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Curse #1: Spam. I get 150-200 spam e-mails per day on my personal e-mail account. Then I get another 50 or so on my work e-mail. Last but not least, I get a handful from each of the dedicated e-mail addresses I have for my various Web sites. Spam filters are generally useless, since they all do a terrific job of blocking mail from coworkers, PR agencies (kind of important when you work as a tech journalist) and of course my grandmother, whose diabolic e-mails gets whacked upon sight.Curse #2: Script kids. As opposed to real hackers, who spend their days productively trying to hack into the FBI Web site to post nude pictures of Shakira, script kids are those contemptible morons who keep hammering your firewall 200 times while slowing your connection speed down to a crawl in stupid attempts to break into your computer. I get an average of about 500 attempts or so on any given night.

The thing that really bugs me is how utterly, totally POINTLESS the whole thing is. A recent Newsweek article put the spotlight on ‘bulk e-mailers’ (aka. ‘Hellspawned Spammers’) reporting about 90% of the spam originates from some 150 people or so (they set their servers to crank out dummy sender IDs, which makes any kind of blocking-attempts to fail.) Since I’m apparently on every spam-list known to the civilized world, that means these people have drowned me with junk on a daily basis for 5 years. 5 years times, say only 200 e-mails per day, makes for about 365,000 spam e-mails I have deleted so far. Now, after 365,000 attempts, one would think that they, somehow, would get the hint that I’m not interested in growing my pecker 3 inches in 10 days or getting fabulously rich by buying into some mail-stuffing pyramid scheme. Yet they keep sending me this shit and clogging up my mailbox in a matter of days if I’d dare go on a vacation.

Then we have the script-kids. These guys have dedicated their lives to finding suckers who have not installed a bulletproof firewall to keep them from hijacking your computer. Well, here’s news; I’m not one of them! Unfortunately, there’s apparently a whole lot of them out there trying anyway, sometimes bringing my computer down due to sheer overload. I bet that earned them some real gratification. I can picture them sitting in some shack in Idaho, cackling evilly to themselves while pressing their pinkies to the sides of their mouths. I hope to become that cool when I grow up, too.

Now, since these two groups of morons are not going to go away by asking nicely, the question is: What can we do to get them out of our hair? The answer is, in my opinion, simplicity itself; Get the script-kids to target the REAL menace to the Internet, the spam-kings! Better yet, get some real hackers to focus their energy on obliterating the spam servers rather than some boring Government site! Since the spammers have set up these complex systems to hide their identity and cover their tracks, it should be a nice challenge for the script-kids and hackers to get to them. And by continuously attacking spammers again and again as soon as they try to revive their crashed and hacked servers, there should be a marked decrease in spam across the nation. Eventually, they’ll go out of business due to excessive technical costs and lost contracts from not being able to deliver their so-called ‘services.’

Given the fact that a large portion of the spam being sent out by these people are pushing illegal scams resulting in tons of crimes being committed, I imagine few law enforcement agencies would feel the urge to crack down too hard on the perpetrators in this particular case. So, how to motivate the script-kids and hackers to go after the spammers? Enter the power of the Internet. If everybody who hates spam donated a dollar to a giant virtual bucket of dough, a small committee could dole out cash awards to individuals who could prove that they actively participated in driving a known spammer out of business. If a lone hacker spearheaded a huge, month-long assault and brought a spammer down single-handedly, he’d get a hefty sum on his own. If a gang of 100 small-timers do the same thing through small but unrelenting disruptions, they all get smaller pieces of the cake and so on. You get the idea.

So what are we waiting for? I’d pay a dollar to get rid of spam forever. I’m sure you would too.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Of course I’m not encouraging anybody to commit a crime. This is all just a joke. I have the highest esteem for the bulk e-mailing profession, and it would just break my heart to see these people driven out of business. So, please respect the integrity of their profession and open your next batch of 216 spam e-mails hawking Viagra and rape-sex with a smile knowing you’re supporting a truly vital function of the Internet.

SPAM — You Can’t Beat The Feeling.

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Blessed because it is a miracle how his underwear stays up. I will never understand this about men in general, and my husband, in particular. To the outside world, he is the most GQ looking, put together, spit and polish man. But beneath that facade of Armani ties, Italian suits and shiny shoes, lies a wasteland of overstretched elastic, toes peeking through socks and barely enough molecules left to actually call them underwear. It is a phenomenon I am helpless to explain. I know you are thinking to yourself, “Well, if he can wear an Italian suit, surely he can afford some American Fruit of the Looms”, right? Right. The problem is, like most men, he is a “keeper”.

Not that the underwear or socks have some special significance, but many of his hole-y items do. He has a pair of ragged, faded, almost see through sweatpants that he will never part with. They are special because he wore them in the delivery room when each of our daughters was born. Yes, yes, yes, that is really sweet, but personally I have happily parted with every stitch of clothing I wore back when I was nine months pregnant!! You will never catch me waxing rhapsodic over an old pair of maternity underwear. “Ahhhhh honey, remember how the elastic held my stomach up and cut into my butt making me look like the Michelin tire man from behind? Those were the days.” Ha! I cleansed those puppies with fire, thankyouverymuch!

He is also the proud and stubborn owner of several t-shirts, whose screen printing can barely be deciphered. One hails his alma mater, “Wash—- U—-“, and considering the stainage on this poor shirt, it should read “Wash—- Me—-“! Another proclaims something about a “foo–all” game in Hawaii. Foo All? I’m sure it used to read ‘football’, but now it looks more like something on the menu at a luau. And the strangest one he refuses to part with? It is simply a grey t-shirt, no picture, no words, holes here and there, fraying around the neck. He bought it for $3 at a grocery store, and he considers that his great bargain. I will give him this much. After being washed 3,447 times, you can’t find a softer item to sleep in (or to buff my patent leather pumps, but don’t tell him that).

I suppose he is not as bad as some men when it comes to keeping things. Take my father for instance. Having been in the airline/airport industry for almost thirty years, he has seen the coming and going of airlines, the evolution of logos, and the changes in accouterments served in flight. I kid you not, in the storage space my parents rent, there are boxes of cocktail napkins, plastic coffee stirrers, and sundry bags of peanuts and the higher brow macadamia nuts served on flights to Hawaii. They are emblazoned with names like Braniff, Allegheny, Pan Am, and to quote him, “They’ll be worth money someday.” Yes, I can imagine the day Sotheby’s puts them on the auction block. “And now Lot 23, a case of Braniff cocktail napkins, with matching stir sticks. Notice the individual tiny airplanes at the end of each stirrer. Breathtaking. We will start the bidding at $2.00.” I just hope my siblings and I do not fight over the estate. (I imagine we will fight over who has to clean out the storage facility).

But back to my husband and his laundry. He can afford new underclothing, and yes, I suppose I could darn the socks (I would much prefer, however, to damn the things). But, as I was putting his “religious vestments” back in his drawers, I noticed that the new underwear his mother had sent him at Christmas, was stillunopened in the package! That’s it. I knew it was time again for me to take things into my own hands. Grabbing my rosary beads, I said a prayer to the patron saint of 50/50 blends and threw three pairs of underwear and two pairs of socks into the trash can. May they rest in pieces.

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We have not valued Halloween as the eye-opening, emotional-draining experience it should be. We have hidden behind fantasies, painted ourselves as clowns, and sent our children out with brooms in hand without them having ever known how to actually use one correctly.

Want to have fun this Halloween yet keep it real? Make a PMS costume! Oh, you wouldn’t have to really do much. Just get into some slippers, bang on each door very hard and scream for someone to give your kids something RIGHT NOW!

How about a ‘whiners’ costume? Same concept! Just throw on a white sheet with pictures of cheese stapled on it, knock on your neighbors’ doors, use your normal ‘whiners’ voice and I promise you, the neighbors will shove stuff into your kids’ bags just to get rid of you.

Do you have an opinion on everything? Heck, you don’t have to do anything! Throw on something red, grab the kids and march throughout the neighborhood. Being as you will be directing not only your children but also everyone else’s children on where to walk, where not to walk and what to say and what not to say, you won’t even have to knock. Folks will leave your treats on the front porch. Lucky you!

Do you not have any children living in your home? Are you over the age of fifty? Are you the kind of person who says, “Morning,” without using the word ‘good’ first and snorts when someone greets you as you pass by? You may not fair well in the treat-receiving department but, by golly, you’re off to having a grand reputation for being the ogre who lives in the haunted house down the road! Now, I’m sure this is a fun and enjoyable way to scare all of the children in the neighborhood, watch them shine flashlights into your windows and listen as they ring the doorbell then run like the wind. However, if it is candy you are after, your only shot is running out of the house, screaming at the top of your lungs and behaving like a complete maniac when the kiddies sneak around your home, thus scaring them so much that they drop their goodie bags in your front yard.

OK, so I do this when I am experiencing a PMS day. So what if I’m a little moody? I make darn sure children aren’t around and doubly sure my husband is there. There’s nothing like a husband having to endure his wife losing her mind through the madness of her mouth. How else are they going to learn tolerance?

How about going as a ‘Survivor’ contestant? You need to begin to prepare for this right now. I know we are still six weeks away from Halloween but there are things you should do. Stop bathing, for one. See, this not only insures that you truly look and smell the part but bugs will start to nest in your hair and other severe parts of your body, thus creating a true ‘Cast Away’ effect. Do not eat anything you enjoy and only drink water. This way, you’ll have that drawn-in look on your face and not necessarily from losing weight but basically because you’ll be in a bad mood from not eating cheese dip and chocolate for over a month.

Actually, this could truly be the way to go. Not only will your neighbors give treats to your children on Halloween, you will probably notice bags of groceries and clothes on your doorstep for several weeks afterwards. As a matter of fact, if you play it up really well, you may set yourself up for a fantastic Thanksgiving and Christmas season.

However you partake in Halloween, be it with plans in your neighborhood, your local church or with friends and family, be creative this year! It doesn’t take a lot of money to come up with a great, new idea. And who knows, you could come up with the next moneymaking trend.

After all, Halloween isn’t Bill Gates’ area!

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“What?!?!?!?” exclaimed one alarmed gentleman after reading said survey. “No, no, no…leave it to a woman to omit the most important part of the whole story!” spoke Bill Spacely with a rage of fury and confusion.

Diving further into the story, the shocking truth was brought to light. “Just because we’re old doesn’t mean that we don’t like a little action here and there,” explained one James McFly, 65, “but let’s face the facts – these women aren’t exactly drop-dead supermodels anymore, now are they? Have you taken a look at these chicks lately??? I mean ‘Woof!'”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said 52-year-old Eddie Carson, “I still love the art of, well, making love, just as much as I did thirty years ago, but old wrinkle-bags over there just ain’t doin’ it for me anymore! Sure, she’s got the libido of a college girl, but she’s got the face of Martha Washington…and not on one of her good days, either. I mean, come on – give me something to work with here…” he muttered on, shaking his head as he walked away…

Among the men that took this survey, 96% would like to justify their previous votes with one final statement, “Oh yes, we still want to have sex – more than ever, just not with you. Nothing personal…”

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And you would hope that with all the jokes and shouts of “What an idiot!” echoing through the country, the other 297 million Americans would say, “Hmm, maybe I should take responsibility for my own actions.”

But you would be wrong.

Thanks to Overlawyered.com for bringing an article to my attention, from the September 11 issue of the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Times-Leader.

According to the Times-Leader, Wilkes-Barre resident Kathleen Ann McCormick is suing eight doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, because they failed do anything to prevent the heart attack that has left her a “cardiac invalid.”

McCormick was in the hospital on several different occasions between 1997 and 2000 for different problems, and had several obvious risk factors for a heart attack.

She says that despite her obesity, history of hard-core smoking, high cholesterol and blood pressure, as well as a family history of coronary disease, the doctors “did not do enough” to help her make any life-saving changes. According to the lawsuit, they didn’t help her to eat less or stop smoking, or force her to take drugs to lower her cholesterol and blood pressure.

In other words, no one said, “Lose weight and quit smoking, or you’ll die.”

Not satisfied with dipping only into the pockets of the eight doctors named in the suit, she is also suing the US government, since it — through the US Department of Veterans Affairs — employed the doctors. And since she is house-bound and requires constant care, she is seeking $1 million.

So where is McCormick’s responsibility in this? If you follow her logic, nowhere. It’s not her fault she’s fat. It’s not her fault she smokes too much. It’s not her fault that her lifestyle lead to high blood pressure and high cholesterol. No, it’s the doctors’ fault, because they didn’t make her stop.

But shouldn’t she bear some (“some,” from the Greek meaning “absolutely, positively ALL of it”) responsibility for her own unwillingness to make these life changes? By blaming the doctors, she is essentially saying that she did not know these things could lead to a heart problem. Instead, she thinks it was entirely up to the doctors to point these things out to her.

Never mind there are graphic, bloodthirsty warnings on cigarette packs designed to make people quit smoking.

Richard: And so, Betty Ann, you’re saying that thanks to Deal-A-Meal, you no longer have to travel by tractor-trailer?

Betty Ann: *sniffle* That’s right, Richard. Boo hoo hoo!

Richard: WAAAAH…buy my latest video!

Basically, she’s saying she ignored thousands of experts, warnings, and news reports that we need to lead healthy lives to avoid heart problems, but she would have listened to the doctors.

What did she expect them to do? Jam some medication down her throat? Give her a series of electroshock punishments in a drastic stop smoking campaign? Or would it have been enough if one of them had just said, “Hey, Kathleen, why don’t you put out that cigarette and drop a few pounds, huh? We’d hate for you to have a heart attack or something. Haha!”

I’m surprised the American Civil Liberties Union and privacy nerds haven’t dropped on McCormick with Daisy Cutter-like thoroughness. By pushing the blame onto her doctors, the implication is that she no longer needs personal liberties either.

In other words, since the doctors — and by her argument, the government — should have made her quit smoking, they can actually force her to stop. Since they should have told her to lose weight, they have the obligation to make her get a stomach staple.

Is McCormick willing to give up her right to privacy just so Arnold Schwarzenegger can make sure she’s exercising every day?

Arnold: Hey, Lardo. You awen’t wunning fahst enough. Wun fahster! Fahster, fahster, fahster!!

Maybe I was asleep during my high school social studies class (actually I was), but I don’t recall the line about “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” being followed by a disclaimer that says “…unless you eat like a pig and sit around all day.”

With the ACLU shrieking about any infringement on personal freedom, whether it’s the Ten Commandments displayed at a county courthouse, or the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, it’s a wonder they haven’t stubbed their cigarettes out on their triple cheeseburgers and screamed to the press that McCormick will set personal liberties back by 50 years.

Or maybe I can sue Kathleen Ann McCormick for that myself.

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If you are one of the blessed few who read that sentence and asked, “Who the hell is Mandy Moore,” I almost hate to destroy your blissful state of ignorance. I envy you. I used to be just like you and would do anything to regain the serenity of not knowing who Mandy Moore is. I just found out a few days ago who Mandy Moore is, and I’ve been royally ticked ever since. I chomped on my Lucky Charms so hard this morning, I almost bit my tongue in half.

I was hoping we had reached our limit on this whole adolescent pop diva thing. I knew about Britney and Christina. And there was some singing blonde chick named Jessica who married a guy from NSync or 98 Degrees who isn’t gay. (One of those guys is openly gay, right? I thought I read that somewhere.) Maybe they’re just dating. I know one of the Backstreet Boys got married because my teenage cousin, who lives in New Jersey, let out an anguished wail that shattered windows in the governor’s mansion here in Raleigh. That’s the thing: I’ve been blissfully unaware of most of the details on all these entertainers. I know they exist, but I’m just too busy to care.

But last weekend I needed a break, so I pulled myself away from the computer to watch South Park and Saturday Night Live. I was flipping channels between shows and came across Mad TV. Mandy Moore was the special guest. She walked out onto a stage in front of a small studio audience. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. She was blonde and cute and wearing a little black dress. She giggled a lot.

She decided to take some questions from the audience. I wished I were in the audience so I could ask who she was and why she wasn’t home since it was obviously past her curfew. But a Mad TV cast member posing as an obsessed fan asked a bunch of goofy questions instead, and that led to some carefully-scripted spontaneous hilarity. He mentioned her first hit single, “Candy.” That’s when I knew she was a recording artist. But she didn’t sing anything. She just stood there and said her cute lines and swished her cute skirt. Then they cut to commercial.

The reason I wanted to throw rocks at the television was this: One of my freelance writing jobs involves working with independent musicians. I write reviews and interviews, trying to help them build press kits and promote themselves. True artists. People who work as bartenders just so they can play their music – music that they wrote themselves — in NYC dive bars until all hours of the night and then drag themselves home just in time to watch Mandy Moore get national exposure on Mad TV. I’m surprised more of them aren’t flinging themselves off their fire escapes.

They practice for hours every day. They play anywhere they can. They struggle with writer’s block, serious competition, and that idiot in the back of the bar who keeps flicking his lighter and shrieking, “Freeeeee Bird!!!! FREEEEEEE BIRRRRD.” They have grown to loathe “Free Bird.” They kind of liked it a long time ago, but now they would like to track down every radio deejay who still insists on playing it and strangle them with their guitar strings.

But Mandy Moore moves to Orlando and decides that the usual cheerleader and Jr. Miss circuits aren’t enough for her. She wants to be a recording artist. She doesn’t play any instruments or know how to write songs, but she’s seen Britney and Christina and Jessica and wants to get in on the action before all the heterosexual boy band members are taken. She gets coached and made up and hires a promoting team and other people to do the pesky stuff like write songs, and PRESTO! She’s a recording artist.

Okay, fine. That’s a great new approach to the career ladder. I wanna be a brain surgeon. They’re smart and get to wear cool white surgical coats and make lots of money. I think they have to go to school for a long time, but I wanna be a brain surgeon now.

I wanna get to poke around in people’s heads. I don’t know what all that stuff is in there, but I know you get to sew their heads back up when you’re done! I’m good at sewing! I sewed a button back on my dress a couple of weeks ago, and I learned how to cross-stitch in Girl Scout Camp. My patients will all look so pretty with little cross-stitches going all around their foreheads! I’ll use cool purple thread and body glitter, and when they wake up, they’ll think it looks so cool that they’ll forget all about the fact that I just sawed off their brain stems. Or whatever it is I’m supposed to be removing. I don’t think it even matters what part you take out because I saw a drawing of the brain when I accidentally looked at my textbook back in my high school biology class, and it just looks like this big white fluffy cauliflower thing. I think you can just chop of any part of it and it will be okay.

I’ve gotta hurry up and prepare for my new career. I need to build myself a web site with a bunch of photos I’ll get taken at Glamour Shots. I’ll also need to get myself a guest spot on some brainy medical show on The Discovery Channel. I’ll just giggle and wave my scalpel around and take staged questions from the audience.

Oh, that’s right – I’ll need a scalpel and some of those other surgery-type things. Maybe someone’s selling some of that stuff on eBay. Gotta go.

The post Hand Me a Scalpel – This Can’t Be That Difficult… appeared first on Just Laugh.

I wanted to experience the life of partying, living in a tour bus, and most of all, signing that once in a lifetime record deal. But how would I make that happen? I know, play the guitar. So that’s what I did.

At the age of 10, my parents bought me my very first electric guitar. It was a beginner’s guitar, but hell, it was mine. It signified that first step to gaining the fame and fortune I so often desired. It was red and white and when plugged into my small, but trusty amplifier, was loud and twangy, just like today’s typical white trash woman, such as Tonya Harding and Anna Nicole Smith.

I had no idea how to play this thing and I didn’t care. Because when plugged into the little box that read ‘amp,’ along with a boost of distortion, the powerful chords jumped out of the speaker and into the air. “Music,” I thought to myself.

For the next two years, I went on to act like I could play guitar. I carried it around in my hard shelled case, hoping for one moment the cutest girl in the seventh grade would see me. She never did.

But then one day, out of the blue (because blue seems to be the adopted color for surprises), she approached me and asked me to play her a song. I freaked out, knowing that if she knew my real secret of not being able to play, the word would hit the rest of the class in record time (about 54 minutes if you include at least 12 songs).

So I did what any other child who was in love with the cutest girl in the seventh grade would do, I ran the other way.

I never got that girl, nor did I get any other girl in the seventh grade. Because the word did get out in record time (about 54 minutes if you include at least 12 songs).

The only thing I could do was redeem myself somehow, and vow to the Eddie Van Halen poster that was on my wall, held up by masking tape, that if up long enough would droop down like an 85 year old woman’s breasts, that I would someday be a ROCK STAR! So I took lessons. For five years.

Then when I turned 17, I joined a band. We played really bad songs, mostly by Nirvana. But hey, chicks dug us, including that girl who was the cutest girl in the seventh grade. We went on to play school dances, as well as the occasional birthday party. It was everything I imagined it to be, minus the money, the tour bus, and the record deal.

After high school graduation, we (the four band members) all went our separate ways. The dream died. I had to go to my back up plan, comedy. Of course, many people who heard us play music believed I was in comedy all along. After all, we did play Nirvana songs.

I went nearly four years without touching an instrument, a musical one that is. That was until I got the urge, Herbal Essences shampoo. It does wonders for your hair.

Another year went by and I decided to purchase a guitar and amp. Believe it or not, it was like riding a bicycle… too bad I don’t know how to ride a bicycle so it was like learning all over again. But the difference this time was determination. I was going to fulfill my initial dream, becoming a ROCK STAR!

It took only one year to get myself up to speed, and an additional year to improve threefold.

I assembled the greatest band since Aerosmith on drugs. We played and played. And then it happened.

Last month, I got the much anticipated news I was looking for. “Dear Jason, I just want you to know that you’re NOT the father.” Phew!

The next day, unexpectedly, it happened. The dream came true. In my face stood a record deal. I read the long list of terms and conditions, looking for any loopholes.

I asked for advice from those who have experience in this matter. To my surprise, there were many.

After long talks and heavy thinking, I ended up not signing the record deal. To me, even though 12 CDs for a penny was appealing, I didn’t want to purchase six more CDs at regular price over the next 2 years.

And you know what, I’m happy with my decision to not sign that record deal.

The post I Want to be a ROCK STAR! When I Grow Up appeared first on Just Laugh.