Explosive opportunities … and the rabbit’s ears wiggle too…

I have to admit it. I love spam. Both kinds. That strange but tastelessly tasty food product and the email variety. Breakfast of eggs and spam, lightly grilled on both sides, with or without beans. Wonderful. But we’re here to talk about the email variety.

Now, in my youth (rather, my younger days on the internet), I used to rail at spam like everyone else. And when the first email spam filters arrived, I loaded them ruthlessly with rules to catch emails with subjects in all caps, with certain words, with strings of exclamation points. And then I discovered that none of these rules worked particularly well. Not only did the spam keep coming through as the spam-meisters came up with newer and newer ways to ply their trade, but all the emails that I had been eagerly expecting and expecting and expecting, could usually be found nestled in the spam folder, provided I got to it before an automatic flush.

So I turned off the spam filters and have gone back to the age-old delete button, which has the sterling advantage of never deleting anything I didn’t WANT gone. And if I accidentally do, command-Z takes care of that in an instant. And since then, I have been regaled by daily doses of Pamela being concerned about my size, or Cindy about my lasting power. Stock tips sent to “Fred” but seemingly delivered to me by mistake. How many opportunities I’ve been afforded to sneak currency out of falling dictatorships! Aid widows in securing their husband’s vast fortunes in some foreign land! The number of times paypal has needed me to log in to verify the account I’ve used for the last five years is astounding! Or my bank? Or banks I’d never even had accounts in!

There are more benign missives–like those advising me of the wonderful opportunities to be afforded by online universities. If you consider credit mills benign. And it was one of those I got last Friday. Become an ULTRASOUND TECHNICIAN! Read the rest of this entry →

Well, our natural world seems to be having its fun with us as a huge ash cloud erupts from Mount Eyjafjallajokull (Eye-ya-falafel-cul?) and cuts off Europe from air travel for several days. This is not the first time such a huge cloud has occurred: there was the famous Mt. St. Helens eruption back in 1980. The centuries have been dotted with darknesses "enveloping the whole of Europe" as the description of one 5th century eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that, curiously enough, signaled the start of the Dark Ages (although the Dark Ages could have been presaged by an eruption of Mount Etna in 417, on whose dating, I, in an earlier incarnation as an historian, wrote a paper on in 1990 (Olympiodorus’ Eruption of Mount Etna: a possible dating of 417. EOS: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 71:329-334)). Rush Limbaugh has been having fun with it, calling attention to Obama’s statement on the passing of the health care bill that the world hasn’t ended yet. I certainly hope the Almighty has better aim than to punish Europe for OUR supposed transgression, so I shall assume that Rush-boy is being ironic, should he be capable of such complexity of thought.

But with such a global disaster, it might be better to look for a more global transgression, and I think we have our candidate at Goldman Sachs. Their financial manipulations–along with other august companies–managed to pull off a global economic disaster, yet their CEO Lloyd Blankfein had the effrontery to make a positively BLASPHEMOUS statement that he was "doing God’s work" while bankrupting the entire world. Now if I know one thing about Our Lord God Jehovah, you can kill millions of people and He won’t bat an eyelash, but say one thing wrong about Him and all Armageddon is gonna bust loose. On top of all, Goldman Sachs has the sheer CHUTZPAH to announce 5 billion dollars in bonuses to be paid to its executives–you know, the ones who bet short on the world disaster they themselves engineered–and you say, enough is enough.

The teabaggers have it all wrong–the cause of our ills is not the government–tho it’s not helping by spending 20 times the amount that could eliminate world hunger on a military that has gotten itself bogged down in the middle of a desert for 8 years. It’s these bankers who think God’s work consists of lining their pockets with our money. They’re no better than the guy who is going to the track and convinces you to bet on a certain longshot that he says he has a tip that it can’t loose. Then, when he goes to the track, bets all YOUR money on the favorite and after the race, picks up one of the losing tickets off the floor to give you with the lame explanation that he’s never gonna listen to THAT TIPSTER again. It’s beyond time that they should be sued for fraud. It’s about time that they should be INDICTED for it!

In the meantime, Europe is enjoying a slower pace and beautiful sunsets. Maybe Mt. St. Palin in Alaska will explode in a few years and we’ll be the lucky ones :D

---

I went to a small con this weekend in Alexandria called T-Mode and had a great time. The advantage of a small con is its size–you can meet everyone and do everything. Naturally, you have a bigger selection of activities at a big con, but you always wind up missing some things you would have enjoyed. The organizers of T-Mode called it "fun-sized" and that it was. I got to hear a lovely singer Emi Meyer and hip hop artist Shing02 and DJ Icewater. I had a TAIKO DRUM LESSON–and I’ve got to search for the artist’s weblink–as well as meeting the new voice of Haruhi Suzumiya and a great singer herself Cristina Vee. Also there were our friends from the webcomic Geeks Next Door, who gave sessions ON webcomics, and Interrobang Studios, whose artist Sarah Martinez, gave a great session on surviving Artist’s Alley. I didn’t get to meet the voice actors Mega Ran (aka Random) and Todd Haberkorn, or Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has invaded the US. Oh and I nearly forgot, I got interviewed for Vidgle and I hope to have up a link next week to my podcast with them :) Congratulations to the organizers–I had a great time. My personal photos will be up on my Flicker account later this week.

---

Greg Uchrin is a satirist, cartoonist and professional cynic in Alexandria VA. This diary is cross-posted to his blog Intravenous Caffeine, the post-Bush era successor to HAIL DUBYUS!