When people talk about "spam," I think they need to be more specific. During my first few years of Internet use, I managed to stay below the collective radar screen of the people who promised to show me adult pics FOR FREE!!!, help me meet the (insert city here) single of my dreams, and add inches to my cock GUARANTEEED!!!. Then, for some reason I can't begin to fathom, I started getting unsolicited porn. Not much, never more than 6-12 a day, but enought to annoy me. And now, after a year's worth of tinkering with my filters, I am just finally able to go a week without getting any solicitations for "Tight Young Vagina" in my Inbox.
Now, the spam I receive has taken on an ominous new tone. All of a sudden, the email marketers want to get me out of debt. And there are lots of 'em. Fat ones, skinny ones, ones who climb on rocks. And they're all concerned about my financial future.
Whoo-hah.
Wednesday, July 24, 2002
_ I originally intended this Blog to be something I would update every day. Instead, it's been almost a week since I was here. *sigh* even online I am a lazy, uninspired wastrel.
_ My ex-roommate is getting married, and I am to be his best man. There is all sorts of pressure associated with that hyperbolic title, not the least of which is planning a bachelor party. My options are severely limited in this endeavor.
A) The groom's brother will be attending. Since he's not of legal age, going to a bar is right out.
B) The groom is whipped like a recalcitrant galley oarsman. Thus, any form of risque entertainment... okay, a stripper, is also verboten. Personally, I'm sort of thankful for that one. Some bleach-blonde skank spastically twitching her implants around my living room is not my idea of a final send-off.
C) I've never even attended, let alone planned, one of these things. The closest thing I've ever been to was a bridal/baby shower for an old friend who got the "getting married and starting a family" thing all backwards. I did see a stripper once, at a birthday party for a fellow attendant at the gas station where I used to work. The dancer was pretty good, but he really didn't quite fit into that little thong very well. Not that Theresa, my co-worker, minded very much.
_ So far, all I've come up with is sitting around, drinking, and telling embarrasing stories about Otter. (Yes, his nickname is Otter.) While there is certainly an abundance of such tales, I can't help but wonder if I'm somehow short-changing both the groom and the guests. I've always had an abundance of female aquaintances, and the stories they tell about bridal showers are terribly intimidating. From what I can gather, they are elaborately choreographed affairs, with coordinated themes, decorations, and surprises that will both delight and amuse the bride-to-be. Otter's party won't be a surprise in any sense, since he helped me fill out the guest list. The theme consists of "drinking a lot," and the only decoration will be the life sized cardboard picture of Ian McKellan as Gandalf that I got from the bookstore where I work.
_ I'm sure that Otter will enjoy his party, as will the guests. Until they've drunk themselves into a blind stupor, they'll no doubt appreciate the chance to rip on each other in a sanctioned, encouraging atmosphere. In the end, I suppose that's really all that matters. Yet, I still can't shake the feeling that there was more I could have done to make the experience more unique. More planning, more decorating, more thematic consideration. Hopefully, everyone will get drunk too quickly to notice.
_ My ex-roommate is getting married, and I am to be his best man. There is all sorts of pressure associated with that hyperbolic title, not the least of which is planning a bachelor party. My options are severely limited in this endeavor.
A) The groom's brother will be attending. Since he's not of legal age, going to a bar is right out.
B) The groom is whipped like a recalcitrant galley oarsman. Thus, any form of risque entertainment... okay, a stripper, is also verboten. Personally, I'm sort of thankful for that one. Some bleach-blonde skank spastically twitching her implants around my living room is not my idea of a final send-off.
C) I've never even attended, let alone planned, one of these things. The closest thing I've ever been to was a bridal/baby shower for an old friend who got the "getting married and starting a family" thing all backwards. I did see a stripper once, at a birthday party for a fellow attendant at the gas station where I used to work. The dancer was pretty good, but he really didn't quite fit into that little thong very well. Not that Theresa, my co-worker, minded very much.
_ So far, all I've come up with is sitting around, drinking, and telling embarrasing stories about Otter. (Yes, his nickname is Otter.) While there is certainly an abundance of such tales, I can't help but wonder if I'm somehow short-changing both the groom and the guests. I've always had an abundance of female aquaintances, and the stories they tell about bridal showers are terribly intimidating. From what I can gather, they are elaborately choreographed affairs, with coordinated themes, decorations, and surprises that will both delight and amuse the bride-to-be. Otter's party won't be a surprise in any sense, since he helped me fill out the guest list. The theme consists of "drinking a lot," and the only decoration will be the life sized cardboard picture of Ian McKellan as Gandalf that I got from the bookstore where I work.
_ I'm sure that Otter will enjoy his party, as will the guests. Until they've drunk themselves into a blind stupor, they'll no doubt appreciate the chance to rip on each other in a sanctioned, encouraging atmosphere. In the end, I suppose that's really all that matters. Yet, I still can't shake the feeling that there was more I could have done to make the experience more unique. More planning, more decorating, more thematic consideration. Hopefully, everyone will get drunk too quickly to notice.
Thursday, July 18, 2002
_ I spent the afternoon playing with Legos today. I whiled away countless days as a kid, building spaceships and tanks, etc., on the floor of my room in Vineland, NJ. It's been years since I did that, but I went to my parents house today, and my dad was building with my nine-year-old cousin, so I decided to join in. Five hours later, as my mother was admonishing us to clear the blocks off the table for dinner, I had come to realize two very important things.
_ 1) There is a certain pleasure and satisfaction to be gained from imagining something, picturing it in your mind, and then building it. Making the thing that you saw in your head into a three-dimensional object, that you can touch, examine and destroy if you wish, is a creative thrill of a very high order.
_ 2) I am much more anal-retentive than I was as a child. My method of storing my Lego pieces was to dump them all into huge plastic bins. When I needed a specific block, I would sift through them like I was looking for the last green M&M. Today, as I was digging through the bins as I built my hovercraft, I was seized by a near-overwhelming urge to sort each and every piece by type, size, color, and whatever other category my compulsion demanded.
_ *sigh* I guess I'm just not the same carefree kid I used to be. Although people who know me now will find it hard to imagine that I was ever carefree, let alone a kid.
_ 1) There is a certain pleasure and satisfaction to be gained from imagining something, picturing it in your mind, and then building it. Making the thing that you saw in your head into a three-dimensional object, that you can touch, examine and destroy if you wish, is a creative thrill of a very high order.
_ 2) I am much more anal-retentive than I was as a child. My method of storing my Lego pieces was to dump them all into huge plastic bins. When I needed a specific block, I would sift through them like I was looking for the last green M&M. Today, as I was digging through the bins as I built my hovercraft, I was seized by a near-overwhelming urge to sort each and every piece by type, size, color, and whatever other category my compulsion demanded.
_ *sigh* I guess I'm just not the same carefree kid I used to be. Although people who know me now will find it hard to imagine that I was ever carefree, let alone a kid.
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Here's a question: why do people feel the need to bare their souls to retail employees?
I support my bastardly activities with a day job at a bookstore. It's one of those mall-box type stores, a subsidiary of one of the giant mega-book-coffee warehouse chains. Aside from my mad register skillz, my main function is book-retriever. Customers come in, describe a book to varying degrees of vagueness, and I try to match their sparse data with an actual title.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it invariably takes a few minutes of searching, both in our computer's database and on the shelf. For some reason, customers quite often feel impelled to fill that void of conversation with an explanation of why they're looking for the book in the first place.
"My son's got ADHD, and he's a very bright boy, tested all off the charts, and his teachers don't know how to handle a kid that's so much smarter than they are. I heard that this book can set them straight."
"I just found out I have this really large tumor on the inside of my skull, and the ichor dripping onto my brain is making me nauseous. My cousin's best friend's dentist is a water-skiing nut, and he says this book helped him overcome motion sickness, so I thought it might help."
"The first time I made love to the missus, we was in the back seat of my Chevy Nova. We were so cramped and bent around and twisted up, but for some reason, I was fantastic. I here that this tantric sex has some yoga or somethin' involved with it. Maybe that'll help me be able to get it up again."
I've heard more stories about sexual dysfunction, family dysfunction, marital dysfunction, recently diagnosed diseases, learning disorders and pet peeves from complete strangers than I ever expected. I feel like the world's lamest bartender. Is there a reason that these people are driven to share their sordid secrets with me? Is it just because they aren't comfortable with silence? Do I LOOK like I care? Whatever the reason, here's a piece of advice. The next time you're in a retail establishment, and the conversation lags for some reason, resist the urge to fill the void with intimate details about your personal life. The interest/sympathy/fascination that you'll elicit from the sales associate is most likely feigned. And, if it's a good enough story, it just might end up on the Internet.
I support my bastardly activities with a day job at a bookstore. It's one of those mall-box type stores, a subsidiary of one of the giant mega-book-coffee warehouse chains. Aside from my mad register skillz, my main function is book-retriever. Customers come in, describe a book to varying degrees of vagueness, and I try to match their sparse data with an actual title.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it invariably takes a few minutes of searching, both in our computer's database and on the shelf. For some reason, customers quite often feel impelled to fill that void of conversation with an explanation of why they're looking for the book in the first place.
"My son's got ADHD, and he's a very bright boy, tested all off the charts, and his teachers don't know how to handle a kid that's so much smarter than they are. I heard that this book can set them straight."
"I just found out I have this really large tumor on the inside of my skull, and the ichor dripping onto my brain is making me nauseous. My cousin's best friend's dentist is a water-skiing nut, and he says this book helped him overcome motion sickness, so I thought it might help."
"The first time I made love to the missus, we was in the back seat of my Chevy Nova. We were so cramped and bent around and twisted up, but for some reason, I was fantastic. I here that this tantric sex has some yoga or somethin' involved with it. Maybe that'll help me be able to get it up again."
I've heard more stories about sexual dysfunction, family dysfunction, marital dysfunction, recently diagnosed diseases, learning disorders and pet peeves from complete strangers than I ever expected. I feel like the world's lamest bartender. Is there a reason that these people are driven to share their sordid secrets with me? Is it just because they aren't comfortable with silence? Do I LOOK like I care? Whatever the reason, here's a piece of advice. The next time you're in a retail establishment, and the conversation lags for some reason, resist the urge to fill the void with intimate details about your personal life. The interest/sympathy/fascination that you'll elicit from the sales associate is most likely feigned. And, if it's a good enough story, it just might end up on the Internet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
