In Memoriam: John Whitehead. In the words of Semi-Regular Chris Arrington: “The song “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” is kind of ironic now that a bullet stopped Whitehead of McFadden & Whitehead, the singers of that song and the writers of some of the best soul music of the seventies. I know you do the “In Memoriam” thing at the beginning of your columns, but just in case he might be considered not big enough for that honor and my letter gets to be in your column I would like the people out there to give the proper respect to one small but significant part of the Gamble & Huff era of music.” Oh, he’s big enough. Unfortunately, the irony isn’t with their best-known track as performers, but their best-known track as writers. To lose the co-writer of “Back Stabbers”, a song about personal betrayal, to an act of violence that can only be categorized as random…that, Anal-Ass, is ironic. And tragic.
Lots of tragedy to go around today, really. Nick Berg’s beheading shows the world that there’s a gulf of opinion in the Islamic world that we didn’t expect; poor Muslims, the ones more apt to be fundamentally religious, are showing approval while most others are sickened and asking the world to not conjoin this act of barbarism with Islam. Moqtada al-Sadr is switching every half-second between cutting a deal to stop his militia and fighting to the death. The Israelis are playing Fun With Helicopters in Gaza, and the Palestinians are responding in kind, only without air support. Bill Simmons is going to get a baseball bat shoved up his ass if I ever run into him for dissing MJ’s 63 against the Celtics…hell, I don’t need that much to shove a baseball bat up Simmons’ ass, but this just makes me more certain of doing so. And I got to witness the tragedy of what the White Man did to the Native American first-hand by driving to Kansas yesterday. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a casino.
Now let’s move on for expansions of some of those along with the standard pimps…
THE PIMP SECTION
First of all, a big get-well to BFM, who had surgery on Tuesday and according to Maria is doing well. Get back soon, bud.
Read the whole Games section this week. It’s E3, the High Holy Days of the game industry calendar, and we’ve got guys on the ground in La La Land, including Wids and Pank, who will keep you up to date as things change there hour-by-hour. Just hope they know that Ashish will not reimburse them for expenses occurred treating the after-effects from encounters with booth babes. Yeager, though, is not one of those people, so he’s submitting his normal news report. And, naturally, Misha is stuck in England, so it’s normal news for him too. However, does it make sense to any of the Games people that MS and EA were able to work out their differences over X-Box Live support only after Johnny R was ousted at EA?
Coogs got his column up after I submitted, so this is a make-up pimp.
Gamble has an ugly drivers’ license photo. So does everyone else. The one thing I’m going to regret about leaving Nebraska is that my drivers’ license photo doesn’t make me cringe, like most of the others I’ve taken.
Haley does his usual wonderful job of trying to follow me in Wrestling.
Smilowitz, that young punk, is doing wrestling-related columns again. Gotta love it. Just one thing: “Yeah let me just say I’m sick of HBK…If you want an ex-champ, bring out Bertha Faye”…we would, except she’s dead.
Geist recaps a show I don’t watch or like, but apparently a lot of people do, so it’s justified.
No problem, Rutherford. You can take Jeri Ryan, I’ll take Seven of Nine. Sleeping with Chuckles is one thing, but sleeping with Braga? That I can’t countenance.
Regrettably, I know Cocozza‘s missing lyrics, and you’re going to need a strong stomach and terawatts of terrapin to get it.
Erhardt and I share an affection for Rond Vidar. I don’t remember ever seeing him done by Grell during his stint on Legion, but I’d love to have. Talk about perfect artist doing perfect character.
Stevens and I also share an affection, this time for Aztek. Definitely a book cut down in its prime for no real good reason.
THE KANSAS CHRONICLES
Well, I drove down to…should I say it? Oh, hell, why not?…Emporia, Kansas yesterday to look for a place to live. Since discovering that a shithole like Emporia does indeed have digital cable and high-speed Net access, I became more comfortable with the prospect of actually living there. Found the best apartment complex in town, which is almost within walking distance of the plant I’ll be terrorizing, did all of the paperwork, and got the place sight unseen. I figure that I’ve seen enough apartments in my time to be able to look at the floor plan and know what I’m getting. Called SBC and set up the phone service today as well. Unfortunately, cable/Net will have to wait until such time as I go down there, because they don’t set up remote appointments for new customers, the bastards.
The drive down…yeesh. I’m an inveterate radio switcher while driving. I don’t bother with cassettes, CDs, or such. I actually like local radio because I like to be surprised; songs that I’ve forgotten about get played, which sends me scrambling to the notepad and pen I keep in the Damn Vaninator to write down the song in order to coordinate with a convenient P2P program when I get back to my computer. There are fortunate and unfortunate circumstances to this. For instance, driving from Lincoln to Chicago, you get oldies stations virtually all the way. You can’t really complain about oldies. However, when you get hit with five separate plays of “Mrs. Robinson” on an eight-hour drive, it can definitely make you want to find Paul Simon and strangle him (happened to me on Christmas Eve when I was driving in). No such luck with my little jaunt down US 75. The oldies station in Topeka is shit when it comes to transmission range (doesn’t even reach to Emporia), which means I’m scrambling for something to listen to between the time the Omaha station fades and the time the Topeka station kicks in. I was lucky to find a classic rock station in between all of the Country shit and was lucky enough that they were playing stuff I liked. Listening to “Crossfire” fade into “Gimme All Your Lovin'” makes me realize that Texas got some stuff right.
Enough about radio, though. I’ve had minimal contact with Native Americans (other than a roommate of mine in the Army), so when I think about them, the feeling defaults to anecdotal liberal guilt. Fortunately, liberal guilt can sometimes pay off. You know you’re on a reservation when the gas prices drop fifteen cents a gallon. Stop and tank up, especially during these times of gas prices I haven’t seen since I left Europe. And you KNOW I stopped for cigs as well. I was also going to stop and assauge some of those feelings at one of the conveniently-located and very well-marked casinos, but then I realized that I’m moving in a month and I can’t afford to blow money.
Emporia, as I said, is a shithole. However, after the period where I was living in Wisconsin and commuting to Chicago every day and after living here in Lincoln and doing a hundred-mile-a-day commute, I’m sick of driving. I couldn’t take the daily commute to Topeka and back. Fortunately, along with digital cable and cable Net access, they also have loads of fast food joints, so my basic needs are taken care of. I think I can live there. Once I’m back on the pills, that’ll help too.
Now all I have to do is get moved. Fortunately, I never really unpacked, and what little I did unpack should take a few days to get boxed up.
That’s it for that. Now on to the news.
THE BIG SECRET ABOUT CONDI RICE
Read Alan Grant’s column at espn.com here. It described her two experiences hiring head football coaches at Stanford. In the first hiring, which Grant participated in, she interviewed Pete Carroll and Dave Wannstedt, among others. But the moment that Dennis Green left the room, she said, “I think we have our new coach”. Dennis Green? Oh, we in Chicago knew him well before this. We knew what he did at Northwestern. We knew he shouldn’t be allowed with a clipboard in his hand ever again after that debacle. So it could be well believed that she ignored that particular bit of evidence. For another hire (after Bill Walsh came back to Stanford and retired), she decided, apparently personally, on Ty Willingham. Grant didn’t mention the other candidates, but I can assume that it was a group similar to the first.
I posit this explanation for those hires to you: Condi Rice is a racist. She went straight for African-American candidates who had blots on their record or were inferior to coaching candidates who might have been better fits for Stanford but who were also white. With Bill Walsh, she had no choice because of his status as legend, which trumps all else. You just know she would have rather had a black man in there, don’t you?
If that sounds silly to you, it also sounds silly whenever some African-American sports figure starts spouting off about coaching hires and complains that a black wasn’t hired. Point made?
THE CHOPPING BLOCK
The Nick Berg situation is getting weirder by the moment. First of all, anyone who just reads the headlines, stop and read the whole story before you say “There are al-Qaeda in Iraq! See, there is a connection!” The members of al-Qaeda in question are Jordanian, not Iraqi. al-Qaeda is a worldwide movement. There are a number of Chechen members of al-Qaeda, doing things like helping kill high-level government officials in Chechnya. So don’t use Berg’s murder as a pimp point for the Junta.
The most interesting part of all of this has to do with Berg’s activities. This isn’t the first time he went missing. Between March 24th and April 6th, he couldn’t be found. The Junta was denying they had him in custody. On April 5th, the Berg family sued the US Government in general and Rummy in particular, calling them out on their bullshit about not knowing where Nick was. What a coincidence that the next day, he was freed. He’d been taken into custody by US-controlled Iraqi police. They knew where he was. After all, Nick had been visited by FBI people three times in Iraq, querying him about his activities and highly suspicious about his motives for being there. And then three days after Nick came in public and told everyone who’d taken him, he was taken by al-Qaeda.
Oh, it would have been so easy to set up in a place that’s crawling with violence and intrigue as Iraq. A US trusty gets a note from his controller about this American who’s causing trouble. The trusty tells someone he knows has connections to extremists but doesn’t know his role as Uncle Sam’s bitch. That someone tells his pals, and they snag Berg. And just to sweeten the pot, the info that he’s a Jew is passed around. That’s a bait that no good Arab extremist can resist.
In fact, I’d say that’s exactly what happened. Nick Berg was embarassing the US. So who better to eliminate the embarassment than the “enemy”? And what are the results? Growing anti-Arab feeling in the US and a “desire for revenge”, in the words of Reuters. A wonderful blind to cover up the mess that the Junta made of their little pet project, a Wag the Dog of magnificent proportions. And all it took was the body of one dead Jew troublemaker that the US didn’t want any part of.
As you go into the polls and vote for Dubbaya, retards, remember Nick Berg and remember that the Junta will go to any lengths to get the job done. Including setting someone up for murder.
OH, BULLSHIT, RUMMY
From the AP Wire:
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended military interrogation techniques in Iraq on Wednesday, rejecting complaints that they violate international rules and may endanger Americans taken prisoner.
Rumsfeld told a Senate committee that Pentagon lawyers had approved methods such as sleep deprivation and dietary changes as well as rules permitting prisoners to be made to assume stress positions.
Anyone see a contradiction between that and this statement?
Any al-Qaeda or Taliban personnel taken prisoner are to be treated consistent with the Geneva Convention, under a decision made by Bush, Rumsfeld added.
What the hell do the Junta and Pentagon lawyers believe doesn’t violate the Geneva Convention? Just because sleep deprivation, dietary changes, and stress positions are allowed in an Army boot camp doesn’t mean they can be done to prisoners.
I printed the relevant sections of the Geneva Convention that were violated by US MPs last week in this column, so I feel no need to repeat them. I’m just glad that my pal Dick Durbin, a man I’m proud to say I voted for, called them out on this during that hearing. If I could find a way to vote for him again despite not being a resident of Illinois, I’d do it.
And the fallout from Lightstickgate continues. Two more general courts-martial for a pair of sergeants, and a special court-martial for a specialist have been scheduled. General Karpinski, the MPs’ commanding officer, is shouting to anyone who can hear that she’s being made out to be the scapegoat for the situation…no, General, anyone who’s had any leadership training can tell you that you’re responsible for their behavior. However, she does have a point, what with her name being smeared in front of Congress by Pentagon dildos. That little bit of behavior was called out by the current senator I have that I can stand, Ben Nelson (I’ll miss you, Ben). I love General Taguba’s response to Senator Nelson’s question about why shit like this can happen: “Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down. Lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant.” So, in other words, Army training and discipline, something instilled in recruits from the moment they walk into boot camp, is a fantasy? Or maybe it’s gone downhill in the last fifteen years. I don’t know. All I know is something I told JJ last week: I’m a bit ashamed to admit I served. This isn’t the Army that I knew.
So what’s the solution to this? Televise the courts-martial live. Let the American public know the whole story and assign blame that way. Unfortunately, that won’t happen. Too bad the guys in the dock won’t get immediate discharges for their behavior, because I’d love to see them rush to the press the moment they’re back in the world. But freedom of the press isn’t a concept the Army’s aware of. They treat reporters like Lula Da Silva treated that NYT stringer who reported that he was a heavy boozer. And they don’t have to deal with the criticism that the opposition in the Brazilian gummint is dishing out for that. Just remember that when you look at all of the pictures of the happy, smiling soldiers in Iraq.
SCUMBAGS AHOY
I think I’ll just put in a combined Evil Computer-Related Bastards Who Should Be Shot effort into here…
One of the best-known and worst-behaving spammers in the world, Scott Richter, obtained a TRO from a California court on Monday preventing SpamCop, the respected clearinghouse for spam complaints, from reporting one of his larger piece of shit companies, OptInRealBig, to ISPs as an e-mail abuser. This is just the latest ridiculous action by spammers in order to “stay in business” when virtually everyone in the world with a sane mind (in other words, everyone who’s not a spammer) wants them out. Let’s look at the facts:
1) Spam now makes up a majority of e-mail as of a few months ago. It literally costs billions of dollars a year in time spent and in anti-spam products purchased to get rid of the shit.
2) Enough idiots buy stuff from these guys to give them major economic clout, thus leading to the ridiculous CAN-SPAM Act of 2004 here in the states, which, for all intents and purposes, legalizes spam.
3) Spammers are assholes. Lowlife former coke dealer/money launderer and ex-convict turned spammer Eddy Marin used his lawyer to form a front company to sue SPEWS and Spamhaus, two blocklist operators, out of existence last year (the case was thrown out of court). Now Richter, one of the few people in the spam business bigger than Marin, has gone to court in order to shut people up from complaining about his antics. And those two are linked in the most important fashion of all: they do business together.
How big is Richter? His two main companies, Wholesalebandwidth and OptInRealBig, are the number two and nine leading spammers in the world for April 2004 according to Spamhaus’s respected and authoritative ROSKO list. You can check out the Spamhaus entries for those two companies here and here. The latter is the OptInRealBig entry in ROSKO, which tells you more about Richter than you’d like to know. In case you’re scared to click for some reason, here’s Spamhaus’ Steve Linford, a true credit to the British spirit, on Richter, his operation, and his total lack of morals:
Long-term professional ‘make-penis-fast’ spammer who operates high-volume opt-out spamming under the guise of “opt-in” using deceitful names/domains such as “OptinRealBig” (optinrealbig.com/optinbig.com) to imply the millions he spams have “opted in” (in fact addresses are simply bought from other spammers and ‘opted-in’ by Richter who uses the term ‘opt-in’ to simply mean the addresses “haven’t opted-out”).
OptinRealBig pretends to have ‘Fortune 500’ customers, but can not name any, which is not surprising as no ‘Fortune 500’ company would knowingly be connected to Richter as OptinRealBig’s spam operation is illegal in countries with laws banning spam, including Australia, the United Kingdom and all of Europe.
Richter claims the 80 million people he spams all “subscribed” to his lists, all “asked” to be sent generic advertising and plenty of it. Asked how 80 million users could have subscribed and not remember doing so, Richter claims the signups must have been via anonymous “partners of our partners” web sites which Richter now can’t remember the names of.
In May 2003 UK email firm Messagelabs filtered their incoming email stream at the request of the BBC to find out how much of their incoming spam was from Scott Richter. Messagelabs collected 175,000 spams from Richter, addressed to harvested and in thousands of cases non-existent addresses (proving the address could never have “opt-in” to anything), and provided them on CDROM to the BBC together with tesimony from sample address holders that no opt-in had ever taken place.
OptinRealBig.com and Richter’s many aliases are “block-on-sight” domains for most of the Internet’s mail systems, as is any IP space allocated to Richter’s spam operations. In 2003 Richter’s OptinRealBig spam operation has been mostly hosted by Florida Spam King Eddy Marin as, due to his massive spamming history, Richter finds it hard to get service from responsible ISPs. Spamhaus views any Internet Service Provider providing service to Richter as “Knowingly involved in providing Spam Support Services”.
Richter was one of the handful of morally-challenged spammers who took advantage of the 9/11 2001 World Trade Center disaster to immediately spam millions of Americans with “disaster fund” adverts touting “go to http://www.saverealbig.com to start the relief! Buy American flags from Saverealbig to show your support”.
While declaring himself “The Spam King” (he even plans to start a ‘SpamKing’ clothing range), in press interviews Richter claims he’s not a spammer because he defines “spammers” as “only those who send illegal scams” and defines “opt-in” as simply “people who haven’t opted out”. Constantly claiming he’s “legit” according to his own definition of ‘legit’, Richter uses greed on the part of hosting/network sales staff to write contracts favorable to his spamming, pays over the going rate for hosting (as he already knows he’s going to inundate his new ISP with abuse reports and cause serious dammage to his new ISP), and uses legal threats, backed by his lawyer Steve Richter (Scott’s father), to try to uphold those contracts after the ISPs find out they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.
Did the Cali judge read this before deciding in Richter’s favor? Or did he bother reading the Usenet posts by Richter that Spamhaus has preserved for us? Like this one:
The more you talk about me the more famous I become. Thanks to you all the big corporations want my mailing services. Please keep up the good work.
Or this one?
HELP MAKE ME FAMOUS, GET ME ON ALL THE CHAT BOARDS. I KNOW YOU CAN. I WANT TO BE IN THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC, GET ME ON TV, RADIO. MAKE ME FAMOUS. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Does this demented moral void deserve the protection of the law? I’ll leave that question to you, but I think you can figure out where I stand.
Now, I made a decision yesterday in conversation with Regular Derrill Guilbert, who told me about the SpyHunter ad that’s being displayed here at 411. I’m going to provide links to key anti-spyware programs that are FREE AND DO NOT INSTALL OTHER SPYWARE, UNLIKE SPYHUNTER, as long as their ads are posted here, along with certain quotes like these:
SpyHunter cannot be recommended firstly for the way in which it is marketed and secondly, because it does not work and comes loaded with it’s own spyware. This piece of crap is marketed by Enigma software, steer well clear of anything from this outfit. As if this were not bad enough, they try to deceive by having you believe they are connected with/to Spybot Search And Destroy. There is absolutely no truth in this whatsoever…Let’s make this real simple. You see SpyHunter advertised. You download it – in fact, just by clicking on the link will start the download process without your consent. You scan. It tells you you have spyware on your PC. You click to remove the spyware. SpyHunter then tells you you must register and/or pay for spyware to be removed. You click on register or pay. The instant you click on register/pay, Spyhunter leaves it’s own spyware on your PC. The post scan message telling you you have spyware is not true. It is fictitious and designed to get you to part with your cash in return for the removal of non existent spyware. That’s it. You have been conned AND, have a batch of spyware installed on your PC. – Mariner, forum moderator, computercops.biz, which has been targeted for DDOS attacks by spyware purveyors like SpywareInfo and other important anti-spyware sites
I just removed a bunch of crap from my sister’s computer over the weekend. She had an “anti-spyware” program on her computer called Spy Hunter. Seeing as how it certainly wasn’t very effective in removing stuff, and I had never heard of it before, I theorize that the program was actually spyware itself. – j0nb0y, Slashdot poster
I wasn’t silly enough to believe that a pop-up could scan my computer so quickly, but stupid me, I downloaded the program [SpyHunter] anyway. It scanned my computer and found two pieces of spyware. When I clicked the button to remove them, it said I had to pay for an upgrade for it to actually do anything. I didn’t pay, but I did surf around and found other spyware removal programs. I ran two of them. Both came up empty. I then searched the Web for the spyware programs SpyHunter said that I had. I found them; apparently they’re real spyware programs. One Web site also gave detailed step-by-step instructions for manual removal. Well, the removal instructions didn’t work. Apparently the spyware programs that SpyHunter said I had weren’t really on my computer at all! It just made it up.
SpyHunter also came up every time I booted my computer. I went into the [SpyHunter] options menu and de-selected the button that said “start with windows.” How convenient that it was pre-selected, huh? SpyHunter continued to come up with windows anyway. So I un-installed it. Rebooting my computer, I got an error message during the boot sequence “keyboard not detected.” Uninstalling SpyHunter damaged my computer, and it was a real pain to get everything back to normal again. – a letter to David Radin, tech columnist of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 16th, 2003
Ok, it all began when I decided to re-install the operating system in my computer. I had too many files I needed to back up and also needed to free some space in my hard drive. After a good three hours of re-installing software and backing up files it was finally back online. Until then everything was ok. After two days I started to have some problems after surfing the web. All of a sudden either my home page had changed or I was getting ads by some casino. I figure to just uninstall whatever software was installed without my knowledge about. When that doesn’t work I usually go straight into my programs folder and delete the folders manually. (But keep in mind I’m very new to the way spy ware hides in computers.) On the next day I turned my computer back on and all of a sudden my scanner started to work on it’s own as if I was using it. Also once I was finally able to get online some programs in my computer started to work on their own and other times internet explorer would open a different home page on it’s own. Ok so I decided to find a spy ware program to fix the problems. So I typed anti-spy ware programs in my browser and I found one claiming to be a great tool find and get rid of spy ware. It was SpyHunter. I downloaded it for free as it said. Did a scan and was surprised at the number of infected files I found. But when attempted to fix the problems SpyHunter asked to register the copy. So I paid $29 dollars for it. Once I did that I scanned my system again and “fixed†the problems. Ok the next day, I started my system again and when I got online I found out that my homepage had been changed once again. So I ran SpyHunter again, and again, and again but my homepage keep on getting changed. Now not only that but every time I scanned my system the number of infected files seemed to double. I thought, what the hell!!!
Finally, upset and very frustrated, I decided get the new Norton Internet security and looked for a new anti-spy ware program. When I did my second search I ran into an article from CNET new and found out the straight facts about the so-called anti-spy ware programs and about how spyware is a much bigger problem than I though. I was so angry since I had been ripped off by Enigma, (makers SpyHunter) and even more pissed off at the fact that there are no laws against this kind of scam!! So I joined the Spyware Warrior forums and there I found out about the true anti-spy ware software. I downloaded Ad-aware and Spybot S&D. Finally my computer began to work properly. Bottom line, we need laws against spy ware and fast!!! – e-mailer to the Spyware Blog
And now the links to the software that I recommend you DEFINITELY install:
Spybot and AdAware. The ONLY two spyware removal tools to trust. Do NOT buy any spyware removal tools, because none of them work better than these two, and all of them except these two are suspect.
SpywareBlaster. Will nuke twelve hundred different potentially malicious ActiveX controls, and now has the ability to prevent a number of non-ActiveX methods of installing spyware for people who use Mozilla/Firefox.
SpywareGuard. From Javacool, like SpywareBlaster. It’s a real-time scanner for spyware. A decent first line of defense.
IE-SpyAd. Throws numerous ad-related URLs into IE’s Restricted Zone, where they won’t display or affect your system. Bookmark this one, since it’s the only one that doesn’t have an in-program update.
These links will be posted in EVERY ONE OF MY COLUMNS UNTIL SPYHUNTER ADS ARE REMOVED FROM 411.
MAILBAG!
I do have a YAM winner, but I’ll postpone it until next week’s wrestling column because it’s wrestling-related.
Lots of responses to my desire to see a pillow fight involving My Beautiful and Beloved, Baldy Holly, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup. Big Daddy tells me to substitute Karo syrup for the chocolate. Sorry, but I’m a meat inspector again. I have to limit the involvement of corn syrup-based products according to regulation. Steven Kowalcyzk says to forego both and use pre-packaged pudding cups. Only when they’re on sale. I like to kink it up, but only on the cheap.
Lot of response on last week’s Iron Chef/wrestling analogies. The general consensus about Ishinabe is that he’s Ricky Steamboat, suggested by a number of people. That one, I’ll give you. I didn’t really think of it per se. The other main set of contention was regarding my comparison of Chen to Dustin Runnels. Here’s Scott Granell, who gets a Memo later on:
Dustin was never a great technician, whereas Chen is one. When he sticks to his field of reference, he can show all the subtlety and skill a Sakai can, and has a win record that says he is not far behind Sakai. His only flaw is that he does not have Sakai’s ability to adjust to different styles. As I said, Dustin is a good comparison, I personally see Chen as more like the late great Curt Hennig.
Who also fills the criterion of second-generation star. The only problem is that Hennig never really had to work out from under his dad’s shadow, which Chen did. He was something special from the moment he walked into AWA until his death, and was regarded as such by fans.
The Pride of Dartmouth His Own Self, though, may have a winner:
Chen is Terry Funk.
Second generation, veteran competitor (Chen was/is the longest serving Iron Chef out of all of them), still keeping up with the young’uns (well, maybe not anymore, but Funk certainly did to the ripe old age of 57), has shown some ability to change with the times (how many men would even THINK of trying a moonsault in their 50s?)…I think we have a match. Especially since Chen deserves better than Goldust.
Except that Chen really isn’t that old. He’s now in his early 50s. He’s almost a decade younger than Sakai.
Chen is my favorite IC, and the wok flip in Battle Shark Fin against Sugunuma ranks as one of my favorite moments in the show’s history.
Agreed on the flip. It ranks right up there with Kobe beating a live octopus to death with a daikon radish.
And how would you feel about adding Todd English to the American team? I really liked his stuff on the UPN version (Shatner’s stupidity notwithstanding). Also, I ate at Olives once in Boston, and I thought the food was great.
English is about the only one of that group I can stand. He’d be a great addition as a fourth IC, except that Food Network wants their own well-established people, which is understandable. They have to sell IC to the skeptics who watch their network but not the show, and they don’t want to offend IC fans by having anyone less “notable” than those three as ICs. Good idea, but it’d be like Vince getting Kawada under contract.
Aussie Bureau Chief Brett Wortham asks me whether or not BitTorrent is easy to use, and mentions that he had problems with eMule. First of all, Brett, your problems with eMule probably stemmed from you not having a server.met file. Download an eMule variant from here (I recommend Sivka; it’s right at the top). After installing it, create a new file in the program’s /config directory called adresses.dat and put in this line:
http://www.edonkey2000.com/server.met
Save the file off and start up eMule. The first thing it should do is try to connect to that site and download a server.met file. Once you have that, you have a startup list of eDonkey servers to go by.
Now, as for BitTorrent, yeah, it’s very easy. You download what’s called a torrent file from a website that has them indexed (like Suprnova), save off the torrent file, load up your BT client (as always, I recommend Google Toolbar. Just tell it to install without advanced features. Personally, I can’t live without it. Also, you can wait until XP SP2 is released soon. They’re rewriting IE to have built-in pop-up blocking capabilities. Of course, Mozilla/Firefox/Opera users already have that capability built in.
Kevin Doten provides an interesting query:
I have a question for you. Reading about all the trouble in Iraq, I keep thinking about one thing that happened right after we invaded.
One of the first companies to start doing business in Iraq was a cell phone company.
Now, if you’re a radical militant group, that has had trouble gaining access to technology and suddenly, here comes this portable telephone, how valuable to you is that communications device, which you can now buy fairly cheap?
Am I out of line here saying that these cell phone companies are aiding and abetting terrorists? I’m sure the lines are tapped, but still, these guys have been operating on spoken code (since that is basically all they had) for generations. It’s second nature to them. First Saddam’s regime (who spoke the language and probably had a better grip on their methods of operation than we do) and now some cocky Americans who realized that that speaking the language might be a good thing.
It’s interesting, but I don’t think it’s really relevant. You’re underestimating the ability of terrorist networks to gain access to sophisticated tech. Most terrorist networks are well-funded, and not all Arabs are nomadic camel jockeys who’ve never heard of an indoor toilet. They already had cell phones. Cell phones are a big advantage when the terrain isn’t amenable to slinging wire, as it is in a good portion of the Middle East. The reason the cell companies are in there is to take advantage of the fact that the infrastructure was pounded to shit during the combat, and cell phones are the only reliable voice communications around. There’s nothing sinister about what they’re doing.
Memo to Joe Caff: In most municipalities, there’s a monopoly for cable companies in a given area. Chicago was initially split in two when cable arrived in the early 80s, one of the companies went tits up and was bought by the other, which happened to be AT&T, which was bought by Comcast. 21st Century was let in on an ad-hoc basis after they complained. So the situation in Philly is pretty normal.
Memo to Scott Granell: Disney doesn’t give a damn about the religious fanatics who might protest against Miramax. Remember, he’s the one who approved “Gay Days” at the theme parks and incurred the wrath of the Religious Reich for doing so, and then didn’t back down against boycott threats by a number of Baptist churches. So selling off Miramax for that reason doesn’t fly. What was done to Fahrenheit 911 is censorship of a political nature.
And my fascist bud John King has some comments to make in that area:
Fuck Michael Moore. If that fat-ass spent less time free-basing hams and more time actually putting together something that rang with a grain of truth, then maybe Disney would have released it.
Oh, but Fahrenheit 911 is very truthful. But it’s truth that the Junta doesn’t want you to know about. Those of us who are more astute know about the connections between the Bushes and the bin Ladens. Now we want the world to know.
I’m sure that you know Moore has known for about ONE FUCKING year that Disney was not going to allow this celluloid abortion to hit under their name.
That was Disney’s claim, and I wouldn’t believe them about anything these days.
Its interesting how Chef-Boy-Is-He-Fat waits until right before Cannes and with all the Iraq crap stirring to start with the crocodile tears. Fucking huckster. He’ll get a distributor and the movie will make $15 million the first week and then be forgotten.
That’s what was said about Bowling For Columbine as well. And the hucksterism…John, it’s the movie industry. Do you expect anything different?
Then he can get a show on Air American….but wait that’s going in the shitter to right? Another example of trying to force garbage down the throats of people who have tuned out to their irrelevant rhetoric.
As can be said about any of the right-wing talking heads.
Guys like Moore and Franken should be down on their knees PRAYING for Bush to get re-elected. If not they go the way of the Slinky, the Rubik’s cube, and Tickle Me Elmo. Cosigned to the dustbin of history, along with their half-baked ideology and shit-for-brains ideas.
Just like Rush and Savage and all those other walking abortions when Dubbaya got appointed, right?
Good try, though, John. That’s why I love you.
Tony Morse has an observation:
Maybe you can explain something to me. I know several otherwise intelligent people who, when it comes to the Junta, are mindless sheep, changing their opinions to follow whatever the line of the day is. Even my boss prints out pro-Bush stories about the war and leaves them around the workplace for us to read.
Because too many people have the “America is always right” mentality. These jingoistic retards can’t deal with anything that doesn’t fit into that view. Also, do you have some process in your office where you can file a complaint about offensive material, like an ombudsman or something? I would do that in order to get rid of those articles. Just go to HR and say that you find them offensive and that you’d like them removed. Yeah, it’ll cause a little heat, but it’ll make it absolutely clear that not everyone finds this material acceptable.
I brought up the point the other day that until Bush decided that Iraq was involved in 9/11, no one, NO ONE, was clamoring for the liberation of the Iraqi people and the ousting of Saddam. Yet when the WMD went vaporware and “Iraqi Freedom” became the new mantra, all these Republicans took it up like it was the real reason all along.
When the war atrocities are brought up, the common excuse is “This is war, any action is justifiable,” but of course, the argument doesn’t hold true for the other side when a civilian is burned or beheaded. And the fact that more Iraqi civilians have been killed than there were 9/11 victims (to which there’s STILL no connection) doesn’t faze them either.
Doing what I said to do above might help to shut them up. But there are just some unrealistic people out there who will still believe this bullshit. They’re the ones creating the environment, especially if they’re management. Since they do seem to be management in your case, maybe official complaints might also help reduce the sheep factor. I’m sure that a lot of fellow employees are just going along to suck up.
My personal favorite is when I criticize Bush open I’m sometimes told that I should respect the office of President, even if I don’t respect the man holding it. Sure, I’ll buy into that. But not from the same people who wanted Clinton crucified for Monicagate. If that’s not disrespecting the office…
Use that to your advantage, if you haven’t already. Something like “Better semen on a dress than a light stick shoved up a prisoner’s ass”. The more graphic you get, the more they’ll want to shut up. It works for me.
Paul Lucas has a not-so-graphic question:
I know you are from the Chicago area (or lived there for a while, at least).
Born there, raised there, lived most of my life there.
And I value your thoughts on stuff, so…my now-wife (we got hitched on April 4th) got me Cubs tickets as a wedding gift. Even though we live in Indiana and, thus, are only about 3-4 hours away, we want to make a weekend of it and stay in a hotel for a couple nights. What I wondered is, do you have in recommendations? You can be as specific or general as you like, but anything you can offer would be appreciated. Is there a certain area, for convenience purposes, we definitely want to stay (the Cubs game is the primary item on the agenda, but we might want to check out the sites or shopping)? Is there a certain area to stay away from? Do you recommend a particular hotel? Like I said, anything you want to offer up would be great.
Okay, so you’re going to see the alleged baseball team that allegedly plays on the North Side, and you want to get some shopping in. I’d definitely look at the hotels around North Michigan Avenue, around 800 North or so (the Westin, for example). She’ll have the best shopping area in the city to peruse, while you’ll have the Playboy Building to pay tribute to. You’re also a reasonably-priced cab ride or a short walk to the El from the alleged intersection of Clark and Addison. Loads of great restaurants within walking distance as well, like Lawry’s if you want a great steak and a branch of Giordano’s for some real Chicago pizza. Be warned, though, you’ll be paying an arm and a leg for the room. And once you drive in, do NOT drive out until you leave. The traffic is mind-numbing.
And with the words “mind-numbing”, I will depart. We have a Round Table for a PPV this weekend, so I’ll be contributing. Until Tuesday in wrestling, I bid you adieu.
