A Little Effort, Please

You know what irks me?

Well, yeah, OK, a lot of things irritate me. You got me there.

You know what irks me today?

People who do their job really half-assed.

Seriously, a little effort, that’s all I’m asking here.

You pick a profession, maybe it’s what you want to do for the rest of your life, maybe not. Maybe it’s a great job, lucrative, fun, with interesting people, great benefits, good location, groupies, hot babes, fast cars, and an unlimited supply of Jolt Cola and Twinkies or maybe it’s a third world shit-hole where you work thirty-hour days for Kathy Lee Gifford at sweatshop wages with hourly beatings chained to a table in a sweltering rat infest firetrap – whatever, show a little pride, put some ass into it. You start doing a shitty job and it reflects poorly on the whole industry.

Take Spammers for example.

Remember the early days of internet spam? Back when spammers and scam artists and cons took pride in their work? Remember when spammers were professionals? I used to get really great spam. Interesting, colorful, intriguing, amusing, entertaining. Hell, remember the variety? Official looking letters from exotic sounding institutions like the First Banking and Trust of The Seychelles. Lusty emails from widowed heiresses who actually took the time to research my background and wildest fantasies and were mine in Christourlordasavior? I’d get Invitations from filthy rich oil barons to tour the beautiful Ivory Coast and maybe make a couple of million on the side if I was willing to smuggle out a paltry few conflict diamonds and maybe a Soviet era T-72 main battle tank in my colon. I’d get guaranteed investment opportunities in charming third world countries like Panama, Tierra Del Fuego, and Arkansas. I’d get letters acknowledging my heroic manliness and requesting my assistance in helping the author escape from his gold mine in Belize with as much loot as I could smuggle past the Federales. I’d get meticulously crafted ersatz PayPal and Citibank letters advising me to change my password by using the conveniently provided link and handy online line form. I’d get official looking emails purporting to be from the CIA or Department of Health or the IRS filled with cunningly hidden Trojan horses and packed with enough viruses to make Typhoid Mary look like a piker.

Good stuff, and you really admired the spammers in those days. They were pioneers, rough and tough rogues of the wild Internet frontier. Always one step ahead of the law. Real Jesse James and Billy The Kid types – well, if William Bonney was a 17 year-old pimply faced dweeb who broke into nervous explosive flatulence when confronted by a real live female type person that is.

Alas, those romantic times are gone now, lost somewhere in the ancient days of spam-that-was and on-line Castle Wolfenstein.

Spam today is a pitiful pale paunchy balding shadow of its former self – sort of like a Kevin Costner movie. Spammers today just don’t seem to give a crap, to them spam is just a job. It’s not about the lifestyle, it’s not about flooding the inboxes of lonely seniors and gullible housewives, it’s not about originality or a classic Spanish Prisoner con updated to the electronic age. There’s no substance, no style. It’s all about mediocrity, it’s all about volume, it’s all about the bottom line and pandering to the lowest common denominator – again sort of like a Kevin Costner movie. It’s a numbers game, a business.

I blame it on Zombies and cheap overseas labor.

- Learn Top SEO Secrets. Seo? SEO? I thought maybe it was Search Engine Optimization – maybe some original scam spam aimed at IT types. No. “Learn the secrets of top Wall Street executives. Get you’re own Gold Parachute, why should only SEO be rich?” SEO? Oh, he means CEO. And the obvious poor English - that’s just amateur hour, right there. Bad English can really put the polish on a Dubai Oil Widow Scam, but here it’s just pathetic. It’s like the guy isn’t even trying. In the old days, back in glorious 2007 and 2008, no spammer worth his stolen AOL address list would have made that kind of silly mistake. That’s what happens when you move your Tech to Nigeria. Nobody is going to buy secrets from a SEO. Nobody. Stupid N00B.

- Acai Berry Supreme Used By Oprah For Weight Loss: Weight loss? Do they even broadcast Oprah in Mumbai? Because I’m guessing not. What kind of hook is that? I don’t want a berry that makes me look like Oprah – oh, sure you could end up like Svelt Weight Watcher Oprah, but you’re a whole lot more likely to end up looking like The Color Purple Oprah. Frankly, it just isn’t worth the risk. Now a berry that makes you look like Halle Berry, well, now we’re talking.

- You Will Not Get Out Of Your Bed For Days: Well, hell, that’s intriguing – a pill from Mexico that gives me chronic depression and bed sores. Let me get my credit card.

- Don’t desperate enhance desire restaurant milkshake: Um, yeah. Hey, at least we know not all spam operations have moved overseas – we’re obviously keeping a few folks in Alabama employed.

- Be the IT Consultant of Perfect Lovemaking: Know your target audience, that’s what I’m saying. Sure, if you’re spamming a Trekkie Convention or COMDEX, but really, Dude, The IT Consultant of Love? Really? What am I getting spam from Johnny Guitar Watson now?

- Plunge your power drill into her: Um, who’s this aimed at? Leatherface? Jason? Constructions Workers? Plunge your power drill into her? Power Drill? I can’t tell if this is for Viagra or Johnson & Johnson Band-Aids. Rip her to shreds with your tablesaw! Slap her upside the head with your wooden mallet. Grind her into pudding with the leaf chipper! Chicks dig that sort of thing. Apparently.

- Don’t let others laugh at your manhood: Generally this isn’t a problem, as I generally don’t leave my manhood laying around where others might mock it.

- Buy a Degree – The New Way Of Earning A Degree: Yes, because in my country “earn” means “Fake” and nobody ever checks during a job interview, they just hand out money. Is that how it works in Liberia too?

- Solve all lovemaking problems in a matter of seconds: Really poor choice of time unit there, fellas. Just saying is all.

- Don’t pay for your electricity any longer: Just like here in Nigeria, where we steal it right off the pole!

- You need Business Admitration Degree: I hope they spell that right on the fake degree. Generally, unless it’s the WWF Pile-driving School of Spandex, people sort of expect a degree in business administration to be spelled correctly.

- Weekly Microsoft Security Update: Yeah, who’s this supposed to fool? Oh, wait…

Fully half the spam in my inbox is from…me! Talk about phoning it in. In the old days a good spammer could generate a million fake email accounts a day. A truly great spammer, a master, could crack open protected government servers and steal the social security numbers of a hundred thousand military veterans and have ten thousand new Hotmail accounts set up by the time he finished his second Mountain Dew. Now, I get email with my own email address in the “from” line? Like I’m going to look at that and say to myself, “Heeeey! I sent myself some information on fake Rolexes! I’d better check that out!”

Seriously spammers, shape up. Look what happened to Wall Street. Look what happened to the Auto Industry. I for one, simply won’t support any kind of government bailout to the Spam Sector, unless I start seeing some effort.

I have some suggestion for fixing the industry. Click on this link to learn more.

Foot, Mouth - Never a Good Combination

Interviewer: "Do you think Sarah Palin has the experience to run a major company, like Hewlett-Packard?"

Carly Fiorina: "No, I don't. But you know what? That's not what she's running for."

Heh, heh.

That response by Fiorina, herself the former CEO of HP and an initial contender for McCain's running mate, would have been just another glib off-the-cuff remark - if she wasn't one of McCain's top advisors and spokespeople.

She made that gaff on St. Louis radio station KTRS yesterday - and, fairly obviously, realized that she'd put her foot in her mouth. So, during another interview, an hour later with NBC's Andrea Mitchell, she tried to explain the above remark in more detail by saying, "Well, I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation. I don't think Barack Obama could run a major corporation. I don't think Joe Biden could. But that's not the same as being the president or vice president of the United States."

Predictably Obama's campaign wonks went bugshit crazy over that remark, and by a number of accounts McCain himself was furious with Fiorina.

But wait, it gets better - McCain's top economic advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, in an effort to address questions regarding McCain's economic and technical knowledge, basically claimed in front of the world yesterday that John McCain invented the Blackberry.

Bawahahahahahaha!

Oh hell yes, this campaign is nothing if not entertaining. Who'd have thought that that John "I was a POW Goddamnit!" McCain and Al "bunnies, and trees and rainbows, oh my" Gore would have something in common? Who says there isn't hope for a bipartisan government? I tell you, when the pinnacle of conservative economic business technology connects seamlessly over the liberal Internet, when John and Al have something in common, well it just gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling all over. And frankly, the thought of liberals looking at their Blackberries with sudden horror, or conservatives suddenly realizing that their communication device is connecting over the Daily-Kos powered Internet give me more than a touch of glee.

Now, obviously (at least it's obvious to me) neither Fiorina or Holtz-Eakin meant their words the way they were taken - but taking sound bites out of context is an old and approved campaign tactic and people like Fiorina and Holtz-Eakin should have known better than to make impromptu remarks.

Fiorina is correct, mostly - the president of the United States is not the same as the CEO of a major company. Alas, maybe our economy would be better if it were. But I do understand where she was coming from with that statement (truthfully, HP's board of directors didn't think Fiorina was able to run HP either, so they ditched her, which you know, kind of makes her an expert, just saying). But seriously, what the hell was she thinking? Talk about a case of uncontrolled verbal diarrhea - help me! I can't stop!

And Holtz-Eakin wasn't actually saying that John McCain personally invented the tool Palin uses like a crack addict (seriously, have you seen that woman's thumbs? I'll bet she could bench press a lipstick covered pitbull with those mitts), any more than Al Gore actually claimed that he personally invented the Internet. Holtz-Eakin was trying to make the point that McCain chaired the Senate Commerce Committee and helped to create a climate of technology based economic growth - i.e. McCain is both technologically and economically savvy. That's what he meant but that's not what he said, and he's been around long enough to know better.

When you're a spokesman, you stick to the script. If you deviate from the approved talking points, especially in campaign politics, you are absolutely guaranteed to end up ass deep in starving alligators.

And McCain himself isn't immune - he and Palin have both engaged in some serious truth stretching if not outright falsehoods. But, yesterday McCain said, "I was Chairman of the Commerce Committee that oversees every part of our economy." Well, no, that's just plain wrong. The Senate Commerce Committee doesn't oversee a couple of critical portions of our economic foundation, in fact by law the committee is excluded from addressing credit, financial services, and housing finance. Those things are the purview of the Senate Banking Committee - and they are the very things that are right now crashing and burning. McCain might want to think twice about claiming to be part of the process that led directly to the current economic meltdown, or to claim knowledge and experience in areas where he clearly has none.

Both campaigns are scrambling - Obama to take advantage of the GOP's hoof and mouth outbreak, and McCain's people are jumping to damage control stations.

Hilarity ensues.

But in between chuckles I'm feeling a ominous foreboding.

If these are the types of advisors John McCain has running his campaign, who does he plan to listen to once he actually is in charge of the economy? And if Obama is the type of person to revel in sound bites taken out of context, clearly out of context, deliberately out of context, what kind of leader and role model will he be?

And suddenly things aren't so funny, are they?

You've got to be kidding me

Aaagh! Aagh! Head. Full of teh stupids. Feels. Like. My. Eyes. Are. Bulging. Out. Of. My. Head! Must not make fist of death.


Every single time I think that the leader of the free world can't possibly say anything more idiotic, more puerile, more revolting, or more deluded - he goes right ahead and says something so profoundly stupid that I think my head will explode. I swear to God, this guy is a complete and total fucking moron.

Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.

Honestly I thought this was a joke, I had to look and see if I was reading The Onion by accident. No, he meant it, every word. Seriously, this guy needs a handler - or a muzzle and a padded room.

Senator cures cancer, invents Internet, and discovers fabled Iraqi WMDs!

Oh yes, yes she did go there.

According to reliable media source, Sinbad the Comedian, Hillary Clinton may have, uh, embellished her combat experience in Bosnia.

So?

I mean, seriously, so?

Look bullshitting your way into the White House is a time honored tradition in the United States. Her husband did it. So did the current jackass. And fudging the truth is, on the face of things, a required skill in a President. I mean, seriously here, what if Lyndon Johnson couldn't have lied flat out with a straight face about the Gulf of Tonkin? Why, we might never have gotten into Vietnam! Think of all the great movies that would never have gotten made! The books that never would have been written. We'd have lost three decade's worth of entertainment. The whole world changing hippy peace movement wouldn't have happened, my God, the music - we'd have lost the music! What, I say what, would we compare every military action to nowadays? Pundits and newspaper editors would have nothing to work with; Iraq, Another Day At Disneyworld just doesn't have the same ring as Iraq, The New Vietnam?

And Nixon, what if Nixon told the truth about Watergate? Forest Gump would have been a lesser movie for it. Woodward and Bernstein would still be nothing but bullpen stringers if it wasn't for Nixon, and All the President's Men friggin' made Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford's respective careers. Thank God for Nixon's ability to bullshit.

Hell, even Vice Presidents need the ability to bullshit. Al Gore invented the internet and discovered an inconvenient truth - he got the Nobel Prize and an Oscar!

Look at Jimmy Carter, remember him? No? He told the truth. Nothing, barely a footnote in history. How about Gerry Ford. Loser.

Reagan was the consummate bullshit artist. He was so good at it in fact, that he's a role model for the GOP! And Bill Clinton, need I go there? Hillary learned from the best. And then there's George the Lesser Decider, the King of the Malleable Past. Tell us about Vietnam, George. "Oh hell, yes, there was this one time I was knee deep in a bucket of hotwings outside a Louisiana National Guard Post, I took some fire the next morning in the shitter, I can tell you!"

Seriously, what's a presidential candidate anyway? A candidate isn't a person, a presidential candidate is entertainment. A president is a dozen speech writers, a make up guy, a voice coach, a public relations firm, and a dozen talk show hosts. So Hillary bullshitted about her past? Good! She's got the mad skillz I want in a President. And I say fuck it, if you're going to do it, go big. The bigger the better. Americans like to be entertained, give us a story, Hill, make it a good one.

First Lady Hillary Clinton visits Philippines, draws fire.

I'd like to be charitable. I'd like to say I've been in similar situations and I know how information can get confused. I'd like to say that Hillary Clinton was telling what she thought was the truth, that she was repeating what her security detail told her. But, if you watch her and her daughter walk from the plane (the video is widely available, I'm not going to repost it here), you can easily see that there is no threat - and she is clearly aware that there is no threat, at all. Because, really, do you think that even cast iron Hillary Clinton would walk across open tarmac with her daughter in tow if there was even the slightest chance of sniper fire?

As I said over on Refugees from the City, I think that smell is the smell of desperation. Sad and inevitable.

Bet he gets an earring too

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