Bloghalla - Blog Courageously

It all started this morning, Nov 4th; Election Day. I slept “ok” and had no problem shaking off the half bottle of Nyquil I drank the night before. All in all, it was already a successful day. Long story short, I found myself sitting at my desk at exactly 8:50am looking at my iPhone in wonderment. I had received a text message on my iPhone. Wait a minute, I don’t use SMS text messages. It’s email or websites for me, baby! Text is for school children and pussies! Maybe pedophiles but don’t quote me on that. Wait! After reading my text message, I know for a fact that pedophiles use them. Go ahead and quote me. The message informed me I could avoid the long lines by voting tomorrow, Wednesday. Woohooo, and extra day and, hopefully, shorter lines! Wait a minute, my “common senses are tingling”. I think this is a fraudulent bit of information sent to me from a pedophile in San Antonio Texas, from someone I don’t know, that forwarded it from someone else I dont’ know, on election day. Hmmm, I wonder if they are Conservatives?

After almost deleting the message, I figured I had better preserve it for future chuckles by making a screenshot. As I was in the process, it hit me. This is a pedophile from Texas trying to disinfranchise me from my, God given, right to vote for the least awful candidate for President of the United States. If anyone is going to make me waste my opportunity there is a long list of people I actually know who can do it and I, myself, am at the top of that list! Without hesitation I posted the screenshot in as many places on the internet as I could think of. Friends of mine were linking to it and spreading the good word. Below is the actual popup message on my iPhone.

On another note, I think a good indicator of how successful you are at something on the internet can be measured by how many times you have been ripped off by someone else. As evidenced by this jackass, you can clearly see my screenshot with the phone numbers blocked out. If you’re reading this, you just protected the criminals (Conservatives?) from prosecution by hiding their information. I think it might make you an accessory to the crime(s).

Jackass’ Website

At the end of it all, I’m sitting here typing this, feeling pretty good about myself and considering taking up a part-time job. That is, being everything to everyone. Just one of the unsung heroes doing his little part in America!

Among my friends, it’s no secret that I can be a bit “critical” of what the TV Executives are deciding we want to watch.  However, I’m a huge fan of the premium cable channel series shows. The late Sopranos and Deadwood from HBO and the, still fresh, Dexter over on Showtime were/are excellent. Having taken a backseat to Showtime (in my home), HBO has pulled off something that had me thinking, “You gotta be shitting me! A series about Vampires.” Yes, Vampires!

We join the show, for me, in episodes 1 and 2, hot off the DVR last night. (When I should have been sleeping.) True Blood starts off in an America where Vampires have (I am not making this up), “come out of the coffin”, and apparently, “just want to fit in”. Well, they want to fit into the “after sunset social scene”. In this world, technology has created a perfect synthetic blood called True Blood, that can be purchased in (so far as we know) bars and convenience stores.  Thus, vampires don’t have to feed on humans and can now cohabitate with the mortals.  As much as I’m liking the show so far, I have a couple of issues with the believeability of the story.  Here’s why.

Goodbye lateshift for all you mortals. Firstly, vampires are strong and fast. Our first vampire, Bill Compton,  (Not Count William Compton IV or anything like that) kills a couple of people, saving his mortal, telepathic, fine as hell, girlfriend, and makes it look like they died when a tornado hit their mobile home. What I’m saying is it would only take 1 or 2 of them to do the work of 20 people. Unemployment, depending on how many of them file for social security numbers, could be off the charts.

They are being oppressed and persecuted. Yeah right! In this show, they are hunted an “drained” for their “narcotic/aphrodesiac-like” blood and treated much like a minority. Folks using words like “you people” and “your kind”. This would never happen. Even out in the sticks with a dive-bar full of like-minded, biggoted vampire hating rednecks to back you up. One of the guys could clean house. For “hatin’ on vampires”, I’m calling bullshit!

In summary, they’ve done a lot of good stuff with this one. I think HBO has found a much overdue winner in True Blood. Now, if this series ends with a “switch to black”, I’ll put a stake in HBO, in my house. You heard me!

Midwest USA, Sep 17 - With information trickling in, details of this lawsuit are sketchy at best. So far, it seems that a 39 year old nerd from somewhere in the Midwest, has filed the suit, citing the makers of the iPhone and MacBook computers “ruined his life”.  The suit also states the manufacturer showed negiligence on their part by failing to display proper warning labels regarding the addictive elements of their product. As compensation the suit is seeking 3.2 milion dollars and a new iPhone.

I can almost see it now. Why?

First: Americans are “Litigation Nutjobs”! We base the risky decisions in our lives on how much we could sue for if we get hurt or sick. That floor looks slippery. Screw it! This blah, blah, blah, company has “deep pockets”.  Besides, I’m almost 40 and you could buy a lot of prescriptions for pain killers if I herniate a disk or tear my ACL.

Second: It’s really that addictive.  Want to bitch about something? Post some feedback on the net with your iPhone.  See something funny?  Take a picture of it and send it to your friends with your iPhone.  Need directions to the house down the street?  Get directions to navigate the .25 miles to your friends house with your iPhone.  I don’t thing humans have ever seen “so much value” in such a small package.  Exception: Swiss Army knives and condoms.

C: It’s making me stupid.  In just one week, I no longer need to remember meetings, directions, phone numbers, web addresses, or what my kids look like.   It’s all right there in my pocket now.  I have also been giving myself about 10 extra minutes to get to work because just this week, I’ve missed my stop on the train at least 3 times.   On one of those instances, I actually had to ‘back track’.  I’m not proud of it.

We’re only scratching the surface.  Stay tuned.