My view of the world

I found something that’s weirder than Jacko.

This is the I-Buzz, for sale at lovehoney.
Their theme music is “I touch myself.” At least this one doesn’t require some sending you a text message.
The ring I understand, but a rabbit?
They also have a music survey.

OK, so I didn’t find something weirder than Jacko, we all know that such a thing is all but impossible. and if you did find it nobody would believe you.
I found this on the podcasting news as one of The Ten Worst iPod-Related Christmas Presents Ever.

There was a brief article about Michael Jackson being in town in the Las Vegas blog.

He’s been living in Bahrain and has plans to release an albumn recorded at Two Seas Records, which is owned by Shaikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa, son of Bahrain’s king, who said the album was scheduled for release late in 2007.

Jackson has been living in Bahrain since a California court acquitted him of child molestataion charges.
He rarely makes public appearances, but has been reported seen on several occasions in shopping malls in the Gulf disguised in a woman’s abaya.
Since, just before this latest round of apparently botched medical modifications, he used to look more like Diana Ross than Diana Ross, maybe it isn’t a disguise.
He shut down Neverland after agreeing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back wages to avoid a lawsuit by state labour officials.

Here’s Jacko with his best friend, Uri “the spoon bender” Geller. If you don’t give this man what he wants, your silverware will never be safe again.
Jackson was best man? at Geller’s wedding.
Somehow they seem right for each other, they’re both nuts. and seem to make money off what should be a major impediment.
Geller is making a living doing the sort of spoon bending tricks, that you can learn from any magic book, while taking credit for all sorts of unprovable stuff.
(According to an account in an Israeli newspaper, the Magistrate’s Court in Beersheba, Israel, upheld charges of fraud against Mr. Geller.)
As for Jacko the Wacko. What needs to be said?

In Gellers defence, his website is mostly about self improvement and motivation, and no so much about spoon bending, although, to me, he’s still a self-aggrandizing fraud.

The UK has a Respect Tzar and the cops can give out asbos, (anti-social behaviour order) to unruley children.

Conservative leader David Cameron says, “They must have counselling, education and training.”
But Home Office minister Tony McNulty claimed Mr Cameron was using “fluffy bunny language”, lacking any substance.
“Fluffy bunny language,” only the Brits could use that phrase with a straight face.

David Cameron said crime was influenced by a growing gap between the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood.
“We’re making childhood - the time of innocence - end earlier and earlier. We advertise products to pre-teens as if they were fully sexualised adults.
Ooooh, I see, it’s the advertisers who should be given asbos, not the sweet innocent child who just broke your window.

An official study says that Anti-social behaviour orders have become a “badge of honour” among young people.
Parents and carers of the young people given orders said an Asbo was now viewed as a “diploma” that boosted a child’s street credibility.
“Some of the friends are left out now because they are not on an Asbo,” said the mother of three young men who were all on Asbos.
God forbid that someone might want to suggest these children be disciplined at home.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said the prime minister was “demonising” young people through the Asbo system, and what was needed was engagement.
Yes, Yes, that’s it. Ask them nicely and they’ll all put on their scout uniforms and start helping old ladies across the street.
…Bloody, big poof.

At the same time a report was issued that found these Brit brats, were the worst behaved children and young adults in Europe.

Forty areas of England and Wales are to be offered more money to tackle the problem of anti-social behaviour.
The government’s “respect tsar”, Louise Casey, said councils in the worst areas were bidding to become “respect zones”.
In return for extra funding, they would be expected to use the full range of powers available to them to combat anti-social behaviour, she added.

The Home Office is working on guidelines to help authorities deal with anti-social activities.
In March it will publish a leaflet for the public outlining their rights when faced with yobbish behaviour, and how to ask for help through official channels.
And if that doesn’t work, they’ll send in the British special forces, anti-yobbish squad.

All secondary pupils in Scotland should be given ID cards in an effort to stamp out bullying, according to a teaching union.
It believes adding a picture would stop pupils missing meals because they have been bullied into handing over cards.
The Educational Institute of Scotland said it was concerned that camera phones were being used to bully staff and pupils.
There have been reports of youngsters deliberately winding up teachers so they can secretly record angry outbursts, or taking compromising photos or video clips of classmates.

See, the Brits are even more fucked up than we are.
The only real difference, is that when they say and do stupid things, everybody thinks it’s just another Monty Python skit.

Flipchip over on the Las Vegas Poker Blog wrote some really bad poetry and had the nerve to publish it.
So, in the true spirit(Patron silver) of the occasion, I looked up some other links.
A Bikers Christmas.
A DIETER’S CHRISTMAS.
From the New Yorker a Hemingway Christmas.
A Florida Christmas.
‘Twas The Night In The Casino.
An Intellectual Christmas.
A Lovecraftian Christmas.
‘Twas The Night Before Christmas, Legal Version.
Ad Infinitum

I saw Andy Rooney’s segment on Chrstmas and found I agree with one thing. It should be illegal to play Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer more than 5 times in one holiday season.
It appears that we have survived another Chrstmas, now all we have to do is endure one last day of xmas commercials, 20 year old Charlie Brown specials, and mediocre football.

Now it’s time to find a reason, not to go and face the relatives, when I’d really rather stay home and watch those incredibly bad halftime shows.

Never mind, the relatives aren’t that bad.
I just turned on the tv to see what games I was missing, and I found a live Disney special instead.
Speaking of things that ought to be illegal.

Dear old Newt is starting to show his age, at an event honoring free speech, he insisted that we must limit free speech to protect us from terrorists.
This goose stepping, illegitimate son of Der Fuehrer, would take away our freedom in order to protect our freedom.
I’m not certain if he’s gone senile, or if his true colors are showing.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a “different set of rules” may be needed to reduce terrorists’ ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.
“We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade,” said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP’s takeover of Congress in 1994.

Gingrich cited last month’s ejection of six Muslim scholars from a plane in Minneapolis for suspicious behavior, which included reports they prayed before the flight and had sat in the same seats as the Sept. 11 hijackers.
“Those six people should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists,” Gingrich said. “And the crew of the U.S. airplane should have been invited to the White House and congratulated for being correct in the protection of citizens.”

Assuming for the moment that the seating was planned, so Effen’ what.
Are political statements to be made illegal?
Is praying only acceptable, if you are an evangelical, and then only if you use a state approved bible?

Muslims pray often, and considering what happens if one of those planes has an engine failure and falls out of the sky, I don’t think that I would object to anyone praying, to any god they thought would listen.

Old men start wars and young men fight them.
People who know that the law will never be applied to them, write the laws.

Sedition is defined as:
Conduct which is directed against a government and which tends toward insurrection but does not amount to treason.
The distinction between sedition and treason consists in this, that though its ultimate object is a violation of the public peace, or at least such a course of measures as evidently engenders it, yet it does not aim at direct and open violence against the laws, or the subversion of the Constitution.

In other words, protests or possibly even a letter writing campaign, to stop these rather, annoyingly stupid people, from taking away any more of our rights could be considered sedition, if anyone suggested, as did Thomas Jefferson, that the entire system needed to be scrapped and rebuilt.

Resistance is futile……

Well, our latest yes-man, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, says, and I quote: Iraqi leaders have “concrete plans” to end escalating sectarian violence.
He said Iraqi leaders took “their responsibilities seriously” and were “eager to take the lead” in curbing violence.
Yeah, riiiight.

You have police being locked up by U.N. forces, because the police are also death squads, the army and Shia militias are forcing the Sunnis out of formerly mixed neighborhoods, fighters are crossing in from neighboring countries, religious fanatics on all sides are encouraging Jihad, which may translate only as “struggle,” but which has long been seen as armed struggle by those who believe, and the ones that the US and their allies, put in power, live in the green zone and have no concept of what’s really going on. Their goal seems to be the same as every bunch of two bit hoods that we put in place, hang on as long as they can, suck the treasury dry and retire in Miami.

Here’s a short scorecard, so you can keep track of the players.

Iraq is in chaos, the sectarian violence (CIVIL WAR) has too many players to keep track of, the folks that run the place are arrogant assholes, who believe that god is on their side, so there’s nothing wrong with driving their former enemies into the sea, there are no good guys and our position is untenable.

And here comes Gates, quoting the party line, “we may not be winning, but, the losers we put in charge say they can win, and we believe them.”
..Now give us more cannon fodder.

I sometimes forget that in politics, there is no honor, only unmitigated and baseless arrogance.

I watched a program on advertising, on PBS, called the Persuaders in which a man quite proudly announced that he was the one who got the whitehouse and their friends to refer to “climate change” instead of “global warming.”
The changing from one phrase to another doesn’t change the truth, global warming is climate change, but it does obscure the origin and muddy the waters, after all, climate change can be almost any event including a lowering of temperature, while global warming is a specific effect.
This is how to lie by telling the truth. This is what advertising and politics is all about.

It was interesting that the advertising campaign for Delta Airlines newest endeavour, named Song, made no mention of the fact that it was an airline or the fact that it was part of Delta. Instead they tried to create a “culture” without telling anyone what they were selling.
Now, I don’t know much about advertising, but how do you get people to buy something, without telling anyone what you’re selling?
Song appears to have given up the ghost, their website says they have joined forces with Delta, without ever mentioning that they were a wholely owned subsidiary of Delta, even when they fail, they try not to tell us the truth.

During the program they showed a huge datacenter that was used to house and sort eveything imaginable about us, so if some politicain or marketing firm wanted a list of lefthanded, whitesox fans who bought oscar meyer hotdogs on Thursdays, this data could be provided.
When I shop at Albertsons I use their rewards card, or whatever they call it, because I save money, but when I get my receipt, I also get coupons and ads based on previous purchases, and I’m positive that they sell this data to companies like Choicepoint.

Between the data brokers and Google cataloging everything we ever search for, privacy has become a moot point, for enough money anyone can find out anything about us and the spin-doctors can rephrase and twist it until it can mean whatever they want it to.

BTW: You don’t have to be a business to use companies like LexisNexis, you just have to give them money.

In the last 24 hours I received 25 new spam messages from the same source, and when the links were followed, I got the website removed page.
These have to be sent out by a bot-net, probably run by one of those “send a million emails for….” outfits.
I can’t imagine why anyone would do this. I not only would never put their comments on my blog, if I ever catch up with this guy, I’ll turn him over to the Feds or anyone else with deep pockets who will listen.
And while I’m certain he or they are overseas, a number of countries including members of the former USSR are cooperating with US and British law enforcement.
As stands, I don’t see any profit in the spam, since the websites are apparently being taken down as fast as they’re being put up, so it’s probably something malicious, that’s being done for the sake of being malicious. This is like the sporge that occurs in the news groups, there’s no profit in it, but I’m certain that it gives some impotent luser a feeling of power.
Life would be so much easier, if we didn’t have to put up with lusers and thieves.
As a side note:
As a sysadmin, thieves are easier to tolerate than lusers, at least thieves do what they do for a premeditated, logical reason, and lusers do what they do, because they’re inept, childish, and or patheticly stupid.

I’ll take evil over stupid anyday.

US retail giant Wal-Mart has set up a new branch of the Communist Party at its China headquarters after allowing unions to operate in its stores earlier this year.
Don’t get excited when you see the word “union,” there are not now, nor are there likely to be, any unions in Walmart stores in this country.
They’re just cooperating with the Chinese government, which is trying to expand it’s state-controlled unions and to expand the presence of the communist party.
Chinese law makes it compulsory for any company or institution with 25 or more staff to set up its own trade union if staff request one, of course these unions are state controlled, but it sounds good.

Walmart opened it’s first store in China in 1996 and now has something like 60 stores in 34 cities with 35,000 employees, with the intention of hiring 150,000 more, indicating massive planned expansion, which means that soon, in China, as it’s becoming here, every store will be Wal-Mart, and all you’ll be able to buy is crap.

I have been receiving a minimum of 7 instances of blog spam from this company, http://hometown.aol.com/jjjinsurance, every day. Today I checked on it and was greeted with the message:

A mutual agreement has been reached between the owner of this site and the company.
Site has been removed.

My opinion of AOL has gone up, not enough to ever use their product, but up none the less.
Other blogs I know of, receive porn and viagra spam, at the rate of 20 or so a day, this is without counting e-mail spam. These are small sites, getting less that 100 hits a day, can you imagine the mess big sites must have. I’m lucky, the spam I receive is usually less than 20 a day on this site and rarely more than 20 per day, per mailbox on the sites I manage.
An article I read said, that a study showed that email spam increases this time of year.
This must have been done under a government grant, I mean who, in their right mind, would expect any different results.
The hard copy junk mail appears in our mailboxes as if by magic, it must be the trash fairies, because no mere letter carrier, could possibly lift that much scrap paper, and if I printed and trashed all the spam I get, the garbage company would make me get a commercial dumpster.
Can you imagine the combined weight of all those unrequested catalogues and fliers, from companys you’ve never heard of, that have appeared at your front door, just this year.
The primary difference between spam and junk mail, is the fact that, in spite of it’s protests to the contrary, the post office makes money on junk mail.
You don’t hear much noise about controlling the stuff that kills trees and clogs landfill, and just as soon as a large entity starts to make money on spam, you won’t hear anything more about stopping that either.
Of course spammers are getting something for almost nothing at the moment, and as soon as they have to pay to spam, most of them will quit.