Monday, April 23, 2007

Parliamentary, My Dear Buffoon


"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAHHHHHHH!"
No doubt about it: Howard Dean's 'shriek' at the Iowa Caucus was THE definitive moment of Election 2004. This sound byte will be with us beyond Generation Z-plus.
Granted, it's only April of 2007, but the ramp-up for the presidential election of 2008 is already rolling. Both primary parties have a host of candidates fund-raising and providing verbal gaffes with which to provide grist for their opponents.
For me, personally, the interest in this otherwise *yawn* time of the election cycle is in the email I get. From third parties. Some of them really waaaaaay out there.
Somehow, I wound up on the emailing list of the...uh..."USA Parliament Party". The alleged "leader" of this peculiar party identifies himself (in the email) as "MP James Ogle", and starts off with the following...uh...commentary:
"The US Parliament is only involved in voting. I am a volunteer vote counter. I warn everyone, the way this guy has ranked everything from one up may be pretty groovy and everything, but a parliamentary coalition is about 100 people making similar rankings...a democratically legit, elected BoD.
We need this kind of "all party" conciliatory language to all independent voters, insiders integrated with outsiders, represented as equals (first 100 receiving 1/101th plus one vote) not dictators. A group up people elected under pure proportional representation (PR)...
Now fortunately, I have prepared such a ballot to be released on 4/20/2007, where you can sit back and vote online, or get people to vote on the paper ballot, for a new BoD at;
All new write-in BoDs receiving 1/101th plus one vote, will wield exactly 1/100ths of the "power" on the BoD, when voters are counted ~ 100 days later on 8/6/2007.
Any other way is less mathematically correct, but we (the ruling coalition, those approving said rules) are open to improvements. And this is a national cycle, starting on 1/1/2008, every year. In fact, I personally mailed the schedule to all known 19 remaining MMPs (of the 100 on "Normandy Beach" see www.pot-party.com) which is like a decimated force #1, elevent and 1/2 minutes into Normandy's D-Day, and the supply lines were supplied on February 5, as promoted every year".
(Y'all following this so far? Me neither, but I digress and the email babbles on)
"We hope by the 12th minute (12th year anniversary on 8/6/2007) to have made more progress, but by current schedule, the Battle of the Bulge is 150,000 years in the future".
(Say WHA..?).
"Let's please pay attention to the task at hand, the good ship US Central California (http://www.usparliament.org/c-cal.htm). The machine gun nests are under siege on the cliffs above, but we are still in dissaray, splintnered, decimated, undersupplied, and ineffective. Most of here are suffering from shell-shock, are physically unable to go forward, and statitistically things look bad, as we have pushed only about 20 feet ahead from shore, and are being driven backwards".
-- James Ogle [Parliamentary]
volunteer vote counter
Finally, he says something that made sense: he (and/or his efforts) emanate from, or are targeted toward, 'Central California', with 'California' being the operative part of the "ahhh, now I get it!".
He's a flake, from a state overrun widdem.
Once more, this message is nothing more than a tap on the *delete* key. Or should have been.
Instead...I recalled another 'flake' from TV land, with delusions of something-er-other that involved a large tract of California, too. Granted, his time was represented to be about 130 years ago. And granted, out of 105 episodes on the show from which he tried to carry forth his various and sundry nefarious remakes of the Califorlornia landscape, he only appeared in 10.
But for fans of The Wild Wild West, those ten episodes were their favorites.
So I did respond to this modern-day version of Dr. Miguelito Loveless, and in a manure I figured he'd understand:
Dr. Strangely-Loved Miguelito Loveless:
Your language is as obtuse as your scheme, however brilliantly hatched before too much glue-sniffing impeded the verbiage flow and conjugation. I'd suggest an open window to help clear the air, prior to the next rounds landing atop Pointe du Hoc, which seems to be located within shrapnel range of your word processor.
Online voting for absolutely nothing relevant or meaningful! How absolutely like a Califorlornian to campaign on behalf of! Is ACORN helping you assemble your voting registrants and lists? Surely now, they will provide you with lists replete with the dead, the fictional, the etched and sketched, drawn and quartered or some other measure of fraction.
Perhaps this will parliamentarily allow you to advance off Omaha Nebraska, onto the bluffs of Council (across the river in Iowa, for those what don't know what I just did there). Perhaps this will allow you to speed up the final reclamation in the Ardennes by, say, at least 100,000 years. In any event, the scheme is certainly obfuscatory enough that it might lead some to vote for Pat Paulsen, even as he's dead going on 10 years now.
I must point out, however, Dr. Loveless: you failed in ten episodes against the clever and wiley James West, point-man for The Man. What makes you think you can best him NOW?
I did end this reply with a question, after all; an answer was but a day in coming:
...ahh yea, Pat Paulsen was in the poll when I started it in '95 online, when I ran for Gov of Callifornia as a Green, also online (*TOING*). Maybe Google liked my logo, joogle, who knows? Anyway, please get back to me about what you're doing...I'm trying to unite independents and 3rd parties under a voting system. Imagine a regular voting system as a sngle shot gun, then imagine a ballot of 120 names where you rank all 120 (or more) as an auto-matic with 120 (0r more) rounds.
That's the knd of power behind this concept, a stack of ballots, where people rank multipe choices [the more the bnetter]. The current system has the people so constricted, that there is no democrtic crteativity allowed. That's where we excell.
You could name your own ministry, you know. Go here (http://www.usparliament.org/cabinet1.htm) and see where you may fit in.
MP James Ogle
Dang...never been offered to name my own ministry before. Made up a couple for the purposes of yanking the chains of Nigerian 419ers, but those were fictional. Here, I'm offered the opportunity to make one up that ain't fictional...sorta.
After reviewing their list of twelve "full" ministries, "under consideration" ministries, and the available seats as a "deputy minister", I determined that I was best up to serving in a 'new' ministry: The Ministry of Consumer Protection & Scam-Baiting. I informed Dr. Strangely-loved Miguelito Loveless that with my years of experience in fencing with these various and sundry cretins, I was eminently qualified to hold such a post.
Dependent on the reply -- if any -- there might be a Part II. Otherwise...just breath a sigh of relief that the US Parliamentary Party isn't a viable one in '08. Anymore than the National Barking Spider Resurgence Party is ;-)

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Russian Threat of Global Humor


It's a wonder the political correctness police haven't been all over this just yet. So I guess I'll just have to pick up where they've dropped the ball.
It saddens me to have to pick it up and run widdit on one of my over-eager Russian bim...er...bride wannabes.
But it's for her own good. Ask any progressive.
In one of the many emails I'm now being deluged under in the From Russia With Scam series, Evgenia wrote the following in the body of her comments:
"I like humor and my slogan is 'Humor will save the world!! And what do you think about this?"
Poor, deluded 21 year old from the Russian Republic. She obviously doesn't keep up with all the latest politically correct thinkers of the day.
So leave it to ol' Le Skunk de Polecat to set her straight with this reply:
Dear Evigie:
I hope you don't mind me calling you Evigie. I could call you late to dinner, but perhaps you wouldn't get that. It's an insidious thing called humor.
And it's being banned.
Yes, my little 'built like a Kremlin Outhouse', banned.
You are singularly uninformed. It is not your fault, so I will singularly inform you. Global humor has been determined to be the greatest threat to world self-esteem, much as Al Gore's made up climatological "global warming/carbon offsets" scam. Did you ever stop to think, Evigie, that any one thing that you think is funny, someone else, somewhere else, might not? And thus, you might be laughing at someone elses' expense.
And that just isn't fair.
Take for example grits: American northerners (aka, Yankees) make fun of, and tend to abhor grits. American southerners (aka, rednecks) treat grits as a dietary diety, and bristle at any denigration of this coveted food by "danged fool Yankees". I'll bet you have borscht bashers who rile your Russian culinary purists, in a similar manner.
And it goes so much more wide than that: radical Muslims find humor in abducting Christians and Westerners, and making videos of hacking their heads off for slaps and giggles; Christians and Westerners don't find this very funny. A western newspaper cartoonist draws a funny editorial cartoon about Mohammad, and radical Islamists riot and burn Parisian Yugos to show their complete lack of humor on the subject.
Yak humor offends PETA and animal rights folks; gulag humor offends the KGB. Jokes about liberals offend socialists and progressives; jokes about 'crackers' offend Nabisco. The company that produces Spam is torqued about bulk email on the internet being referred to as "spam".
And so on.
No, my dear Evigie, global humor is a blight on the face of the Earth, and must be eradicated. Write back to me when you have expunged yourself of all *snicker laugh titter roars* and any residual *guffaw snorts*, so that you can reduce your humor footprint and achieve true humor neutrality, so that fewer offense and self-esteem issues are happening on a global scale. We must stamp out rampant global humor, before it is too late, and the offended rise 20 feet by 2036.
I'd tell you the joke about the blonde calling the computer support center, but it might offend you on any number of levels, so I won't.
Humorlessly,
Comrade Le Skunk de Polecat
Striving for 100% ha-ha free by 2008
Just think...I saved some poor chip-on-their-shoulder, no-life, politically correct buffoon/ette from being offended.
*oops*...

Saturday, April 14, 2007

From Russia With...Soap?



After the latest flurry of Russian 'bride-wannabe' emails, I decided to take an uncharacteristic step for moi: I wrote to the outfit what's sending me this hyar stuff (http://crOssrOad.org), and very nicely laid out to them that I didn't know how I got on their mailing list, but that I was genuinely concerned about misrepresenting myself to their bevy of bride-wannabes -- most of which being half my age -- and concluded that I wasn't what these young ladies (real or imagined) were looking for. In the immortal words of Bob Dylan, "it ain't me babe..uh no no no it ain't me babe...it ain't me they're looking for, babe...".

I sent that on Monday.

On Tuesday, I had 15 email inquiries from 'Russian bride-wannabes'.

On Wednesday, I had 14 more. On Thursday, 14 more. So much for doin' the right thing.

So instead I took the tact from the previous two installments, and selected three of the more, uh, "promising" email offers.

First up, Natalia (the profile in pink), who's email heading was "My heart is in your hands, Le Skunk de Polecat"...*TOING*. She went onto say "The major qualities Ive always depreciated (huh?!) in men their kind heart and a sense of humor. I am not looking for a knight, but for a down-to-earth man".

My response was in keeping with my full-hearted, down-to-earth, knightly character:

Natalia:

Your heart is in my hands? EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWwww! All the blood! The slime! My gawd, IT's STILL PULSING!! And SPURTING! MEDIC!!! STANLEY STEEMER!!!

*passing out hyar*...*thud*.

I 'spect this left her wondering "what th' bullshevic?".

Next up was Julija (white jacket w/black-red stripes):

Dear Le Skunk de Polecat, nice to meet you here! My name is Julija, I'm single lady 23 year old. I'm kind of cheerful, easy and most sociable with attractive and intelligent. I can fit to you, because I'm flexible *TOING*, but proud of yourself, so please be gentle! I dream to meet such a person as you to give me baby and much happy husband. If you're kind enugh, my heart is yours!

She's "easy"? DOH:

Dear Julija:

Speaking of flexibility, can you put your left foot behind your head, while keeping your right foot attached to the bottom of your right leg, extending it in the opposite direction? THAT is flexibility. If I tried that, I'd snap, crackle and plop into six months of totally boring traction. As for the heart thing, I just had my carpets cleaned after an untoward experience with one of your comrade-ettes doing some strange appendage handling with her heart, so I'm not up to another round of 'bloody good show' hyar. Nice jacket, BTW.

Add Julija to the 'lost in translation head-scratchers' having met Le Skunk de Polecat.

Last -- but certainly not least -- is Svetlana. Svetlana didn't write the longest or most interesting intro. But that apparently wasn't Svetlana's plan. Svetlana wasn't counting on her paragraph of prose to impress ol' Le Skunk; nooooooooo. She sent along a photo. The cropped version is up top: the real version was a head to knees picture of Svetlana...clad only in...uh...soap suds:

Hi, Le Skunk de Polecat!

I am Svetlana! I am to say that Im rather independent personality. Im decent but like to do things that say things to a man *no poop, lady*. I like to shape peoples feelings, it is a great pleasure to bring satisfaction to people. Im not afraid of making unexpected decisions. Id like to say Im often in to sports and with good company *no poop, lady*. I lead a healthy lifestyle *no poop, lady*. I love new places and things. I love to hear more of you. Pleased to write me and tell me how I impress you, yes? I love hear what you think.

*a cold shower later, I think I'm up to a reply of sorts*:

Dear Svetlana:

I don't know how to write the word, but if you ever saw Bugs Bunny, there was a sound the characters made when they needed to clear their minds. That sound was most assuredly in evidence here when I saw how you like to speak to a man, not so much with words as with visuality.

I must say that you are certainly the cleanest photo I have ever received from these kind of emails. And it bears out that you are certainly healthy. And it further bears out that you like to send a message to a man. Hooba dooba, what a message you send! Hadda take a cold shower to reply.

But I am curious, Svetlana: I did some very careful perusal of that photo (okay, ladies, stop the oinking again...I'm a guy) and I am most curious about those scars? Yes, those scars...the ones that are indicative of anatomical surgery usually consistent with..uh..er...sex changes? Are you sure you weren't Sven at one time?

Not that I'm saying you're not a woman NOW, Svetty cakes; not at all. But...well...uh...you did say you were independent and like to make unexpected decisions.

Just askin'.

Le Skunk de Polecat

Once again, not a peep from the trio. In Svetlana's case, this might be a good thing.

I don't need 'Svet/Sven' showing up here, armed and really pissed.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Imusnt


Since everyone else is weighing in on Don Imus and the relative size comparison betwixt his backside and the insertion of his head there recently, I might as well too. Nothing like a media pile-on to overstate/inflate an issue.
Bottom line: the guy's a moron. I've listened to him a small handful of times. It was a small handful too many. So I exercise the right I have in this society to be selective: I don't listen to him.
Should be 'nuff said.
But it isn't.
I've heard an interesting span of arguments over the Imus flap: he's a racist. No, he's an entertainer, albeit a rude one. He's sorry. He's not sorry. He should be fired. He has First Amendment rights. Is what he did worse than what Jesse Jackson did with the Jewish slur some years back, or the Al Sharpton/Twana Brawley fraud? Was/is Imus more disrespectful to women than rap/gangsta rap music?
Personally, I don't care about or put much stake in most of the other arguments. Here's my own personal take put pretty simply: the guy's a moron. Period. If you don't like him, don't listen to him. I don't, and I don't. Simple.
If enough people don't listen to him, free-market forces will take care of the rest.
Should the Rutgers girls' basketball team rise above him or allow his comment to make them perpetual victims? That's up to them. I know as much about them as individuals as they know of me. I don't consider them victims; but that's up to them to rise above or wallow in. They can rise to the mountain top and never look back, or take the Al Sharpton low road of wallow and whine. That's their choice.
'Nuff said. Particularly by a guy who's just spent two blog columns dissing Russian bride-wannabes, or humorously pointing out yet another scam angle to readers.
Am I as bad as or worse than Don Imus? You decide.
I just know I ain't as ugly. Yet.

Thursday, April 5, 2007

From Russia With Scam


I recently had the pleasure of meeting with the Vice President of Public Affairs for the Denver/Boulder Better Business Bureau, to see if maybe there was some contribution I might be able to make at some point in their on-going battles with online (and other) business scams.

Like, fer 'xample, bein' "Bawb" from Ballhitch, Colorado. But that's for later.

But life is full of irony (except when it comes to my laundry), and later that same day, I get one of those ironically-timed emails. From Russia. With love.

Sorta.

See, I recently got a scam mail from some person of borscht antecedence who sought my indulgence for "eager Russian brides"; I sent back a tart reply using the nom de guerre of Le Skunk de Polecat.

You'd think some things would transcend language barriers. *Buzzer*....wrong.

Witness the following evidence in my email:

Dear Le Skunk de Polecat,

My name is Lada.

A little bit about myself. I am Russian. I was born in September in the city Voronezh. I am Russian (yeah, I think I got that the first time, comrade-ette) . I am Christian. My weight-63 kg, my height 175 cm. I have a fair hair (only one?) and nice blue eyes, athletic figure. I have a degree from an Russian University education. My speciality is radiophysics and electronic. I am electronic engineer and have been for many years. I work in research institute-radioelectronics. I am divorced with my Canada husband. I do not have children, but I like them alot.

A little bit about my personality. I don?t smoke and drink. I have no bad habits. I am good-looking, healthy, active, communicate. I have the shape and attitude of a 28 year old. By character I am very light in relationship, intelligent joyful. I can tell that I am very romantic, calm, sincere, intelligent (redundant...) honest, loving, womanly (*TOING*) , kind. I have good sense of humour and a very optimistic outlook on life. I like a theatre, book readings, dancing. I have various interests: good music, art, nature, travelling to culture, history of countries. Think I like are sports, swimming, keeping fit and in general healthy life.

I looks for serious man (double *TOING*) for making a family, for marriage. I?d like to get acquainted with intelligent, honest, kind, independent, generous, with a sense of humour and interests in different sides of life man and maybe more, for long term relationship. I do not wont man have smoke/drink or have any bad habits (I agree: a man with a nun's hat is too kinky for some women).

I speak English not good. I learned German but I do not know it very well yet. Please write back me.
With large respect, Lada.

Oh, horsefeathers. I'm single anyway, so why not indulge a tad? Here's the kind of reply I know will engage me in a long-term sit-chee-ation:

Dear Lada:

I was born in Iowa, many moons ago, as the fit of my pants has always been dubious at best. I am about as athletic as a tree stump. I have much bad habits, and the pissed-off nuns to prove it. I am older than dirt. Well, some dirt.

I work for a water treatment plant as a reclamation tank diver, which has I think something to do with my name.

I like kids in general, especially around meal time. Sauteed in particular.

I seek a rich woman who will support me in a manure to which I am totally unaccustomed, but am willing to adapt to. It is probably good that she is also a very understanding woman with olfactory dysfunction, as I am rather flatulent before and after meals and sex.

So if you like to play hide the bleenie with me, I have a photo. I will share it with you upon request. If you don't request, I won't share it.

I speak English okay, long as you don't ask my English teacher of years ago. As for my German, bitte fraulein, schiesse flieger undt das kaput midde spitzen sparken undt das fartennoigen undt schtuff. By the time you write back, I think I can figure out what I just wrote. But I doubt it.

Awaiting your single hair to write again, my borscht blossom.

Le Skunk de Polecat

Romance was never my forte, as her lack of a reply would tend to suggest. Or maybe it was the trail of pissed-off nuns in my bad habit wake.

Whatever it was, Sean Connery got the better deal than I did.

Monday, April 2, 2007

Badder Skunk


My work schedule and April Fools' has, in the past, tended to miss each other. This has been viewed by those who know me as a good thing.
Several years ago, this wasn't the case: having access to a radio communication system and a helium tank, well...let's just say a series of radio messages enlivened proceedings a tad.
That was then; this is now. Then, I was a landless serf and a grunt on the low end of the employment food chain. Now, I'm a supervisor, in charge of a staff for ten hours a day, four days a week. From the GM to the other shift supervisors for the various departments therein, they know and expect of me the kind of professionalism that my position and title suggest, whatever the situation.
I usually deliver, save for one lil' time: Sunday, April 1, as my work schedule and the day had a less than harmonic convergence.
The harmony was particularly less on this fateful day, for in my possession that morning was a nemesis of the very prim and always proper: a remote-controlled fart machine.
Yep, I can see the gals rolling their eyes and shaking their heads: just like a man.
The remote has a range of approximately 50 feet, and works suitably through a standard wall. Just like the one between my office and that of my officer's dispatch room.
Uh huh: badder Skunk.
Well, just so's the rest of this tale isn't a wasted exercise in male-denigrating "that figures" on April Fools, allow me to enlighten one and all with a few factoids on the personly art of flatulence:
-- the average episodes of flatulence per person is 13.6 per day; and that average is not gender specific.
-- the average release of gas per episode is between 35-90 milliliters, making for an average daily release, per person, of 500 to 2000 milliliters.
-- 99% of what makes up flatulence is both odorless and colorless (carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and methane).
-- microorganisms in the digestive tract take what they need from what an average person ingests daily, and in turn generates waste of their own, in the form of -- you guessed it -- gas.
-- foods containing complex carbohydrates -- made up of three or four different sugar molecules -- are among the worst offenders in creating flatulence that carries with it the signature acronym, SBD (Silent But Deadly), though many such are not silent; they provide a room with seconds of audio warning, before the olfactory horrors kick in. If one is ensconced in an elevator between floors, the warning merely gives one time to try the old "hold the breath until the next floor is reached" method, followed by a stampede.
-- Top food offenders include beans, carrots, raisins, bananas, onions, milk and other dairy
products.
Of course, this is a machine we're talking about, that generates synthetic farts; all the sound, none of the fury. Which is not always realized at the time.
And speaking of time and timing, mine was always abysmal: the thing always seemed to go off when there was a customer in dispatch.
How'd it know to do that? That's what my perplexed, confounded officers wanted to know.
I, for one, am appalled.
But not really.