Monday, December 21, 2009

No, He's Not Amazing


You know, a lot has been written about the deterioration of Americans' vocabularies, so I'm not going to belabor that point here. Not much, anyway. But there is one really, really annoying trend I've noticed over the past couple of years that really just needles away at me.

It's amazing.

No, I'm not saying the thing that people do that needles away at me is amazing. I'm saying I'm sick and fricking tired of people using the stupid word "amazing."

For crying out loud, people, engage more than one neuron from time to time.

Tune into any moronic reality show where strangers date each other like "The Bachelor" and you'll hear that word flying around like popcorn on a hot kettle.

"He's soooooo amazing!"

"He's such an amazing person..."

"I think she's an amazing girl, but I don't know if she's right for me..."

That last one is particularly noteworthy, as it's become a sorry way of breaking up with someone: "You're amazing and all, but you suck, so I'm dumping you."

Damn it! Spider Man is amazing. Harry Houdini was amazing. Dogs that can count are amazing.

Ordinary, boring people with dull, uninspiring careers are not amazing! I repeat -- ordinary people are not amazing!

Not even Donald Trump is amazing.

To amaze literally means, "To cause great wonder or astonishment." So quite clearly, rich losers who are rich because their daddies are mega business tycoons are not amazing.

Stop it, already!

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Monday, December 14, 2009

Fortune Telling Scam


About 20 years ago, I dated a girl who was a bit superstitious.

Elaine was her name, and her parents were Cuban. She was born and raised in Miami (Hialeah, to be exact), but her parents were bona fide Cubanos.

Elaine had a "friend" named Maria. Notice the quotes around the word "friend." That's because, as you might easily guess, Maria wasn't much of a friend. She was actually a very mean-spirited, vindictive girl who thrived on drama and spread vicious gossip for her own bemusement.

One day, Maria decided it would be fun to spread a rumor about my girlfriend Elaine that she had slept with one of our high school football coaches.

It wasn't true -- not to my knowledge, at least -- but it devastated Elaine. The rumor spread like the Bubonic Plague in medieval Europe, and soon everyone in school was whispering and giggling.

Elaine cut off her friendship with Maria and learned to despise her. She developed a bloody hatred for the girl, which was, well, well deserved.

Anyway, so a few years later, my girlfriend found new friends, and one of the new friends told her that she just had to go visit this fortune teller that the friend had just visited. The friend told my girlfriend that the fortune teller was "amazing" and could tell her things about herself and her future that were astonishing.

So to the fortune teller they went.

Elaine walked through the door and took a seat in the foyer to await Madam whatever-her-name-was. Finally, the prestidigitator entered through the archway, and before she even introduced herself, she looked straight at Elaine and asked her a question that made her jaw hit the floor:

"Who's Maria?"

Maria, the venomous girl from high school who had poisoned Elaine's good reputation.

Sure enough, Elaine was sold. Convinced. Hooked, line, sinker, and all.

The fortune teller proceeded to tell Elaine all sorts of nebulous things about her future, her direction, and her prospects.

When Elaine told me about the whole affair, right away I knew our relationship was over -- because there was no way I could keep dating a girl so dumb to fall for such a simple, cheap parlor trick.

What's the trick, you ask? How did the fortune teller know such an intimate detail about Elaine's past? How could she possibly have known about what Maria had done to her?

Ahhh...you think you have it figured out, don't you? You think the friend who recommended the fortune teller tipped the clairvoyant off, don't you?

Oh, you're so clever.

Not.

No, the trick is not that sophisticated, and if you still haven't figured it out, I have some beachfront property in Kansas to sell you.

It was fricking Miami.

There are 800 zillion girls in Miami named Maria.

Chances are damned good that anybody in Miami knows someone named Maria. So all the palm reader needs to do is ask a very unsophisticated, leading question like, "Who's Maria?" and wait for the mark to fall for it and start spilling her guts.

Oldest, stupidest trick in the book.

Visit any fortune teller or palm reader anywhere in the country and I guarantee you he/she will attempt this con. Only difference is the name will be John or David or Ashley or some other extraordinarily common name in the area. Just ask, "Who's John?" because surely every mark in the world knows someone named John.

So for your entertainment, give this a try. Go to a fortune teller, and when she asks you, "Who's John?" say, "I don't know. You tell me -- you're the fortune teller."

Watch how quickly the session comes to an end.

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Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Republican Hopefuls of 2012 -- Not a Heavyweight Among Them

If the Republicans are going to have any shot at winning back the White House in 2012, they need to start recruiting.

Hard.

The current cast of "potentials" is a lineup of lightweights. When Sarah Palin is your biggest name, man, you've got a serious problem.

Let's take a look.

Sarah Palin. Not bad to look at but can't think of the name of any fricking newspaper in America. Just say "USA Today" and move on! Duh! Next!

Mike Huckabee. Can you say, "Twinkle toes?" And he's plumping up, too. Next!

Bobby Jindal. Weird -- no, bizarre -- rebuttal to President Obama's address to Congress. Next!

Mitt Romney. Conservative Americans are never, ever, ever going to vote...for a guy named Mitt. Next!

John Thune. Tall, lankey looking dude. Next!

Charlie Crist. Own state doesn't like him, and he's a Republican in name only. Next!

Rudy Giuliani. Worst run campaign for president, ever. Only one in the bunch with any potential.

Hollywood, do you have another Ronald Reagan to offer us?

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Friday, December 4, 2009

Six Years Later and OpenOffice Still Sucks


Way back in 2003 I learned about a new open source product called OpenOffice, a free, "full featured" office productivity suite similar to Microsoft Office.

It sucked back then.

It still sucks today.

Now don't get me wrong -- for a free product, OpenOffice is an impressive little hobby shop pet project. I mean, that a collection of volunteers can crank out a productivity suite that can actually do something is an impressive feat. But as a professional office productivity suite for today's demanding workplaces, it's a joke.

Let's face it -- whether we like or not, Microsoft is still king of the mountain when it comes to just about everything to do with a personal computer, and Microsoft Office is no exception. As a professional writer, I have come to take for granted all the advanced and powerful features of Microsoft Word. One can easily write the most complex documents using Word. It does all the work for you.

What's that, you say? You hate how Word "commandeers" your documents and starts doing whacky, unexpected things you don't want? That's because you don't know how to use Word. Get a good book on the subject, sit down and practice, and you'll be amazed at what it can do. All that auto-numbering and auto-formatting will suddenly make sense and you'll be thankful for it.

So whether you like it or not, Microsoft Office is king. Accordingly, any product that's going to try to compete with it has to be compatible with it. That is, if you want to compete with Office, your product has to be able to open and edit Office documents.

And that, folks, is where OpenOffice fails.

Oh, I know. They brag big about how OpenOffice can open Microsoft Office documents.

Uh huh.

That, folks, would be a tall tale. A stretch, at best. Back in 2003, when I first gave OpenOffice a whirl, it could "open" Office documents, but only the most rudimentary ones. If I tried to open any doc with any advanced formatting at all, OpenOffice would choke.

Advance the clock to 2009, when I'm currently writing a nonfiction book. Recently I decided to load Windows 7 on my home office computer that was previously running Windows XP. After reinstalling the OS it came time to install the Office suite. My only problem is, on that computer I only have a license for Office 2003, which is a bit dated. So I figured that six years after my first bad experience with it, I'd give OpenOffice another try. Surely they'd fixed all the problems they had with it six years ago and surely they'd infused it with all the advanced features of Word.

Wrong.

When I fired up OpenOffice and told it to open my book's manuscript, it opened -- I guess -- but it didn't look anything like my manuscript. Text was garbled. Text was moved. Text was bizarrely jumbled on top of itself. All my section headers -- which are not numbered in my manuscript -- were now somehow numbered, and incorrectly. So I closed down OpenOffice, installed Office 2003, and it -- the 2003 version -- opened my Word 2007 doc just fine!

Read that again -- Microsoft not only has modernized its Word processor by introducing the 2007 version, it's retrofitted the 2003 version (through a compatibility pack I got from Windows Update) to be able to open 2007 documents! And they open perfectly!

OpenOffice, conversely, just can't get it right.

In fairness, maybe OpenOffice works fine if you work exclusively in OpenOffice, but in today's busy world and in today's climate of moving docs from machine-to-machine, who's going to do that?

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Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Hey, Asshole -- Slow Down!


Let's see how much of an a-hole you are.

Suppose you're driving on the Interstate and you're hauling ass -- 85 or 95 miles per hour. And as you're irresponsibly flying down the road, endangering innocent 10-year-old children in the cars around you with your self-absorbed, mindless hotdogging, you come up on someone going 75mph in the left lane. You notice a truck in the right lane towing a trailer going 60mph.

What do you do? Do you...

a) Flash your high beam lights repeatedly to demand the guy get out of your way
b) Bear down on the guy and ride his ass until he gets out of your way
c) Slam your fist on your steering wheel because this jackass made you tap your brakes
d) Drive two inches from the guy's bumper so he can see you cuss at him in his rear view mirror

If you answered any letter, you're wrong, because you know you're a supreme a-hole and your answer is all of the above.

You're an ass, a self-absorbed clod, an immature teenager in an adult body.

You think of no one but yourself and believe that the left lane on roads and highways is the "speeding lane," rather than the passing lane, what it really is.

You see signs that say, "Slower traffic keep right," and you take them literally. You believe that since you're going 100mph, anyone going the speed limit -- the fastest speed one can legally travel --should get the hell out of your way. After all, you have TV to watch, video games to play, and porno to surf. You're important, damn it!

Well, I hate to break it to you, but you're flat wrong. The speed limit is a limit. That is, it's the absolute fastest you can drive on the highway. If someone is driving the limit and he's in the left lane, you have no right expecting him to get out of the way just so you can break the law.

And endanger children.

See all those fricking accidents on the highways every time you go somewhere? You know, the ones where cars are wrapped around trees and dead bodies litter the shoulder? How do you think they happen? Meteor impact? Maybe a Caribou ran out into the street?

No, it's because a-holes like you drive too fast.

Grow up.

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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Send Your Kid to College...Get Back a Drunk, Raped Heroin Addict

So you've sent your 18-year-old child away to college. You're so happy and excited for her, aren't you? She's going to get to have all those big fun experiences you had -- innocent drinking games, social mixers, pool parties, mischievous raids on opposing sororities, jammy parties with the girls, and all night study sessions fueled by fresh, hot pizza, right?

If this is what you think is going on in your college kid's life, you're an imbecile. You're out of touch, living in a fantasy world, and being duped by the kid who just a few years ago was playing with her Barbies or Jurassic Park action playset.

The reality? Your kid, right now, as you read these words, is snorting Oxycontin (the pharmaceutical name for heroin) up her nose.

Or she's binge drinking herself to unconsciousness and sleeping it off on a sidewalk or on the side of a street.

She's puffing away at cigarettes and having unprotected sex.

She's "partying" with boys she doesn't know, getting completely wasted, and then getting gang raped.

And those all nighter study sessions fueled by pizza? Well, that's half right, only the fuel isn't pizza -- it's handfuls of Ritalin, that shit you and her irresponsible teacher introduced your kid to at the age of eight "for her own good." Ritalin, you see, when overdosed, makes your kid extremely awake, alert, and focused so she can stay up 72 hours straight without sleeping to counter all the ill effects of all that booze and Oxy she's been pumping into herself.

Oh, and after her big test is done, since she's already been up 72 hours, the next "fun" thing to do is crush up ten or twelve Ambien and snort them. When taken as prescribed, Ambien, the "gentle, non-habit forming sleep aid," makes you really, really sleepy. But if you take a huge dose of it through your nose and force yourself to stay awake, you hallucinate, big time.

It's called "Ambien tripping," and it's all the rage. When you finally fall unconscious, you're in a virtual coma, and the boys can have their way with you any which way they like.

But the biggest, most sought after designer drug on campus these days is Oxycontin. Oxycontin is a pain drug originally designed to be given to terminal cancer patients in extreme agony. Here's what it really is: Heroin.

Yes, that dirty shit you see people cooking up in a spoon over a candle and then shooting into their arms. That's what Oxycontin is. Only difference is that Oxy is cooked up in a legal lab by people in lab coats rather than by scuzzy dirtbags in abandoned houses.

But the effects are 100% the same.

Extreme addiction. Extreme euphoria. Complete loss of free will. Total dedication to the drug. Painful, horrific withdrawals. A life constantly fighting off the craving, even after you've gone through detox and rehab and have "cleaned up."

Your little Ashley, you see, has figured out that popping an Oxycontin is an OK little pick-me-up, but to really get wasted, you need to crush them up and -- yes, you guessed it -- snort it up your nose through a straw. What an awesome feel good rush!

Right now, as you read these words or consider where next to go on your family vacation, an entire generation of hardcore drug addicts of the worst kind is being created. Take a hidden camera into any fraternity or sorority party on any college campus in the country and you'll see with your own eyes the reality of why Brittany needs so much money "for food" since "the cafeteria food sucks."

All that cash your lavishing on her? I mean, after all, she needs spending money, right?

Right up her nose.

Don't think your little Ashlee, Brittany, Courtney, Dylan, Jacob, Emily, Madison, Joshua, Emma, Jessica, Luke, or Jennifer is doing this? Think she would never get involved in this stuff? She's "too good" or "too smart," right?

Get your head out of your ass.

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Trying Terrorists in Civilian Courts = Bad Idea

My local newspaper printed an editorial that contends that trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in American civilian courts is the right thing to do. Here's the letter I wrote the editor in response:

I found your editorial on trying suspected mastermind of 9/11 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) interesting. You conclude that trying him in a civilian court is not out of line and will reinforce our traditions of openness and our commitment to the rule of law. That's all fine, but you missed the main point of the argument against trying the man in civilian courts -- the admissibility of the evidence.

Since he is being tried in civilian court on American soil, he must be afforded all rights granted by the Constitution.

KSM did not have Miranda rights read to him upon his capture. Further, because President Obama on April 30, 2009 openly admitted KSM was tortured, his defense team will logically argue that interrogators violated Due Process. As established in Brown vs. Mississippi in 1937, forced confessions are inadmissible as evidence. Moreover, by torturing him -- as President Obama freely admitted -- KSM's Eighth Amendment rights were violated. KSM's Escobedo rights were also violated, as he did not have an attorney present during questioning.

KSM did not receive a speedy trial, as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.

KSM was detained without being charged for more than 24 hours.

Much of the evidence against KSM was obtained without a warrant and without following formal police procedures for the proper collection of evidence.

Add it all up and what do you get?

Case dismissed.

And then what happens? KSM and his flunkies must be released. But because no other country would be foolish enough to receive them, there would be no place to send them. So what does that mean? It means KSM becomes a free man on the streets of New York.

Free to plot again.

Free to file a civil suit against the United States for violating his civil rights.

Trying KSM on US soil in civilian courts was a very, very bad decision.

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