Rover uncovers clues to Mar’s origins – Teaser on cnn.com, February 23, 2004
And you complain about 411’s teasers. Who the hell is Mar, and what’s Rover doing bugging him about his origins?
Oh, I’m not in a good mood. This column is going to be one spew of bile after another, like my gall bladder forced its way into my fingers and demanded a discharge in electronic form. I don’t know why this is, really. I know that it’s going to find its manifestation in a series of short epigrams, mostly political in nature (well, hell, I already did my Oscar Predictions column when the nominations came out, and the SAGs didn’t change my mind about any winners; I also never saw an episode of Sex and the City, nor did I ever want to see one, and the same goes for Friends, so I won’t be rhapsodizing about those six assholes in a couple months either). It’s going to be brutal and acidic. If you don’t want to come along for the ride, I don’t blame you. Hell, even Grut gets blasted a little in here. So, if you dare, start scrolling…
PIMPS ABOUND
Grut got his column up after I submitted yesterday’s work to Wrestling (I normally submit right after Raw goes off and I do final editing and polish, which means about 10:30 CT on Monday). So did Misha. Ditto Laflin. I apologize to all for the crossover on that, and I hope this makes that up to them. See, I can be nice if I want…no, I can’t. I’m neurochemically incapable of that. Although I shouldn’t be nice to Laflin; he forgot the “l” in my last name. And we PC owners have had Kapalua Plantation on Links since 1997, and it came free with the game, so there.
Norton: useful wrestling information and computer utilities, all in one package.
Erhardt may be lovelorn, but hip-hop can cure that. Wake me up when Dr. Dre is shown to reduce cancer cell multiplication.
Don’t worry, Anderson. No more Around the Horn for this week (and you have golf to thank for that), and Woody’s back next week. But for God’s sake, isn’t there anyone they can find outside of Paige and Mariotti to carry that show? The only thing that could make it worse is if they anoint the winner of Dream Job as the new host. I can’t believe I’m actually missing Noo Yawk Kellerman…
We can at least be happy that Gustafson didn’t throw The Greatest Show On Earth or Cimmaron on his list of the ten best Best Picture winners. Although I do have to question whether or not he’s seen two Best Picture-winning comedies that are far and away better than Annie Hall, namely It Happened One Night and You Can’t Take It With You*. The former only changed movie comedies (and men’s underwear-wearing habits) forever, and was the third of the three Grand Slam winners that he didn’t bother mentioning, and the latter was a damn sweet piece of work. No Noo Yawk assholes in either of them, which alone makes them superior.
* – Yes, I know, it must be an absolute shock to the neocon jerkoffs in the audience that I’m pimping not one, but two films directed by Frank Capra. As far as I’m concerned, up until Meet John Doe, the guy was pure platinum. If it makes you happy, I’ll admit that I completely f*cking loathe It’s A Wonderful Life. I’ll forgive Jimmy Stewart almost anything, but not that.
Oh, Hayhurst, Hayhurst, Ziegler, Ziegler the mistakes you have made, like mentioning David O. Selznick’s two Best Picture wins for RKO. Selznick was once head of RKO, but almost a decade earlier than his Oscar victories. He was an independent when he made Gone With The Wind and Rebecca. RKO had nothing to do with either film (GWTW was distributed by MGM, while Rebecca was distributed by United Artists, which Selznick had become a part of when he went indie). Lionel Barrymore wasn’t nearly the lush that John and Ethel were. Sid Luft was Judy Garland’s husband at the time she was pregnant and lost. The Bowery Boys did a comedy series, not a mystery series. And an Oscar history without mentioning Greer Garson’s infamous acceptance speech, which I believe is considered a crime in most nations? Hey, anyone who misspells Ronald Colman’s name needs to get pounced on. I may have to do a f*cking erratum to this series, just to get the facts straight. I won’t even start about Ziegler’s lapses in taste. “Halle Berry deserved an Academy Award” has to rank right up there with “I won’t cum in your mouth” and “Iraq had WMDs” on the Big Lie Scale.
IDIOTS ABOUND
This week, the Religious Reich is trying yet again to define potential as actuality. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act has made its biennial appearance in the House of Representatives, which will pass it, then see the bill get caught in some Senate subcommittee yet again and die a proper death (unlike with their success in a certain judicial appointment over the weekend…oh, I don’t want to talk about that one; it’s such a mockery of the US judicial system that it makes my hair hurt). The bill essentially defines a fetus as a lifeform of its own, which is, of course, complete bullshit and a cynical way to allow the Religious Reich to couch its anti-abortion rhetoric in something that might be more acceptable to the majority of Americans that approve of abortion rights, thus slipping a mickey to Roe v Wave through the back door. What the hell’s next, right-wing assholes? Are you going to pass a bill like this regarding animals? Kick a pregnant dog, you get charged with endangering the dog and its eight or nine fetuses? How about outlawing fetal pig dissection too? If you don’t pass bills like that in addition to this, you’re a bunch of hypocrites, or you’re ignorant and don’t recognize the fact that humans, like dogs and pigs, are mammals, just ones who happen to have opposable thumbs and a developed brain. That doesn’t make us special, that just puts us on top of a very large heap. Of course, you are ignorant. You’re the type of people who restrict hunting certain animals to certain times of the year and charge licenses to do so, but killing a doctor who performs abortions is acceptable any time, and you don’t even need a license for it.
I’m sick and tired of this. A fetus is a potential life, not an actual one. Until it’s viable outside the womb, it should be perfectly acceptable to alter the potential. In fact, under certain conditions, I’m in favor of abortion after viability, like if the former fetus starts voting Republican. Don’t bother writing in. You’re not going to change my mind. In fact, I’ll shout it to the world, okay?
IT’S GREAT TO TERMINATE FETUSES! IT’S FUN AND EASY! YOU CAN DO IT WITH A VACUUM, YOU CAN DO IT WITH MEDICATION, YOU CAN DO IT BY KICKING A PREGNANT WOMAN IN THE STOMACH! IT’S SPIFFY-NEATO!
Your arguments won’t dissuade someone who just doesn’t give a damn about what your religious beliefs think. Aristotle trumps the Bible any day. So f*ck off.
CRIMINALS ABOUND
From CNN:
The Pentagon’s investigation into allegations a Halliburton subsidiary may have overcharged for gasoline delivered to Iraq last year is now a criminal probe…”The Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the criminal investigative arm of the Inspector General’s office, is investigating allegations of fraud on the part of Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), including the potential overpricing of fuel delivered to Baghdad by a KBR subcontractor,” a Pentagon statement said.
And so it starts…
You’re not going to hear Monroe talk about this one, will you? This is what the “war in Iraq” means, folks. It was started purely in order to enrich the pockets of Dubbaya’s cronies and their friends, like Halliburton, which is connected to the Junta at its highest levels, through Mad Dog Cheney, a former Halliburton director. Now, even the biggest tool of the Junta, the US military, is saying that Halliburton is committing crimes and robbing the American taxpayer.
Oh, this is beautiful. I said it over a year ago, folks. I told you that the Halliburton stuff would start coming out before the election, and at a time when the American people were starting to understand what frauds were committed in their name to start this conflict, and that it would help poison the well for the Junta. This is a day to celebrate, my people. The Junta shall be exposed for what they are, a gang of low-moral, low-class, power-addled retards, and they shall be driven from the land by the force of a disgusted electorate no longer willing to have the wool pulled over their sheep eyes. I am no longer a voice in the wildnerness, called by some a fool. I have been joined by the Inspector Fucking General’s office, the nastiest bunch of guys to wear a uniform this side of Delta Force. They will ferret out the truth, and they will not be scared of the Junta. No AWOL National Guard wimp can outmuscle these boys.
Go, IG’s Office, go. I’m rooting for you on this one.
SECRETS ABOUND
The Junta loves doing judicial things in secrecy, don’t they? First the David “I Approve Of The Ten Commandments Monument, But The Law Says, Regrettably, That We Have To Remove It” Pryor appointment, bypassing the accepted judicial approval process in order to get a right-wing religious freak on the Court of Appeals. Now the Supremes have handed down a major blow to what should be something that the American public has a right to know: the actions of their law enforcement officials in response to September 11th, and the probable racism against Arabs that took place in this country due to the actions of nineteen psychotics with a bad interpretation of the Qu’ran on repeat play in their heads.
Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel was a waiter in Florida. He was taken away in secret and interrogated by INS law enforcement, also in secret. His incredible crime? He might have served a meal to two of the aforementioned psychotics. The Junta kept Bellahouel’s case and hundreds of others under wraps in the name of National Security. Bellahouel was, of course, innocent of any dastardly deeds, but he wants that fact to be publicly proclaimed so that he could be vindicated in the eyes of a society that still looks at all Arabs with slight askance. He wants the world to know the truth: that most Arabs, like most people, are good, and that they as much as anyone loathed the actions of a few wrong-doers.
He’s not even referred to by name in court documents, only by his initials (it was a clerical screw-up that enabled the press to get that limited a piece of information). Yet the Supremes fell for the line of bullshit presented by the Junta’s pet lawyer, The Widower Ted Olsen (fill in your own “bloody smear” comment here; I’m not going to do that again). His proceedings, as well as the hundreds of other Arabs who were rounded up by INS during the aftermath, are sealed from now until such time as National Security becomes nonexistent.
So, we, the public, can’t find out what happened to those people, and the press can’t present findings of what happened to the public in order to inform them. Why? “National Security” might have flown in the 1950s, but this is 2004, bucko. We’re a lot more cynical over secrets than our forefathers. Blame Nixon for that one. He totally ruined the use of the term “National Security” for all presidents from now until the end of the United States by putting the events of Watergate under that umbrella. Keeping the events of those interrogations secret, especially under the “National Security” aegis, can only make people think that the worst happened, violations of civil rights that no civilized society would tolerate.
In fact, that’s exactly what I’m thinking happened. The Junta was out for blood in those days of late 2001, and, by God, there was going to be blood one way or another. When they didn’t get it from those people, and when Afghanistan turned out to be a debacle in terms of the mission objectives, then it was Iraq’s turn, with help from Halliburton. They had to keep those interrogations a secret in order to keep the public unaware of their “failure” to find the violators of common decency, just as they needed Iraq to shut the public up about why Osama bin Laden wasn’t caught (not to mention the head of the Taliban; oh, let’s not forget him either).
Failure in political actions has a price in this country. That price is the loss of power. In November, they pay, and then, maybe, Bellahouel and those hundreds of others can get the vindication in the eyes of the public that they deserve.
SPOILERS ABOUND
Okay, I should say a few things about Ralph Nader. I admire him for taking on Detroit and becoming a consumer advocate. However, despite Grutman’s asinine analysis and assertion derived therefrom on Monday, he did destroy the election for Al Gore. The place he destroyed Gore’s chances, though, was not Florida. It was the political fruit-loop capital of the US, New Hampshire.
There’s a reason why I discount the New Hampshire Primary: weird things happen when you have a concentration of whacked-out voters in a place small enough where the fringe elements can dominate under certain conditions. This year, everyone got a good dose of reality there before giving votes to Howard Dean, but that’s been the exception, really. And when you have a fringe candidate with great name recognition who happens to be a celebrity in his own right in another field, as is Nader, the appeal is there.
Dubbaya won New Hampshire by a smaller margin of votes than Nader received there. Given the nature of radical New Hampshire voters, the vast majority of Nader votes there would have gone to Gore (and opinion polls at the time proved this assertion was true). Without Nader in the race, Gore would have won New Hampshire, and there was no other person who had the combination of reputation and pull on the electorate that Nader did, so if you threw in a substitute, no one would have siphoned Gore votes away like Nader did. If Gore had won New Hampshire, Florida would have been irrelevant. Gore would have had the majority of the Electoral College without Florida. Therfore, Nader was the spoiler in a close, critical battleground.
However, his entrance into this race will be a repeat on a smaller scale of Ross Perot in ’96, and under similar conditions (incumbent running for a second term who is under fire from his critics). His relevance will end up shrinking to the fringe who won’t vote for either big-party candidate under any condition. He tapped into a significant “protest” vote in 2000 which isn’t there for the taking in 2004, thanks to the polarization that has happened since due to the Junta’s comically criminal activities. This year, he gets less than one percent in every state he’s able to get on the ballot in, even if he had the Green Party on his side (which he doesn’t this time). Hence, he is not worth talking about anymore.
Goodbye, Ralph. You’ll not be in this column again. Although the Pride Of Dartmouth his own self is considering voting for you, so that might change. As for where Fielder’s going to end up, Elliot, I’d say Pittsburgh is a distinct possibility if they don’t get Phillip Rivers in the draft.
MONROE ABOUNDS
And now it’s fun time. It seems there’s a lot of people out there becoming slightly miffed at Monroe for his blathering, including some people who I have the utmost respect for:
Can someone please kill him? He gives conservatives a really bad name. Being a blowhard is one thing…being a f*cking moron is quite another. – BFM
Can you do me a favor and have someone shut Seth Monroe up? He’s giving us intelligent conservatives (yes, we do exist) a bad name with his incoherent, bile-laden diatribes that do less to inform and present valid arguments and more to make him look like a blathering idiot. Either that, or let us know when he makes a salient point that makes use of more than rhetoric. Hell, half the time I don’t agree with you but you do at least crack open a book or present some facts. I can’t get through a single article of his without changing the page before I finish. – The Ravin’ Cajun
When you address Monroe, please consider that some of us agree that as long as it is a law it ought to be obeyed. – Regular Derrill Guilbert
I’m not going to talk about the gay marriage thing for the simple reason that, as I’ve said, it’s a Religious Reich smokescreen, an irrelevant issue that the right is using to deflect attention away from other far more important issues like the economy. Personally, I don’t care one way or the other. Monroe can harp about it all he wants, but the fact is that the whole schmeer is media-driven in the first place, and the neocons are the ones most trumpeting about it. It’s an election year, and the neocons have to get hopped up about some social issue. If it wasn’t this, it’d be abortion again.
Geez, when you start pissing my Regulars off, people who have tolerated my blather for years, you must really be in sad shape…
You always back-up your opinions with valid arguments, unlike the other guy on the site that now seems to have an unnatural attraction for Pat Buchanan. I get the impression Monroe is a 20-something from a rich white family in a rich white neighborhood (as are most if not all republicans). For him to say he disrespects you (check out his latest ‘column’) because of your views is unacceptable. The freedom to express differing opinions is what is supposed to make America great, but usually ends up making it worse. Because you don’t agree with him, you are stupid? From reading your columns I know that you served your country, something the chicken-hawk republicans seem to be excused from (see Limbaugh, Rush; Bush, George W.)…It shocks me these people who never wore a uniform are so quick to rush in and ‘protect human rights’ not caring about protecting the safety of the brave men and women who have volunteered to defend this country, not fight another country’s war. – Eric Peoples
Well put, I must say.
Well, since Monroe was nice enough to call me a Communist yet again for no valid reason (if anything, I’m a free-market social democrat), I guess I have to slap him down yet again. So, as is my tradition, I’ll use his own words against him:
I feel the need at this time to address one Eric S. or “Eric the Red ” as I like to refer to him. Another example of a book smart individual who is rendered retarded after drinking the liberal Kool-Aid.
No Kool-Aid ™ required. I came by it naturally.
Look no further then his unabashed apologetics for John Kerry’s waffling and two faced politicking. It seems Mr. S appreciates deception and spineless pandering. How else could he take my solid points against Kerry gaining the Presidency and put forward one after another empty, talking points inspired, retorts.
The “solid points” against John Kerry were, of course, straight from the neocon propaganda factory, with no substance to back them up other than the assertions of some ideologically-blinded individuals. They’re as vacuous as anything put out that supports Dubbaya. It was a case of yet another monkey taking over for the organ grinder and pumping out the same old tuneless dirge. Maybe Monroe doesn’t like his carefully-crafted weltanshauung destroyed by such replusive things as facts.
As for “appreciating deception”, I’m from Chicago. Of course I appreciate deception in a politician. Just as long as you know they’re lying and can compensate for that, you’re fine. That’s what makes the political world go ’round, Monroe. What you need is a nice, long exposure to realpolitik instead of wallowing in your neocon mudbath.
Eric, let me tell you something, man to man. The bottom line is here is that I am the beacon of objective light for this web-site
Please pardon me while I laugh my ass off. You’re as objective as Fox News.
and you sir, are the status quo.
And exactly what’s wrong with being the status quo? Doesn’t conservativism, as a rule, laud the status quo? I don’t understand this. Are you saying that you, Mister Monroe, are really a revolutionary?
I speak out against any frauds, whether left or right.
Takes one to know one.
You speak out against the right.
Apparently you missed it every time I used the term “Hitlary”. Or when I came out against Fritz Hollings, a good Democrat, for being a complete tool of the Walt Disney Company. And apparently you also missed the numerous times I’ve said good things about people like John McCain and Orrin Hatch. On the other hand, I’ve never seen you compliment a liberal, Monroe.
I trash President Bush the minute he sells out to special interest and panders for votes jeopardizing the nation.
But you didn’t criticize him until the abominable immigration law. I’ve been criticizing him since the 2000 election for being a tool of special interests and a vote panderer, and have been saying since shortly after September 11th that he was jeopardizing the country. Pimping yourself on the basis of Dubbaya criticism? Bitch, I invented that. Don’t try fighting me on that basis; you’ll lose and lose badly.
You apologize for his opponent and applaud his ability to lie and deceive.
Apparently stating the truth has become an apology. Let me put it to you this way, Monroe: both Dubbaya and Kerry lie, as do all politicians. Kerry’s lies, though, did not get the country into an armed conflict with men being killed every day. Kerry is a surface liar. Dubbaya is a congenital liar, as are all members of the Bush family. If you want to place them on an honesty scale, Kerry wins any day.
You sir, are devoid of my respect.
Glad to see the feeling’s mutual. Of course, I do respect you in a way: you’re funnier than most sitcoms currently on the air.
I recognize that you are intelligent and well spoken.
And I recognize that you’re so far divorced from reality that you can’t lift the ideological blinders for one second to take a peek at the real world.
However, I see you as a pretty box, wrapped up in a fancy paper and bow. When opened though one finds the box is empty, devoid of anything of value or merit.
And I see you as a 40-ounce wrapped in a brown paper bag.
Look at yourself in the mirror man. Get yourself together. If you stand behind either of the parties of corruption who stands enslaved to Big Money you fail to stand at all.
You slither.
I recognize the reality of politics. There is no way short of a revolution, whether it be political or psychological, that the situation in regard to Big Money is going to change. The best you can do at this point is effect change from the inside. And if that brings you to herpetological comparisons to me, so be it. Grow up.
Denounce the Democratic Party and the lunacy of the fanatical left. Collectivism has failed at every turn and only a fool would blindly follow their clan applauding them while they lime the ditches.
Collectivism? What the hell? Are you saying that Democrats are Communists by definition? That automatically disqualifies you from expressing any type of political opinion. It’d be as ludicrous as saying that Republicans are Fascists by definition, instead of being correct and saying that John Ashcroft is Martin Bormann in a better suit.
I see, in your last column you requested that I read a book which you seemingly treasure. I have no problem with obtaining that book nor reading it in quick fashion and providing review at this very site.
For someone who claims to admire Barry Goldwater as you say in your ludicrous little screed, you sure as hell don’t know him or his beliefs. Otherwise you would have read his book The Conscience of a Conservative, which is the very book I referenced (and the only reason you name-checked Buckley was because I did last week). He’s rolling over in his grave right now with what you’re writing. You call yourself a conservative, but you dare to claim that a Commie like me would treasure one of the key conservative literary works. You’ve yet again demonstrated what a complete and utter idiot you are.
Have you noticed, by the way, that I’m not fighting this battle on an ideological level? My criticisms are grounded in practical fact. That’s why this battle will never end. You’re fighting on one playing field while I’m off on another. I’m not moving to yours because I’m not as ideologically “compromised” as you think and you are. So you’ll have to move to mine. But you know that if you do, I’ll destroy you completely. So you’re going to stay where you are and keep burying yourself deeper.
…the spectrum of political ideology is a circle and your and my stances are not as far apart as you think. You just need to add reality and common sense to yours
Look who’s talking. The person not adding common sense and reality to his view of politics is you, Monroe. Your ideology has become so engrained that you have to filter everything through that lens. Due to that, you don’t realize that this election has absolutely jack shit to do with ideology and everything to do with practical issues like the economy and the fact that the Junta has lied to us at every turn. Instead, you do things like blow up gay marriage into a world-destroying menace. Why? It’s because you neocons don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes down to brass tacks, and you can’t stand that fact. So you keep retreating into your own little world and shut your ears to anyone telling you what’s really going on out here. The neocon movement has been one PR smokescreen after another. Morning In America, the Contract With America…it connects into a continuum of style over substance. That’s why the movement will die unless new evils are continually invented and publicized.
This is the Year of Hardcore Politics, oogums. The Demos are out for revenge and blood. The people are concerned with real issues that hit their lives. And all the Junta and the neocons can do is offer up demonizations like Evil Faggots Daring To Get Married and John Kerry With Hanoi Jane Faked Photos. Start coming up with some practical, realistic reasons for once, express them without the ideological baggage, and maybe you will be taken seriously.
Okay, bitchslap over. You can now come out of hiding.
MAIL ABOUNDS
And we get to yet another session of Mailbag! under a different sobriquet this week, but it’s only to fit into a theme. Let’s start in…
I hate to delve into wrestling, but a mail from Big Daddy deserves all attention that it can get:
Man, you should have just gone ahead and kicked Bob Holly square in the nuts. That would have been less painful than saying Waltman was the one with the workrate in their pairing. I agree with your assertion that Crash carried the weight (both charisma and ability) in that marriage, but Waltman? I guess when you put two black holes in the ring together, one will eventually outsuck the other. But at the end of the day, it’s still a black hole.
Kurt, you made a remark later in the mailing about how much funnier Bill Murray was when he was on coke. I posit that the same is true of Waltman. He derived some value-added worth from tootski that a sober Bob Holly couldn’t hope to approach. As for the black hole comparison, I love it, but it’s awfully hard to chant “X-Pac sucks, and according to Stephen Hawking, spews as well”.
Ostermeyer was one of four different people who wrote in asking me about comparisons to 2004 and 1972 in re presidential campaigns, mostly filtering the experiences through the Doktor’s magnum opus about said death march by the Demos. I make a habit of reading that particular work every four years, and until Kerry took New Hampshire, it was starting to sound like a repeat of that campaign. Fortunately, Howard Dean was crushed, saving us from that fate. In that vein, Aaron Spanik made this comment:
And I know you’ve probably got all kinds of solid socio-political reasons why the people of the USA aren’t into the bullshit and that payback’s going to be a bitch and all, but remember, “Four More Years.” NOBODY thought Nixon could win. I wasn’t even born then and it haunts me (chock up another for the good Doctor). Especially after watching the PBS 30 years of Watergate special the other night.
In 1972? No, that’s not true. Nixon was leading in polls from the beginning. Remember, he was the incumbent, he was getting the US out of Vietnam, and the economy still hadn’t been shattered by the first OPEC embargo. Before McGoo’s surprising win in New Hampshire, the only Demo candidate who had a chance against Nixon was Muskie, and he ended up torpedoing himself and the party establishment who supported him. During the campaign, all Nixon had against him scandal-wise was ITT, which was pretty sleazy but not that major (Halliburton right now is bigger than ITT was at any point), and Agnew’s big mouth (his malfeasances as governor of Maryland wouldn’t come out until 1973). Watergate really started to explode after the election, and was a non-factor in the election itself.
Now in 1968, there were major, major questions about who could win, especially after Nixon started to nuke the other Republican candidates in the primaries and after Eugene McCarthy’s show of strength in the Granite State drove LBJ out of any thoughts of trying for another term. A lot of people didn’t give Nixon a chance against Humphrey until after the events of the Chicago Convention, especially with Wallace running his third-party candidacy and siphoning away Nixon’s voter base. Turns out that the freaks were right: the whole world was watching, and enough of what eventually came to be called the Silent Majority turned to Nixon in a quest for “stability”, especially given the assassinations of MLK and RFK earlier that year. You may have mixed up the two years.
Bruce Worcester delves into the issue of hot dogs yet again:
Sorry to bother you with yet another hot dog question, but as always, you are the voice of wisdom. I live in the NorthEast (OK, you can’t get any more North and East than Maine, so here I am!) and up here we have a species of hot dog that I think is a favorite of our region, but perhaps not many others. The item in question is the “red” hot dog, meaning that the casing is significantly redder than the usual type. Yeah, I know, it’s no doubt “red” due to food coloring, but these truly taste better than the others, at least to me.
The only reason that I’m under the assumption “red” hot dogs are a New England regional specialty is that one year my wife and I had a bunch sent to her parents in Florida, and all the senior citizen snowbird types went crazy over the fact that my in-laws had “real” hot dogs….. I know that I prefer them over the more traditional dogs, so now I wonder how bad they are for me.
What you call “red hot dogs” is known in the trade as “hot links”, and they’re not restricted to the Northeast. They tend to be popular in the Deep South and in African-American urban areas as well. I did a couple of weeks at a plant in Wisconsin that made them, so I definitely know about them (in fact, I had to answer a consumer letter about them). They’re really, really cheap from a manufacturing standpoint, though, even cheaper than hot dogs. They’re mostly poultry rather than being heavily beef or pork like normal hot dogs are, they tend to use more spices and flavorings in order to counteract the comparative blandness of the poultry used in them, and they are an acquired taste. The color is derived from food coloring in the casing (usually Red Dye #s 1 and 5), but the meat has some paprika in it to give it some characteristic color and a little bit more of a kick. I’ve never liked them, but there are people that do. Take that for what you will.
Regular Cabbageboy316 starts us on the week’s computer queries:
Thanks for putting up the info about spybot and the spyware programs. I ended up installing spybot and ad-aware as well, then ran both of them. Bear in mind that I just ran that Quick Restore which wiped everything away….yet I already had amassed 57 pieces of spyware on the spybot and another 16 on ad-aware.
I know that spyware is stuff that websites may install on your computer (thus they can monitor porn, heh) and it can be used for evil purposes like messing with someone’s home page (which happened to me by the way, not sure if it was a virus or spyware) or planting a virus. I wonder though, is it possible to get rid of most potential viruses by getting rid of the spyware? If you get rid of that and don’t click on links in obviously goofy emails, are you safe from viruses?
Resetting your home page is a trademark of spyware, so that’s the cause of that. Spyware and adware, though, aren’t a vector used by viruses yet. Viruses and worms don’t use methods of passive propagation like a web page that does a drive-by ActiveX install. You’re definitely not completely safe from viruses through getting rid of spyware and not clicking on asinine attachments (although it does help to educate users; the slower spread of MyDoom.F over the last few days shows that some people have got the message about attachments). In order to be malware-free, you have to take a comprehensive approach and use, at a minimum, an anti-virus program, a spyware eliminator, an ActiveX blocker, and a firewall. I’ve made recommendations in the past on each of those.
A person I took a shot at last week decided to take the nice, rational approach at responding to me, and hence gets a respectful reply from me here. See how easy it works, folks?
I’m the guy that sent Chris the email regarding the newsfilter.org site. Just as an FYI, I work in IT for General Motors home office in Detroit, and the information given to Hyatte was from our internal knowledgebase.
And I’m getting my stuff from SpywareInfo, which is 1) a specialty site dealing with spyware and 2) is probably a great deal more up-to-date and definitely more detailed than any corporate internal database (enough so that malware vendors have targeted SpywareInfo for DDoS attacks). SpywareInfo and cexx.org are the two places to go if you want up-to-the-minute material on spyware and how to get rid of it. The problem with your letter to Hyatte is that you treated spyware as a virus, which isn’t true, and gave out some misinformation about MPEGs being infected, which also isn’t true.
See, where you’re mistaken is that ad-aware DOES remove the coolwebsearch/find4unet hijackers from your hard-drive (spybot doesn’t remove this instance of the coolwebsearch, but removes others, as of 2-12-03, and spyware blaster does not immunize against this generation),
That’s mainly due to the fact that CoolWebSearch has over two dozen mutations and variants, with a new one popping up virtually every week. Lavasoft and Patrick Kolla have their hands full dealing with spyware in general, and they update as often as possible in order to make sure that AdAware and Spybot can at least try to keep up with the latest and greatest threats. Javacool has been updating SpywareBlaster more frequently lately, mostly due to CWS mutations. They can’t be proactive with their tools, only reactive, which is why CWShredder has become a popular download. It does a great job eliminating CWS infestations and since it concentrates on CWS only, Merijn (one of the most skilled spyware eliminators out there) can produce a new version quickly when a new variant pops its head out from under its rock.
but the reason this malware is classified as a virus is because the hijackers/registry changes are symptoms of an executable that recreates these edits upon restart.
But that’s not really a definition of a virus. A virus, by definition, propagates. So does a worm. Spyware is more of a benign tumor. It sits there and mucks things up, but doesn’t propagate and causes only minimal damage to its host organism. Last week, I was going to make a statement about your definition of a virus as something that edits the Registry so that a program restarts after reboot even after eliminating its Registry entries by saying that, in effect, RealPlayer is a virus, except that this would be one of the nicest things said about RealPlayer. I have, however, come up with a better analogy. If your definition applies, then Norton Anti-Virus would be considered a virus.
Basically, those infected have to run spyware removal every reboot to remove the instances, only to have them re-propagate upon the next startup.
Unless the spyware removal program removes every restart entry. There are about a half-dozen ways for a program to autostart on booting Windows (including the legacy win.ini run command and rundll32.exe to start libraries), and a lot of spyware these days use multiple methods of restarting on reboot. You can use a tool like HijackThis to examine those various start locations and see how a piece of spyware is starting itself. Most spyware removal tools have accurate methods of removing spyware, and AdAware and Spybot are the best in that department.
As I stated in my communication to Chris, F-SECURE is the ONLY antivirus program to cleanse the infected drive (as of last updates, neither Norton nor McAfee have available fixes).
Wrong tool for the job. You shouldn’t use an anti-virus program to get rid of spyware. You should use a spyware removal program to get rid of spyware, especially when you’re dealing with the more insidious forms of spyware.
I am well-informed about this topic, because at GM our ASMs (area sales managers) have GM-assigned laptops that they do a little more with than keep track of who wants leather seats in their Escalade, if you get my drift. Around January 15th of this year, we experienced a rash of this same strain.
Oh, tell me about it. The biggest security hazard in companies, especially large ones, these days is retards who don’t know how to use computers who are issued laptops, f*ck around with them, get infested with malware, then bring them to work and plug them into the corporate LAN. Then they expect the corporate IT guys to fix their problems. All the firewalls and AV programs at the router level won’t help you if someone slips something through the backdoor like this. I’ve been in the same position in some of the smaller companies I’ve worked at as you are. I was the guy who “knew computers”, so I was the one who got tasked to fix the problems, like the time back in Chicago when the company I worked for gave a public computer to some of the floor supervisors to do some data recording on. Within a week, that thing had over two hundred pieces of spyware installed, porn links on the desktop, etc (all in Spanish, all with time codes from second shift, when I wasn’t there to slap them like the putas that they are). I ended up saying “f*ck this” and reset the permissions on IE to lock them out. People like that should be shot.
So, in summation, while I appreciate your efforts to be the smart guy, you’re wrong in this case . . . or at least only partially right. Yes, common spyware is installed on visitors pcs from the site, but the hijackers are indicative of a larger problem in this case.
I must say that I was right more than you were, though. The principle in education is to make things as clear as possible and not to mix up terms like “virus” and “spyware”. It’s something we have to live with, you as a corporate IT and me as a person people turn to for advice on this stuff. We’re both doing our jobs to the best of our ability, but we have a big job to do in order to give people a safer, less intrusive, more productive computer experience. I think we agree, though, that the best prevention is to be as proactive as possible. That’s why you need to install and frequently update SpywareBlaster. It’s the most proactive tool available for the job.
Someone that I’ll indemnify as “JP” asks this little question of illegality:
How big of a file would I be downloading if I pirated XP and how much more space would it take up on my hard drive? Also, once I install it, would I have to reinstall all of my stuff and redownload everything? I’m guessing no, but I think it’s a valid question.
Last questions, what is the best place to Pirate XP and download the keygen?
Size? One CD image, so no more than 800M. Make sure, though, that you get XP Pro, since it doesn’t require Product Activation. There are disk images floating around on the eDonkey network, which would be the best place to find it, of XP with SP1a already incorporated in there, so get one of those. It’ll save you some heavy-duty Windows Update time. The keygen’s common and can be found by doing a Google search for “XP Pro keygen”. The keygen’s only 15K and gives great results. I’ve done system upgrades from both Windows 2000 and Windows ME to XP Pro that have gone without a hitch; nothing had to be reinstalled. However, have a set of drivers on hand and ready, especially for your video card. Just make sure that you run Windows Update afterward and get everything up to date.
More computer stuff? Well, sure. Here’s mentat with a problem:
Since you seem to be pretty knowledgeable about such issues I would like to ask for some help with a computer problem. I recently tried to load a DOS emulator onto my system to play some old games I used to love dearly (mostly Master of Magic if you are interested in such things). Anyway, the end result was that my system wouldnt boot up at all and after trying many fixes I just decided to load a fairly bare bones old backup I made just for a case like this. The backup worked fine and my system is running nicely, I lost a lot of data I would like to get back if possible. I still have pretty much everything essential, but I had a lot of Word docs, MP3s and other media files which would take a lot of downloading to get back, espescially because I am stuck with dialup at this time.
I have tried several data recovery programs, but so far they have either been too expensive to even try, primarily limited to recovering items deleted from the recycle bin, or very slow and geared much more toward larger systems with disk arrays and networked drives and such. Do you know any data recovery programs which might find files after what is essentially a reformatting of a drive? (I used ghost for the BU if that matters) I am running WinME on a P4 1.4 with 384 MB RAM. The BU I loaded also only had Adaware and I know you have recomended running other spyware blockers/detectors so if you could remind me what they are I would be most grateful.
First of all, the “other” spyware eliminator I recommend, as said above, is Spybot, but you have to make sure that both are updated and run frequently.
Now, as for your other problems…first, the bitch-slap: why are you running a DOS emulator on top of an operating system that’s built on DOS like ME? Yeah, I know, some DOS programs won’t work with ME (although I seem to remember having no problems with Master of Magic). Frankly, running ME is the best way to make sure your system gets hosed. You’ve got enough power to upgrade that OS to XP, and I highly recommend you do that.
As for recovery, I recommend GetDataBack. Yes, the FAT version of it is $69. No, I don’t expect you to pay for it. Here’s an eDonkey network link to the latest version. It’s small enough for you to get through dialup.
And that ends this mess off for this week. Enjoy the rest of Black History Month, and I’ll come in next week like a lion
