A former latin american exile writes about life..

Pharos 137 phone

2009-07-24T17:47:00.004-07:00

This phone is OK, but when you take it out of the box be prepared to apply updates to its operating system. If you are not familiar with Windows Mobile you may have a bad experience.

Once the current suite of updates are applied the phone is pretty tolerable to use.

* The motion sensor support is flaky. It will work when it decides to.

* Do NOT hard reset this phone from the control panel unless the memory card and your SIM have been removed. I haven't experienced this but there are numerous warnings that on hard reset this phone will wipe both the memory card and your SIM (not sure if that's just contacts or the bits that identify your service!)

* Updates to the phone software may corrupt the SD card. Take it out to be safe. They've also had mis-cues with the updates not working in Windows Vista.

* If you're accustomed to GSM voice and EDGE data in marginal signal locations (i.e. on your previous phone that worked just fine at a particular spot) - you are giving that up by buying this phone.

Pharos seems to be quite responsive to user feedback. So far issues are being fixed.

Pharos 137 Phone

2009-07-15T22:59:00.002-07:00

I got another new toy I don't really need this week. Of course, I couldn't live without it now.

The specs for the Pharos 137 are widely available, just google 'em. I could write it all down but it would look like an eye chart. In short its the first Windows Mobile phone that supports T-Mobile USA's odd choice of frequency for a 3g mobile network.

The phone has some very appealing features. A GPS that gets its position fix pretty quickly (outdoors, naturally) and navigation software included. A VERY high resolution screen as well.

In a 3g coverage area the phone is a great little media toy. Slingplayer Mobile works flawlessly to bring in TV from home - say, to the office :) The streaming audio options that can be made to work on Windows Mobile work quite well - this may provoke me to finally ditch XM/Sirius, which I've been contemplating since their recent price increase. Viewing as well as upload to YouTube are supported. Xtube does not seem to be supported though I didn't try very hard. (It might work with that Skyfire browser)

The phone has one feature that may never work - the built in phone application supports "video calling." This is the reason for the phone's two cameras - one is front-facing. T-Mobile would have to implement support for it and even then a video call would only be successful to another 3g phone supporting video calls. Given that their own models don't support it nor does anything upcoming, don't hold your breath. But it's a button you can push all the same.

Awesome phone really! And yes, it works all over the world for low-speed data and voice calls.

I got a google voice phone number...

2009-07-03T23:32:00.002-07:00

I finally got an "invite" for a Google voice account. Unfortunately the only numbers available in the Phoenix metro area are area code 623. I don't live anywhere near there and I don't WANT a 623 phone number, thanks...

But I got a neat number that spells something and is in a somewhat meaningful geographic area (to me at least). No, I'm not going to post what it is.

The service looks to be very useful for getting around international text message charges to Canada :) T-Mobile charges like 15c per international message and this is free. Haven't tried to use it through the Windows mobile internet browser yet but that will come.

Shit economy + airport = :)

2009-07-02T19:39:00.001-07:00

Ok, I suppose its a bad thing that the airport is utterly uncrowded on the evening before a holiday weekend. But it is! It's kinda nice.

still around :) ... in... ARIZONA!!!

2009-06-30T22:25:00.003-07:00

Damn, it's been awhile. Obama was my last post - and he's been in office long enough that I dislike him already. But that's another topic.

I lost my friggin' mind this afternoon and bought a pair of rollerblades. I'm traveling up to nor-Cal soon and my friend up text-messaged me a week ago as a followup to the voicemail he just left -"Oh, and bring your rollerblades!"

WHAT rollerblades, I was thinking... they got left in Uruguay with a whole hell of a lot of stuff when I moved out of there. Besides, the last pair was THOROUGHLY worn out - I think I'd been through five or six bearing replacements and at least three stoppers. I know for sure that along with the rollerblades I left behind a new-in-package stopper designed for those 'blades - I bought 'em in 1993.

Damn, I wrote several paragraphs about WHY I bought them in 1993. That's off topic ;)

Anyway, its been five years since I've been up on ANY kind of wheeled footwear. HOLY CRAP! I thought it would be very simple but um, not quite. First of all I had the dog with me. I had this idiot idea Shaggy would pull me and it would be sort of chill.

NO. First of all descending the stairs was not as easy as I'd remembered it being. I live on the second floor so I had no choice.

Shaggy didn't quite know what to make of me being four inches taller OR moving quite so randomly. Suddenly I was able to move MUCH faster or slower than normal. As such she held way back and it was more ME pulling HER. Note to self: do not try to walk dog and rollerblade at the same time. I walked her long enough that she did what every good dog should do THE HELL OUTSIDE :) and then cleaned it up.

I climbed the stairs again to let her back into the house and then it was ON - there had been little glimpses of the previous skill I'd had years ago but the dog was slowing me down.

Perhaps that was a good thing. (The slowdown)

I went around the block as fast as - indeed, faster - than I dared ;) "Faster" is relative, I suppose - but I didn't KNOW I was going faster than I wanted to be until I'd gotten there. I kept thinking, "OK, it's June 30th... you have two hours until you have full health coverage again - WHY DIDN'T YOU WAIT?!" But that thought only crossed my mind when I damn near fell.

(Yes, in 1 hour and 14 minutes from now I have what passes for healthcare coverage in this country. But that too is the topic of another post...)

Ah well, I can go out and practice one more time tomorrow night before the weekend. :)

Inauguration day

2009-01-20T06:28:00.003-07:00

I got up at 5:30 mountain time to start watching coverage of the inauguration. The crowd is unbelievable considering that it's 19 degrees (f). Watching it in high-definition really adds a LOT to this type of programming.

The presidential car looks like a monster in terms of security. All of the windows are quite visibly bullet-proof glass. It appears there is a visible gun-port on either side of the car.

There have to be more than a MILLION people there. I've been to DC a couple of times and the mall is FULL!

But the best part of all of it - eight years of Bush/Cheney are OVER at noon today. I tagged the post as "You can't fix stupid" but today is an exception. The fix is in at noon.

techno-shy Americans venting about the coming analog TV switchoff...

2009-01-04T12:31:00.003-07:00

You'd think the world was ending to read all the whining in the newspapers.

Complaint: "We got the coupon and installed the box and now we don't get nearly as many channels! We 'had to' subscribe to cable or satellite."

Response: The manuals for the converter box make it clear that you might need to change your outdoor antenna. Furthermore those who 'had to' subscribe to a pay service could have uninstalled the converter box until the 18th.

The US government and TV broadcasters did sort of a bad job explaining an important point - but the average person whose eyes glazed over at the word 'antenna' probably would not have followed this at all: the digital signal on the air in most markets is decidedly weaker right now than it will be on the 18th. Broadcasters don't have the resources to transmit two equally strong signals. Those who 'had to' subscribe to cable or satellite - were they to hook their converter box up to a proper antenna - might well discover all the channels they had plus more. Their 'having to' switch to cable or satellite was in all likelihood unnecessary. They should not have listened to the employees at big box stores who got slightly better performance reviews for that month or quarter for signing up those cable or satellite subscribers.

Complaint: What do you mean we have to re-scan from time to time to update the on-screen guide? How can we possibly be expected to remember to do this?

Response: The newspaper reporter either wasn't quite detailed enough OR the reader didn't process that the only reason you'd re-scan was to look for new channels. The guide updates itself. The "How can we possibly be expected..." bit - whining. Putting it another way: "Waaaaaah, it's change. We can't possibly change."

Complaint: We didn't know about the coupons for the converter boxes! Once we got them we had a hard time finding them in stores! And worse yet - people bought them who don't really need them!

Response: You had to be blind or deaf not to see the public service announcements about the converter boxes. The PSA's explained how to get the coupons. Once you got your coupon you had six months to use it.

If you waited until the last minute you probably DID have a hard time finding them in stores. If you wait until February you probably WILL have a hard time finding them in stores.

It's also true: plenty of coupon-receivers and buyers didn't really need the boxes. They've had no problem selling those boxes at full price on eBay.

I have two that I probably will never need. I had just as much right as any other American to take advantage of that subsidy - that's capitalism! :)

The morning of the 18th I'll put the boxes up for sale on the bulletin boards in the laundry room where I live, or at the supermarket.

Some say a solution is to put off the switch. In my opinion the switch should have been moved forward to one week before the superbowl. It would have given the US population a whole lot more incentive to read and understand the instructions.

Phoenix winters are not one bit like Uruguay

2008-12-20T21:41:00.003-07:00

Well, on the face of it that would sound like a perfectly obvious statement. Tonight it SORT OF felt like early Winter in UY. We've had quite a bit of rain lately so the humidity is way higher than normal - but for just a moment there was a waft of woodsmoke smell in the air that was vaguely like Eucalyptus. Just for a moment though.

But no, not really. Probably one fireplace out of the hundreds in the area had something vaguely Eucalyptus scented burning in it - but on balance it just smelled sort of like a house fire. Nothing like that going on anywhere near here so its probably the creosote-product-type things people burn in their fireplaces. It's a log shaped roll packet but that's where its similarity ends. You're not even supposed to open it - if you did you'd probably see that you'd bought some tightly-rolled old newspaper impregnated with sticky coal tar.

Actual wood is DAMN expensive. So on balance there was really quite a STENCH in the air from all the fake logs being burned up. It was about 8:30 pm, which is usually when I do grocery shopping or cook dinner - but most couples would have long since finished with dinner, put the kid(s) to bed and lit the foul-smelling thing in their fireplace.

Fireplaces here are definitely more decorative than functional. Most of them cause a net EXIT of heat from the house making it MORE expensive to heat with the furnace already installed. There are gas fireplaces but I don't know of anyone who uses theirs. It's essentially a burner of natural gas with a fake "log" insert that makes it look like a smoldering fireplace. The log insert puts out very little in the way of heat. They're a great way to have a zero-maintenance fireplace that you can literally turn on with a wall switch - but you get a huge gas bill.

Yes, heat IS necessary out here in the desert. The most common is a natural gas furnace that's integrated with your air conditioning. Heat pumps are common too (i.e. an A/C unit that can be reversed and provides heat into the house) because this far south they're economical to run. They're certainly not the split system things like I had in Uruguay - that type of air conditioner really never caught on here. They're available but NOT from mainstream stores and generally EXTREMELY high priced.

Indoor propane heaters - the style with a tank in the back and two or three ceramic burners - are unknown here. I'm sure our "nanny state" forbids them. The tanks are readily available for gas grills but the heater unit, I've never seen. It'd probably be more likely to tip over on a carpeted floor. I saw them for sale in Mexico earlier this week - although the asking prices for just about any appliance there are pretty high compared to what I saw in Uruguay for the same item.

Reason 5082 why I dislike living in Arizona: online newspaper anonymous comments

2008-11-24T03:11:00.005-07:00

It's absolutely disgusting to read the comments posted with online newspaper articles. Just about every US newspaper participates in this trend. Some police the commentary better than others. The Arizona Republic does precious little to police their site.

It's obvious why the newspapers do it: viewers will "stick" to the site longer with more page views - meaning the ads associated with those pages are viewed more. But the general public just doesn't have a lot constructive to add to most stories.

"Burglary Suspect Gave Police False Age, Identity" was simply the headline. Four pages of hardly 'intelligent' commentary follow. Comments range from "at least he wasn't another latino," to overtly racist, jump around to how criminals and gang members are in the military and then wind up with this little gem:

"(inappropriate term) ALL OF YOU SORRY SACK OF (inappropriate term) CUM GUZZLIN (inappropriate term)!!!! YOU DONT EVEN KNOW HIM LIKE THAT TO BE JUDGING HIM AND TALKING (inappropriate term)!!! ALL OF YOU ARE STUID FUKING RACISTS ASSES!! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO READ A STORY AND COMMENT AND ASSUME LIKE YOU KNOW HIM PERSONALLY AS A FAGGET OF THE GAY COMMUNITY AND EX BOY FRIEND I DONT LIKE THE COMMENTS OR THE (inappropriate term) IM READING AND FOR HIS MOTHER SHE IS PROUD HE HAS ACCOMPLISHED MORE THEN YOU OR YOUR (inappropriate term) UP FAMILY HAS IN YOUR LIFE. AND ALSO IF IT WERE YOUR FRIEND OR FAMILY MEMBER UP HEAR YOU WOULDN BE SO QUICK TO JUDGE OR TALK DOWN ABOUT HIM!!! AND AS HIS FRIEND DONUT SAID YOU OTHER TWO SORRY SACKS OF (inappropriate term) COME FORWARD AND MAN UP YOU WANT TO BE MAN ENOUGH TO GO INTO SOMEONES HOME BUT YOUR NOT MAN ENOUGH TO TAKE THE FAULT FOR IT YOU SORRY SACKS OF (inappropriate term)!!!!!AND AS FOR LAWRENCE IT DONT GOT (inappropriate term) TO DO WITH SKIN COLOR YOU (inappropriate term) DUMB ASS WE DONT BE TALKING ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE SHOOTING THEM SELFS OR DOING COKE AND METH AND SLEPPING WITH THEIR OWN FAMILY OR DOING STUPID (inappropriate term) LIK COMMITING SUICIDE OR SHOOTHING UP FUKING SCHOOLS!!! SO DONT (inappropriate term) JUST ASSUME BECAUSE HE IS BLACK IS THE REASON WHY HE IS STEALING SO GO TO HELL YOU (inappropriate term) BITCH!! AND AS FAR AS DALG1 DONT CALL HIM A LOW LIFE SCUM BECASUE YOU DONT KNOW HIM DO YOU BELEIVE EVERYTHING THAT YOU READ????IF THEY SAID DALG 1 WAS COUGHT JACKING OFF TO CHILD GAY PORN WOULDNT YOU WANT PEOPLE TO BELEIVE THE FIST THING THEY READ?? NO I DONT FUKING THINK SO!! AND HE IS NOT SCUM SO YOU CAN CUT THAT (inappropriate term) OUT BEFORE THE WRONG PERSON READS THIS AND SCUMS ON YOUR FACE!! SO FOR ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY AND WANT TO HAVE HIS NAME IN YOUR MOUTH BEFORE YOU KNOW HIM OR EVEN KNOW WHAT THE REAL STORY IS HOW ABOUT YOU DO WHAT YOU DO BEST AND SWALLOW IT AND GO (inappropriate term) YOUR MOTHERS (inappropriate term)
SINCERLEY YOUR AMERICAN FAGG!!"

Wow. A simple article about a black kid that robbed a house degenerates into that lovely drunken illiterate rant. Welcome to Arizona! Half the population here could have written that. This guy should be writing copy to attract tourists to the state or even better, the announcements on the Amber Alert signs over the freeways.

The paper should track this guy down - he'd make a perfect instructor for a "Creative writing for douchebags," course. Learn to write in ALL CAPS and make sure that each sentence has a subject and at least three things to offend EVERYONE.

H8 is Enough - actually hearing the idea of 2nd-class citizen out of someone else's mouth

2008-11-15T23:42:00.007-07:00

I haven't attended any kind of political protest since the 90's. Oh sure, in 2000-2003 (what I thought would be my last years living in the USA) I was involved in my share of politics. Had more than enough of it actually. But today was different, today was raw.

Sure, Obama won. I was in my car when I heard the news and I literally had to pull over into a parking lot because I was so overcome with emotion.

But it was bittersweet. The voters of my current "home" (I say home with a bit of a contemptuous tone) state voted definitively to AMEND THE STATE CONSTITUTION to define marriage as being one man and one woman. It was a vote that absolutely snuffed out a possible right I might have in this state, because as a Gay man - I would never marry a woman.

The same thing happened in California. I think the GLBT community in California is kidding itself a bit with the lawsuits they have filed holding out hope of overturning pretty much the same thing in their state. I will be very surprised if judges overrule that vote based on a procedural nuance of California law - although it'll cost the Mor(m)on "Church" another $20 million if it happens.

Even as I was watching Obama's victory speech in Grant Park from Chicago I was distracting myself with various thoughts to keep myself on that cloud of victory. I just knew that either CA or AZ was going to have bad news to deal with.

It wound up being both. I told myself - you can't take this so personally. After all, as with most things in life I'd already done the gay marriage thing. And as with most things in life - I did it too fast and too young. But it absolutely seemed to be the right thing to do at the time. I don't regret it one little bit. I told myself - there's already a certificate on file in another state tying you to another person. Thank god we are still extremely close friends. But Vermont does not have a mechanism by which a civil union done by two non-residents can be dissolved.

So the constitutional amendments didn't really affect me - there was a much larger barrier. It's not like I have anyone special in my life. Quite the opposite - I'm very happy to have a dog as a companion.

But a couple of things today struck a chord. Getting up at 8am in the morning and rushing to buy posterboard, locating permanent markers and doing last-minute assembly of some kind of protest sign. The result is part of this post.

It took me right back to the early 90's when I protested with ACT-UP! At the time it was an important issue because it was so obvious to me that the US government was not going to take it seriously. I DEFINITELY had that 2nd-class-citizen feeling going on at that time - and for many good reasons. Hundreds of thousands of men and women died (and continue to die) because money wasn't spent on research or accessibility.

Life came full circle in 2003 when a close friend was diagnosed as HIV+. I really feel like in some very small way I'd made a difference because he was able to get access to medication - by that time advances in research had turned HIV from a death sentence into a living hell of pills with side effects but the promise of life. (I call it like I saw - and continue to see - it.)

So this morning as I was driving downtown Phoenix all of this was knocking around in my head. The current movement is not just about marriage - it's equal to the civil rights movement in the 1960's. That's how it seems to be evolving. I hope the momentum keeps up. But it was just something to do today until I heard the phrase "2nd class citizen" over the P.A. system. It re-awakened something.

I thought I left all that 2nd class citizen crap behind in December 2003 when I boarded a plane to emigrate from the USA to Uruguay. I thought it would become a new home. I wasn't so much running FROM anything - but definitely running TO the possibility of a new life. It has evolved into a new life - strangely, back in the USA - but not quite in the way I expected.

I have a lot on my plate right now and am hesitant to add more - but Monday night I will be at the organizing meeting for further protests and activism in Arizona.

I AM mad as hell. Now that Pandora's box has been opened with the magic words "2nd class citizen," the fight is ON. Goals:

Make the state and the people of Utah feel the financial squeeze above and beyond the current recession. To squeeze Utah to to squeeze the LDS cult.

Get the LDS cult's 501(c)3 tax exempt status revoked.

Work like hell to regain and demand equal rights. It may not happen in my lifetime but I think it will.

I've taken some initial steps. Most of my extended family in Southern California voted YES on this abomination. The idea of having Thanksgiving dinner with them is absolute anathema. This evening I called and said that odds were 90% against my making any appearance as well as explained why.

I don't know what future relationship, if any, I will have with many of them. The only words I would say to any of them directly are: "SHAME ON YOU! SHAME ON ALL OF YOU!"

I have several much-higher-priority issues in life. (To my last ex: if you think you're a priority, you're simply a matter that's been outsourced to my attorney.) But this issue of 2nd-class-citizenship in my own country will now be a priority.

No comment - just a subtle message...

2008-11-15T02:10:00.002-07:00

Late night USA cable TV - you have to check out "shop erotic!" just once if you get the Oxygen channel

2008-11-15T01:11:00.008-07:00

These two very average women do this shop at home schtick.

They are very modestly dressed and are just completely deadpan about the items on offer:

Some examples -
Original Jack Rabbit 6 1/2" dong w/ Suction Cup and bonus "Pink Water"
10" dong with suction cup "that you can attach to the shower wall, a chair or wherever"
(Just don't stick it to the windshield of your car in California, suction cup attachments to the windshield are illegal. Suction cupped anywhere else in your car is probably fine...)
Loveclone Vibrating Stroker
Glow in the Dark Clone-a-Willy Kit "Make an exact vibrating rubber copy of any penis."

But a picture is worth thousands of words. Mostly safe for work...

Caribou Barbie (Palin) gets OWNED in Canada

2008-11-02T15:51:00.002-07:00

From AP:
TORONTO - Sarah Palin unwittingly took a prank call Saturday from a Canadian comedian posing as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and telling her she would make a good president someday.

"Maybe in eight years," replies a laughing Palin.

The Republican vice presidential nominee discusses politics, the perils of hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney, and Sarkozy's "beautiful wife," in a recording of the six-minute call released Saturday and set to air Monday on a Quebec radio station.

Palin campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt confirmed she had received the prank call.

"Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy and other celebrities, in being targeted by these pranksters. C'est la vie," she said.

The call was made by a well-known Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel. Known as the Masked Avengers, the two are notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state.

Audette, posing as Sarkozy, speaks in an exaggerated French accent and drops ample hints that the conversation is a joke. But Palin seemingly does not pick up on them.

He tells Palin one of his favorite pastimes is hunting, also a passion of the 44-year-old Alaska governor.

"I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun," the fake Sarkozy says.

He proposes they go hunting together by helicopter, something he says he has never done.

"Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together while we're getting work done," Palin counters. "We can kill two birds with one stone that way."

The comedian jokes that they shouldn't bring Cheney along on the hunt, referring to the 2006 incident in which the vice-president shot and injured a friend while hunting quail.

"I'll be a careful shot," responds Palin.

Playing off the governor's much-mocked comment in an early television interview that she had insights into foreign policy because "you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska," the caller tells her: "You know we have a lot in common also, because ... from my house I can see Belgium."

She replies: "Well, see, we're right next door to different countries that we all need to be working with, yes."

When Audette refers to Canadian singer Steph Carse as Canada's prime minister, Palin replies: "Well, he's doing fine and yeah, when you come into a position underestimated it gives you an opportunity to prove the pundits and the critics wrong. You work that much harder." Canada's prime minister is Stephen Harper.

Palin praises Sarkozy throughout the call and also mentions his wife Carla Bruni, a model-turned-songwriter.

"You know, I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife," Palin says. "Oh my goodness, you've added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of yours."

The Sarkozy impersonator tells Palin his wife is "so hot in bed" and then informs her that Bruni has written a song for her about Joe the Plumber entitled "Du rouge a levres sur une cochonne" — which translates as "Lipstick on a Pig."

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama derided his Republican challenger John McCain's call for change in Washington as "lipstick on a pig," days after Palin made a lipstick joke at the Republican convention. The McCain-Palin campaign then released an ad implying Obama was calling Palin a pig with that remark.

The caller asks Palin if Joe the Plumber is her husband and adds: "We have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France. It's called Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit."

He also tells the Alaska governor that he loved the "documentary" made about her and referred to a pornographic film with a Palin look-alike made by Hustler founder Larry Flynt.

She answers tentatively, "Ohh, good, thank you, yes."

The callers then reveal the prank and identify themselves and their radio station.

"Ohhh, have we been pranked?" Palin asks before handing the phone to an aide who ends the call.

Obama's campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs, commenting on the prank, said: "I'm glad we check out our calls before we hand the phone to Barack Obama."

Anne Rice is trying to become a "Christian author"

2008-11-02T11:17:00.004-07:00

This bit of news was, to say the least - disturbing.

Years ago I was a member of her fan club. So was my troglodyte roommate from whom I was renting a room in his Chicago condo. (Location: right off Lake Shore Drive on the little bit of Sheridan Road that runs east-west before it becomes a north-south street.)

I'd abbreviate Lake Shore Drive but it would be misunderstood.

Anyway, me and the troglodyte rented theatrical costumes and in October 1995 went to an INCREDIBLE Halloween party Anne threw for her fan club. She'd bought the St. Elizabeth's orphanage and totally re-did it. 13 years and 75 kilos ago I made a kickass Lestat - would have gotten totally laid too had the troglodyte not stuck to me like a big cancerous blob all night.

Now fast forward ten years later and she's telling CNN...

"To be able to take the tools, the apprenticeship, whatever I learned from being a vampire writer, or whatever I was -- to be able to take those tools now and put them in the service of God is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful opportunity," she said. "And I hope I can redeem myself in that way. I hope that the Lord will accept the books I am writing now."

VOMIT. Oh well, she's made her fortune off the vampire series. The Christian books will NOT fly off the shelves. The Lord may accept the books but I don't think he buys many, nor will the public. Dammit, dammit, dammit - another lost to that awful dogma.

Uniquely Arizona humor

2008-10-31T22:02:00.003-07:00

There is a disclaimer posted below this joke to appease the easily-offended.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is inspecting his tent city jail one afternoon and notices that there are LOTS of pigeons flying about all the time. The tents are covered in pigeon shit and worse yet one of them shit on his Lexus. He's gotta do something. So of course he implements a temporary fix for the problem and puts the prisoners to work cleaning the roofs of the tents. It's a little extra laundry expense for their pink clothes but so what, it's only 112 degrees that day so it won't kill 'em. He's a great guy so everyone who volunteers gets an extra nearly-expired-bologna-product sandwich with their tray that night. Everybody wins right? But it doesn't solve the problem.

He gets on his county-paid-cell-phone with one of his biggest contributors. The buddy is in Honduras working on Joe's retirement program, er, anti-gang liason with the Honduran police. No matter, Maricopa County can pick up the tab for the international call. After they chat a couple ten minutes Joe finally asks for a recommendation about a pigeon exterminator. He gets the number, talks a few minutes more since hey, it's on the county's dime and then calls the exterminator.

The exterminator is a good guy, he's contributed a lot to Joe's campaigns. He says, "Joe, Maricopa County and its people have been really good to me over the 21 years I've lived here. My business has been better than I could ever imagine. So I'll tell you what - make you a deal. I will take care of your problem for FREE. HOWEVER this is an important part of the deal. You must NOT ask me any questions about my method or the price will be one million dollars."

Joe figures, hmm... FREE! When it's over I can issue a national press release about how I go to great lengths to save taxpayer dollars!

A couple days later Joe gets a call from one of his deputies at the jail. "JOE! You ain't gonna believe this but the pigeons are GONE! Oh, and by the way he sent a white guy to do the job so we didn't check immigration papers."

Joe says, "Oh, that's immaterial. You know this guy's on that list of businesses we don't check too much but -- hey, you are on your special cellphone the liberal media can't listen in on right?"

"Of course boss! It's one of these new phones from that high-tech Israeli company - is it true the FBI can't even hear us? Oh and can we get some new ones that don't have these... I don't know what the hell it is kinda lettering on the keys. It's impossible to text my girlfriend!"

"Uhm, I think its called hebrew or something. But you're asking me too many goddamn questions on the phone - get to the point. What happened?!"

"Well we didn't know what to think of it. He brought this ONE BRIGHT BLUE PIGEON in a cage. We weren't sure how to check up the bird's ass for drugs so we had him set up outside the perimeter fence. It scared away all those guys who are always running up to the fence and throwing those little packets over that the prisoners run like hell to grab and hide."

"Goddamn it," Joe said. "Well at least it was probably a few of the guys who don't donate to our Deputies for Kids program that got scared away but you gotta be careful about that so we don't lose money. But you're talking too goddamn much. What the fuck happened next?"

"Well, he opened the cage and the blue pigeon flew out. ALL OF THE OTHER PIGEONS SAW IT and they all flew in a big flock straight south. One of the deputies down south in Gila Bend saw the whole flock still headed south!"

"I'll be damned. And all the fuckin' pigeons are gone?"

"Yes SIR!"

"Ok thanks."

Joe grabs his regular phone and gets the exterminator on the line. "Buddy, I gotta tell you, we're amazed at the pigeon job. My deputies report they're 100% gone! But I have just one question..."

The guy cuts him off and says, "Joe! remember our deal! If I answer a question you're committing that Maricopa County is going to get a bill for a million bucks! Channel 15 and that goddamn weekly newspaper will be all over you and this is an election year!"

"Fuck it, " Joe says. "If you can help with this other problem I got, I will win re-election again by a landslide! I GOTTA KNOW! DO YOU HAVE ANY BLUE MEXICANS?"

Disclaimer:
I posted this with some hesitation because it could be misconstrued in several ways.

I've altered the joke (which I heard from a conservative person) so its not quite so local or so anti-democrat. It'll be just as funny (un-PC) and it's a real BIG local issue on both sides of the political fence. If you live in Phoenix for any length of time and drive a car any distance you will eventually be in an accident where it's hit and run. Might be hit and drive away, might be the driver abandons the car and runs away. This is due to our progressive laws (<--- sarcasm) that do not provide for undocumented immigrants to get drivers licenses or register vehicles or get insurance, but they pay cash for cars and risk it for everyone.

I have had one of these accidents and it cost me $300 out of pocket to fix - could have claimed part of it against my insurance but y'all know how THAT works. God forbid you should file a claim. So that's (one of the) reasons the joke is funny - but it's also more than a bit racist especially told in its original version. I have kept the punch line and the main element of the joke but I've otherwise edited it so much as to be unrecognizable, it'll just make it nationally recognizable and turn it around as anti-republican. I am NOT racist against anyone and I make no snap judgements about a person's status in a country based on their perceived nationality.

There may be other issues in here that don't appear to be funny -
#1, Why is the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office spending ANY money or time IN HONDURAS? It's been in the media... How is this a county sheriff's function? Wouldn't this be something done at an international level?

#2, it's an open secret that it's easy to stay high the whole time you're in tent city, you just gotta have a buddy run up to the fence and toss you the drugs while the too-few deputies aren't looking (or more likely paid to go on break).

Lastly, the bit about hebrew on cell phone buttons is entirely literary license and should not be construed as anti-semitic. Some of the highest quality and most secure microelectronics are created in Israel at offices of a company called NDS. If you subscribe to a satellite service branded DirecTV or SKY, you have Israeli technology attached to your TV: the smartcard in the receiver (which in plain language can both de- or re-activate your service for non-payment, controls which channels you receive and authorizes pay-per-view purchases) is made by NDS. At present (and for really the past few years) DirecTV and SKY branded services have not had the gigantic problems with signal theft that other encryption schemes continue to suffer.

Lastly, to my knowledge I am not making any credible accusations of illegality against Mr. Arpaio and his staff. Mr. Arpaio has chosen to make himself an internationally-known public figure and thus is fair game to poke some fun at.

As seen on TV: a uniquely USA phenomenon - some surgeons refuse elective surgeries to attornies

2008-10-31T22:00:00.001-07:00

IT SERVES THE BASTARDS RIGHT!

I bought back into the market

2008-10-25T14:45:00.003-07:00

I won't say what stocks, what prices, mum's the word. I treated my newly-minted investment account like a trip to Vegas and put a similar spending limit on it.

I have to train myself not to watch it every day - which would be easy if one of the stocks wasn't in merger talks. But nonetheless, I'm in for the near-to-long term.

It's like the great depression all over again - the press says "buy 'em while they're so low!"

The crash has not been like Argentina 2002. One bank I use got bought out by a bigger one - but no major changes yet. I'm already moving assets away. The only fallout is that I used that bank to pay my monthly Sky Mexico bill. I'd let my balance drop below the $USD equivalent of the MX peso debt I have with Sky. It just happened - I wanted my balance at that bank to be pretty damn LOW.

(BACKGROUND: I use Sky as Spanish-on-demand lessons on my TV. Sky legally cannot sell into the USA but it's a don't ask-don't tell situation because they want the US revenue. However, if I use a random debit card to pay Sky and then do a transaction in Phoenix a few minutes/hours later - both get flagged as fraud. It takes a half hour on the phone - at minimum - to straighten it all out! So last night - as my Sky bill was due - I called another CREDIT card provider and said - look, you're going to get a charge for a card-not-present transaction for 1,000 MX pesos but you might also see card-present transactions here in Phoenix tonight. They asked me more than ten questions to verify I was who I said I was - smooth sailing. The Mexican payment via Visa went thru and so did three other local transactions made an hour later.)

I'm setting up with yet a 3rd bank and make sure they know that one card-not-present transaction in MX pesos per month is "kosher."

Marathon runner has Alanis Morrissette moment - fastest time but the didn't WIN

2008-10-24T11:23:00.003-07:00

From the Consumerist Blog, this "ironic" story...
There's a bit of a backlash brewing against Nike after the woman with the fastest time in the Nike Women's Marathon wasn't declared "the winner" because she wasn't among the elite group of marathon runners who start separately from the rest of the pack.

Arien O'Connell, a fifth-grade teacher from New York City, had the best time in last Sunday's marathon, in fact, she beat the next best time by 11 minutes. So why isn't she the winner?

From SFGate:
In the statement, Nike officials said that "because of their earlier start time, the runners in the elite group had no knowledge of the outstanding race Arien was running and could not adjust their strategies accordingly."

Weary of the backlash growing against them, Nike declared Ms. O'Conell "a winner." Not "the winner." This appears to have made things worse.

It turns out that there was really no need for an elite group of runners, because no one was running an "elite" time.

Isn't it IRONIC? Don't you think?

From SFGate:
...the Nike marathon in San Francisco doesn't have anyone running a world-class time - which would be something around 2 hours and 20 minutes - for the 26.2-mile course. Only O'Connell broke 3 hours - and she'd never done it before.

"I think that's what it comes down to," O'Connell said. "There is not a real definition of what it means to be in an elite field."

That's where the Nike event got in trouble. If it had recognized that there was no need for an elite pack, and everyone had lined up and run, the fastest time would have been the winner. No argument.

In fact, that was the other part of Nike's announcement Wednesday.
"Learning from the unique experience in this year's race," it said. "Nike has decided today to eliminate the elite group from future Nike Women's Marathons. Next year, all runners will run in the same group, and all will be able to win."

Candidates ignoring coming Social Security crisis, critics say

2008-10-23T21:28:00.003-07:00

Ummm....

The above is a CNN headline!

Since 1984 or before we've collectively known of a coming Social (in)Security crisis. Every presidential election we get this big publicity handjob about about Social Security, Healthcare, the national debt, blablabla. It's the same crap 24 years later - and 24 years from now I bet USD$100 (value as of 23 Oct 2008) none of it will have changed.

Mile High Club

2008-10-22T19:03:00.003-07:00

Ok, I'm confused. It is nearly impossible to join the mile high club sitting in economy class unless you're on a rare near-empty middle-of-the-night flight --- and have a willing participant. Either that or you both better fit in the bathroom and finish quick! But I'm pretty sure that legs in the air from airplane seats are a no-no...

Indians visit the moon....

2008-10-21T19:25:00.002-07:00

I can see it now.

They will get there. They will return unharmed. I definitely can imagine a red dot being pressed to launch it, and another to return it to earth. ;)

:)

Palin on Saturday Night Live - no surprise on the west coast

2008-10-18T22:38:00.003-07:00

Because the Central and Eastern time zones get a differently timed feed (2 hours ahead of us) pretty much all of the Palin woman's appearance on SNL was leaked on the web. I watched anyway just to see it - it was the first time I'd been home near my HD set to really see the difference between Tina Fey and Caribou Barbie. DAMN CLOSE.

I watched the other bits on either YouTube or NBC.com - there is no substitute for the local over the air broadcast (uncompressed by cable or satellite) in 1080i.

I'll keep watching SNL until the end just in case anything got held back on the web.

It is STUPID that even though the New York City local television station signals are landing on my satellite dish, I can't pay for them to be displayed due to a stupid federal law.

Crossing from Mexico to the USA - a moving target

2008-10-18T01:01:00.004-07:00

The rules keep changing. I was thinking about going to Rocky Point with my dog. Last I'd read, all one needed was current proof of rabies vaccination.

Nope. Now its added expense: one has to get a health certificate signed by a vet. My particular vet costs $65.00 for this. Looks like just boarding her during any trip makes more sense.

That's the bad news. I got an envelope in the mail yesterday from the Border Patrol. I'm wondering, what in the heck is this... then I recall that they told me at the CBP office where I registered that I'd get an updated card in the mail that's a passport-equivalent.

That's what it was.

Here's their "SAMPLE" (public) images of the old and new cards. What, are you kidding, I'm going to put a picture of one of my ID documents on the internet? I will say I don't have the stupid mustache like the dude on the left. The card on the right is like the one I got in the mail. It was an internet-based activation process. The card is a complicated little beast made of at least three parts fused together. The documentation that came along with it made it very clear that there is an RFID chip inside it. It came with a sleeve that was lined with gold foil and the instructions are quite clear that the card should be kept in your wallet in that sleeve to prevent it being read by 3rd parties without one's knowledge.

It means no need to carry the paper passport on road trips south.

Wal-Mart Canada offers super-extra-strength feminine products

2008-10-13T20:41:00.002-07:00

Wal-Mart Canada's website is offering a unique new feminine hygiene product. I really don't think they are singling out Canadians - this product should be available in Chicago as well to make the public transport experience a little better.

The brazilians are here - Pare de Sufrir is in central Phoenix!

2008-10-11T10:15:00.003-07:00

I could not believe the sight. I certainly don't believe their ideology.

Late at night all over South America this group buys (bought? I don't know, it was a couple of years ago) TV time to draw people in. Generally anything having to do with the christian religion is a turn-off, but this group was just so wacky with what they'd do to draw people to their "churches" I would sometimes be curious about what they were promising NEXT. Besides, it was a challenge to understand the thickly-Brazilian-accented Spanish they spoke. The best thing they had on offer was "blessed soap" to wash your sins away.

It was SO surprising to see their logo on a building downtown. A, um, modified version of their logo ;) is part of this posting. I like the modified version a little better since it more accurately represents what they do.

Saturday, October 11th - my voting day

2008-10-11T01:04:00.003-07:00

My early voting ballot is here. Tomorrow I'm going to sit down and (most likely) vote a straight Democratic ticket - with the exception that no incumbent in the City of Scottsdale is going to get my vote. By Monday morning I will have mailed it.

Joe Arpaio again as Sheriff? You've got to be kidding. That guy shouldn't be running *anything* much less a law-enforcement agency. His ads on local cable (which thankfully I only see at the gym) show him receiving the Arizona Republic and then throwing it in the trash immediately - referring to it as the LIBERAL MEDIA?

WTF? The AZ Republic(an) is LIBERAL? He must be smoking something he seized to have that idea.

He may well get re-elected but it won't be because of me.

The economy is just... well, crap. I sold all my retirement funds and stock positions in 2003 when I moved to Uruguay and I have to say - right now I'm feeling pretty OK with that decision. A greedy American Express financial adviser had already lost 1/3 of the value so why not?

I may buy back into the market just before the election - I think that will be the all-time-low for a lot of stocks.

The negativity of the McSame campaign shocks me (but only a little). When you don't have anything to be FOR, or its so volatile how much the candidate is erratically changing his mind - he really doesn't have much option but to go negative. If TJ Maxx in Seattle (I doubt they have locations in Juneau, AK or Anchorage, AK) sold Prada - Palin would have bought it there. (On the other hand anyone who shopped TJ Maxx has had their credit card details stolen due to the abject stupidity of the management of that retail chain!)

Palin - OMFG what a self-righteous bitch. Her silly pentecostal religion is going to bite her in the ass (two words about Pentecostals in high places: 'John Ashcroft') - along with the outcome of the investigation into her interference as governor w/r/t/ the job of that state trooper who divorced a family member. If McCain was smart (not really possible due to the pre-embalming process he appears to have undergone, VERY visible on HDTV) he'd quietly dump Palin and get Tina Fey from Saturday Night Live as his running mate. Looks the same and would do far less harm.

At the root of it - neither candidate will do a damn thing. It's not in their personal or party best interests. Since 1988, again in 1992, again in 1996, again in 2000 and again in 2004 - we heard a bunch of crap from both sides about how healthcare and social security would be fixed. Not going to happen in my lifetime. Hell, I was at my doctor's office this morning and they had their usual posting up about whether lunch would be catered by one of the Big Pharmaceutical companies. Apparently today - YES, it would be. Seems to be the case everytime I'm there.

America 2008 is a very fucked up place. Will it get "fixed"? I don't know. The Roman Empire eventually collapsed and "fixed" a lot of its problems. It's the only "fix" I see in sight. Meanwhile out of fear I continue to pay taxes and look forward to retiring offshore.

Shaggy goes to the beach

2008-10-05T21:28:00.005-07:00

I took Shaggy to the beach this afternoon. This beach is one of the few that allows dogs and between labor day and memorial day they can be off leash.

Just one little problem. Shaggy is in heat. Had I let her off leash it would have been a Discovery Channel moment (or several). Since I don't want my cute little dog knocked up - we had to cut the visit short. But I got a few pictures first.

This is the view from the beach:

Uverse - not ready for prime time

2008-10-05T21:07:00.003-07:00

I'm experiencing the joy of AT 'n T's U-Verse service. I'm underwhelmed.

With only ONE television turned on and no multiple DVR recordings happening - i.e. one standard def video stream - the picture froze about once every half hour.

The 2WIRE brand box that's the center of the system is the size of (remember telephone directories?) one of the volumes of the Manhattan yellow pages. I haven't figured out the network topology - I think it's all IP over co-ax.

The neat thing about it is it's a distributed digital video recording system. If you record the show on the main box - it's available for playback on the other boxes in the house. However it's impossible to delete a recorded show from one of the other boxes, it has to be done from the "main" set.

It seems to do firmware upgrades (or something) at odd times. 4:30 pm this afternoon, right in the middle of prime football watching - the main 2WIRE box went offline for five minutes. It's hard to tell if this is just a bad install or what - but it seems that many other u-verse users have similar issues.

The pluses - channel change is pretty well instantaneous, no delay like on digital cable or satellite. The picture quality is crystal clear (even when it's frozen for that 1 second or so every half hour).

I hate to say it but if they can fix the freeze-ups and I lived in an area where u-Verse was available - I might end my longstanding boycott of the deathstar.

Tina Fey nails Palin again - hilarious!

2008-10-05T10:11:00.001-07:00

HDTV is a bitch

2008-10-03T02:47:00.002-07:00

Palin is tan from the top hairline down to the chin.

Pasty-white and freckles below.

Biden - Palin debate comments -----

2008-10-03T02:36:00.004-07:00

First of all - Gwen Ifill hosting this is all good but... Much better to have Whoopi Goldberg. No disrespect to Gwen but Whoopi would have been better.

All well and good to talk about healthcare, job creation, etc...

Both are 100% full of shit.

None of it will ever happen.

Neighbors

2008-10-02T23:25:00.002-07:00

Oh my. My downstairs neighbor gets more offensive by the day. I was on the phone with my mom talking about something really heavy - and he was good for some levity.

Out of the blue he starts screaming... "You little (ethnic slur) M-F'ers (except he says the whole word good and loud because he's half-deaf) on your skateboards make so much goddamn noise...."

The tirade was so loud I could hardly hear myself think. Mom could hear him crystal clear through the phone. She knew who it was too - I'd warned her to A-V-O-I-D him when she was visiting here.

Jokingly I said to my mom, "Of course I won't do this - he'd shoot me - but I really want to go dump water over the side of the balcony on him to shut him up. Besides, it'll give the kids something to laugh at."

But... must control such impulses. He *really* would shoot me, too!

Just once, as big around as my arm from my elbow to my wrist.

2008-10-02T23:01:00.003-07:00

Ok, enough doom and gloom. This one had me laughing the whole (2 minute) drive home.

I go to the supermarket daily. I've said it over and over on here - it's a habit formed living in Uruguay. Besides, it's a great way of not seeing just how much money a month I'm spending on food when its spread over 28 transactions vs. 3 or 4 :)

My local supermarket just started carrying Yakult.

The name is off-putting to the American-english speaking ear. It evokes images of some strange religion practiced by Ren and Stimpy or worse yet, it sounds vaguely Russian. Then when you pick up the bottle it says "fermented milk product."

The latina cashiers are all surprised. "I didn't know we sold that! My mom made me drink one of these every day growing up in Mexico!"

The cashier tonight asked me - "What IS this stuff? I've never seen it."

I'm trying to be diplomatic. "It's like Dan-Activ (an active culture yogurt) but cheaper and more effective. It just appeared in the store here and I always bought it when I lived in South America. I drank one every morning and then it wasn't a problem if I slipped up and drank the well water."

Yes its a cop-out but it's quicker than having the "Where is Uruguay?" conversation.

Oh my god, the responses you get... "Huh. My husband is never regular. He always tells me, JUST ONCE I'D LIKE TO PUSH ONE OUT AS BIG AROUND AS MY ARM FROM MY ELBOW TO MY WRIST all in one piece."

I started laughing and was like, "Don't take me there!"

I nodded over at the latina cashier a few lanes away and said, "Oh, it works. She knows what it is too, she was surprised to see it here and even more surprised to see a gringo buying it." (American girls don't know the proper word they really call us, which is gabacho."

I figured, I really don't want to know more about this unknown man's bowel movements.

So the woman asks me - "How long does it take to work?"

Hell, I don't know. But I answer anyway because I was hitting enter on the debit card machine and knew I'd escape shortly... "Three or four days." I'm trying to change the subject a little... "Don't let the description on the bottle put you off - where it says 'fermented milk product'. It tastes better than it sounds."

"Huh, how 'bout that. I'll have to have him try it. If I see him again I'll let you know."

"Well you have a great night - but I mean no disrespect - I'd rather not know OK? Take care..." and with that I'm the HELL out of there!

from APPROVED to DECLINED - the message loud and clear from the House of Representatives

2008-09-30T03:46:00.001-07:00

After today's news out of Washington, I was originally speechless. Then I got mad and started writing. My writing style is rather, well, blunt.

My biggest wonder is about getting paid by my clients. But this is a cyclical wonder that happens every 15 days. Either it continues or it stops, right? I work as hard as I can. I don't have a 401(k), I'm not invested in the market - but this stuff worries me. I have aging family about to retire and the value of their 401(k) may put that off - but they may have no choice but to start traveling that road due to lack of employment.

I'm also not sure if globalization is about to be redefined. To the average joe six pack globalization means "Gee, wow, ya mean there's a TGI Fridays in Buenos Aires? Cool!" To the economist - they start to lose me at "intertwined" - not because I don't understand it but because it's SO OBVIOUS. Intertwined? No fuckin' kidding. And then the first time they say "probable" - well then I've really tuned out now haven't I?

What I'm wondering is more along the lines of - are we finally seeing a scripted-in-English slow motion (but picking up speed) localized for our country version of a Latin American collapse? Argentina in 2002? Brazil's hyperinflation in the 1970's? Will the US dollar drop so much in the coming weeks that the Zimbabwe dollar (currently at trillions of them to buy USD$1) actually gain ground, with no intervention of the Zimbabwe government?

I haven't been this freaked out about the economy since I was ten years old, living in Kenosha, WI. Unemployment peaked in Kenosha at about ... 33% if I recall correctly? It was exactly tied with Flint, Michigan. Kenosha sort of recovered, Flint not so much. That was all about the auto industry. It was an impending sea change in the economy and no one knew what was coming out the other end, or when it would end or in what form.

We found out. It was - would you like fries with that OR would you like to get real tech-savvy real fast? There wasn't much in between. And oh did we get addicted. No, not to drugs or alcohol (well... nevermind). We got addicted to the word APPROVED. Better than a food pellet. Some of the machines still show it in blue LED letters in that speak-and-spell font. Some show it completely drawn in, on a black-on-grey LCD. And you damn right well gave that machine the once-over before you shared your card with it, we wised up about tossing those reciepts willy-nilly so that someone else did not assume our APPROVal.

The bankers figured it out although we have to keep kicking 'em in the balls to protect privacy - but they kept those approvals coming because they knew we were hooked. Nobody cared HOW the approvals happened but oh we wanted more. We were ENTITLED at varying levels due to the magic of a thing called a FICO score. Step right up and get approved! You'll probably get approved even with a low score but just skip over that fine print with the boring "legal" disclosures (they'd usually trail off into some fast hard to catch mumbling at that point) and then perk back up with "BUT JUST SIGN HERE, YOU'RE APPROVED!"

And now it's the money shot. We set ourselves up to have that 110-pound 6'1" naked hooker pop out of the cake - except there was a surprise. She used to weigh 510 pounds and hasn't had the skin removal surgery yet, she hasn't quite figured out not to eat much if any fatty food with her Alli tablets so she came out of the cake leaving an oily $4.50 a gallon trail. (Oh, except in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and parts 'round there... they line up for a tank of that oily $4.50 a gallon trail!) And oh baby - she's got some medical debt. Her FICO score is more fucked up than the skin on her thighs! By god that cost and that risk is going to get spread across all the users of the system - willing and unwilling.

So we come back to - what is globalization? Just maybe it's not that bright shiny future the marketers pitch. What if, just maybe, it bears NO resemblance to a Cisco commercial? And as approvals are slowing down - snowballing even - what's going to happen now? It's like being ten years old all over again and the biggest industry of your small town just evaporated, never to return - except on a national level.

Oh, it'll rebound somehow in some form - but at what level? The standard of living expected in the mid-70's took quite a bit more effort in the mid-80's and even more in the mid-90's. There are only 24 hours in a day. I hear that in some households there are two parents that both make a real good wage - but that's an ever-smaller demographic. Used to be maybe 20% of the pie chart looked like that. But there's just a sliver left. Your chances of getting a taste aren't high.

So what form could globalization take? A lot of empty unkempt buildings all over urban America - just like major urban areas abroad (and in Detroit)? Evidence that there had once been pavement and road maintenance with odd brief perfectly paved stretches near houses with high walls and electric fences? Four generations under one roof as the norm with as many bars on the windows as one can have but still let light in? Armed private security playing a higher role than police. Could be much of urban America in the near future.

And today the news out of Washington was DECLINED. Oh yeah, the president with the 27-ish percent approval rating (no, the other kind of approval - it has nothing to do with his black Amex co-signed by the Saudis) went on TV to back some legislation HE WROTE HIMSELF, to hear him tell it. His own party and its supporters freaked out. The opposition party called bullshit (as well they should) - everytime that slick fucker in the White House goes on TV several months later it comes out that part or all of it was some preposterous lie to benefit his own agenda.

Could this be where all that APPROVED led us? We pay our elected officials and their employees untold sums of money in salaries, pensions, entitlements - and the result was DECLINED, in the form of no action?

Both sides pointed fingers. Because there's a new synonym for bipartisanship - it's 'bullshit'. Politics has degenerated to, quite simply, having to be RIGHT. That doesn't mean right-wing or left-wing, it means that we have to vote our position because it's the morally superior groupthink correct thing to do among our peer group (political party). After all, it doesn't matter if they get a goddamn thing done because they still get the big salary and the perks. They just have to do their time.

I predict that these highly paid politicians are going to start leaving Washington as if the session is over. Why the hell not? Most of their constituents would be furious about a big hand-out to these same friendly Wall Street bankers - but wouldn't it be a shame if suddenly - there just wasn't a quorum for doing business? As a slick politician who's more concerned about being RIGHT which are you going to pick?

Meanwhile there's heated activity going on inside the huge remaining banks. Most of the mortgage paper is worth just as much as if it were used as toilet paper. Now lets go after the credit cards. There's a trend picking up steam to look at every member of John Q Public and review his avaible credit vs. his FICO score. The new marching orders are to slow down all those APPROVED's.

I hate that any tax money be spent to bail out these wall-street wonks - but at least it CONTROLs it IF our pompous politicians can get past being morally right and actually do something QUITE FORIEGN to any of them: compromise. Because if we don't, wall street is going to implode in an uncontrolled way that will see a lot of golden-parachute deployments over posh Caribbean islands named Saint-Something-or-Other. It'll leave the American people having to kick the APPROVED "drug" cold-turkey but why should they care? It would be a win for the Wall Street slime who shoveled out the approvals. It will be a win for the politicians who have to be morally right. The "Joe Six-Pack demographic" will perceive "they stuck it to the bastards," - and they will realize too late the bastards stuck it to THEM.

The outcome of today's DECLINED message out of the House of Representatives has already reverbrated once around the world. It's going to keep spiraling downwards with every 24-hour cycle. No one knows how far down that will be.

These overpaid out-of-control elected officials need to hear loud and clear: stay in Washington and pass an acceptable compromise that stops the spiral. The historical precedents are there. It may seem impossible in an election year but the two sides have to put aside their differences.

Going to Fry's on Black Monday '08 - or re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic

2008-09-29T23:18:00.002-07:00

EVERY other experience I have had with Fry's is that you will wait 20 or 30 minutes to find a sales rep who's not tied up - this time it was under FIVE. Perhaps under FOUR! The checkout line took an equal amount of time.

It took more time at the supermarket!

Bloody Monday

2008-09-29T22:18:00.003-07:00

Or maybe it's good news? Nah, it has nothing to do with the stock market, it's much closer to home than that.

I paid no attention to the stock market today or the bailout vote. When your expectations of elected officials are that low, why bother?

Better to stay out of the way of the little parts of the government that *do* function - started the day by getting a smashed-out headlight repaired so now I can drive at night without worry! And of course, use GPS to drive everywhere so I *know* my arrival time - thus no need to risk passing a random speed camera going too fast.

How did the headlight get smashed out? Debris on the freeway. When I pulled over to get insurance information from the guys who dropped it - they drove off FAST! No point calling the cops, hit and run accidents happen statistically more often in Phoenix because of the huge population of people who can't get driver's licenses - i.e. undocumented immigrants.

Speed cameras? Run by a for-profit corporation with a cut to the state - the owners win, the state wins, the insurance companies win - but you can't fight that ticket.

(Well some of 'em can be fought but only those taken at a certain location for a few hours... turned out the camera operator isn't even a cop and the guy got nailed for "extreme DUI" IN THE PHOTO RADAR VAN when he went off shift.)

Oh but I digress.

It turns out that Shaggy is in heat. When I picked her up from the dog groomer she told me, "You know your dog is ... (she was embarrassed to have to, you know, tell me, paused and lowered her voice...) having her period? We sell diapers for it, you know?"

"Do you see how hyper that dog is? I don't see a diaper staying on that animal for longer than five minutes out of my sight! But thanks..." (And I'm thinking... I *am* aware that I own an animal that happens to be female so why on earth should this be embarrassing?)

Ah well, it'll be three weeks of erratic behavior and then back to normal. It was better news than from the TV!

USA's do-nothing federal government again, does nothing - spectacularly

2008-09-29T17:55:00.002-07:00

Proving again that it's safer to be "right" than take any action at all, lawmakers did nothing AGAIN for the US people. We're dropping straight past recession due to do-nothing policies and politics. So much for a "compromise" bill to reward the failures of wall street.

So let's see... I have bread here at home and I'll have to check the TV listings for circuses. Yes, that's it, I'll ignore it all with bread and circuses.

Evening in America

2008-09-24T23:13:00.002-07:00

Tonight we saw Bush the Big Liar on TV telling us how "urgent" it was for Congress to bail out wall street.

Um, so sorry - presidents only go on TV during events like the Cuban Missile Crisis or things of that ilk. If he's a republican president and not a "tool" he should be staying at home looking at his investment bank statements and crying in his beer - period. I don't care that some in his party feel the big wall street banks should get a bail-out on the US taxpayers' dime!

Government cash plus bank money = SOCIALISM!

The last time George Jr. was on TV was to tell us how Al Qaeda was linked to 9/11 and how we had to piss away billions in Iraq - and that was all proven many times over to be a BIG FAT LIE.

So he's on TV, (probably) lying his ass off about the "urgency" of the "bailout." Seven tenths of one TRILLION dollars is the amount he's on CNN begging for - excuse me if I'm a little jaded because we haven't seen the equivalent of a Tammy Faye Bakker and an air-conditioned dog house.

Personally, I am only in support of a wall street "gift" from the government (because thats what it will be) if it includes comprehensive birth control provisions for Sarah Palin's kids and federally mandated open records laws applicable to all states - but enforced first in Alaska.

Arson, 100 yards away from home

2008-09-13T03:01:00.004-07:00

The management office of my apartment complex was gutted by fire last night. Fortunately it's a standalone building with no one living adjacent to the structure.

Unreal. Obviously either someone who applied for a place got denied -or- didn't handle getting evicted very well.

The word on the street is that at 4am somebody broke one of the windows of the office and threw some kind of fuel in there and lit it up. I sleep with an air conditioner next to me so I didn't hear anything. The fire had to have gotten put out pretty quickly.

I've vaguely been considering moving. Now the idea is a bit more appealing. I'll feel a little better when I hear that someone's been arrested for the crime.

the WRONG time to join a gym (but it was a good idea anyway)

2008-09-09T22:09:00.004-07:00

Ok, so I need to do lots of cardio each week. The buzz from a good workout lasts into the next day and OH BOY do I need that.

Of course - what's wrong with being at a gym every night - the TV's that face the cardio machines. I.E. it's all politics all the time.

I can't believe how far the right wing's standards have fallen. Ok, we're going to put a woman on the ticket. No matter her fifteen-year-old daughter is knocked-up and her eighteen year old son's scheduled for a shotgun wedding. UNREAL.

McSame's campaign then proceeds to insult the nation's intelligence with that B.S. demand for an apology about a lipstick on a pig metaphor. In reality polls show that most every sighted heterosexual male watching her speech at the convention was thinking "I could hit that."

(For those [few] readers who are still hung up on the lipstick on a pig thing -
(a) just stop reading and
(b) 'hit that' is not about domestic violence - ask a non-home-schooled 15 year old if you've never heard the term)

A friend commented to me that this election has to be extra-confusing for Mormons. From their point of view: On the one side you have a black man (apologies to Seinfeld) - not that there's anything wrong with that (since 1978 that is). On the other side you have a woman with a family who is *away* from her family most of the time and not currently pregnant (although she could be). Incredible. Which to choose?!

On the flip side of it - hell, by default I'll vote for Obama. Hillary Clinton just is too toxic to be on the democrat ticket - just too unpopular. But I'm not thrilled about Joe Biden either - he's been in Washington since 1973.

So both sides have a big dose of "more of the same" and someone really new to the whole scene. Both sides are promising the same bullshit I've heard during every presidential election in my adult life - we're finally going to fix healthcare, we're finally going to fix social security, it goes on and on.

Meanwhile, it's government by and for the corporation. I'll go through the motions and vote but I really don't believe either side will change much of anything. It's not in the best interest of the lobbyists.

For *sure* I'll be making more use of my smartphone and slingbox to avoid the "news" channels until after yet another "no good choice" US presidential election is finally over.

How to complain effectively about T-mobile call delivery problems

2008-09-09T21:57:00.003-07:00

All is not well inside the Magenta Network.

My previous call delivery problem is back with a vengeance - ironically they couldn't deliver a call to me that was coming from the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) convention floor. It wasn't due to local congestion either. They wouldn't even respond with a trouble ticket because I didn't have ALL this information at hand. Their call center did not have access to the previous trouble ticket which was in May.

This SUCKS! I will NOT port my number to the deathstar and trade call delivery problems for billing issues and god-only-knows-what-because-everything-AT&T-touches-turns-to-crap!

To be heard by T-mobile and even get your ticket escalated to anyone who gives a damn it must meet the following criteria:

* Name of the Local Exchange Carrier (LEC or landline telco) of the person making the call
* The full ten or eleven digit number of the calling party (NOTE: Listing only your desk phone number is not valid, Engineering requires the number of the calling party)
* If the call is being placed from a business phone, does the business use a PBX? If so, has the issue been investigated by the local administrator for the system?
* Name of the Long Distance provider of the person making the call
* Has the other carrier been contacted regarding the issue
* Can the customer be reached from a T-Mobile desk phone
* Is the number from a pooled, ported, or a T-Mobile LERG assigned number range? Use the Mobile Codes Table (internal link deleted) to identify pooled or T-Mobile numbers
* Has the T-Mobile number been transferred in from another carrier? If so, which carrier?
* Rebroadcast the number by calling the Number Transfer Center if the number has been ported in within the last 90 days.
* Can the originating party dial to other similar mobile numbers (If the mobile number of the customer is 1-571-555-1212 can the other party dial a similiar number such as 1-571-555-1210, etc.)

NOTE: If you are unable to resolve the issue and need to forward the trouble ticket, inform the customer that we may need to do further testing up to and including our own test calls to the phone number(s) they provided. Include the following in the notes:

* Did the customer give approval for us to do further testing with the unique examples of parties calling them that they provided?

McSame's son tied to a bank failure in the western USA

2008-09-06T19:57:00.003-07:00

Silver City Bank, well known in Nevada and less so in other Western states - failed today. Andrew McSame (er, McCain) was a member of the board of directors of both Silver City Bank and Silver City Bancorp.

Reason? The big mortgage implosion that's part in parcel of the non-recession (say McSame supporters) happening in the US economy.

No recession? Not so much. Six months ago when I would go to Costco to get gas during rush hour (5:45-6:45) I'd have to wait 15 minutes or more to get to a pump. Today I can drive right up to a pump and get my membership-priced gas with no wait. No recession, my culo.

The truth about the schizophrenic socialism in the US Government

2008-09-06T19:51:00.003-07:00

The two big quasi-government mortgage banks got put under government control today.

A commenter on a commercial blog (rhymes with *onsumerist, but I won't publicize them because I completely disagree with their heavy-handed one-sided management) put it the best way I ever could (if I thought about it):

Words are attributed to ARP on the gawkermedia.com blog where they'll probably delete his post:

I'm so sick of this neoconservative approach of private profits and public losses. And yet, they talk about the "market" "capitalism" and all the other buzzwords to scare you into thinking that socialism is just around the corner. Socialism has been here for a while, just not in the way they've scared you into thinking. Our version of socialism [is] just for the wealthy and "can't fail" corporations, so regular [people] get zero benefit from it like other countries do (e.g. health care, education, infrastructure, etc). So my opinion is that we either become partially socialist a la Canada, UK, etc. or we become more capitalist and let shitty businesses fail.

Rogers GSM - crap service even downtown Toronto

2008-09-04T19:57:00.002-07:00

I was trying to carry on a phone conversation with a friend in Toronto tonight. Both of his phones, two different accounts with Rogers, kept dropping the calls. No single call would stay up for more than 2 1/2 minutes!

It's bad enough that Rogers is a GSM monopoly with every monthly bill being an exercise in price-gouging (assuming its accurate) - but to have to redial 20 times in an hour when the guy's got 4 bars of service showing on his phone? Bleah.

We'd have switched to Skype but their cable-modem throughput at this time of night plus traffic shaping makes VOIP unintelligible. Can't win. Rogers sucks.

more about Sarah Palin you really should know

2008-09-04T16:17:00.002-07:00

She DID support the Bridge to Nowhere (before she opposed it). Here's a picture of her with a T-shirt supporting the project. Palin claimed that she said "thanks, but no thanks" to the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. But in 2006, Palin supported the project repeatedly, saying that Alaska should take advantage of earmarks "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."

Palin recently said that the war in Iraq is "God's task." She's even admitted she hasn't thought about the war much—just last year she was quoted saying, "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

Palin has actively sought the support of the fringe Alaska Independence Party. Six months ago, Palin told members of the group—who advocate for a vote on secession from the union—to "keep up the good work" and "wished the party luck on what she called its 'inspiring convention.'"

Palin wants to teach creationism in public schools. She hasn't made clear whether she thinks evolution is a fact.

Palin doesn't believe that humans contribute to global warming. Speaking about climate change, she said, "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being manmade."

Palin has close ties to Big Oil. Her inauguration was even sponsored by BP.

Palin is extremely anti-choice. She doesn't even support abortion in the case of rape or incest.

Palin opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools. She's said she will only support abstinence-only approaches.

As mayor, Palin tried to ban books from the library. Palin asked the library how she might go about banning books because some had inappropriate language in them—shocking the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. According to Time, "news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor."

RNC convention ruins coverage of hurricane

2008-09-01T15:05:00.002-07:00

I'm far more curious about seeing what happened in Louisiana and east Texas as a result of Hurricane Gustav than I am about knowing *anything* about the Republican National Committee convention.

Now that the coverage is combined I'm going to have to wait for newspaper and magazine coverage that separate the two. I wish some bright spark at CNN would figure out that a lot of us don't want to see ANY part of the RNC convention and use one of their channels just for that and the other for coverage of Gustav.

OMFG - McCain's other possible choices

2008-08-31T10:29:00.002-07:00

Meg Whitman - former CEO of eBay.
* I can see that one now. The IRS would be taking Paypal and ONLY Paypal. Military/government surplus? eBay would become the exclusive seller.

Carly Fiorina - of HP fame.
* She could make for less government, that's for sure. We could reduce the head-count at the FBI and hire a big team of pretexters to get information.

McCain-Palin - the "maverick" meets the loony right wing

2008-08-30T15:59:00.002-07:00

This is what you need to know about the admittedly very telegenic Sarah Palin, the surprise candidate for republican VP. I don't always agree with some of the things that the MoveOn.org lobbyists send me but this one is worth re-distributing because I agree with it.

Yesterday was John McCain's 72nd birthday. If elected, he'd be the oldest president ever inaugurated. And after months of slamming Barack Obama for "inexperience," here's who John McCain has chosen to be one heartbeat away from the presidency: a right-wing religious conservative with no foreign policy experience, who until recently was mayor of a town of 9,000 people.

Huh?

Who is Sarah Palin? Here's some basic background:

* She was elected Alaska's governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience.(1)
* Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest.(2)
* She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000. (3)
* Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.(4)
* She's doesn't think humans are the cause of climate change.(5)
* She's solidly in line with John McCain's "Big Oil first" energy policy. She's pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won't be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species—she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.(6)
* How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position. (7)

This is information the American people need to see. Please take a moment to forward this email to your friends and family.

We also asked Alaska MoveOn members what the rest of us should know about their governor. The response was striking. Here's a sample:

She is really just a mayor from a small town outside Anchorage who has been a governor for only 1.5 years, and has ZERO national and international experience. I shudder to think that she could be the person taking that 3AM call on the White House hotline, and the one who could potentially be charged with leading the US in the volatile international scene that exists today. —Rose M., Fairbanks, AK

She is VERY, VERY conservative, and far from perfect. She's a hunter and fisherwoman, but votes against the environment again and again. She ran on ethics reform, but is currently under investigation for several charges involving hiring and firing of state officials. She has NO experience beyond Alaska. —Christine B., Denali Park, AK

As an Alaskan and a feminist, I am beyond words at this announcement. Palin is not a feminist, and she is not the reformer she claims to be. —Karen L., Anchorage, AK

Alaskans, collectively, are just as stunned as the rest of the nation. She is doing well running our State, but is totally inexperienced on the national level, and very much unequipped to run the nation, if it came to that. She is as far right as one can get, which has already been communicated on the news. In our office of thirty employees (dems, republicans, and nonpartisans), not one person feels she is ready for the V.P. position.—Sherry C., Anchorage, AK

She's vehemently anti-choice and doesn't care about protecting our natural resources, even though she has worked as a fisherman. McCain chose her to pick up the Hillary voters, but Palin is no Hillary. —Marina L., Juneau, AK

I think she's far too inexperienced to be in this position. I'm all for a woman in the White House, but not one who hasn't done anything to deserve it. There are far many other women who have worked their way up and have much more experience that would have been better choices. This is a patronizing decision on John McCain's part- and insulting to females everywhere that he would assume he'll get our vote by putting "A Woman" in that position.—Jennifer M., Anchorage, AK

So Governor Palin is a staunch anti-choice religious conservative. She's a global warming denier who shares John McCain's commitment to Big Oil. And she's dramatically inexperienced.

In picking Sarah Palin, John McCain has made the religious right very happy. And he's made a very dangerous decision for our country.

In the next few days, many Americans will be wondering what McCain's vice-presidential choice means. Please pass this information along to your friends and family.

Citations:
1. "Sarah Palin," Wikipedia, Accessed August 29, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin

2. "McCain Selects Anti-Choice Sarah Palin as Running Mate," NARAL Pro-Choice America, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17515&id=13661-3142163-phDl8qx&t=1

3. "Sarah Palin, Buchananite," The Nation, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17736&id=13661-3142163-phDl8qx&t=2

4. "'Creation science' enters the race," Anchorage Daily News, October 27, 2006
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17737&id=13661-3142163-phDl8qx&t=3

5. "Palin buys climate denial PR spin—ignores science," Huffington Post, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17517&id=13661-3142163-phDl8qx&t=4

6. "McCain VP Pick Completes Shift to Bush Energy Policy," Sierra Club, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17518&id=13661-3142163-phDl8qx&t=5

"Choice of Palin Promises Failed Energy Policies of the Past," League of Conservation Voters, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17519&id=13661-3142163-phDl8qx&t=6

"Protecting polar bears gets in way of drilling for oil, says governor," The Times of London, May 23, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17520&id=13661-3142163-phDl8qx&t=7

7. "McCain met Palin once before yesterday," MSNBC, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=21119&id=13661-3142163-phDl8qx&t=8

An open letter to T-Mobile USA

2008-08-30T15:56:00.002-07:00

This communication is explicitly not a request to renew my contract. I intend to remain OUT of contract until T-Mobile corrects some serious deficiencies in its service and phone offerings.

I was amused to receive a marketing piece from T-mobile today offering me $49.99. This was described as a "free month of service." Hardly. My average bill with T-mobile is always over $100. The goal of the marketing piece was to get me to renew my contract - which I will not do.

I have no complaints with customer service - once I got your support organization to take me seriously they bent over backwards to get the problem fixed. I am generally a happy customer.

Why won't I renew my contract - especially for a paltry fifty bucks?! Every so often I go to the "upgrade phone" section of your site and I see that I already own the most "advanced" most expensive model on offer - the Wing.

T-mobile was "a day late and a dollar short" six months ago with regard to rolling out 3g coverage. It adds insult to injury that your company has chosen a frequency band designed to be incompatible with any other 3g device.

I will renew my contract...
- when there is 3g coverage in the Phoenix metro area and...
- when there are phones on the market that not only support the incompatible 1700 mHz AWS band but are usable to roam on 3g services abroad.

I have no intention of switching to AT&T. Alltel, Sprint, Verizon - forget it, CDMA phones are useless outside the USA. Looking at my usage history you'll see that more months than not I have internataional roaming or text messaging charges.

So, once 3g coverage is available in Phoenix and there are "business-class Windows Mobile or Android" 3g phones available (other than the few 3g feature-free toys available - targeted at high school kids and soccer moms) then I'll sign a contract. Until then, forget it. I'll pay my bill every month and stay contract free until T-Mobile USA catches up with the rest of the world.
(signature)

A copy of the same message was submitted verbatim to T-mobile's customer service. As soon as I publish this post I will take this $49.99 "voucher" and feed it to my paper shredder.

You can't make this s**t up!

2008-08-19T22:14:00.003-07:00

In this morning's paper (along with other atrocities to the senses, see the earlier post) there was an article about a guy suing a restaurant in Chicago because he claims he was infected with a tapeworm parasite there.

After seeing the funeral pictures I was feeling... I don't know what, really.

The article said (in part)
"A man who contends he got a 9-foot tapeworm after eating undercooked fish has sued a Chicago restaurant.

In the lawsuit filed Monday, Anthony Franz said he ordered salmon salad for lunch from (name of very-well-known Chicago seafood restaurant) in 2006 and fell violently ill. He later passed the giant parasite, which a pathologist determined came from undercooked fish, such as salmon."

I could not help but comment. In the USA this could well be used (hell, even approved and marketed) as a weight loss product.

My comment read: "Now all the girls in North Scottsdale are gonna want one. It'll be the new botox. You go to your doctor's office, eat a special plate of sushi and blam-o you've got a little friend in your gut that allows you to eat all the nasty fast food you want and still stay thin. Every year afterwards you go back in for laparoscopic surgery to remove your KFC-buddy and in the recovery room, another plate of special sushi.

I can't wait to see how the drug reps market it and what kind of pretty name they give the worm. Imagine the TV commercials!"

It was total through-the-looking-glass-after-having-seen-a-pimped-out-dead-body-before-breakfast fiction. Sounded funny at the time but who knew the response it would get... A woman wrote me and confirmed that while it may not be on the open market, it's already available. Read on:

By (kept anonymous) ".... (my username on the site deleted): They already do such a thing. It's pretty underground but you can buy the parasite overseas and use it. I've seen the delivery of such parasite and then seen it be used and then watched as HE daily ate like a pig and lost weight. Then went to the doctor, said he had visited a foreign country and got a pill to get rid of it. And it was a man, not a woman who did it. Gross."

Holy shit. I suppose it's one of those coincidences like "I have the same birthday!" that another human being could imagine and actually act upon using a parasite as a weight loss tool. I think it was 25 minutes at least before I stopped laughing at the response.

USA funerals, ghetto-style

2008-08-19T21:47:00.003-07:00

I cannot in good conscience post the pictures seen in the paper. It would be disrespect for the dead and I'd rather leave that on AP's collective karma!

A google search for "san juan wake standing up" will probably locate the pictures. If you're reading on your lunch hour - eat first, eat after or (god help you if you can) eat DURING.

The dude is propped up in the corner of his mom's living room in a stylized NY Yankees hat, Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, layered T-shirts and jeans. His body had been found "under a bridge," as the local version of the article says.

I feel for the family's loss, from the heart. However, I don't know what they were thinking when they let the press take pictures. The poor guy will be (indelibly) remembered by millions.

jesus freak funeral protestors turned away at the Canadian border - but supposedly not all of them :( ...

2008-08-08T22:15:00.005-07:00

I won't mention the website name that these idiots from Topeka run. I hope the second group get their asses kicked, then charged, then deported. This is a sad footnote to a gruesome story that got little press in the USA.

In short, an innocent "nice guy" was beheaded by a crazy guy on a Greyhound bus in the province of Manitoba. For the geographically challenged, Manitoba is above northwest Minnesota and North Dakota.

Google it for more details - it's too disgusting and depressing.

Beheading victim protesters stopped
Winnipeggers urge action against U.S. sect planning McLean funeral picket
By SIMON FULLER, SUN MEDIA
The Winnipeg Sun

Members of a controversial U.S.-based church hoping to picket the funeral of beheading victim Tim McLean Jr. were turned away at the Canadian border by officials yesterday.

The Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Kan., announced Wednesday it planned to protest the funeral, to be held tomorrow afternoon at Westwood Community Church. But church spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of church pastor Fred Phelps, confirmed last night one "team" of pickets were turned away at the Canadian border yesterday.

However, she said a second team was "on course" to arrive in Winnipeg in time for tomorrow's funeral.

"The only way they won't get through is if they are strip-searched and they find Westboro Baptist Church tattoos on their butts," said Phelps-Roper, who previously told the Winnipeg Sun McLean's "filthy ways" brought wrath upon his head.

If they do make it across the border, angry Winnipeggers are ready to confront them. Several Winnipeggers outraged by news the funeral for McLean, who was beheaded and partially eaten on a Greyhound bus west of Portage la Prairie last week, are planning to block the group from getting anywhere close to funeral-goers.

By early last night, a Facebook group devoted to the idea had swelled to almost 200 people.

"Everything they say is bizarre and off the wall and it's totally disrespectful to invade a funeral," said Winnipeg student Amalia Slobogian, 26, who joined the group after reading about the church's plans.

"When I first heard this, I was very angry. Freedom of speech is one thing, but imposing this at a funeral is totally inappropriate."

Pat Martin, the NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre, agreed.

"These guys are lunatics," said Martin.

"They're not baptists -- Tommy Douglas was a baptist."

Martin said there could be an "absolute melee at the church" if the picket goes ahead. If so, the folks from Kansas should be prepared for some "northern hospitality," he said.

Speaking from Ottawa, Martin said yesterday afternoon he had urged Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Immigration Minister Diane Finley to block the church's passage into Canada.

"They treated my concerns with absolute decency and respect," he said. "This is not a partisan issue and it goes beyond political stripes -- it's about common decency."

Slobogian said the controversial church -- whose members believe God is punishing people and nations who accept homosexuality -- is just trying to get publicity.

"They're just a tiny sect looking for attention and notoriety. It would torture them if people didn't hit their website," she said.

Slobogian said the anticipated protesters will not be met with violence or placards, just a human barricade to separate them from funeral guests.

A Winnipeg police spokeswoman said the protest would not violate any hate laws, but officers have the ability to lay charges depending on what happens tomorrow.

She said charges can be laid under the provincial Cemeteries Act if anyone wilfully and unlawfully disturbs people assembled "for the purpose of burying a body."

Vince Weiguang Li has been charged with second-degree murder in McLean's death. He is currently undergoing a psychiatric assessment to determine if he is fit to stand trial and is scheduled to appear in court again on Sept. 8.

---

WHAT IS WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH?

WHO: Westboro Baptist Church

WHAT: Headed by disbarred lawyer Fred Phelps, the church has 71 members, 60 of whom are reportedly related to Phelps through blood, marriage or both. It is not associated with any known Baptist conventions or associations.

WHERE: Based in Topeka, Kan.

WHEN: First public service was held on Nov. 27, 1955.

WHY: Followers believe God views homosexuality as the ultimate sin. As a result, any community or nation accepting of the "homosexual agenda" is hated by God, and bad things that happen to its citizens are signs of His work.

LOWLIGHTS: Members have picketed funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and the memorial for victims of the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia ... Members have praised such things as AIDS and the 9/11 terror attacks ... Made several racial and anti-Semitic statements.

NBC coverage of olympic opening ceremonies disses Uruguay...

2008-08-08T21:17:00.003-07:00

The Uruguayan delegation got THREE seconds of coverage on American TV during the parade of nations. THREE! Pitiful. I had to rewind on my PVR and then pause it to see what their athletes were wearing.

It was disappointing to see just a "flash" of the athletes from a place that I consider to be something of a second home. The McCain for president (Yecch - a vote for McCain is a vote for more of the same B.S. from Washington) commercial that followed not long afterwards was ten times longer.

DirecTV vs. over-the-air HD / olympics opening ceremonies

2008-08-08T19:20:00.003-07:00

There is no comparison. Both are supposedly 1080i. Both my receivers are personal video recorders, both receive HD, but one has an over-the-air tuner.

The picture quality through the satellite service looks like garbage. I get an occasional freeze-up of the over-the-air picture but it's worth it. I don't watch a hell of a lot of olympics coverage every four years but I will probably re-aim the little outdoor UHF antenna to get it pointed more perfectly.

www.antennaweb.org is the place to go to find out how, where and what type of antenna to aim. If you live in the core of whatever city you're in, you probably have high enough signal strength that you can bypass your cable or satellite. The improvement in quality is well worth it!

GSM in Canada - Robbers Communications (er, Rogers)

2008-08-07T00:30:00.003-07:00

I visited a friend in Canada this past weekend. GSM in Canada is like a large percentage of the supermarket business in Uruguay - the "appearance" that there are competitors but they are all the same company.

Cellular service - especially anything having to do with data - was absolute RAPE! It was actually cheaper for me to send a text message ROAMING than it was for my friend and the per-kilobyte data charge ROAMING was less than what the locals pay UNDER CONTRACT. Canadian media is a mafia tightly controlled out of Ottawa and there are really only... five companies and the government in the media business. Your GSM phone showed two networks "Fido" and "Rogers" - except about five years ago Rogers (referred to universally by the locals as Robbers) - bought Fido. Fido had been reasonably priced but they were not in the good graces of Ottawa - and the market is so small in terms of users and the territory so large its hard for a smaller company to make a profit. Most of the cellular plans will sell you 150 minutes for the same price Americans pay for 1000. But that's not really the final price...

Robbers charges a CDN$6.50 "system access fee" which is not included in the plan price either. They also CHARGE EXTRA for "features" like caller ID and voicemail. Oh, and the concept of "long distance" still applies although they will hit you with a charge for "unlimited Canadian long distance." Robbers' coverage is OK, I didn't use GSM very much because I was "on vacation." It'll be interesting to see what I get charged for a couple of uses of Exchange push email and a random MMS message I received.

It's also very strange that they do business under a family name. There actually is a Ted Robbers, er, Rogers that owns the whole thing. I don't know of any other nation where the GSM carrier is so obviously family owned and so obviously politically connected.

Monday was a government holiday in Canada so most people had the day off. A Robbers telemarketer called my friend since he shares an account with his roommate. The telemarketer got SO shouted at when first of all he kept calling my friend "Catherine" even though DUH it was obviously a male voice on the line.... my friend just SNAPPED when he used a pushy sales tactic of ignoring the customer saying NO and trying to close the sale by saying "So can I ship you that new Nokia phone? We'll even waive the activation and shipping charges!" Such a deal. Activation and shipping charges on top of all the other nickels and dimes they ding their customers with. Besides, "Catherine" signed a contract a year ago - accepting the phone would add on two more years which is the goal. (There's talk in the Canadian press of another GSM carrier getting into the market and strangely enough it'll be Egyptian-held Orascom who might be backing it. I'll believe it when I see it....) The telemarketer stuck to his script and offered "Catherine" a "free analysis" of how she could "reduce" her bill. Want to know what it was? Reduce the number of minutes contracted. Duh. Of course the bill goes down - maybe. Might go way up when she goes over that tiny little pittance of minutes she changed to from the other tiny little pittance of minutes.

The other carriers smell blood in the water. One of them is running an ad campaign that says "Ditch that system access fee."

They're also in the cable TV business. The cable TV mafia in Canada is the same as the wired/wireless phone mafia. Robbers is not as bad as Shaw - at least they let you lease that soon-to-be-obsolete cable box. Shaw charges CDN$800 for the same Scientific Atlanta Explorer.

TiVo is the gold standard of personal video recorders. However, the only TiVo available in Canada is analog because.... it's the exact same platform and headend as in the USA, and there are "some" sets with cablecard/QAM tuning that make it into the CDN market - but no CDN cable company has implemented cablecard. That nifty dual cablecard TiVo available in the USA *could* work in Canada if the media mafia there decided to give their customers the option.

US Airways - nickel and diming customers

2008-08-07T00:22:00.002-07:00

Dammit, if you want your flying experience to be like a phone bill - crammed with surprise charges - US Airways is your carrier.

They've just instituted a charge for beverages on top of a charge for checked baggage. It's two bucks for a diet coke or for juice! What a ripoff. It's bad enough that TSA enforces the ripoff prices charged inside airports for food and beverage then US Air nickel and dimes you for drinks on board their planes. Two bucks for a diet coke "correct CHANGE appreciated." (My emphasis is on the word change.)

This morning I tested their policy to see if they will accept change. Without a word I handed the flight attendant a $2 roll of nickels to pay for my beverage. Success!

I think everyone who flys US Airways should express their appreciation for this policy by having correct CHANGE for the flight attendant. Yeah, it's not their fault but the additional expense of coin handling should get their attention that its stupid marketing to so completely unbundle the cost of the flying experience.

TD Canada Trust - a/k/a Tittybank

2008-08-06T23:43:00.006-07:00

I spent the weekend in Toronto. I have lots more to write about it but too tired now. This (or rather, these) had to see the light of day.

My friend banks at TD Canada Trust. After I saw their marketing material - they should change their name to Tittybank.

So we're standing in front of a teller and she's doing the transaction - and this marketing piece literally POPPED out at me. For shit's sake you can see the nipples!

I said to my friend, "Holy shit look at this, what bad taste! You know that these float in the hot tub or someone got bored with photoshop or something."

"I think its photoshop," he said.

"Mmmmm - I'm not so sure... whoever photoshopped it would have had to have left such definite nipples."

She asked if I was American. I admitted it ;) which I don't often do abroad. She said, I'm glad you think its gross - here, take the whole lot back to the states and get 'em out of my sight.

My friend was quite shocked when I giggled and put the whole STACK (hahah) 23 of them in my pocket. 21 made it back to Phoenix because he asked for two of 'em when we walked out of the bank.

Remember, you can click on the picture to make it (cough) larger.

State of California - a new stupid sign sighting

2008-07-19T01:56:00.002-07:00

I had to get the hell out of Arizona for a weekend! 40+ degree (c) temperatures day and night are nearly as bad as winter in the Midwest. Well, nearly. Not enough to make me want to move back :)

San Diego is an easy six-hour drive from Phoenix. I lucked out - gassed up for $3.97 a gallon at Costco in Phoenix and then found the same price in Yuma. Hopefully I won't have to pay the going rate for gas in California - I saw $4.37 at a couple of stations along I-8.

Getting gas in California is a unique experience for those who've never encountered the emission-control nozzles on the gas pumps. It's like there's a huge condom over the gas nozzle. There is also prominent signage everywhere:

"The State of California has determined that (insert name of obvious product here) causes cancer." It's not the exact wording but you see it in places you don't expect it. Duh. I thought gasoline was healthy. Thanks, California!

I stopped at a rest area where I've never pulled off before and ran across a new sign. It had a toll free number where you could reach the California Highway Patrol and it exhorted readers to "Report Vehicle Theft!"

What *fucktard* would NOT report their car being stolen?!

Mormon Missionaries getting owned, courtesy of YouTube

2008-07-12T17:15:00.000-07:00

America's airlines plead with consumers to write Congress re: fuel prices

2008-07-10T22:15:00.005-07:00

Today the lobbyists for US-based airlines have issued a B.S. plea that they expect consumers to forward to the US Congress in order to possibly have an effect on their fuel prices.

Um, get #$!@!! real?!

The airlines have been blaming the federal government whenever convenient for delays and whatever customer service abomination their employees have been able to dream up.

In response to all of the CEO's that signed the letter:
Robert Forinaro - AirTran Airlines
Bill Ayer - Alaska Airlines
Gerard Arpey - American Airlines
Lawrence Kellner - Continental Airlines
Richard Anderson - Delta Airlines
Mark Dunkerley - Hawaiian Airlines
Dave Berger - JetBlue Airlines
Timothy Hoeksema - Midwest Airlines
Douglas Steenland - Northwest Airlines (ESPECIALLY to Northworst Airlines!!)
Gary Kelly - Southwest Airlines (you maybe don't deserve it but if you put your name on the same letter as these assholes you've got it coming)
Glenn Tilton - United Airlines
Douglas Parker - US Airways

SCREW all y'all. I'm not writing JACK on your behalf to anyone. YOUR executive offices have made the decision to reduce customer service and blame-it-on-anyone-else. You reap what you sow. Build bridges with your customers instead of extorting and screwing them - why the #$!!! should we lobby for free on your behalf?!

Buh-bye now.
-Tim

A uniquely american way to deal with high gas prices - prayer

2008-07-09T00:22:00.004-07:00

Only in the USA... prayer groups have descended upon Washington DC area Shell stations in hopes of divine intervention lowering gas prices.

If it actually works, the phenomenon will be seen next in Brazil with the holy rollers going from church to the nearest Petrobras station. Then it will head south to Uruguay with the Pare de Sufrir folks handing out their "blessed soap" that washes away sins while praying over the pumps at ANCAP.

Ultra-conservative ex-senator Jesse Helms dead at 86: GOOD RIDDANCE!

2008-07-04T12:07:00.002-07:00

From the New York times article, "He fought bitterly against Federal aid for AIDS research and treatment, saying the disease resulted from “unnatural” and “disgusting” homosexual behavior."

He died early this Friday, July 4th 2008. Good riddance.

Observation: four-buck per gallon gas lowers traffic

2008-07-02T23:27:00.002-07:00

I don't foresee big cities in the USA having to contend with horse-drawn vehicles - but in rural areas I bet it's already happening.

Driving at night has become decidedly easier. There are fewer cars on the road. Afternoon traffic is not as bad. There are fewer cars on the road.

People bitch about the high price, in general. My only complaint is that less of the USA's high price for gas goes for taxes - it's profit for corporations.

Long term this could be a good thing for the USA. Public transit has long been neglected and even looked-down-upon. Perhaps it will blossom into something truly useful as it has in other countries.

All this to run an alarm clock

2008-07-02T21:44:00.003-07:00

Finally I have a working alarm clock. Or rather, an imported working alarm clock. When I bought it, I'd no idea how difficult it would be to make it function outside its element.

All this to have a clock displaying 24-hour time. I bought it on a previous trip overseas this year, thinking... naaaaaaaaaahhhhhh, it can't possibly rely on the AC power to keep time.

I won't bore you with the details other than to say that plugged near-directly into American current, it runs fast.

It took a $65 device intended for use in cars overseas to provide it with suitable AC power that allows it to finally keep time. Eventually I will un-mate it from the grid here with a solar panel, deep cycle battery and charge controller but that's a future plan. (Yeah, I'm single, no one around to say no...)

Switching over to digital, well, officially

2008-07-01T21:28:00.003-07:00

In reality I've had an ATSC (the US/Mexico/Canada digital broadcast standard) box for a couple of years. Radio Shack had a box on clearance back in October 2005 for about fifty bucks - original price had been like $300. The Rat Shack box has things that the "subsidized" boxes don't - indeed, can't! HDMI output, component video, etc.

The US government is subsidizing the switch to the tune of $80 per household - $40.00 per converter box. The $40 subsidy is not a "coupon" but a "debit card" type of form factor. It has an embossed number, expiration date, hologram for authentication and magnetic stripe on the back.

The converter boxes are pretty basic. The goal here was not for Uncle Scam to subsidize HD setups, just keep basic televisions working. But given that they will send the coupons to any household - I ordered mine a few months ago. I don't necessarily need them. With full subscriptions to DirecTV with all the HD stuff and a subscription to Sky Mexico... It's not like I need an over-the-air converter. I pay taxes so I'm not ashamed to ask for my share of the handout.

The installation experience was very straightforward. If you can connect a VCR to a TV, you can install one of these. It goes through an auto-scan procedure when you first turn it on and choose the default option: "Easy setup."

All that the converter does is output the digital broadcast signal as analog. That's it. Some of the boxes have video/audio outputs but they are still standard definition. Equipment that is specifically excluded has any kind of HDMI or digital audio port on it. The federal government is not going to subsidize your home theater, the focus of the program is to hook up people who don't/can't pay for cable or satellite.

I was a last-minute shopper. Best Buy was the first place that I looked. Their internal "Insignia" brand is really not so bad. They were completely out of stock. Makes sense - July 1st, 2008 would have been the last day any early-coupon-requester could have redeemed theirs.

Target was nearby, then Circuit city, then Wal-Mart. Fortunately Target had two choices of box. One box had no video-audio outputs, it just took in the digital signal and spat out analog on US channel 3 or 4. The other box had the individual video/audio outputs plus the ability to output on US channel 3 or 4. I bought the more expensive boxes, splashing out an extra $20 each on them. Since the dog was in the car waiting for me - and it was still about 100F degrees even though it was dark... I didn't bother looking at CC or Wal-Mart. Had Wal-Mart been my only option - it's quite possible my coupons would have gone unused.

So the boxes were bought at Target. Expect a bit of a hassle at the checkout counter. The cashier had to call one supervisor, then another. That supervisor did something to suspend the transaction and store it in Target's computer system, then had me go over to the service desk to complete the transaction. Each of the $40 cards was then processed as a credit card transaction. A signature was required for the first, but then none for the second. Of course, it's a coupon - so plan on paying sales tax on your federally-subsidized haul.

I haven't had a chance to figure out whether the Rat Shack box is better... the guide works faster on the new "subsidized" one but the picture is a little grainy.

Between February 17th and February 28th 2009, I'll probably try to sell these converter boxes. $35 will be the price, maybe $40. I live in a kind of ghetto apartment complex where people will likely not have noticed ads about the transition.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of publicity happens starting around 1st February 2009 because all of these recently bought boxes and TV's connected to antennas will have to be re-scanned as the actual broadcast channels change.

Religious broadcasters seem to be ca$hing in more than most. The local jesus-wheezing channel on analog is just 1 video/audio combo on analog - but on digital it's five. So yes, the manual that comes with the converter says you'll get more channels - but some of them are just CRAP.

Whip it good. In court, no less.

2008-06-27T23:47:00.004-07:00

80's wonder-band Devo is suing McDonald's over a happy meal toy.

Only in America would a band whose only play is on VH-1 sue over something in the now. I'm hard-pressed to think what they are protecting...

computers say the darndest things

2008-06-23T16:28:00.001-07:00

I was using a macintosh FTP software called Fetch to backup a website. My backup was rather too complete... explaining how this filename appeared in the list would just be boring.

It said "Getting head as binary data"

Indeed.

400+ arrests for mortgage fraud

2008-06-20T06:46:00.003-07:00

It's way too few. Everyone that signed a liar loan (state your income, then they don't verify it) or took cash back, every straw buyer should get arrested.

I suppose I shouldn't bitch much. From a personal point of view this is causing a price adjustment in the housing market that was long overdue, and with any luck will actually lower the national average credit score.

China's ready for the olympics :)

2008-06-20T06:41:00.003-07:00

Given the tone of the rest of the sign, it should say "Please fuck off..." rather than "...leave off..." - but it might give closeted homosexuals from, say, Idaho the wrong idea.

Jon and Kate plus 8 - voluntarily watch bickering on cable TV

2008-06-18T23:38:00.002-07:00

Daaaaaaaamn. These two are a piece of work. Philadelphia area family because thats where Discovery Communications is based.

I actually was contacted years ago by the Discovery producers when an ex and I went to Vermont to civil union! I think in shopping for the justice of the peace someone was getting a finders fee for an out of state couple and I seriously talked with them, getting to the point of seeing a faxed contract. It was ALL ABOUT us being a spectacle for them and nothing in it for us. We read the contract and decided - this is a great way to sign up to be a forever-repeated freakshow for middle America. PASS!

But this Philly area couple with a set of twins and a set of sextuplets (that's EIGHT kids or a worst case of what can happen when one messes with fertility drugs)... it's almost painful to watch them. The two are VICIOUS.

If Jon and Kate finally ever divorce it's going to make incredible reading on thesmokinggun.com. Kate is great with the kids but the way she treats her husband - she needs some dalmatians and a fur. Again - VICIOUS.

Mexico vs. other countries in central/south America - I'm seeing the difference

2008-06-18T23:03:00.003-07:00

Ok, the difference started to hit home when my friend R from Uruguay told me specifically he did NOT want any part of visiting Mexico on his trip to the southwestern USA.

Having seen Costa Rica, Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico in the past seven months... I'm starting to "get it."

Living in Phoenix, I see Mexican TV. No, not just the local channels that are in Spanish but the full feed of Mexican cable channels through a satellite service. Phoenix, Los Angeles - even as far north as San Francisco... the Sky signal hits all those places although the further north you get the poorer the signal quality gets.

I got home this evening and decided... damnit, I get all these US and Mexican channels, may as well USE the Sky box for awhile tonight seeing as I've just paid the bill for the service - and it's not cheap. To get BBC World you have to subscribe to the full package.

BBC world does a whole 20 minute segment on the battles between the drug cartels on the border vs. the MX police. So I was curious and knew that the local news channel probably had the live feed of the local news from TJ.

And it was this evening I started to "get it." To buy a gun in the USA is trivial. Techincally it's a big crime "delito"/"felony" under the Mexican legal system to bring guns and ammunition into Mexico. But apparently a large quantity of Americans smuggle them into Mexico for re-sale.

It's obvious why... crossing from Mexico to the USA you can be subjected to everything from car disassembly to x-rays to whatever. USA to Mexico? Odds are, you just drive across. No examination of papers, nothing. You absolutely positively have to have MX auto insurance and they don't check for it. Supposedly further into Mexico there are checkpoints where papers ARE checked but in the border area - not so much.

So that's the information I put together between BBC and my own experience.

Then I switched to the Tijuana local news. The government of Baja California has a steady stream of advertising about how they are improving the police despite all the officers killed in the last six months (eight at last count). The news stories just from today were super-graphic with gun battles etc.

In Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Argentina - the government has good control over its territory.

Now, this doesn't stop me from exploring northern MX. I even take my car, GPS navigation makes Baja much less scary! I figure... if my number is going to come up, it's going to come up. It's largely sightseeing because there are some incredible views between Tijuana and Mexicali on the MX-2 toll road. But I only travel during the day and I keep a close eye in the rear view mirror.

I make DAMN sure all papers are in order for both sides of the border and don't take any stupid risks. The views are worth it!

But then contrast that to the other three countries. Far fewer battles between the police and anything. Argentina is the most risky but its orders of magnitude less. Uruguay? Damn, the country is organized based on France. One feels really safe. And Costa Rica is a whole different economic critter than the other three - CR has a BIG middle class so there is less crime pressure and the police presence feels a bit like in the USA. The capital city is dangerous in parts but the coastal areas - provided you use common sense - are super-safe.

In Mexico I would never drive at night. Ever. Argentina - less likely but its more for reasons of traffic safety. (Hell, even during the day... the Argentines are INSANE behind the wheel!) Uruguay? I would not think twice about driving at night. Safe, but you might have to give small gifts to the highway police if they stop you. Costa Rica? Depends. In San Jose probably depending on the neighborhood, in the beach areas probably as well. The beach areas of CR - your biggest danger is drunk drivers. Long distance travel in CR at night - probably not. The country is quite mountainous and while distances between locations are relatively short... the roads are difficult to navigate even during the day where they pass thru the mountains.

But definitely after the 3rd variation on the GobBC police commercials during the TJ local news... I was starting to understand why R didn't want to go into Mexico. It'd be depressing.

Giving away the store

2008-06-18T20:10:00.002-07:00

On the way home from work I stopped at the supermarket to buy dinner. I used to buy for weeks at a time but my habit changed living in Uruguay.

The person in front of me was buying wine. It's faster at that time of day to use the "self" check-out... and the guy tried to show his ID to the woman in charge of the four lanes of "self" check-out.

I noticed there was an out-of-order sign on the terminal used to control the four check-out lanes where she would ordinarily do whatever on that touch-screen to "authorize" his wine purchase. (Those outside the USA - we have stupid laws that set the legal age at 21 and huge penalties for stores and the employees themselves that sell to someone under 21.)

She told him she would come back when he was ready to pay.

Um, he had two items... but she disappeared to go do something else and the "self" checkout lane terminal said it required authorization to complete the transaction. She finally came back over after a minute or two and did the "employee override" button.

The size of the screen made it very easy to shoulder-surf the all-numeric user-ID and password which was something ludicrously easy to remember that corresponded with the company's internal store number (which prints on all receipts).

I doubt that I will try to use that user/password combo for myself but I can't believe that's their plan B. I bet that most of the stores in that chain use something equally guess-able given that most technology deployments have the user ID and password as the weakest link. The screen changed colors and one could do price adjustments or whatever before resuming as the "customer" and completing the transaction.

US elections 2008

2008-06-18T00:25:00.004-07:00

It's been interesting to see things start to polarize now that it's pretty much a given that it's Obama vs. McCain.

A US election is based on fear, hysteria and car bumper stickers. I use the term "car" loosely since most McCain bumper stickers are on the giant vehicles like Hummer, Chevy Tahoe, etc. - i.e. the driver's ASS is planted in a seat that STARTS at the top of my car's ROOF.

But no matter how many of the republicans are sitting on my face, I'm voting for Obama.

Roomba vacuuming robot

2008-06-16T02:00:00.003-07:00

In a word... Wow. The thing does a better job than my upright vacuum cleaner and its possible to sit on my ass and remote control it.

The jury is out on total cost of ownership.

Unexpectedly - Shaggy is not afraid of Roomba. I have a long way to go though to make my apartment Roomba-friendly - your place already has to be pretty much clean (free of clutter) for the robot to do its job.

I'll be curious to see....

* Will Roomba zap a hard disk it passes by
* Will Shaggy decide that Roomba is another pet and thus mark territory?
* Will Roomba survive my style of housekeeping, or improve it?

The thing ran for about 45 minutes after I charged it 12... well 8 really... hours. There was still plenty of power in the battery, I was just tired and had it go back to its charging station.

Ambien + blogger -> last three posts LOL / Uruguayan currency

2008-06-15T00:12:00.003-07:00

Holy crap. Well, at least the mileage on my car was the same last night as this morning :-) Just goes to show that when you take the CR pills (Mom and I joke that CR stands for chewable) because it knocks you on your ass faster - that you really should log off after you swallow.

(And yes, I deliberately wrote that sentence that way. Thank god cyber-sex hasn't provided a way to exactly make that happen although who knows...)

Upon waking up this morning I re-read that and it sort of makes/made sense at the time.

Now that I'm back in the USA for a full 24 hours, I *think* I've finally gotten all the foreign coins out of my pocket... between that and the left over paper money I've got 36 bucks in Uruguayan currency hanging about. Since the dollar is tending to fall against the Uruguayan peso I'm betting the money will keep its value or gain a precious few percentage points. But I'm also a realist: whatever value the money adds/retains will get eaten up by price increases!

Oh wait, that's really 46 bucks... I put about another ten bucks on my Movistar account to move my UY phone number expiration date far enough into the future so it still is active for my next trip. It's so cool to be able to just change the chip and the GPRS parameters on the phone as the plane lands :)

And the POINT of all this cryptic crap is:

2008-06-14T01:38:00.004-07:00

A sample from Forevergreen says:

"People used to dream about the future. They thought there was no limit to progress. They dreamed of a clean, bright future, where science would make everything possible, and everybody better off. But somewhere along the line that future got canceled."

Frankly, world business conditions and politics have already caused cancellation of the future for many. But dammit, I'm going to be selfish. I don't want mine canceled.

I just have to tell it like it is.

Those of you who know me, I'll get you links ;) to the appropriate tracks so you can hear 'em in context and tell the rest of the story on the phone. I had quite a lesson in both humility and in (unfortunately) following that gut instinct NOT to trust others.

We live in the short term and hope for the best

2008-06-14T00:45:00.007-07:00

If it sounds vaguely familiar its a Scottish band that never escaped obscurity. Finitribe. The song? Forevergreen.

Why on earth does it interest me? Well, three reasons...

(1) somehow by coincidence I'd gotten hold of this cassette tape whilst I was 13 years old and delivering newspapers to make spending money....

(2) "We live in the short term and hope for the best" --- that was the utopian vision of that track from years ago.
If that wasn't what the whole goddamn last week was about, I just don't know how else to describe it....

(3) Somehow it connected the dots to Enya's Orinoco Flow track. I know its years later but in the timeline of my life its all a mishmash... Because damn it, I had to take a phone call from Venezuela in Montevideo. And that phone call underlined that "We live in the short term and hope for the best" is total bullshit.

Yes... utopian visions can be total bullshit.

The lyrics by themselves do not do it justice.

FOREVERGREEN

"People used to dream about the future.
They thought there was no limits to progress."

"And in warmer seas are new realms of pleasure!"

"They dreamed of a clean, bright future,
where science make everything possible
and everybody better off."

"A weekend, if you wish, in Hotel Atlantis!"

"But somewhere along the line that future got cancelled."

Moving on a linear express
to a levitation disc
to Technopolis Town
Which is evergreen, this is forevergreen
From a lap top via a satellite disc
A Buddhist gong is sent to catch our fish
Under the ocean in our sea
Out with the mean, in with the green

"Teletopia...Technopolis...Marinopolis...Aquatopia... Seatopia...Aeropolis...Alice City...Geofront..."

The sun is rising on a linear express
there is a smell of sweet success
Fuzzy logic, there is no no life on a cloud
It's time to be proud
Fuzzy logic, there is no yes
Intelligence here is under duress
No sound, there is no wind
In our big wonderland

"Now being built, Millenium Tower out at the sea of Tokyo Bay,
soon to be followed by Aeropolis, another tower city, 6000 feet tall,
whose inhabitants commute vertically, by elevators through the clouds.
They lead the West in computers, robotics, superconducters and new material."

Moving on a linear express
to a levitation disc to Technopolis Town
Which is evergreen this is forevergreen
Evergreen, forevergreen
Evergreen, forevergreen

"We live in the short term, and hope for the best" "Glad you came"
"And hope for the best" "Glad you came"

I've shamelessly snatched another description of the track from here:
'Forevergreen' is a song by Scottish indie/techno band Finitribe, released in 1992 on the One Little Indian album 'An Unexpected Groovy Treat'. It was released in many different remixed forms as a single and is their most famous tune, although it did not chart anywhere and the group is willfully obscure to this day. Culturally, it belongs to the early-90s pre-dot.com 'Wired' magazine techno-virtual reality ambient William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' transhumanist fractal crop circle pre-X Files UFO-obsessed goatsucker Schwa-inspired etc, although it was a joke at the expense of all these things.

Musically it's a dated but charming techno-pop song, similar in style to the earlier work of labelmates The Shamen, but thankfully without Mr C. The lyrics - 'moving on a linear express, to a levitation disc in technopolis town, which is evergreen, this is forevergreen' - are a sardonic reflection on the pagan-techno-utopianism of the times; Finitribe's political sensibilities were much more down to earth than their contemporaries, such as The Shamen again. At a time when the latter were bleating about the shamanistic consciousness of the metasphere (cf. 'Re:Evolution'), Finitribe were moaning about hubris. Their previous album, 'Grossing 10K', had contained counterblastes against McDonalds and consumerism in general, all of which is forgivable as the band were and remain Scottish, both genetically and as a state of mind.

The song contains a list of futuristic construction projects, read in a Californian voice, which are or were genuine developments in and around Tokyo and Oita. 'Alice City' was to have been a large drum-shaped underground city which could generate its own power with special magnets, whilst 'Aeropolis' and 'Millenium Tower' were plans for massive, imposing skyscrapers which resembled something from the Imperial homeworld Coruscant, the latter by Sir Norman Foster. All of them would have been opening just about now if the Japanese real-estate crash hadn't led to them all being cancelled. Each would have housed 30-40,000 people; presumably they would now have to be armed with missiles.

'Teletopia' is an exception - it was a government programme dating from 1985 to create 'new media' cities, with digital telephone, cable lines and wireless communication. It is apparently still in operation and has been quite a success.

The song is packed with curious samples, inlcuding no less than Foghorn Leghorn. It opens with an English lady announcer whose monologue, revealed in full in one of the 12" mixes, read:

"People used to dream about the future. They thought there was no limit to progress. They dreamed of a clean, bright future, where science would make everything possible, and everybody better off. But somewhere along the line that future got cancelled."

The recurring 'and in warmer seas are new realms of pleasure' is an item of dialogue from the narration for General Motors' Futurama exhibit from the 1964 World's Fair, perhaps the last time people actually did used to dream about the future. Five years later the future happened, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and now most people do not dream about the future at all.

The album from which 'Forevergreen' came was plastered with excerpts from 'The Name of the Rose', 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', old Yosemite Sam cartoons and others. 'People Used to Dream About the Future' is now a fashion label; their website offers both a t-shirt and a sweatshirt.

Orinoco Flow - the reality

2008-06-12T14:30:00.006-07:00

Wheee what a dose of reality I got over a crackly phone connection between Venezuela and Uruguay.

I really can't go into detail as to the content. If it were me in Venezuela and someone else in Uruguay - I'd have delivered the same message from VZ to the person in URY under the circumstances.

But one associates Venezuela with (well lets forget about the pre-Hugo Chavez "por que no te callas" days) Enya - y'know, that ethereal Irish singer with way more panache than that twat Sinead O'Connor.....

So the call initiated from somewhere near the Orinoco River - nearer than I was in any case. The content had nothing to do with Enya's lyrics:
Let me sail, let me sail,
let the orinoco flow,
Let me reach, let me beach
On the shores of Tripoli.
Let me sail, let me sail,
Let me crash upon your shore,
Let me reach, let me beach
Far beyond the Yellow Sea.

From Bissau to Palau - in the shade of Avalon,
From Fiji to Tiree and the Isles of Ebony,
From Peru to Cebu hear the power of Babylon,
From Bali to Cali - far beneath the Coral Sea.

From the North to the South,
EbudÃ¦ into Khartoum,
From the deep sea of Clouds
To the island of the moon,
Carry me on the waves
To the lands I've never been,
Carry me on the waves
To the lands I've never seen.

We can sail, we can sail...
We can steer, we can near
With Rob Dickins at the wheel,
We can sigh, say goodbye
Ross and his dependencies
We can sail, we can sail...

Um, no... for goddamn sure we had dependencies. The picture I got was rather more like this:

We live in the short term and hope for the best clearly is not the answer.

I'm sure you've no idea what you're looking at - it's the power grid diagram surrounding that oh-so-romantic Orinoco Flow (it ain't all fuckin' jungle... French Guyana and Northern Brazil have to get electric power from somewhere....) - and I was getting 765 kV worth of information.

Monday morning in Montevideo

2008-06-09T05:22:00.017-07:00

Just another Monday AM in Montevideo. My work day started - well, when I decided to start it. I'm an entrepreneur so that usually means early. I was up about five to have everything ready for something later. "Everything" and "something" just got more and more fucked up as the week droned on....

Of course, it's COLD here. 11c was the temp display on an advertising sign when I was leaving central MVD to come home last night. It was even colder overnight and by morning my 3kg tank of gas was nearly empty. (No really, the 3kg tank of gas - it's what you use to heat, that or wood in a fireplace.)

AMERICAN READERS ONCE AND BLOODY BUGGERY FOR ALL FUCKING FIGURE OUT THE METRIC SHIT, m'kay? hmm???

It had nothing to do with the La Cigale ice cream I had with my friend Maika at Montevideo Shopping yesterday afternoon. I thought - this will be perfect. I'll order the ice cream and then run across to the San Roque and get lactaid-type pills.

No, I'm standing there with my ice cream, starting to eat it and explaining in really graphic detail the symptoms of lactose intolerance. He finally figured out what it was I wanted and he said "we don't carry it."

Yes, I cannot digest lactose in my old age. Gotta have the special tablets and then I'm sorted. Otherwise, well, I'm not so sorted.

Instead we went to Tienda Inglesa attached to the mall to get Yakult. Of course I still ate the ice cream knowing that there still might be hell to pay later. Yakult is shown at the top of the first picture. The first link goes to their Spanish/Portuguese site, this one to Yakult Australia might explain it better. It's like a fermented milk bacteria bomb that is actually good for your stomach.

I decided to go back to Tienda Inglesa during the work week since the place was super-full on a sunday afteroon. I like to explore the crazy crap they import.

This crap isn't necessarily all from Tienda Inglesa but some of it is. It's sort of my breakfast. Ok, so starting at the bottom center, we covered what Yakult is. It fixes your culo. Moving to the left, we have 'Polakitos' - um, not-very-politically-correctly named roasted peanuts - in other words - Little Polacks. In the center we have PanCatalan Tortugas. Or, in other words - hamburger buns. Damn close at least. Above that - sliced ham. Immediately to the left of that is a McDonald's (Uruguay) Beijing olympics collectible glass. For whatever odd reason I think they have five available. It makes no damn sense to me and I ultimately came home with 4, or a set as Americans would think of. Ok jumping to the left past the ham we have bananas. No really, just bananas. Uruguay's climate is not quite temperate enough for banana crops so I think these are from Brazil or they could just as likely be from Ecuador like the ones we get here in the USA.

Off to the right, my two laptops and in between them my HTC phone - Americans know it as a T-mobile Wing. Get the unlock code from T-mobile and it becomes a truly useful device. HTC GSM phones ROCK provided they are unlocked. When I am in Uruguay it has a local number, access to the internet, crackberry-style email ... everything you would expect. It's all hellaciously expensive by local standards but still far cheaper than roaming.

If I used it as a strictly T-mobile device all that neat-o stuff would work but I'd have a thousand-dollar-plus bill at the end of the month. Thus unlocked, I can put a 3rd company chip in the phone and have a local phone number and not get raped.

I have a little 3rd-world-marketed-only Nokia GSM1800 phone the actual T-mobile SIM stays in so that my American co-worker(s) can keep in touch when they deign to. I mention GSM1800 because that's the state-owned network, Ancel - they have truly INCREDIBLE coverage so I know for sure that at two bucks a minute I won't miss that goddamn all-too-rare phone call.

Lastly - a bottle of Salus mineral water. Carbonated of course. Why on earth would one buy a bottle of water if it didn't have bubbles?

Below is the heat source. Or, it's one option. You can get a small electric heater but if you use it constantly it will cost you US$250 a month. Oh and that curtain/metal door thing off to the right in the pic? The goes directly outside. Damn near every room in every house has such a draft leading to the outdoors!

As the morning goes on the expected "visitors" arrive. TCC (Tele Cable Color) is already doing a card-swap on their digital cable customers. Digital cable has gone the way of Europe here. The box is a little Chinese-made (ok that can be safely assumed of everything right?) DVB-C box. Translated - not the same as what the Americans do. Not at ALL.

But yeah a card swap already! Um, duh... yeah launch your system using Irdeto 1 (an encryption system) which has been widely hacked worldwide because its been used for a variety of satellite services. I mean, hacked for like oh... three years?! Every single one of the satellite services using Irdeto 1 moved to version 2 (that's sorta hacked too) or something else and then TCC launches with Irdeto 1. ;) I hope their contract included the first few card swaps.

(Don't even think to ask, please, where I may or may not have learned anything or nothing at all about conditional-access TV systems.)

So then an hour later (maybe less) another 'cadete' (translation - young guy on a motorbike) shows up from Anteldata with a replacement 'splitter' for Rodrigo's DSL. Yes, I know what it's FOR but I'm not going to bore you with it... he sure didn't. He wanted the old 'splitter' in exchange for the new one and a signature. I sign the form complete with UY ID number... why the fuck not, it's a part that costs $1.98?! Having signed I replace the part in the appropriate spot - um, no, still not working.... But he's gone and he didn't have a f'in clue what it was he was delivering nor how to install it.

The problem is still not solved. Fuck it, data still works, if I plug a phone in at the main jack data drops and I can dial 141 for a cab.

141 uses caller-ID pre-registered to the address and the voice basically says "If you're still at ____________(address), need a taxi NOW and are paying cash press 1." You press 1 and a minute or so later the voice tells you the license place number of the cab and whether it will be there in three or five minutes.

When I plug the rest of the house cabling back in, the phones no longer work but data comes back so at least its a consistent problem/solution.

Off I go to work. What "work" is exactly escapes me on many days - I'd been up since 5am doing it remember? But by that time it's 1230 Montevideo time which means 0830 Arizona time so I can reach my co-worker .... or her goddamn voice mail. Her voice mail is precisely what I get so, hell with it, off to the office without any new info for negotiation purposes. Fuck it all, I'll wing it another day.

connecting everything

2008-06-08T04:45:00.002-07:00

Love it!!!!! Literally. A co-founder (in English means: can't fire him) of Broadcom got NAILED for a whole damn alphabet soup of drugs!

I personally would not have believed, one year ago, that his dealer invoiced his company and they just paid for his stash. However, having recently figured out some advantages of incorporation - fuck YEAH today I would.

VERY busy GSM phone day in Uruguay

2008-06-06T07:02:00.006-07:00

Both SIM's on their GSM 1800/1900 networks worked well.

Movistar (and Ancel...) Their switches do not appear to be programmed consistently for acceptance of international calls. For absolutely certain, both SIM's pass any credit test.

However dialing the USA today while in various places in Montevideo both Ancel and Movistar were inconsistent. In some cases a call would not go through dialed as +1-npa-nnn-xxxx. Two seconds later it would go through dialed 001 etc. like on a landline. However, assuming that 001 etc was correct - nope. Other places on either net worked as +1-npa-nnn-xxxx and failed as 001 etc.

Fascinating stuff, hmm?

Local calls went thru dialed as 02-xxx-xxxx no problem.

Coverage here is (and really always has been) very dense with general strong signal and almost no dead spots. I can hear my phone manage to get a radio channel before an international call doesn't quite go through.

And NO, I wasn't born stupid. For every minute of international call via cellular there's about an hour via Skype.

back in Montevideo. Open 24 hours? No...

2008-06-06T06:14:00.003-07:00

I had a variety of menus to choose from this morning when trying to order breakfast. (I'm not at a hotel...)

So there were a stack of paper menus near the phone. Nearly every place delivers in Uruguay provided you are willing to navigate the phone system.

Actually the phone system is quite good - but the one in this house is.... unique. Right now ADSL (or internet or DSL as Americans know it) works but none of the phones have dialtone. So to dial out you have to use cellular.

From my observations... to use cellular during the day for, say, a 20 minute call - for the same price you could hire a prostitute to give a great blowjob. Assuming you were interested in women.. Gotta tick the no box there. Whooops a pun ... "no box" mwahahahahahahaha.

So I call three places by cellphone. No answer at 1, the other "24 hour delivery" places start delivering at 11 am.

AND THEY HAVE FUCKING BREAKFAST ITEMS ON THE MENU!!!!

So I'm waiting for this fucking plumber to get here (whole other story really) and have no choice but to dash to the corner to grab a sort of breakfast. I really don't care for bizcochos. Or rather, thats not true: They taste great but they are 100% fat. Just NASTY 100% fat. Like krispy kreme.

So I get rolls and mortadella. Diet coke. (This raises eyebrows at 0915 but I give a shit WHY?) I run back. I meet the plumber. He fixes the problem.

Es asi Uruguay.

Yesterday was nearly the same - buying a lp-gas heater for the house was rather stressful. Not because the heater was out of stock but because ANCAP (the national "fuel" monopoly) had the "garrafa" (small fuel tank). They could sell me a new, small one (the big ones are sold out at this time of year!) and the ceramic heater.

However after I paid - a Soviet process, get this:

Ask for tank and price of ceramic heater. Get a quote. He is expecting me to walk away because it's more than a quarter of most people's monthly salary. Surprisingly without hesitation I accept. Anything I buy in Uruguay can either be left at my friend's house or he can re-sell it. This is reality. So when I'm told its a hundred bucks for a tank and a ceramic heater - hey, it's a way smaller tank BUT such is life....

Ok gotta run will finish later

this does not add up

2008-06-04T14:23:00.002-07:00

Ok so I'm sitting here in the Dallas airport where these three hasidic jewish girls just sat down. They are all dressed in the usual dowdy clothes - I thought it was like four of Warren Jeffs' wives or something. And then they all sat down and the smell hit me.

THEY REEK LIKE WEED!

Torah, torah, torah, 420 torah! L'chaim!

Listening to the Scottsdale 5-0 on police radio

2008-06-01T22:42:00.002-07:00

I live in the South part of Scottsdale, Arizona. It used to be the core of the town but now its sort of ghetto in spots. I make a point of listening to their radio system that's based nearest my home - it's the most interesting.

Facts that I've overheard:
Not carrying a drivers license? They will ask you enough questions to try to match you up against a database. And I don't just mean here in Arizona - it's nationwide. I don't know that I've heard 'em do any Canadian lookups but they get information at all hours of the days and nights from other states. Your height and weight are two numbers, then when your eye color matches that narrows the search, your name narrows the search, and eventually you exist or don't. If you don't exist they will do a social security number search. They do it intelligently though - it's impossible to tie that SSN to any identity because the results get flashed back to the mobile data terminal in the cruiser.

Pulling out of a bar? If there weren't undercover folks in the bar (or assuming the bartender didn't just rat you out because they for sure do - and should) your license plate number is VERY likely to get run, more so near closing time. ANY reason to pull you over comes back over the radio - you'll get stopped. If the report came from a bartender the police cruiser density on the street at any given time appears sufficient for them to track you. You will get pulled over, your car will be towed, you will go to jail etc.

I haven't quite figured out the scoring system that I hear. Occasionally the dispatcher will return a score of some sort about the person. Not sure if high score = safer and low score = haul 'em in.

YSL SOL @ 71

2008-06-01T22:40:00.001-07:00

Yves Saint-Laurent died tonight at his home in Paris.

He will be missed.

AT&T customer "reprimanded" for posting exec customer service number

2008-06-01T19:26:00.003-07:00

...i.e. one of the few they don't have answered in India.

Many AT&T wanna-be customers (god only knows why...) received empty bags instead of phones. When he posted the telephone number of the AT&T office of the president in a heavily moderated AT&T customer non-service site...

That number is 877-734-0766 -- and FUCK YOU AT&T I will not take it down. Just change it. The consumers will get the new one and 'round and 'round it goes.

"
Hello,

We'd like to ask that you not post contact info for the Office of the President in posts or PMs until an AT&T moderator can PM you. Failure to follow moderator directions can result in loss of posting privileges.

regards
"

I LOATHE the AT&T deathstar. They kill everything they touch and providing customer service cannot possibly be even the 10th or 20th priority in their business plan. I personally stopped doing business with them FOREVER in 1994. CIAO!

THIS is why soldiers in Uruguay are NOT allowed to vote during active duty!

2008-05-31T14:27:00.002-07:00

(I've never mentioned it on here but I have been following with great interest - more really like horror actually - the goings-on over the last ten years in Zimbabwe. It's incredible to see how far and how fast condidions in that country have become just... horrifying. The drop in standard of living.

If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- A top Zimbabwe army general called on the nation's soldiers to vote for Robert Mugabe in a presidential runoff or quit the military, the official media reported Saturday.

Army Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Martin Chedondo told troops at a target-shooting competition to leave the military if they did not support Mugabe, the state Herald newspaper reported.

"Soldiers are not apolitical. Only mercenaries are apolitical. We have signed up and agreed to fight and protect the ruling party's principles of defending the revolution. If you have other thoughts, then you should remove that uniform," he was quoted as saying.

He told soldiers at the Cleveland shooting range outside Harare on Friday that Mugabe was head of the nation's defense forces.

"We should therefore stand behind our commander in chief," he reportedly said.

OMFG

2008-05-31T14:20:00.002-07:00

Wow, um, that previous post was a lulu. SO much information there.

I've considered editing it, but I'm not ashamed of having done it. Every human has impulses and fantasies - and living that one ... I was really ok with that.

Heathers and swordfights

2008-05-29T23:22:00.003-07:00

Remember Heathers:

Open this in a second tab: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097493/

Also known as:
Lethal Attraction Germany (TV title) / USA (working title)
Atração Mortal Brazil
Escuela de jóvenes asesinos Spain
Fatal Game USA (working title)
Fatal Games France
Häxor, läxor och dödliga lektioner Sweden
Heathers Germany (video title)
Malkot Ha-Keata Israel (Hebrew title)
Série noire au campus Canada (French title)
Schegge di follia Italy
Westerberg High USA (working title)

I've changed their names to protect their identities. Ashley and Andy both of 'em Brits HAD A SWORDFIGHT IN MY MOUTH.

There were differences from the movie:
a) they did not kill each other
b) no it wasn't me either but it um, was.. my mouth
c) actually no one got killed the two of them just um, released (but by agreement their release was completely outside of me :)
d) we hung out for 45 minutes afterwards and both of 'em confirmed they really wanted to do that (um, duh with names like that - they ARE more than best friends)
e) i cannot describe what a swordfight may or may not have been but for a consulting fee I will reveal 99% of details to straight porn producer who can prove that's really his vocation

Ok kids. Swordfights can cause thirst, specially if your door is locked. Much like cetain 80's tracks - this is equally as disruptive (but generally better than) A Birdhouse in Your Soul

I

up and down - and I ain't talkin about the Vengaboys

2008-05-29T13:12:00.007-07:00

Wow is it raining today. That means short circuits on the power grid. So when I saw that the power is up and down - its up and down more often than a Filipina prostitute near a navy base.

But you deal.

When the power is off, there is no water. Electric pumps. The hotel has their wifi stuff on a battery so you get just enough time to tell your chat partners: power cut again see ya later.

There was a brit couple in the next room that FLIPPED OUT this morning at breakfast about the power cuts, possible road flooding - they actually thought they were safer in San Jose.

Poor bastards. It just isn't so. They mistanslated what the woman helpfully tried to tell them and reacted based on that. And who the fuck am I to correct that perception?!

So it's mildly annoying. The power cuts last (so far) more often than 1.5 hours and I've got a really good book from the hotel library!

All the neato electrical stuff stops working and you just have to light a candle. Here's an example. See above.

a Spanish-speaking reader enlightens us on PQ no te callas..........

2008-05-28T21:56:00.005-07:00

Sorry - if English is your only language, just pass this over. If you understand Spanish and a tiny bit about how Spain's former colonies interact with her (in this day and age) this video CAN make a lot of sense.

Ok if you got lost at "former colonies interact," you're probably American. It's OK, so am I. It took me years to learn this part of history which is explicitly NOT taught in our school. Think of it another way - the US and Canada are former colonies of the UK. Both countries have enhanced ties because of that. It's really not too much different in well, about 80% of the Latino world which used to but no longer Venezuela, Colombia pays lip-service and the Panamanian USA-seal-of-approval (really not sure but this is what i expect) pupped government all ago along and act sort of clique-ish at this meeting the King of Spain attends - annually.

There's more information but it would take more than 3 seconds of video (which I will embed anyway) to fully explain... Watch it with a hispanic friend who keeps up with news from down south - then ask him to explain why he is laughing so hard afterwards.

Listen for the bald dude askng (exasperated) - POR QUE NO TE CALLAS. I *so* agree with the king of Spain.

This was a hot story that did not quite carry over from the Latin Press to the North American. Maybe it got a little coverage out of Ottawa (Canada) and her cable/TV/news nets but CNN and FOX have been pretty silent about the story save to cover it negatively - as in "Venezuelan rebel may nationaize oil company (CITGO) becuase it would distract the American public from feelng scared ...

Scared for whom exactly:?! Their wallets. It's a great way to make this idiot Venezuelan responsible (in the minds of the American populace that he is responsible) 100% for the higher gas/diesel/heating oil costs. And by the time it all filters thru the translation - well everyone knows what the message is expected to be.

Nevermind in the last two years ACTUAL CARS became economically accessible to Indian and Chinese citizens and eight lane (each way) highways of international quality opened between major Chinese cities.

Ever think their global thirst for gasoline might just possibly have an effect?

Point is: Chavez is an idiot but he should not be a scapegoat. Nor should the Indian or Chinese citizens with their new cars.

As the international level of development rises... the USA just might stay slightly ahead and still have that certain je ne sais quois about its economy pushing it along. Or it might not. A 3rd term for Bush (McCain) could well seal our fate.

Yes, WHEN (not IF, I pray) I pray I can vote democrat for Obama. Obama is a washington outsider who will disturb a lot of establised corruption patterns. Hillary will maintain some that are convenient.

McCain? Status fuckin' quo. Your vote for ?McCain in November is sealing the country's fate for the deaths/maimings of thousands of American soldiers who do not deserve to have that happen since the whole premise of entering Iraq is/was a big damn lie. Never was a Saddam Hussein/Al Queda connection!!!!! Saddam never really had weapons of mass destruction.

Bush/Cheney/Rove/Rice are 100% responsible for all the blood. May they get their karmic justice. Do not perpetrate all the blood that will spill from young american servicemen (or has alread spilled). Do not vote 3rd party to be a rebel -dammit get real we are a 2-party system and that changes from the local level UPWARDS and not with these so called "independent" (snorts, my ass... a printout of their stock portfolio would show what flavor of independent they are). It produces 15 second news item on the fear channels when the indpendents give campain speeches.

Please do not vote based on what you see on the fear channels. Vote carefully. Vote an absentee ballot that will not be passed through a Diebold voting machine. Ensure your voice is counted, whatever it is!

We should pull out of the middle east entirely and SEE for ourselves how the billions of dollars poured into propping up the state of Israel really work out in our absence. I bet they do ok - and if not, well, we tried but then changed priorities to make our internal programs like education more important. I pray that that happens.

So if you're writing this goddamn much, where are you writing from?

2008-05-28T12:15:00.002-07:00

This link should help.

Si estas de vacaciones, PQ no te callas?

2008-05-28T11:14:00.003-07:00

Translation of the title: If you're on vacation, why don't you shut up? (implied: with all this blog posting) There is a joke for my Spanish-speaking readers in there too but it would take several paragraphs to explain.

Quite simply. It's raining here.

my opinion about the upcoming USA presidential election

2008-05-28T10:38:00.003-07:00

A picture says a thousand words.

the obligatory posting about cellphones

2008-05-28T03:10:00.003-07:00

I don't go a week without posting perhaps multiple times about cellphones. I'm a mobile phone junkie. (If/when I ever get brain cancer, the news will appear first, but those of you who've known me for a really long time know goddamn right well that the primary risk factor that lit the fuse on the cancer just might not be radio waves.)

But I am on vacation. And aptly, in the location where I am at: there is zero cellphone coverage. I would have to walk 1km from here to see even a hint of a signal. No TDMA (yes, some antique technology is still used here) and no GSM. In the center of the nearest town both phones show full bars. But just a few KM away - the tropical foliage does a kick-ass job of attenuating the signal, so both gadgets are useless here.

How am I posting? Hotel has wifi. How they connect to the internet, I don't give a damn. I can even phone from here, my room with no phone, using skype. The local internet mafia appears to have given up (at least for now) on harassing us rebels who use internet to send our overly-self-important (yes, at times but this should come as no surprise to frequent readers...) verbal opinions across international borders at dirt-cheap rates.

Andrew Jackson, a Benjamin and the special prescriptions, or, a never-published Hardy Boys story

2008-05-28T02:33:00.007-07:00

It is an open secret among my close friends that I choose to manage my anxiety with the help of certain Roche/Pfizer-branded things. And it really IS anxiety management - I know there are skeptics who are going to read this and say: "You were just an addict getting your fix." No, not so much.

YOU try running your own business and living your life. Eventually you're going to drink, find god or take a calm-me-down pill.

YES, the calm-me-down pills CAN be addictive. But the first two will probably do you a lot more harm...

In some countries these prescriptions have distinctive colors or security features. I will not say what color the special prescriptions are so as to protect the ... well I won't say "guilty" but "involved" will do fine.

I just didn't want to waste a day or half a day finding a pharmacist that could refer me to a doctor's office, or ask a cab driver for a recommendation or whatever. I was staying at a swank place recently (British readers I said SWank, get yer mind out the gutter ya wankers). I went to the concierge and tipped him twenty bucks before even speaking about WHY. I said to him (mostly in his native language - ) "...for every problem there is a solution." I showed him my near-empty non-USA-branded product packages. "I'm going to get the legal paperwork for this country to buy more of this stuff before the end of the day, no matter what. If it's with your help, it will save me time. But it is going to happen no matter whether you get involved or not. You really shouldn't feel guilty because I don't. Now here are the brand names, chemical agents and their dosages. Please find me a doctor that will skip the office visit and just sign the damn document.

An hour later my local cellular phone number rang. (Kids, some sage advice: if you're in a foreign land and speak the local language well enough to talk on the phone - get your damn self a local mobile number no matter HOW you have to do it because it will probably immeasurably change your life.)

Depending on which country you're in it (the phone transaction or use thereof) may also immeasurably drain your wallet, but that's a whole other topic. I digress....

It was the concierge. "I found someone!" He actually sounded surprised. I'm sure he'd made some calls and heard "Not no but hell no" a few times. But he succeeded and that's what counts. Power of positive thinking... you can't discount it. It was like the movie "The Secret," except I had decided: I AM going to buy those pills. Positive thinking!

He went on to tell me, "... but the guy wants to ask you a few questions over the phone." OK, I have no problem with this.

I will take the details of my conversation with that duly-licensed medical professional to my grave.

So it wound up that a hundred bucks (that's where Benjamin enters the saga - this ain't no bible story and it sure as shit doesn't have anything to do with Hebrew School) went into an envelope to pay for the "medical consultation" that I'd gotten in... well it took between 90 and 600 seconds on the phone. You guess which, I'm not gonna fuckin' tell. Tough. I left the envelope with the concierge and went off to do other things.

Yes, just other things. I share a lot with my readers but I will not share in this context what those other things may or may not have been. I was "busy." Read that entirely as you will. Those of you who have read this blog know full well that the writer isn't overly-concerned about your judgments or opinions. Well, some of you the latter...

(Especially those of you who've been telling me over and over for the last six months: YOU NEED TO GET LAID, DUDE! The jury is still out on that question, but I'm 90% certain you were right.)

So I returned to my hotel room and there was an envelope with duly-authorized prescription documents appropriate for that country - basically confirming that that medical professional concurred with my opinions about anxiety management!

I have to admit though... I laughed like hell at how quickly it all worked out. Props for:
* the power of positive thinking
* the TRUTH behind the statement "if you don't ask, you don't get."

And for those of you that read this far (thanks) - you might be wondering why this was a never-published Hardy Boys story. Surely the author of those stories wouldn't ever conceive of doing something quite so ghastly. But maybe... If either of the Hardy Boys ever abused these pills I assure you they might have just passed dead out. There have been plenty of stories in which they were drugged. This class of drugs would not be a villain's first or second choice (what I bought does NOT rhyme with "poofy"). OR - and this is pure speculation - maybe they WERE (however implausibly) drugged and then realized they'd both gotten cornholed pretty good so they agreed never to tell the story. Choose your own ending there.

I crack myself up. (Adopts Beavis and Butthead tone of voice) "He just said cornholed and ending all in the same breath. Heheheehhehehh."

Stella and her groove

2008-05-28T02:11:00.003-07:00

Ok for those that don't get it, I'm referring to the movie, "How Stella Got Her Groove Back."

Since movie titles are so different for the same damn film but in different countries, here are as many references to the title that I can find.

Also Known As (AKA)
A Nova Paixão de Stella Brazil / Portugal (video title)
Benvenuta in paradiso Italy
Cómo Estela recuperó la marcha Spain
How Stella Got Her Groove Back Argentina (video title)
How Stella Got Her Groove Back On USA (working title)
Sans complexes France
Stella vaihtaa vapaalle Finland
Stella's Groove: Männer sind die halbe Miete GermanyTaas svengaa Finland (TV title)

Ok, let's everyone sing a few bars of kum bah yah, then buy the world a coke and get on with our lives after the big multinational group hug. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, if you are reading this: "Dammit, I said A coke not SOME coke." I single you out because when I see you on the Venevision TV news which I watch on grey-market TV from Phoenix... your face looks just like Diego Maradona did every time I saw him entering rehab on Cronica TV from Argentina. I tend to be pretty perceptive and I gotta call it like it is.

Anyway, this vacation has proven to DEFINITELY a catharsis for me. (YES P, I said it again. It's scary... That little charcoal briquette at the core of my soul might be getting pressured into being an industrial diamond. Or maybe I might shit it out at noon time tomorrow after breakfast who knows....)

I think of that movie. My life has a few parallels. I never got the surprise Stella did: I have known up front all of my boyfriends/sex partners have been/were probably gay.

Well, a few of you (and you know who you are) are/were married but I won't tell if you won't tell... I also started litigating with my ex BEFORE getting my groove back which is unlike Stella. She did it later and really damn publicly, well thanks to www.thesmokinggun.com .

Parenthetically speaking but it really reads better as its own paragraph, grammar be damned: Ok, a few of my um... boyfriends have gone on to date girls. But I have never agonized over whether I "turned them straight." Whatever they were, they never chose anything - nor I - but they did make a snap decision in the moment to get or give some head from/to a dude.

Yes, damn it... I think I am getting my groove back. And to those who might oppose that I'm going to give you some sage advice that I'm pretty sure I heard on Cartoon Network. "Don't piss on the electric fence."

sayings that turned out to be true / the reach of USA TV in the 70's

2008-05-28T01:50:00.002-07:00

"The best way to get over someone is to get under someone."
- I always thought that that was bullshit. I still think it's bullshit if it's just a fuck. However, if good conversation goes along with it, it can be absolutely cathartic.

(Yes, P in Valencia, the ice-cold gringo said cathartic. Can you fucking believe it? I am surprised too.)

Then I was reminded of some cultural stuff by that same, um, I don't even know how to put it. I'd say angel sent by god but I'm not christian and don't speak with a Brazilian accent. (Because "angel from god" translated into Spanish sounds terribly like those silly Pare de Sufrir folks. And when those folks speak Spanish, they sound terribly Brazilian because well, um... they are!)

I didn't know that live American television made it this far south in the late 70's. But oh man, we had some memories of 70's TV in common and laughed like hell. Maybe they were not "specifically" shared - i.e. the event we laughed like hell about as adults actually happened in 1977. I'm pretty certain at age 7 I would not have understood this, nor would (or should, holy shit!) either of my parents explained it to me.

Actually my new friend (this is not "friend" in the American sense either) remembered it a little incorrectly but I too had to THINK and THINK and THINK before I said, "Ah, fuck it," and did a google search. Sure enough, Wikipedia had the answer.

I will quote directly from there. Go to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Newlywed_Game
(subject to change) and search for the word "butt."

(Yes, for those that are perceptive we are/were two gay men that had just done that thing that makes Jesus cry. Or whatever you want to call it. If you're not perceptive, please re-read the last word of the last paragraph and then this one. If you still don't get it at this point maybe you really should start considering this question: "Am I really that dumb?" I know, it's a tough one. But you have to admit the problem before you can start to fix it.)

"The Newlywed Game was the subject of an urban legend for many years. The story, which had several variations, had Bob Eubanks asking a contestant, "Where is the weirdest place where you have ever made whoopee?" in one episode. The contestant supposedly responded, "In the butt." Eubanks denied the incident for a long time.[2]

It turned out that the incident in question happened in a 1977 episode where Eubanks asked a wife named Olga where the weirdest place that she and her husband Hank had the urge to "make whoopee" was. After drawing a blank, and prodded by Eubanks to give an answer, the wife responded, "In the ass" (with "ass" bleeped out). As everyone in the studio laughed uproariously, Eubanks clarified the question, asking for the weirdest location.

Eubanks reluctantly presented the clip on a 2002 NBC special, The Most Outrageous Game Show Moments, which he co-hosted. The clip also appeared (uncensored) in the 2002 film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, about the life of producer Barris.

Hank's original, more pedestrian answer that Olga couldn't match was... "in the car", one that had drawn laughter and applause during the husbands-only segment. (Eubanks: "I'm going to take the side streets hereafter." )

During the same season, Eubanks asked another set of couples what their least favorite place to make love was. One wife quickly said, "Probably I would say the ass" (with that word bleeped out.) causing her husband to groan and sink in his seat. That episode was seen on the "Nutty Newlyweds" retrospective on Game Show Network in 2002.

Muslo, pechuga o.... dogma? (translation is inside the post)

2008-05-27T17:20:00.002-07:00

I was at Watchtower Fried Chicken this afternoon without even realizing it.

My post title means: Thigh (or leg/both), Breast or DOGMA - same word in English.

I am staying somewhere near Quepos, Costa Rica. To put what that means in perspective: this time of year (late May) it rains 12-24 hours out of the day.

I went into town because, well, I didn't really need anything but it was raining and I was bored.

I got some fried chicken, which is served with flour tortillas, ketchup, mustard and something very similar to Pico de Gallo.

So I'm sitting there wondering.... how the fuck do I make sense of this place.... when it throws me a total curveball. Inside the counter where they have the Orbit gum (which is sugar-free and ONLY has a too-much-of-this-gum-is-a-laxative warning in Latin America...) they have Spanish language Jehovahs Witness Literature.

I ate and left. Didn't say anything. Didn't witness anything either. And I won't go back to that place.

I forget the word for watchtower in Spanish but it means *exactly* the same thing.

Cheap ANCEL (Uruguay) phones are definitely NOT locked

2008-05-25T02:15:00.004-07:00

ANCEL is a GSM 1800 network. I bought my Nokia 1600 series from ANCEL in Uruguay and was rather surprised when it accepted my T-mobile chip. But the proof is... does it work well away from home?

I.C.E. Costa Rica is also GSM 1800. BAM! the Nokia 16xx used my T-mo sim to get on the network in NO TIME.

I sort of expected this based on previous tests but... my 3rd-world Nokia 1600 works just the same as my HTC phone (worth 10 times the value as the 3rd-world Nokia!) here in Costa Rica with the smae T-mo SIM.

My HTC has to fail some "tests" before it looks for a GSM1800 signal. It eventually works but not super-fast. The Nokia 1600 is designed to be a a low cost no frills 3rd-world phone. It first looks on 900 then 1800 (neither of which work in the USA). It does it FAST.

The Nokia finds GSM1800 immediately. The HTC took.. well, 15 minutes. It took my T-mobile Wing from the time I took it out of the overhead compartment until sometime when I was going immigration to figure out where it was and whether it could roam. So... $400 phone - quite the delay. $40 phone - instant. :)