Remember when I told you about that good friend I lost?

Except not that for-serious post. This one. Which was the follow up to this one. They were all about a particular spam email that really pleased me. I was checking my spam folder again for blog fodder anything sent there by mistake, and noticed it had reached a personal high for spam count. Thirteen! Let's discuss.

To begin, I just don't think anything official would have a from line of "loteryclaimsoffice2009". Now, of course I have previous dealings with, er... "JAPANESE WORLD CYBER GAMES" (What the hell, spellcheck? "Cyber" isn't a word? And neither is "spellcheck"???), but the real people know how to spell their own from line. Der.

Up next! As I would never subject an email I wrote as "DEAR SARAH" (besides the fact that I never give any of my emails a subject) (you're welcome, people with whom I correspond), I would therefore never receive back an "RE :DEAR SARAH". However! The beginning of the email is apparently, "Dear SARAH Good day and God bless you. I feel quite safe..."; me, too, rechelleyton. Me, too. And thanks!

Then mary_wong is harping on the "Japan Lottery" again. Can't trick me! You are not my contact with them, bitch!

What I don't get about this next one is why itunes is concerned with ((((Percocet-Aderall-Viagra-Vicodin)))) usage. I've already had my intervention, thankyouverymuch.

iborilucky wants to know, "CAN YOU SUPPLY OIL MATERIAL?" What. the. fuck. Please, no one explain this to me.

And THEN someone is trying to get me with the New Zealand lotto. Well fool me once, folks! I only play the JAPAN CYBER LOTTO. Morons.

And then there're a couple more people all up in my business about my drug use again. Bastards. Although the "Love love pill Offer Pack" has admittedly got me curious. The pill so nice they named it twice. But no capitalization for you, asshole. "Offer" and "Pack" are mucho mas importante. (Imagine the accent marks there. I'm not searching out those keystrokes.)

Let's see... another JAPAN LOTTERY faker. This one used "TOYOTA". Apparently spammers don't read the news... itunes is up in my craw about my drug use again... "noreply" doubled up! One email offering me drugs followed closely by one offering me online gaming. Wow. noreply is spreading himself thin, these days...

Oh. My. GOONIE. (as Connor says)

This one is for real, y'all! It's from a barrister! (A foreign one, obviously.) barristerbrwn12 says, "Re: Dear Sarah"... fuck. Okay, we'll just ignore that. "My name is brown Liam, a Malaysian national and personal At...". "At" what??? "Attache"??? Oh, wait. Probably "Attorney". I'm kind of insulted that brown Liam felt the need to translate it for me. Also, you'd think a lawyer wouldn't put up with shit like being called "brown Liam". Unless this nickname keeps him from getting mixed up with "douchebag Liam" or "bigamist Liam" in the office. Who am I to judge? All I know is goddamned gmail screwed up once again and deposited non-spam email into the spam folder! What if I had not decided to mock the spam folder and had missed this?

Anyone know if I can sue gmail? Hang on, I bet brown Liam knows. I've got an email to respond to.

I just paid eighty bucks for the doctor to tell me to put my daughter on the BRAT diet.

Because apparently letting her eat fried chicken and grapefruit with an upset stomach is a bad idea.

Apparently.

Go me.

I'm an awe-inspiring mother.

You know when they're little, and they use a phrase because they want whatever that phrase achieves for them, but they don't actually understand...

...the words that they are using, and it isn't until they've started speaking clearly, and yet they're still using that odd pronunciation, that it occurs to you that, no, he really has no idea what he was saying?

Ethan: "Crap, snapple, pop, rice krispies!"

It's kinda like that.

I Love My Country (And My Sister Kimberly)

I thought I'd start with that because, well, there are so many ultra-conservative assholes who think that anyone with any-any-any liberal opinions is anti-American. And they are known for reading my blog. Right?

So, yes, this will be a vaguely heavily politics saturated post.

Let's discuss what happened in Massachusetts. That state (you're a state, you bastards. Uppity commonwealth b.s.) just elected a Republican to replace the well-known, well-loved, well-Dem'd Ted Kennedy. (How did Ted become the nickname for Edward? It's further off than Dick is to Richard.) (Although I've known some Richards who were definitely Dicks.)

And that's fine by me. Massachusetts had a message to send. And in our fair democratic (as in democracy) nation, that's exactly what the vote is for. Those politi-bastards in the Capitol need to have their collective ass handed to them every once in a while. Or often. Let's go with often.

And if our government ran like it was supposed to (hey, did you notice the size of that "if"?), i.e. citizens elected a representative (lower case "r") that represented their views and then said representative went to our land's beloved capital and- and here's the kicker- represented those people that voted for him/her, and voted in the best interest of those people- oh, and maybe, say, the rest of the country- well, hell, that would have been a damn fine message for them to send!

Except for the completely effed up "us versus them" mentality of the aforementioned politi-bastards. I'm sure you remember, those in this country who share my United States citizenship (and those who don't) (and those in other countries who learn more about our country than we ever do), from back in your basic school lessons in Government and U.S. History, that we as a nation did not start out with this two-party, my-penis-is-bigger-than-your-penis, elephant-donkey crapola. George Washington not only was not a member of a political party, he was actually opposed to them. Can't imagine why.

Yet here we stand (okay, we're Americans, so here we sit), 13 score and several years later, and we can't get shit for shit done because they're so busy counting sides and no one will step a toe off their party's line because god forbid they think for themselves. Except when it comes to voting themselves a raise. That reminds me. I need to get my coworkers together- see if they'd all like to vote us some cost-of-living wage increases.

So I think we need to help them get out of their own way. Which, I think, is what Massachusetts voters had in mind. But it needs to be broader than a single politician change-over. My very first thought? How about this funny little thing that we have that applies to the presidential office, but, miraculously, not to the Senate or House. That thing is called a "term limit". Why is this a good thing you ask?

Well. You, my lovely readers, are frickin' geniuses. No doubt. However! If you're in public right now, look around. If you're in the office right now, look around. Next time you're in traffic, look around. In the grocery store, in the bank, everywhere you go, every time you watch television, every website you visit- other than this one (and your own, of course). All those people. Those people? Are fucking morons. They cannot be trusted. But the vast majority of them, their votes count just as strongly as yours. And if they see a name they recognize and see a name they don't, they're going with the one they recognize- even if by "recognize", they "vaguely remember that name from a newspaper or something". Like that article about the corrupt politician (redundant, sorry) accepting bribes from the local mob boss. But the fact is, nine times out of ten, the incumbent gets reelected. (No, I'm not citing this stat. You don't just trust me by now?) And, no, this is not all just because of morons. There are other factors. But most of those factors are not "I am so much better than my pathetic opponent". Wouldn't it be great if some of these politi-bastards spent a little less time campaigning and a little more time doing the whole improve-our-country job thingy?

But that would involve putting their country first and themselves second by voting term limits on their own j-o-b-s.

And speaking of campaigning, wouldn't it be fan-frickin'-tastic if we outlawed campaign ads on television? Oh, mygod. My October would be brilliant.

Cate Just Brought Something to My Attention

In response to yesterday's post, I found this:

Call Me Cate said...
So what happens when he googles the right combination to find your blog?!?!?

...

...

...

Sonuvabitch.

Great. Now I have to figure out how to preemptively block a site that is not specifically associated with pornography. Thanks for giving me more work, Cate.

I am so not overreacting.

As a good parent, you're supposed to monitor your children's computer activities. This is what "they" say, right?

Well, anyway, part of the new protection software that Sam installed for all our computers was monitoring software. Which we don't hide. In fact, the first thing we told the children upon them getting computering privileges was that we were monitoring every single thing they did- every single keystroke! Which was a total lie- by the way, free parenting tip- lie to your children. Seriously that "never lie" stuff is bullshit. There are some times that lying is not only the "easy" choice, it's the right one.

Where were we?

Spying. Right.

So he installed this software, and I figured it would be limited to monitoring their internet use. No. Apparently it informs on everything. And I'm not really sure how I feel about that. I mean, I do know how I feel. The only thing I really need to know about is whether they're giving out personal information or talking to strangers on the internet. Guaranteed? These kids are going to be doing things that I do not like. On and off the computer. Guaranteed? I absolutely did things that my mother did not approve off. But it didn't harm me. I am alive and healthy today. I swear.

So, yes, I want to know what they're doing online. Out of pure curiosity, I of course want to know what else they're doing. Who here wouldn't want to see every iota of what their spouse does? And then kill them for it. So it's probably a bad idea. Same thing goes with kids. I know Connor swears (yes. he has me for a mother. you can all just shut up.). But he's smart enough not to do it in front of me. And I'm okay with that. Because- and here's that defining line- it is not going to harm him.

And this is not denial. It's not "out of sight, out of mind". It is the fact that they are separate-and-apart-from-me human beings. And as much as I want to be up in their business at every possible moment, growth requires space and freedom.

Thus! I take that step back.

Most of the time. I'm also nosy as hell.

So I scanned Connor's internet use when Sam first presented this new ability to me. And it's searches for cheats (for video games, people!), searches for online games, nothing surprising...

And then.

"Well this just pisses me off." I stabbed my poor laptop monitor with a finger. "Oh... no...", Sam said, peering at my screen. There, glaring up at me from a list of benign search terms like "poptropica" and "hulu", was the offense.

"how do you get the peanut butter crackers on big nate island in poptropica"

What. The. FRIGGIDY.

Anyone remember this? My own child! How could he!

There will be blood. There WILL be blood.

I don't have the energy for this, New Jersey.

Blah blah blah you suck blah blah blah fuckatards, all of you (okay, not 14 of you- the other 20 of you should just sod off) blah blah blah... listen, just go read this. And this.

Oh, and a special double-bird-flip goes out to the backward-out-his-ass-talking Michael Doherty. He's the State Senator from the Washington Township in Warren County. Here's his quote. "Suddenly, today, there's implications that you're discriminating against folks when you want to maintain that definition."

Uhm, yeah. Asshole. If that "definition" you're "maintaining" is "I'm gonna keep it this way because how the hell else can I prove that I'm better than you?" That's exactly what you're doing. Let me reiterate. Asshole. (And, by the by, global warming? Being a skeptic therein? Ass. HOLE.)

And just because somehow there's more about him than New Jersey in general in this post- New Suck Suck Jersey Suck Suck.