Hot Stock Spam

No doubt many if not most folks have received at least one "hot new stock tip" spam. Ever wonder how much money you'd have made if you invested in those? Wonder no more:
http://www.spamstocktracker.com/

The webmaster of that site purchased an imaginary 1000 shares of every sock mentioned in a spam e-mail.

Bottom line (as of 5 oct 05):
Total Cash Outlay: $17,405.00
Total Current Value: $8,616.90
Net Profit: - ($8,788.10)

The data feed is automated, thus the figures are current.

Winner of This Months DUH! Award

Seems that Minneapolis boarded up a supposedly abandoned house for non-paymet of taxes. Eight months later, the body of the owner was discoved inside. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Pirtle, who had been a sorter for American Linen Co., just hibernated in her upstairs bedroom. That's where she was found dead this summer, eight months after her house was boarded up.

It may never be clear whether the 79-year-old was alive or dead when the city shut up the tiny house at 3216 Garfield Av., the Hennepin County medical examiner said.

Pirtle's death went unnoticed for so long partly because of her own reclusiveness, but also because city inspectors aren't required to walk through buildings before boarding them up.

Although authorities initially said the contractor was expected to walk through the property before boarding it up in November, that wasn't part of the contract. The city official who manages such properties said the city is considering whether to change the policy.

"Somebody should have checked," Hastings said. "I'm still trying to deal with it."

Gee, ya think?
[ Full story here ]

The Same Riff?

Was just cruising around Amazon and listening to some samples.....came across The Best of the English Beat and clicked on the second cut, Best Friend. I'll swear the intro riff was used by the Pretenders for Night in my Vein.

Is It Really That Difficult?

Apparently so. There are lots of discussion fora on the net covering a vast array of topics and interest areas. Obiously most people only look at/participate in a minute fraction of them. We all use the subject line as a filter to select the topics of interest. I'd think most are aware of this. Then why, in mid-2005, do people insist on using meaningless subject lines like......

• Need help
• A few questions......
• Good Question
• What does this mean
• Help me please!
• Windows XP <---- this in a forum titled "Windows XP"
• This is New to Me
• Weird Problem
• Help or I am Screwed
• Having a Ton of Trouble Here

It seems that this is most prevalent on tech support fora or in beginner sections, but by no means limited to those. Really folks, is it that difficult to come up with a subject line that actually relates what the post might be about?

Movie Plot Generator

A movie version of Bewitched. A film version of The Honeymooners. Second, third, fifth, and seventh sequels. Hollywood is officially out of ideas. Time for the rest of us to get to work developing plots.The movie plot generator solves all of our problems. Here's the result from my first go:

Helium Ninja
an original screenplay concept
by Marc

Science Fiction: A shell-shocked war vet teams up with a well-built female cyborg to discover America. In the process they accidentally kill a gay interior decorator. By the end of the movie they blow up 98 ewoks and end up winning the admiration of their kind hearted prostitute, living happily ever after. Think Waterworld meets forbidden planet.

Is That Like What You Do To A Dog?

If your head is up your a$$, you have lost 4 of your 5 senses - Nelson DeMille

Are People Really This Stupid?

Some assclown on eBay is trying to sell a partially eaten, 10-year old grilled cheese sandwich that supposedly contains an image of the Virgin Mary. The seller, Diana Duyser, of Hollywood, describes it thusly:

"I made this sandwich 10 years ago, when I took a bite out of it, I saw a face looking up at me, It was Virgin Mary starring back at me, I was in total shock, I would like to point out there is no mold or disingration, The item has not been preserved or anything, It has been keep in a plastic case, not a special one that seals out air or potiental mold or bacteria, it is like a miracle, It has just preserved itself which in itself I consider a miracle, people ask me if I have had blessings since she has been in my home, I do feel I have, I have won $70,000 (total) on different occasions at the casino near by my house, I can show the recipts to the high bidder if they are interested..."

eBay went so far as to cancel the first auction because they thought the seller was joking. Since then they've reinstated the auction. Quoting from the AP article:

Diana Duyser, of Hollywood, put the sandwich up for sale last week, drawing bids as high as $22,000 before eBay pulled the item Sunday night. The page was viewed almost 100,000 times before being taken down.

An e-mail Duyser received from eBay said the sandwich broke its policy, which "does not allow listings that are intended as jokes."

But Duyser, a work-from-home jewelry designer who has bought and sold items on eBay for two years, said the grilled cheese wasn't a joke.

The auction was back on Tuesday afternoon with a top bid of $5,100. The winning bidder also has to pay $9.95 for shipping. In mocking response, two similar items were later posted ? grilled cheese sandwiches bearing the images of the Virgin Mary's used gum and Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen.

Duyser thought eBay would be the best place to show off the sandwich, made on plain white bread and American cheese and cooked with no oil or butter. She said she took a bite after making it 10 years ago and saw a face staring back at her from the bread.

Duyser, 52, put the sandwich in a clear plastic box with cotton balls and kept it on her night stand.

She seems like a wingnut but just maybe she's really clever. The real venom should be directed at the morons who are bidding on the sandwich. $22,000???? Twentytwo thousand dollars? Are these people bat-shit insane???

Officially Old [sigh] :-(

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Suspicious packages that shut down a busy road in downtown Orlando Thursday were found to be lava lamps, according to Local 6 News.

The lava lamps were found on top of a building near Central Boulevard Thursday.The bomb squad did not know what the lamps were at first and sealed off a block of Central Boulevard from Orange Avenue to Garland Avenue.The streets were reopened after the lamps were identified.It is not known who put the lamps on the building's roof or why they were placed on the building.Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

The youngsters on the bomb squad didn't know what a lava lamps look like.

That Charlie Brooker Piece

This ran in The Guardian on 10.23.04 but has since been pulled from their site because of the objectionable final sentence. I'm reproducing it here because it shouldn't vanish from the web.

Charlie Brooker
Saturday October 23, 2004
The Guardian

Heady times. The US election draws ever nearer, and while the rest of the world bangs its head against the floorboards screaming "Please God, not Bush!", the candidates clash head to head in a series of live televised debates. It's a bit like American Idol, but with terrifying global ramifications. You've got to laugh.
Or have you? Have you seen the debates? I urge you to do so. The exemplary BBC News website (www.bbc.co.uk/news) hosts unexpurgated streaming footage of all the recent debates, plus clips from previous encounters, through Reagan and Carter, all the way back to Nixon versus JFK.

Watching Bush v Kerry, two things immediately strike you. First, the opening explanation of the rules makes the whole thing feel like a Radio 4 parlour game. And second, George W Bush is... well, he's... Jesus, where do you start?

The internet's a-buzz with speculation that Bush has been wearing a wire, receiving help from some off-stage lackey. Screen grabs appearing to show a mysterious bulge in the centre of his back are being traded like Top Trumps. Prior to seeing the debate footage, I regarded this with healthy scepticism: the whole "wire" scandal was just wishful thinking on behalf of some amateur Michael Moores, I figured. And then I watched the footage.

Quite frankly, the man's either wired or mad. If it's the former, he should be flung out of office: tarred, feathered and kicked in the nuts. And if it's the latter, his behaviour goes beyond strange, and heads toward terrifying. He looks like he's listening to something we can't hear. He blinks, he mumbles, he lets a sentence trail off, starts a new one, then reverts back to whatever he was saying in the first place. Each time he recalls a statistic (either from memory or the voice in his head), he flashes us a dumb little smile, like a toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement. Forgive me for employing the language of the playground, but the man's a tool.

So I sit there and I watch this and I start scratching my head, because I'm trying to work out why Bush is afforded any kind of credence or respect whatsoever in his native country. His performance is so transparently bizarre, so feeble and stumbling, it's a miracle he wasn't laughed off the stage. And then I start hunting around the internet, looking to see what the US media made of the whole "wire" debate. And they just let it die. They mentioned it in passing, called it a wacko conspiracy theory and moved on.

Yet whether it turns out to be true or not, right now it's certainly plausible - even if you discount the bulge photos and simply watch the president's ridiculous smirking face. Perhaps he isn't wired. Perhaps he's just gone gaga. If you don't ask the questions, you'll never know the truth.

The silence is all the more troubling since in the past the US news media has had no problem at all covering other wacko conspiracy theories, ones with far less evidence to support them. (For infuriating confirmation of this, watch the second part of the must-see documentary series The Power Of Nightmares (Wed, 9pm, BBC2) and witness the absurd hounding of Bill Clinton over the Whitewater and Vince Foster non-scandals.)

Throughout the debate, John Kerry, for his part, looks and sounds a bit like a haunted tree. But at least he's not a lying, sniggering, drink-driving, selfish, reckless, ignorant, dangerous, backward, drooling, twitching, blinking, mouse-faced little cheat. And besides, in a fight between a tree and a bush, I know who I'd favour.

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

Except for the final crack about wishing for assinations, I couldn't agree more. We can only hope the author is wrong in his guess that Furious George might win.

In his stump speech, The Smirking Chimp says he's "proudly running on his record". He's proud of a record of absolute and utter incompetence and abject failure? Thus he's telling you that if you vote for him, you're a moron. Furious George thinks you're too stupid to realize that. Why is it that the rest of the world but only about half of this country can see that?

Bush Supporters Are Delusional

They are still standing behind Furious George because they are either delusional or brainwashed. They just cannot rationalize the spectacular failure he has been as a president. A survey, which was conducted in mid-October by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm.

The survey was conducted after the release of the Duelfer Report, which was just one more confirmation that Iraq had no WMD, had no ties to al-Qaeda, and had no responsibility for 9/11. Despite that, the survey found that of the mindless drones that are his supporters, meaning most of the people who identify themselves as Republicans:

72% believe either that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for making them (25%).

56% said they thought most experts currently believe Iraq had actual WMD

57% said they thought the Duelfer Report had concluded that Iraq either had WMD (19%) or a major WMD program (38%).

75% believe that Saddam was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda.

20% believe Baghdad was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.

63% even believe that clear evidence of such support has been found

60% believe most experts agree with this conclusion.

55% believe that was the ultimate finding of the 9-11 commission report.


This is ignorance and the denial of reality of the worst sort. Now where did they get these crazy ideas?

82% perceive the administration as saying that Iraq had WMD.

75% perceive the administration as saying that Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda.


Some more staggering results:

42% believe foreign views were evenly divided on the war

26% believe that the world population strongly supported the Bush administration's decision to go to war.


Bush supporters are also pig-headedly wrong about Georgie's position on a number of other international issues. What's more, these morons said they [I]favored[/I] the positions that they incorrectly ascribed to the presnit:

69% think he supports the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)

72% think that the administration supports the international ban on land mines.

51% think Furious George supports the Kyoto treaty.

53% still think Buah favors U.S. participation in the international criminal court (even though he said the opposite during the debates).

74% think their man favors the inclusion of labor and environmental standards in trade agreements.

In ten or fifteen years, when it's common knowledge that one-term-president Bush was the worst president in the nation's history, I wonder what will be said about those vote for him for a second term. All those who are delusional enough to have swallowed all the lies from this administration.

Bush Says Vote For Kerry!

In a campaign speech today, Furious George said:

For a political candidate to jump to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief.

A very compelling and thoughtful argument for why he should not be reelected. As Gen. Wesley Clarke eloquently explains in a statement today:

President Bush couldn?t be more right. He jumped to conclusions about any connection between Saddam Hussein and 911. He jumped to conclusions about weapons of mass destruction. He jumped to conclusions about the mission being accomplished. He jumped to conclusions about how we had enough troops on the ground to win the peace. And because he jumped to conclusions, terrorists and insurgents in Iraq may very well have their hands on powerful explosives to attack our troops, we are stuck in Iraq without a plan to win the peace, and Americans are less safe both at home and abroad.

By doing all these things, he broke faith with our men and women in uniform. He has let them down. George W. Bush is unfit to be our Commander in Chief.