I Know That Guy! Kinda.

I have a feeling that Steve is about to blow up a little more. Of course I've been a staunch SDEI supporter since 2005 when I discovered we shared a common passion for things labeled "food product". Maybe now he'll have to get back on the "eat gross things for my personal amusement" horse. If you do one thing today, make sure you read the Cuitlacoche bit. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll struggle to keep from rolling out of your chair.

• Steve, Don't Eat It - Featured on BuzzFeed

Incentive Much?

Hang on a second. Let me get this straight. Citizens of Birmingham, UK did such a great job stepping up to meet the city council's recycling goals that said environmentally concerned council distributed 720,000 congratulation pamphlets? Isn't that kinda like thanking local drivers for reducing gasoline consumption by throwing a lit match into a tanker truck?

Some people may be distracted from this by talk of the £15,000 worth of publications that contain the wrong Birmingham's (AL) skyline, but not me. The fact that they were printed in the first place is obviously more insulting. Next time, how about you print up one pamphlet and just have everyone pass it around and share?

The classic pizza party ploy always got my fourth grade class pretty fired up for whatever they wanted us to do. Or, in the US at least, you could get around 373 kegs of beer with that $28,000. Not sure how your beer unit conversions work over there, but one beer for 52,600 people is a pretty nice reward...

• BBC NEWS :Chiefs admit Brum skyline mix-up

You're Jamming Up My Tivo.

So last night I watched three (count 'em, three) blocks of Olympics that my Tivo box snagged for me. The first I believe was a reasonable 4 hour block which contained some swimming finals (that I'd already read about 6 times before I got home) and other mildly interesting things like diving and gymnastics. The second was a 7 (SEVEN!) hour time sink with soccer, table tennis, beach volleyball, rowing, etc. And the final block was the most reasonably clipped 3 hour Olympic coverage I've experienced with kayaking, boxing and women's basketball.

Now you may be saying to yourself "Sweet son of jambalaya! How in the name of Zeus' butt hole did you manage to fit 14 hours of tv in after an 8 hour work day?" To which I respond, you my friend are not aquainted with tivo's 60x fwd mode and judicious use of the "skip to the next half hour mark" button. So while I'm aware that fits of soccer and boxing flashed on my screen, I wouldn't say that I watched any of those events. The table tenis and kayaking were interesting for a while, but I gotta tell you those Olypmic badmitten players are goddamn insane! I can't even keep track of the shuttlecock and they're smashing and diving all over the place to keep that badboy up. Don't miss out.

Of course once I was done fast-forwarding through NBC's saptastic coverage I had to stop watching tv, because my Tivo hasn't been able to record ANYTHING else for the past two days. Nice job, NBC scheduling gurus, you completely boxed-out the competition. Too bad the result isn't increased eyeball to NBC time, but rather me throwing in a DVD for the first time in several months.

The only beef I have with cheese balls i

The only beef I have with cheese balls is that the make everything else taste... less... Good. Well, that and I don't think they're using real cheese.

I'm Trying. Really.

Isn't there an ESPN-style olympic coverage that I can watch? I mean, I'd like to get my international sporting competition on, but I don't know how much more NBC shmaltz I can stomach. I mean, NO, I don't want to watch Tiki Barber and some chick spew uninformed drivel all over themselves in between 4 second clips of the world's greatest atheletes. And when you follow the US women's gymnastic team around like a love-drunk puppy, maybe it'd be a good idea to aknowledge that there are actually competitors from other countries too. Also, I have to basically cancel all the other programing my tivo has lined up to get one of your 6 hour superblocks of swimming, diving, tennis, badmitton, team hand ball, archery... why in the hell don't you break these things up into separate listings, so that people can actually figure out when things are on? Are there really folks sitting down every night to watch 4 hours of tearjerking backstory and commercials? Or more likely, do they just flip on the coverage, watch whatever's on at that second, ans lose interest in 20 minutes cause its not something they want to see? Whatever, I'm sure you know better than me. Just because I can't figure out how to watch a world-class 150 year old international multi-sport competition in a manner that makes it seem interesting doesn't mean too much. Right?

Just Stick An EZ Pass On My Bag.

Hmmm... I was reading something last week about personal information and security and governmental agencies... What was that? They're really, really good at securing personal information they harvest? No, that wasn't it. I'm sure it'll come to me eventually.

Anyway, did you know about this program? The TSA was creating a "verified" traveler program for frequent travelers whereby an individual could pay to get on a kind of "no-fly" whitelist that lets you bypass all the normal security checks at a participating airport. How very nuvo-american; people with money don't have to wait in line. Brilliant! But wait, I thought the security lines were there to verify that people are who they say and to make sure they're not transporting anything ellicit (either knowingly or unknowingly). Wouldn't you have to set up a separate line to verify the "verified" passengers? Won't that take more TSA agents and just slow down the cattle economy class lines?

Also, if you were a bad-guy, wouldn't you try to get through the less rigourous screening process? I mean, what if the names and private identity information of everyone on the list was accidentally lost? All someone would have to do is pretend to be a "verified" passenger even though they're not. That'd probably make this whole thing seem like a really bad idea, huh?

Don't they have this same thing at amusement parks so rich bastards can skip the lines? I mean, that pissess me off like nobodies' business and its not even in the name of so-called "secuirty". I mean COME ON!

• Techdirt: TSA Loses Laptops With 'Verified' Flyer Details

Dear Dr. Conman... I mean Jose.

Dear Winner. [good first paragraph, dork!]

It is obvious [is it?] that this notification will come to you as a surprise but,
We are happy to inform you that your email address
have emerged [like a phoenix from a contest it didn't enter.] winner of (EUR 1,000,000.00) [what the hell is a euro?] in Once Lottery Award. [I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and imagine that some wealthy heiress -Duchess Von Braun Once- established a random worldwide lottery.]

The online cyber draws [I'm glad you're not having real-world cyber draws, that's just dangerous.] was conducted from an exclusive list of 50-million [50 million seems less than exclusive, no?] email addresses of individuals and corporate bodies [is this as scary as it sounds?  where do you store these bodies?] picked by an advanced automated random [how do you make advanced random?  is it like double random?] computer selection from the web.
No tickets were sold.  [I'm sorry, tell me again, why are you giving money away?]

Your email address is attached to Ref No: [jibberish redacted]
Batch No:[jibberish redacted]; Award/Ticket No: [number redacted]; and
PROMOTION DATE: 4th of August.2008.

Bear in mind that prizes will strictly [adverbs go after the verb or before an adjective; there are exceptions.  this isn't one.] be remitted to winners that
officially file in [is that like 'queuing up' in Spain?] for their claim within the given time frame. [...have you given it?]

To begin your claim, you are to forward this message to our accredited
claim agent [fancy!] including your full names and telephone numbers:

CONTACT NAME: Mr. Simms Sanchez. [ha ha ha... ha. ha.  Sanchez... that's a good one.]
TELL NUMBER: [12 digit number redacted]
EMAIL: [netscape.com email redacted]
CITY/COUNTRY: Madrid,Spain.

Your prize award has been insured [what kinda benefits?  dental?] with your email address and will be
transferred to you upon meeting the requirement of the gaming board
authority [i'm imagining Rich Uncle Pennybags, is that right?] which includes your statutory obligations. [like paying you fake taxes?  can you just take it out of my fake million euros?]

Best Regards,
Dr. Connie Jose. [either go full bore and sign it Connie Connerson, or just stay away from "con", "scam" or "fleece" altogether.]

Homeland InSecurity.

This might be the closest to the thought police we'll ever experience. At least I hope it is. Seizing and scanning any electronic device that crosses the border seems like a large invasion of privacy. Yes, it is unreasonable to randomly seize a laptop, copy its contents (which may include any information stored online that cookies or stored passwords will access), crack any encrypted file that might be found and store the results in a massive government database for undisclosed periods of time.

But we're talking about ANY electronic device capable of storing information. So your pda, blackberry, cell phone, iPod, usb drive and cd collection are all up for grabs too. (the feds won't have to coerce telcoms into illegally releasing phone records, they'll just download them from our handsets). But lets not stop there. What else do you have that carries information? Got any credit cards? Gift cards? Transit cards? Key fob? Library card? Wristwatch? Pedometer? It all goes into the database. No suspicion needed, just because you're there.

Remember carnivore? Well forget having to send data to someone else to have it intercepted. All you need to do is cross one of the borders of your own god damn country and your govenment will help itself to all the information you never had to consider was personal or private.

Proponents say they're preventing "criminals and terrorists with a means to smuggle child pornography or
other dangerous and illegal computer files into the country" with this warrantles (yet currently legal) policy. But lets face it, there are better ways of smuggling data into the country than shoving a usb drive up your backside and standing in line at customs. (are you guys searching all the UPS boxes that cross the border too?)

But lets say you're not at all concerned about feds finding anything on your discs that could be construed as criminal evidence. (you're gonna delete that mp3 library when you get home, aren't you?) Fine, you honestly feel comfortable about you personal and secure information being duplicated and stored by any number of federal agencies with little or no oversight? You don't worry about the possibility of impropriety or all too common digital security or confidentiality breach? Can I introduce you to my government?

Policies like this should make the entire population cringe and hold their breath, hoping they don't get their own rights caught up in the mix of ensuring "freedom" in general.

• Homeland Security: We can seize laptops for an indefinite period | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com

Random Acts Of Marketing.

Names have been changed to implicate the innocent.

[ben affleck]'s new status message - prefers the black forest ham over the sausage and aged cheddar.

me: are those new gatorade flavors?

[ben affleck]: that sounds disgusting

me: you misspelled delicious
[ben affleck]: no they are starbucks breakfast sandwiches
hamtorade...

I'm not really sure why but thinking of walking down the Gatorade isle and seeing a bottle marked "Black Forest Ham" just tickles my funny bone in a special way. So much more than ham soda ever could. I think the new viral marketing could be actually producing limited runs of ridiculous flavors. Think about it.

Now Here's A Trademark Suit.

Does anyone else find it mildly confusing that there is Dove soap and Dove chocolate? I mean they're both called bars, yet anyone who is trying to buy one will be upset if they get home to find they accidentally grabbed the other. "Alright, I ate my asparagus and metamucil time to reward myself with a big bite of.... ewww." Or "Whew, I'm all stinky I'd better lather up with my new... ewww."

Normally it seems like two companies with this type of issue would be up to each other's throats in litigation sauce, but not so for these peaceful barmakers. Good job guys! Lets all just hope that Dove doesn't come out with a white chocolate; or a brown soap.