTRA retarded! Yay!

That is the question we must ask when watching the new reality TV show, A Simple Life. Lexi, Emmy and I happened upon this show by accident - I actually had no initial intention to watch Paris Hilton prove what a moron she is, but once we started watching it, it was impossible to tear our eyes away.

Here's a review that I found online, for any that are curious. I'll quote it here, and as always, insert my own comments.

So a Paris Hilton tape winds up on my desk. The gods have smiled on me today, as this is one where she keeps her clothes on, so you actually wind up focusing on what the airhead heiress has to say, instead of projectile vomitting across the room.

As for what she has to say - not much at all.

No joke. However, in the opening scenes, we did get treated to Paris paying $800 dollars for a hat, which easily makes up for her lack of personality.

Having seen a couple of episodes of "A Simple Life," a new quasi-reality series from Fox, let me suggest that the homemade porn shot in green-tinted night vision by a former lover and distributed to perverts in every corner of the World Wide Web may be the less degrading of the two tapes Hilton has in circulation.

"A Simple Life" is a "Green Acres"-like contrivance from the producers of MTV's "The Real World," dumping Hilton and her equally vacuous pal, Nicole Richie, daughter of singer Lionel Richie, onto a gracious, hospitable small-town Arkansas farm family that deserves better as their houseguests teeter from amusingly stupid to downright contemptible.

No exaggeration - This pair don't even have the social grace to keep themselves from spewing out verbal diarrhea like "So, do you guys hang out at Wal-Mart?". It's alright though, because Curly, the sassy Grandpa of the crew, nails them back with "No, we don't. So, do you guys fall over when the wind blows especially hard? No? That's good. You're sharing your bed with these scorpions tonight! Hahahaha."

It could be worse for Hilton and Richie, who are fortunate to be born wealthy in that they seem to be hothouse flowers utterly ill-suited for reality. In relocating from Beverly Hills, 90210, to Altus, Ark. 72821 (population 817), they could be forced to live on their wits alone, which would result in a very brief series indeed.

"A Simple Life" tends to present Hilton (whose ass crack is tastefully blurred by the uncharacteristically alert Fox censors) and Richie (who, since completing the TV series, entered a drug-diversion program after pleading guilty to a felony heroin-possession charge) as simpletons.

This is obviously a demonstration of the mastery of camera-work that Fox is capable of. Making Paris and Nicole appear as simpletons is as difficult as getting someone to voluntarily admit that they don't know what Wal-Mart is, and then to ask if it's a place where they sell a bunch of wall stuff. Oh wait, they already did that. Sorry Fox, guess you've got it pretty easy on this one.

Initially these two addled spendthrifts come across merely as benign examples of the idiot rich. And by idiot, we mean retarded to the point of being unable to keep yourself from drooling all over the floor. By the end of Episode 2, their brattishness has you recalling Marie Antoinette and wondering how long it would take to get a guillotine carted in to the center of Altus. Too often, they come across as monumental clods whose colossal ignorance is matched only by their insensitivity.

And by too often, we mean about once every three minutes, which is about the same frequency that either Paris or Nicole opens their mouths.

OK, so they've never worked a day in their lives, and dairy work is tough. Okay, so Paris hasn't eaten in six months. So what, Nicole and Paris lost a game of chess to the livestock on the farm. Do these two really need to undermine the poor fool duped into hiring them for our amusement?

Watching them water down his customers' milk to avoid having to fill all the assigned bottles and plant themselves on his living- room couch when they're supposed to be working is meant to be seen as funny, not sad or infuriating. Never mind that they act slightly indignant when he sends them home and pays them $42 each for the six hours they sort of worked. Curly, of course, gets his own back, however, by saying "Hey, Paris, I got something caught in my teeth, do you mind if I use your leg to pick it out? Hahaha, suck it bitch".

Oh man, that would be so sweet.

As entertaining as it can be to watch Hilton and Richie flounder and throw out the occasional moronic observation -- "Who knew you could wake up a cow with a bell?" one of the two says when handed a cowbell, only to be slammed by Curly again, "How do you think I got you up? BURN! Now get the hell out there and clean out the goat urinal." -- it would be nice to think that Hilton and Richie eventually come away from this experience a little wiser.

Yah, good luck with that. I knew, well, suspected at least, that Paris Hilton wasn't the brainiest of the bunch - the very fact that she's appearing on a show like this proves that point in spades, but I figured she'd be quasi-capable. How wrong I turned out to be. Watching this show makes you wonder constantly if Paris and her friend Nicole even managed to graduate from high school - questions like "What's a well for?" and "Do you know what generic means? Me neither..". Thank god for Curly, who keeps things going with zingers like "Hey, generic blonde number 1. Your ass is hanging out your pants, and you're scaring off the livestock. Put some duct tape over that crack or something."

If Average Joe was a car accident, The Simple Life would have to be an airplane that was hijacked by terrorists, then crashed into a mountain, then all the passengers were disemboweled by wolves, and then all of their souls were eaten by Kathy Griffin. All of that makes for a TV show that, if you're inclined like myself, is impossible to tear your eyes away from. What stupid thing will Paris Hilton do next? Every minute of the show is filled with me going "How can she possibly top not knowing what a soup-kitchen is?", and then immediately followed by "Oh my god, she topped it.." Paris's biography for this god-awful show says that she devotes a large amount of her time to doing charity work. If that's true, how the hell can she not know what a soup-kitchen is?

Are you one of those people that laugh so hard that spittle flies out of your mouth whenever you see an old person trip and fall? Me neither. But all the same, you should watch this show, if only to make youself realize that having a lot of money is god's way of saying "I'm going to make damned sure that your kids are retarded!" Ever wonder why Bill Gates doesn't have a son? (I don't think he does. If he does, then he's probably dumb or something).

Anyhow, that's that. It's on again tonight at 8:30 on CTV, so make sure you watch it, because it's all I'm going to talk about for the next six weeks, and you KNOW you want to be in on those conversations. I hate to have to ostracize someone from the group just because they aren't watching the right TV shows, so get on the ball!

Graham and I had another epic battle on the squash court again yesterday - he won again, as he usually does, but I can feel my game improving somewhat, so I don't really care about the score. As long as I'm getting better, it doesn't matter whether I win or lose. It's when I start to stagnate that I get irritated. Sometimes I even get infuriated. I try and keep that on the low-low though.

I haven't had much of a chance to get any pictures taken as of late, except for weekly photo sessions. Most of the interesting stuff around UVic I've already taken shots of. Well, actually, that's not true, because even a piece of paper crumpled up can look cool, given the right composition of a shot. However, being in the same setting all the time sort of removes some of your inspiration to seek out the cool shots, and so that's really the main deterrant in weekday pictures. Anyhow, more should come up sometime soon.

Winter is coming! Throw out any family members that won't be able to handle the cold!

The answer to the question above is: lots of stuff. So much stuff that I really can't be bothered to tell you all of it. However, I will drop a few juicy little nuggets, just enough to kind of get you desperate for more, and then cut you off, much like a heroin dealer does. I've been introduced to people as the heroin dealer of juicy winter home tip nuggets more times than I can count.

In any case, like I said yesterday, I ran out of awards for award-week, after the first day no less, so today's article will be how to winterize your house. This is a problem that has been plaguing many of my friends for quite some time. A lot of them complain about morning mildew constantly, oftentimes to the point of me no longer wanting to hang out with them, because I'm so damned sick of hearing about morning mildew.

Anyhow, let's get started with this. First things first. This article is written by Don Vandervort. That's a pretty damn strong name, and it really puts forth the message that "You fuck with my house, I fuck with you, your family, your accountant, and your flower garden". Clearly this is going to be a balls to the wall style article. Let's check this mother out!

Once winter blows in, houses have to get serious. No more fucking around, as they say. Roofs must shed rain and snow, windows and doors must reject the cold and the homeless, and the heating system must be capable of causing furniture to spontaneously erupt into flame. If any of these components don't hold up their part of the bargain, you need to start doing some serious ass kicking.

So let's get started! By handling these few important, reasonably easy tasks now, you can avoid considerable grief later when your child freezes to death.

Wow, this article is even more fervent than I had hoped! Bit of a grim image on that last paragraph though. I guess that's just the style you have to adopt if you're a Vandervort.

1. Inspect the roof

If going through the winter without a roof seems "crazy" or "dangerous" to any of your family members, throw them in your neighbour's backyard as well and get some new ones. You're better off without those pansies anyhow.

Well.. I guess that's reasonable. I mean, I'm no Vandervort, but the chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, and I guess drastic times call for drastic measures.

Do not climb onto a roof that is steep, wet, or icy. Instead, consider checking the surface from a ladder or, if you're old and frail and can't safely climb a ladder, check it from your neighbour's backyard after you have been discarded there by someone in your family who is strong and can actually take care of the family. From the top of a ladder, you can check the gutters along a typical asphalt-shingle roof for any livestock that were hurled up there after the last tornado came through. An accumulation of roof-livestock usually means the surface is wearing away and replacement time is near.

As a kid, I remember that no meat tasted as good as roof-meat.

2. Check the gutters

While you're on the ladder, look into your neighbour's house. If they look warm, they probably have good insulation, and you can save a bundle by stealing said insulation. The best way to go about doing this is to write them a fancy invitation to a ball or gala or galaball or something, and put the ghetto part of town as the address. While they're out getting mugged, you can safely steal the insulation out of their walls. Imagine their delight as they come home from being robbed to find that their home has been pillaged! Welcome to America assholes! Leave a note that says that in the wall where the insulation would normally have been.

This article should probably have actually been titled - Winterize your home, for Vietnam veterans..

3. Investigate weatherstripping

Also look to see if windows and doors can be opened. If they can, this represents a huge heat loss area. Every second that a door or window is open represents valuable heat molecules lost. Apply weather stripping securely to the door knob and window clasps until they are completely covered in the stuff, and unusable. If one of your family members didn't make it inside before you finish this task, forget about them and move on. They probably wouldn't have lasted through the barren winter anyhow. Weatherstripping will prevent drafts and winter heat loss. If weatherstripping is damaged, it's usually easier and more effective to burn a bunch of books and American flags to keep warm, rather than replace it.

Ah book and flag burning. Without those two things, America would probably be nothing more than a communist Russia that attacks countries.

4. Service the heating system

If your home is heated by a forced-air furnace, turn off the power to the unit and replace it with a large block of Uranium. Uranium is highly radioactive, and will ensure that your house, and it's inhabitants, are kept at a toasty 59 degrees celcius at all times of the year. Best of all, you won't need to waste valuable power on your lights, as you and your family members will emit a handy neon green glow everywhere you go. If you are not familiar with doing this type of work yourself, call a nuclear technician, then hit him over the head with a brick when he starts to inspect your furnace. Tie him up, and then move into his house. He's probably already got his Uranium set up for the winter, so this will save you valuable time and effort. If your home is due for a new, high-efficiency furnace or heat pump, instead call a high-efficiency furnace or heat pump technician and hit him with the brick instead. This handy tip can also be applied to many other aspects of your daily life, such as banking, and giving birth to children.

I remember seeing a bunch of bricks for sale at Canadian Tire recently. Guess I better start making a list of technicians that I need to have come look at my furnace. I guess this means that if anyone calls me up and tells me they know I'm a computer technician and they need me to come look at their furnace, I should shout no, like I mean it. Shout no and run away!

5. Sweep the chimney you lazy bastard

If you can see past the damper in the throatal region of the chimney, shine a flashlight up from inside to look for the groin of the chimney. If you can see a black, scaly creosote buildup on the inner walls, you're looking in your oven, and not your chimney. Ask someone intelligent where your chimney is, and try again. Buildup on the inner walls of the chimney groin must be removed periodically to prevent fires. Lots of people tell you that the whole purpose for having a chimeny and fireplace is specifically to have fires, but they don't know what they're talking about - a fireplace is best used to store canned goods for the winter. That's why the word place is in the name. It's a place for you to place canned goods during the winter. It's pretty obvious, and if you couldn't figure that out, you should probably save yourself the trouble, and just walk over and sit yourself down in your neighbours yard, since you're going to get dumped over there pretty soon anyhow. Cleaning is generally recommended at least once a day for an active fireplace with lots of canned goods. If you store beets in your fireplace, you should probably clean it more often.

That reminds me, the annual beet and cabbage festival is happening pretty soon, so if anyone wants to go with me, write me a comment and let me know.

6. Adjust storm doors

A storm door can reduce energy costs and prevent drafts by harvesting the power of the weather. To keep your storm door working properly, coat it in vaseline. This also provides for hours of hilarity as your friends and family will try to push the door open, only to slide right off and fall over. Be sure the door closer is adjusted and working smoothly; to adjust the closing speed of a pneumatic closer, hit a pneumatic technican over the head with a brick, and proceed as described earlier in the article. If you feel bad about this, remind yourself, no one forced this guy to become a pneumatic technician. He asked for it! If you have a storm-and-screen door with interchangeable glass and screen panels, replace it for a cement wall.

Sounds easy enough. I hope to have my house completely winterized by the end of the next hour. I can only assume that my neighbours have taken the liberty of treating the lobby of my building as their neighbour's yard since I find all manner of garbage dumped down there, including, but not limited to, old books, bibles, rotting meat, the first computer ever made, old family relatives no longer deemed useful, and a piece of Skylab.

I got to see Average Joe again last night, and as always, it was great. They've made the show even better by removing Kathy Griffin's random appearances, which was really the only bad part about the show. At this point, there were two normies and two beef-cakies left. Melana went on some dates with them, and naturally chose the two good looking guys to do the single parts of the dates with.

The model, Mike, was obviously trying his best to be more than a pretty face, saying things like "Often times, people look at me, and they think, oh, he's a model, he must be dumb. Then they get to know me and think, oh, maybe he's not that dumb". Further glimpses into Mike's conversation helped reveal to us that the people actually thought more like "Oh, this guy's a model, he must be dumb. Oh my god, he's making me dumber just by talking to him! Must.. go... watch.... Nascar racing..". In between conversational gems like "Yah, I like you, I think you're fun", Mike really kicked things up a notch by giggling nervously about every 2 seconds. Thank goodness you're really really ridiculously really good looking Mike.

Meanwhile, the two ugly guys bitched about how unfair it was. Big surprise. On her date with Jason, the other really good looking guy, Melana avoided the danger of repeating the type of conversation she had with Mike by making out with Jason the whole time. She made sure to keep things interesting though, by stopping making out for a few seconds to utter things like "You're so pretty". I was hoping that Jason would reply with something like "And you my dear, are a very handsome woman". I don't know if Melana knows guys too well, but calling a guy pretty is somewhat akin to telling him "Don't worry, I think it's cute!". NO! NEVER SAY THAT!

Anyhow, Melana finally caught Zach talking about her in a fat suit (he thought it was her cousin), and how she was the DUFF which stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend. She wasn't impressed, and so she booted his ass out. If only she could have seen him crack an egg on that other guy's head.

So now we're left with Adam, who's funny but not gorgeous (but not really ugly either) and Jason, who's pretty, but softspoken. WHO WILL SHE CHOOSE? Stay tuned for 1 hour and 45 minutes of filler next week.

I've come to the realization that the must see episodes are inevitably the first couple of episodes, and that the finale and episode leading up to it are the best ones to miss. The finale almost never has anything new happen - the Joe Millionaire finale had at least ten minutes of footage that just involved a camera held steady on someone's face, while they waited for something. Great way to build suspense guys. The only important parts of a finale are the ultimate decision that is made, and that I can read about online. That being said, I naturally plan to watch all two hours of the finale for Average Joe, totally ignoring everything I've just said. They always suck, but I'm a slave to my TV so whatever.

Fire in the sky

Hmm. Monday morning. I've already gotten complaints of the site being slow this morning, and that is because it's hosted on the same connection as the one I use for my downloading etc. If I go over a gigabyte of throughput (either stuff I've downloaded or uploaded) in a day, my internet connection gets set to the equivalent of a 56K modem (which is slow) until midnight. That's already happened today, and will no doubt happen other times, so please be patient, and don't despair, the site will remain up, it just may take longer to load.

This week will be award week, here at Adam's House o' Fun (it's more fun because there are two apostrophes in the name), at least until I stop being able to think up awards to give out, and then it will become some other kind of week.

First award of the week is Foot in Mouth Award. Fortunately, someone already did all of the writing for me, so my job is that much easier. Here's the original link.

A particularly curious statement by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s at a press briefing won him an unexpected honor on Monday. Rumsfeld, usually renowned for his uncompromising tough talking, was awarded the "Foot in Mouth" award for a baffling message which probably left his audience in the dark, Britain’s Plain English Campaign said, "It was like he had a personal vendetta against grammar".

Take that, Petit Becherelle!

"REPORTS THAT say something hasn’t happened are interesting to me, because as we know, there are known unknowns; there things we know we know," Rumsfeld told the briefing.

Ah yes. The known unknowns.

"We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.", Rumsfeld continued, spittle starting to appear around his lips.

I had to sit down after reading the last bit.

John Lister, spokesman for the campaign which strives to have public information delivered in clear, straightforward English, said, "We think we know what he means. But we don’t know if we really know."

Touche!

Rumsfeld, whose boss President Bush is often singled out by language critics for his sometimes unusual use of English, took the booby prize ahead of a bizarre effort from actor-turned politician Arnold Schwarzenegger: "I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman," was the odd statement from the new California governor.

Evidently Arnie was just thinking in terms of the older usage of the word gay, to mean happy. "Whether or not a marriage is happy is something that should be between a man and a woman". And all of you people criticized Arnie. He's just trying to class things up a bit by speaking in Elizabethean english. Cut him some slack!

Whatever, I don't really care. American gubernatorial elects just seem to be following the proud tradition of 1984's doublespeak to the T. I think that if Rumsfeld managed to deliver that speech without stumbling over the words at all, he deserves credit for that alone. Extra points if he managed to keep a straight face too.

Nothing else new is going on, AT ALL, so that ends this post. If I feel the need for a break later on today, I'll track some other article down and do the usual bit.