? whatever ?

man, i love a good laugh.. funny movies, funny people, or just people doing funny things.

but nowhere, have i ever run across a blonde joke this good. damn, i’m still having problems typing from all the laughing. here it is, the best blonde joke, ever!

please be seated before reading, you are likely to bring to life the acronym ROTFLMFAOAPIMP, and i’d hate to see you hurt yourself too much.

someone’s been passing tracts in my email. lots of them. sometimes more than once a day since early last summer. it’s annoying, it’s offensive, and it just pisses me off. even moreso than the usual scam, dick & hairy junk that everybody gets. why? because these right-wing freaks of nature, that supposedly worship ‘the lord’ and ‘praise god’, live the perfect saintly lives, and all that shit, would drag their sorry asses to the level of a spammer to try to preach their “message”.

well, bub. it ain’t working. i’ve seen my fair share of how the far-right, ultra conservatives work, up close and personal. i’ve witnessed them scam and cheat their fellow church-goers out of life savings, i’ve seen the smut buried on more than one preacher’s computer, and i’ve grown up with enough preacher’s kids to know that many of them (parents included) don’t even come close to following the old saying ‘practice what you preach’. and that’s not even getting into the messed-up, convoluted message that the real ‘winners’ try to get across. you know the type. the kinds of churches or people that don’t let you do anything except go to church, pray, study the bible and abstain. no tv, no (mainstream) books, music, or media of any kind, no interaction with those not “like” yourself… it’s hogwash, it’s as phony as our current president (hmm. i suppose that line would read equally well if you were american or french!)

the only thing he’s succeeded at is getting me in action. i don’t know who this guy is or who he thinks he is, or even where the hell he got my email address from in the first place. he’s in california, and i don’t even know anyone west of the rockies. all i know is this asshole has been begging for prayers lately because he is now finding himself with a particular painful affliction right up his ass. it’s quite fitting actually. the asshole has tumors in his ass. i’m sure he could find a verse or two in that bible of his that can explain why. oh, the idiot was kind enough to include some details i will find quite useful once i swing the civil action club. names, address, even a phone number and a wife’s name. thanks dude. next time send over your fiancials so i can get a better idea of what i can soak you for.

back to the sbc and yahoo thing. this bonehead is an sbc yahoo dsl subscriber, out in california, old pacbell territory. sbc and yahoo have a partnership of sorts where they provide each other services and then co-brand their high speed internet access.

sbc’s abuse email address is abuse@sbcglobal.net, as noted in their acceptable use policy (aup) at http://help.sbcglobal.net/article.php?item=441 , however the autoreply you receive from it states that the address is “unmonitored”, which does not conform to rfc-2142 (reference http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/rfcs/rfc2142.php ).

what the autoreply does give you is an address to a webform where you can submit your complaint. but wait! that form (http://help.sbcglobal.net/servabuse.php ) requires an sbc-affilliated email address, plus full contact information. so that means, the only people that can file a complaint against an sbc subscriber is another sbc subscriber. wow.

ok, strike two. their (sbc yahoo’s) web site also lists a phone number to contact them 24/7. so i try that. i explain that i am unable to submit a complaint against a sbc yahoo dsl subscriber and why. the poor girl on the phone never had a clue. she did give me two numbers though, one supposedly the sbc corporate office in san antonio which is a building i know quite well, actually. and i even recognized the phone number as being what it ended up being (but she insisted it was the ‘corporate office’). the other she says is the ‘policy department’. ok. the first number ended up being their telephone service sales line (for phone service, you know, the one in the front of the phone book), and the other wasn’t even sbc, it was a rent.com mailbox system (for leaving messages regarding listings, i suppose). strike three. after that call, the belief that my cable company had the worst support personnel on the planet was shot all to hell.

all the while, i try filing the complaints with yahoo as well, since this particular subscriber’s email service utilizes a yahoo.com mail server (actually many, but the last parts of the name are all the same), smtp1XX.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com (where XX = numbers). of the dozens of complaints sent off to abuse@yahoo.com, i might get *a* response on *one* of them. and it’s always the same story, as they must focus directly upon the offending sbcglobal.net email address, “sorry, not our problem” or something very similar. even when i point out on the very first line that the mail originated on such-and-such.yahoo.com mail server.

forget about trying to pound the fact that yahoo and sbc are in this venture together and that yahoo provides sbc with some mail services (among other things). or the fact that both yahoo.com and sbcglobal.net are (currently) listed on one of the rfc-ignorant.org’s block lists for non-conformance with rfc2142’s abuse mailbox specifications and recommendations.

i’ve tried dealing with yahoo on other issues and once needed to get ahold of someone or something that had a pulse lower than 50 or 60 hz. never happened, and since then my own business with and use of yahoo has dropped to almost complete nonexistance.

sbc and yahoo are both rather unresponsive to spam, and i believe they are just too big to have an effective strategy to deal with offenders on their own networks. sure they can block port 25, and i’m almost positive they do that in most areas, but that doesn’t stop people from using legitimate servers (theirs or 3rd party) to send out unwanted bulk mail. as long as you say underneath the “triggers” on the log watchers of their own servers, you’ll probably go completely unnoticed by them. and without effective abuse complaint handling, you’ll never have to worry about getting shut off either.

their (both) policies both forbid sending “offensive” materials in addition to sending unwanted bulk mail (aka spam). and it wouldn’t matter if i was jewish, catholic, orthodox, or even a tom cruise buddy, i would still find the unsolicited tracts in my email box offensive. and the term “offensive” is a pretty vague legal term. what’s offensive to one may not be to another, and in this case, it’s more offensive than well, just about everything.

so, if yahoo and sbc both refuse to police their dsl subscribers, where do i turn next? the feds, oh, those wonderful feds, took away any real course of action mere citizens could take, so what’s next?

there’s been (a little) talk about “ala carte” pay-per-channel programming for years (since at least the 70’s), but nothing’s ever come of it. it’s where you pick and choose which channels you want to receive, and you pay so much per month for each one; instead of being locked into huge and/or expensive packages full of channels you’re not the least bit interested in. a couple of quick google queries would yield many relevent hits.

while most consumers and their advocacy groups may praise such a transformation of the cable (and dss) industry… it won’t happen.

• the cable companies won’t go for it, because most people would select the handful of channels they actually watch and their bills would decrease significantly.
• the “content” providers (the networks, channels, etc) won’t go for it, because it would mean a far smaller subscriber base for most channels, resulting in lower ad revenues.

if it were to happen, the cable companies would make up for it by charging premiums on popular channels (maybe 5 bucks for espn, disney, nick, tnt, etc; 1 buck for some obscure oddball channel nobody cares about anyway). you’d likely end up paying 10-15 bucks a month for “basic” cable (broadcast channels, public access and shopping junk), then 1-5 bucks a month for each channel, pick more than a handful and your bill would be close to what you’re probably paying now.

so, it doesn’t really matter if the people want it.

• it will never happen so long as the cable companies and networks are in charge and
• if it does, you’ll still get raked through the coals anyway.

personally, i’d love to see it. my cable bill would go down drastically, as i can live without all those movie channels (they’re getting axed soon here anyway); and i only watch a couple channels regularily, and wouldn’t miss the others at all.

what really bugs me about cable bills is you pay for it regardless of how much it’s used, if at all, in a given month. the basic ala carte billing scheme (where you pay so much per month for each channel) still has that problem. the technology is there, seeing how digital receivers (with two-way communications capabilities) are the norm these days, to monitor what channels are watched, and how often during a month and bill according to actual usage. with that in mind, here’s an idea i cooked up some years ago, long before widespread adoption of the technology needed to implement it: (more…)

in, i suppose, an act of defiance against the whole star wars media blitz, i’ve started to re-read the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy “trilogy”. i haven’t read them (the first three) since something like junior high school. i’m already about half way through the five books, and am getting real pumped to see the movie. i am first reading one of the novels, and then listening to the audiobook before moving on to the next one.

the audiobooks, read by the author himself, are wonderfully narrated. i haven’t listened to a whole lot of books on tape (or cd, or whatever), but these are by far, the best that i have listened to.

the movie, btw, has not reached the pissy little theatre we have here. now that they’ve got star wars, it may be awhile before anything else is shown. damn george lucas and his friggin empire. i hope the rumors about there not being another three episodes (set after ‘jedi’) are true. just go run along and join star trek in the retirement home. maybe you’ll get lucky and bump into a vogon along the way. ask him to recite some poetry, would ya? you’ll love it! honest!

i can’t believe it. well, i guess i can, considering the degradation of education in america. people camping out just to watch a friggin’ movie. i repeat, it’s just a movie.

many of these freaks would be better served by getting jobs and moving out of their parents’ basement. the ones that “dress up” in costume for the ocassion are probably the same folks who make fun of trekkies who do the same thing. they’re all just a bunch of freaks.

i watched the first three star wars movies when they made their initial runs through theatres. that was enough for me, and i can remember being pissed at the local theatre for keeping each one of them for months on end. if you wanted to go to the movies, you had one choice. star friggin’ wars.

i haven’t watched them since, nor have i even seen any of the prequels, not even on video or television. i dunno if it’s the over-abundance of marketing, the desire to not contribute my hard earned money to the ‘empire’, or just a lack of interest. but i can tell you the marketing, media, and all that nonsense sure is getting old real fast.

if you’re gonna go to a movie in the next few weeks, there are many other excellent alternatives:

• The Interpreter starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. (drama/thriller)
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the big screen at last. (scifi/comedy/fun)
• Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist opening in selected markets and highly praised. (thriller/horror)
• The Longest Yard the new Adam Sandler movie. (comedy)
• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants opening in two weeks. (comedy/drama/for girls)
• More new and upcoming movies. there’s something for everyone in the theatres, you don’t have to resort to star wars.