SPAM- Now with Personality!

Ok, like most people I hate spam even though it does occasionally reassure me that I do indeed exist. Still one must check one's spam folder because every now and then something non spam does wind up in there.

So I am cleaning out the old spam folder scanning the subject lines and what do you know? I actually got a chuckle out of the subject line of one of my spams…

“Rock hard deals on Viagra!”

Ok, well played sir, well played. :)

Springfield Weirdness #3

Two more tales of the odd logic defying lifestyle we so adore here in Springfield...

#1 – I have a Shell Credit Card. Last night I stopped at a Shell gas station, grabbed a couple of small items and pre-paid my fuel. There is one of those little digital swipe and sign stations right there so as he totaled up my order I started to swipe. The cashier says “Wait!”
I froze and looked at him.
“Is that a Shell card?”
“Yep.”
“Oh, you can’t swipe a Shell I have to do it back here.”
I just raised an eyebrow and handed him the card.
“I guess that is pretty weird that a Shell card won’t work in the reader at a Shell station huh?”
I started to say – ‘Oh yes’ but after a few milliseconds thought though I replied, I work for state government so that does not even make the needle on my weird-o-meter quiver.”


#2 – I am driving to work this morning on a four lane thoroughfare here in the greater Springpatch metro area. A school bus is stopped with lights flashing so of course all traffic in both directions stop. Now the trick with an active school bus is you have to get past it between it’s stops to pick up students or else you get stuck at every.single.stop to pick up students. Getting past the but of course all depends on the person in the left lane; once the bus stops flashing if they don’t get on it and pass the buss before it goes two or three blocks and stops again everyone is screwed.

So after each stop one or two cars get past the bus and finally I get my turn and I am like "WHOO HOO!"

As I pass the school pus though I am shocked. About 75 yards ahead is another school bus with it’s lights flashing picking up students!

What the hell? We have *two* school buses going the same way on the same street making pickups at the SAME TIME? In what bizarre parallel universe does this make sense?

Ah, more of that government efficiency we have all come to know and love.

Muscle Car?

Ok, the last few years I have been in that nebulous time frame known as “Mid-life crisis”.

I mean I did my job, I raised my kid, my bills are paid, so dang it, I have been trying to have fun, the kind of fun I could not afford to have when I was young but can now.

This post is a little late because this actually happened last summer but writing about it later is better than never, no?

So last summer I had a mild case of “Mustang Fever”. You know, those new Mustangs that look like Old Mustangs? Yeah, Grog like! I went and drove one. The darn thing is all show and no go. It would not even squeal the tires. :( C’mon man! You can’t have a muscle car with no muscle! I mean my little Hybrid will lay rubber if you floor it, and here you have this Steve McQueen-mobile and nothing?

C’mon guys, if you can’t put a real muscle car engine in it at least, AT LEAST, put a megaphone in the rear fender well and then when I tromp on the gas pedal have the computer make manly noises through the megaphone!

I mean throw me a freaking bone here would ya?

Reality my glowing red ass...

Ugh, reality shows. The very name is a lie.

Anytime you have a 6 person camera crew in the room I don't care what you say or do it WILL be different from what you would have said or done if they had not been there. So right there in my mind Reality TV is an oxymoron UNLESS it's stuff that just happened to get caught on hidden cameras (like some crime shows you see)

Then to add fuel to the fire there is no doubt in *my* mind that someone off camera is deliberately egging things on to make "good drama" for the show. (Ok say she stole your boy friend now!, Ok now you say No I didn't! Ok, now slap, c'mon SLAP her!)

So with that said, I was channel surfing yesterday and I hit "The housewives of "something". (Orange County? Yew York? Beats me and I don't care)

So they have this whiny teenager on the screen complaining about she has always been spoiled rotten and now her parents want her to behave better. First off, like *any* kid will ever admit or even realize, they have always been spoiled. Yeah, right.

But here is the part that KILLED me. She was whining to another woman who was identified with the little text under her image as uh, made up name here, "Linda Walsh- Youthologist".

YOUTHOLOGIST? She is a YOUTHOLOGIST? Oh ROFL! That kills me! just what in the hell is a freaking "YOUTHOLOGIST". Oh man, in this age of made up pseudo-scientific bullshit this one has to take the cake! This is right up there with pet massage!

Now I googled this and guess what, there is all kinds of crap on the web about how you too can become a "youthologist" Guess what though, there is no such thing as a degree in Youthology or even a Youthologist permit, licence or rating so it is totally made up BULLSHIT for rich people to waste thier money on and feel good about it.

Like many pet psychics I'll bet that some of these Youthologists actually believe they have some merit but I will stick with the cynical view that this is yet another pile of made up bull shit in a world littered with piles of made up bull shit.

So watch where you step folks! :)

One last note

An update to last Fridays post then I will ignore politics here again as I mostly always have…

Regardless about how you feel about nationalized healthcare, you should be *glad* this particular legislation went down. If you want nationalized healthcare this was not a good plan at all. Here is how you know…

The next business day after it passed the senate my broker called me up and told me to BUY insurance and Pharma stocks, this bill was going to channel a trillion dollars into the PRIVATE healthcare business. It was not just my broker; most of those stocks did go up markedly in Jan. Now if it is good for Big insurance and big pharma it is NOT good for you (most "real" people who supported this mess wanted those very entities punished, quite the opposite was going to be the effect.)

Since the election and this plans death last week insurance and pharma stocks have been dumped and have gone way down. So again, the market sees this bill’s death as BAD for big insurance/pharma.

If it’s bad for them it’s very likely it good for you.

Who'd a thunk it?

Never in my life would I have ever expected myself to say the following words.

I take a lot of pride of being able to admit when I am wrong and I was so here it is.

I always thought that people who would continue to send a hypocritical, drunken, womanizing, man slaughtering, power abusing fool to DC for 47 years in a row years must be complete morons.

To the people of Massachusetts, I was clearly wrong about you.

"You are what you do when it counts."

This week it counted more than ever and you stepped up. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You did good, you should be proud! I know I am proud of you!

You may well have saved this nation from bankruptcy and you probably have saved untold millions of people from a slow painful death by waiting list for medical care and you certainly stopped (at least for now) the Marxist waltz that was being danced in DC.

You are the "Neo" of our little Matrix here. You stopped the unstoppable machine!

Here is a big fat wet kiss from me to the voters of Massachusetts... MUUUUUUUAHHHHHH!!!!!

I love you guys!

Fair is fair

I often like to make fun of management for their often bizarre and mind bogglingly stupid decisions so I guess it’s only fair to make a little fun of the workers too when they get all lazy brained…

Here in Springfield we had some snow last week.

So seriously, what does this guy think he is accomplishing?

See?

This is what I was talking about last week with my TSA Problems

An eight year old boy is on a TSA watch list.

He has been getting hand searched since he was two.

http://wcbstv.com/local/8.year.old.2.1425568.html

As Will Rodgers used to say, "Thank God we don't get all the government we pay for."

Ahhhhh Rednecks!

Is there anything they can't misuse, er, I mean do?

My heart swells with rednecky pride when I see such beauty. Don't watch this video unless you are prepared to weep with joy! You were warned!

Grow Up?

It seems to be a trend on TV lately to tell people to “Grow up”… “You are 30 now, you can’t dress like that or act like that or date someone like that", etc.

It’s starting to get on my nerves now. Can someone please explain to me just what the hell is so great about being “grown up”?

I mean if you go to work, pay your bills and help others when you can then what else is there to being “grown up”? According to TV it means being boring, dressing like a nun and dating boring people or better yet setting at home on Saturday night watching Home and Garden TV.

So I repeat, who wants to be a grown up? I sure as hell don’t.

So to all you people out there telling other people to “grow up” I only have one thing to say to you… Nana nana boo boo go stick your head in doo doo!

New Movie

At the movies this last weekend I saw a trailer for the pending Tim Burton flick "Alice in Wonderland". Now I do like weird avant garde stuff so it looked very entertaining to me. However, like oh so many Tim Burton flicks that looked good in trailer form in the past, I am sure I will be disappointed in the end. :)

Just one observation though, Johnny Depp is cast as the Mad Hatter. Now most actors do not like to be type cast so don't you think Johnny Depp would get tired of playing weird yet effeminate characters at some point in his career?

Whew!

Thank God for Classmates.com! I have spam from them this morning. Apparently Rena Fitzer (who I have never heard of) wants to contact me! So disregard the last post please! The universe seems to be returning to normal!

Man I feel so much better! Now if I had just one penis enlargement spam my relief would be complete but I will gladly take this happy omen!

End times?

I checked my e-mail this morning and I did not have a single spam e-mail. There is something very, very wrong here!

Signs and portents people, signs and portents! When something as utterly reliable as getting the notice that the Nigerian government is holding $20,000,000 for me fails then something in the universe is definitely askew! No Viagra offers? No girls that want to date me this Friday? NO SMUT? Scary scary stuff!

My God, I do not even a notice from classmates.com that the pretty popular girl I loved so much in high school but was too afraid to talk too really, really, REALLY wants to contact me NOW if only I were a member? Nothing?

Is the earth spinning off into the sun? Are the four horseman approaching? Were the Mayans off by two years on their calendar? It's the end times people! Prepare!

Hold me, I'm scared!

Management Think #8

OK, I refuse to fly commercial on Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends. The crowds are unreal and weather usually leaves 10’s if not 100’s of thousands people stranded at airports each year spending their holidays sleeping on the airport floor eating vending machine food.

However, I thought I would be safe flying home for New Years.

I cashed in frequent flyer miles so the times you get to fly are a little weird. I had to come back north Sunday morning which makes sense as LOTS of biz travelers head out Sunday evening so planes are generally full then. I figured at 8:00 AM Sunday morning the place would be deserted.

Wrong!



(sorry, it's not a good picture)

Oh, you can only see about 65% of the line from here it trails off a ways to the right.. When I first walked in the door I thought, “WOW, Cinnabon is doing a roaring trade this morning!” As I came around the corner and got a better angle my heart sank as I realized no, this is MY line!

Click on the picture to enlarge it then look carefully under the arrow. That long line just leads to the beginning of the “rats maze” look inside their alcove, there are at least 100 people in the “maze”.

Of course, if I could just print out my boarding pass I would not need to be in this line but reference last weeks post about the evil cabal of Rob Johnson’s in this world so I had to stand in this line.

Now, since I knew I was going to have “TSA Issues” I got there 1 ½ before my flight left.

It took an hour and 40 minutes to get through this line.

So why is this post called “Management Think”? I would like to point out to Southwest Airlines managers everywhere that nowadays they have these things called “Computers” It is VERY easy for you to know you sold a shit load of tickets this Sunday morning and your normal complement of 2 people working the ticket counter was probably not going to cut it this Sunday Morning.