In the past I have done my best to avoid posting rants on my blog. I can only think of one other time when I did post a rant. I’m sure there are others, but not very many. This post is one that exempts itself from this record. There’s a few bones I’d like to pick with various people, groups, or things. So we’ll get right to it.

Rants of Spam

Everyone has their rants of spam. Everyone gets some sort of spam in their Inbox. Something that has pissed me off lately is spamming on my blog. Bots and spammer sites run little scripts that post comments and trackbacks on my blog that advertise something (usually Poker or some medication). This pisses me off. First of all, this is not their site. I pay for this site. If I want their advertising, I’ll ask for it. Blacklisting their domain doesn’t seem to do it justice. I can’t even send the owner of the domain an email because 99% of the time it’s a freemail account (e.g. Hotmail or Yahoo) and I either (1) get no response, or (2) get a response stating that the email address doesn’t exist. From this point on any advertising by these bots or scripts will be assumed as an agreement that you’d like to pay me for your advertising. Perhaps that will get their gritty hands of my site. Or I’ll just send a nice letter to their web host and describe how they are abusing their website.

Rants of Society

I was talking to Aaron at work today and he was telling me about how some malls are no longer referring to the common society idol of Easter as the “Easter Bunny.” Rather, he is now called the “Spring Rabbit.”

Wait a sec. I think I broke my jaw because it landed on the floor so hard.

You gotta be kidding me. As if we have deviated enough from the true meaning of Easter. The Easter Bunny was bad enough. The only relation the Easter Bunny has to Easter is the fact that it’s got the word “Easter” in it’s name. Now we’re cutting off that single thread that somehow ties it into this season. Now we’ve got a fricken Spring Rabbit.

What has happened to us as a society? Somehow we manage to reach new uncomprehensible lows. Either we’re too scared to offend anyone at all, or we’re trying too hard to separate ourselves from our Christianity roots. I’m beginning to think it’s both. Think of how much we will go out of our way to not offend anyone. Airports can’t profile people because it’s racist. A plaque of the Ten Commandments gets ripped down from a courtroom because it offends sometone. Most, if not all, references to anything Biblical in schoolbooks are either dumbed-down, shortened dramatically, or removed all-together. “Seasons Greetings” instead of “Merry Christmas.” “Spring Rabbit” instead of “Easter Bunny.” I can’t help but think this is all being lead by or motivated by activists (e.g. majorly-screwed-up-in-the-noggin-folks) who get offended by this stuff too easily and can’t even say something like “Merry Christmas” (no, we need to say “Happy Non-Denominational Seasons Greetings” because it doesn’t offend anyone).

I propose a solution: either grow some balls, or shut up. For our group of “non-denominational seasons greetings”, I recommend the shut up alternative.

Oh, and Happy Easter by the way. We gonna rename Easter to something else? Perhaps something like “Happy Sunday after the first day of Spring” to you, or–I can’t even think of anything else. Whatever. Sometimes society just amazes me. In a bad way.

Addendum to Rants of Society: The Terri Case

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t really followed all the news lately. Mostly because I’m quite busy and rarely watch TV. The only news I see are headlines when I sign into Yahoo!, and Fox News headlines that are sent to me via email. However this Terri case has got me thinking: I don’t understand why Terri’s husband is even still involved in
Terri’s care, much less making decisions about it; he’s had two
children with another woman, so clearly he has emotionally moved on.
Her parents can’t and never will. Their investments in Terri are no
longer even slightly comparable. The respectful thing for him to do would be to back off from them, carry on with his own life, and leave them to theirs. The fact that he has not done so, when it would have been both the easiest and most decent thing to do, has already raised my suspicions about his motives even without knowing much about anything else in the whole debate. A recent New York Times article claimed that death by starvation was the most peaceful way to depart. I beg to differ. To quote from writings of
Jon Krakauer in reference to a young man starving to death in the Alaskan wilderness:
“Starvation is not a pleasant way to expire. In advanced stages of famine, as the body begins to consume itself, the victim suffers muscle pain, heart disturbances, loss of hair, dizziness, shortness of breath, extreme sensitivity to cold, physical and mental exhaustion. The skin becomes discolored. In the absence of key nutrients, a severe chemical imbalance develops in the brain, inducing convulsions and hallucinations.” Peaceful indeed.

Addendum to Rants of Society: Customers

I’m just going to save this for another post. I could go on for hours with this subject. We’ll just leave it at that for now.

Rants of Jon (e.g. what 90% of the people reading this post are actually looking for)

I don’t stand alone when I state the following views/opinions of this subject. As most may or may not know Jon recently managed to get 2 girlfriends and to date kept them. Hearing this the first time I was a little hesitant, as sure it’s somehow possibly a congratulatory item for him since he does have a girlfriend(s). However, after the second, and third, and fifth, and seventh time of hearing it, I still stand by my original statement that absolutely no good can come out of this. I keep referring back to when Katie was telling Jon that “You can’t have two girlfriends” and Jon replied with a very suprised “Why?!”. That statement in itself got me wondering if he really thinks there’s absolutely no problem with this. They may smile and nod and agree with it now, but the fact that these two are friends and they know each other, this can’t turn out good. In the end friendships will break. Whether it’s the two girls turning against each other, or/leading to you breaking up with one/both of them. Every single person he or I have mentioned this to, I hear the same reaction. “No good can come out of this.” Hopefully someday Jon will see the light.

Also note that I, and others, don’t exactly care to hear (over and over) why we shouldn’t smell your backseat, or what she screamed to you, or where you did it last, or how it was. I remember when you complained about people telling you about stuff like this and you complained about it and found it uninteresting. I hate to break it to you, but we are somewhat in the same boat. Sure we’re interested in how your relationship(s) are going, and sure we’re interested to hear a non-depth overview of what you did, but we don’t need to hear every nitty-gritty detail of everything. It’s not like we hear much of anything else other than a quick reference to “we watched a movie” or “went to Best Buy” followed by the TMI version of what I keep indirectly referring to in this section.

Also thanks for sharing the info about how one of them is turning 18 after Easter and your four days of requested days off will be spent doing–that. I’ve only heard it too many times, and everyone else has only heard it too many times. It’s fine to be excited about having a girlfriend, but for goodness sake, keep your personal life to yourself, or at least keep it somewhat modest. It’s obvious to everyone that you’re in it solely for the prize, and that fact has been well-engraved into our minds. I’m not jealous of you having two girlfriends. Hell, I’m more than happy with the one (1) girlfriend that I have. I’m also not too impressed with your “going straight for the prize from day one” strategy with all of this. I see a lot more in my girlfriend than just a “lets be friends then like each other and then go for the prize from there.” Obviously we have much different moral viewpoints on this subject-matter.

Of course, I might be wrong with all of this. Seeing that these words come from, as Jon stated, a “slow-moving, conservative, reserved” (in terms of relationships) person.

Also note that I’m well-aware that I’ll see this fireback at me in either (1) a long post on your LiveJournal, or (2) a long complaint to me in email/phone/in person. Just note that when you send that email or start writing that post, don’t direct it at just me. I’m representing many people here (and trust me, it’s not nearly as deep as it should be). Perhaps someday in the future I’ll talk with everyone behind this post and get a written-down-on-paper viewpoint on it and then write a nice long post about it. Until then, remember not to shoot the messenger.

Addendum of Rants of Jon: The Case for LiveJournal

I don’t know why this topic keeps getting brought up. I have given up on “fighting” between my blog and a LiveJournal. For some reason it’s still brought up. You keep on bringing up little tidbits that somehow make your blog better than mine. Well, I’ve got news for you: everything LiveJournal has my blog has too. If I don’t have something, I have plugins. I have no ads. I have unlimited space. I have the entire fricken internet to view my blog. Like I said before, I’d rather someone find my blog by searching for a subject in Google or some other search engine and come up upon my blog and read something. Not because my blog is under the “World of Warcraft” friends group. I have more skins. I have the option to edit every single page to my exact specifications. I can have several blogs on the same site. You can keep bringing up that whole “community” topic, but it’s like beating a dead horse. I’m not switching to LiveJournal, and I don’t care. I like my blog the way it is, and if it’s existance on this vast world wide web is a nuisance or bother to you, that’s fine. Because it ain’t moving. Sorry.

And no, I’m not bashing LiveJournal. If you have a LiveJournal, that’s cool. And if you want a LiveJournal, that’s cool as well. Blogs make for great procrastination tools. It’s the fact that I keep getting this argument shoved in my face that gets irritating. Just remember this:

The “community” of the internet > Your LiveJournal community.

Rants of World of Warcraft

Fricken Palladins. They are the bane of Azeroth and deserve to die. High level Alliance need not to gank on me and kill me when I’m low level. I didn’t do anything, I obviously stand no chance against you, and you ganking me just secures my statement that all Alliance players are immature 14 year olds who have nothing better to do with their time than run around and gank lower-level people. Someday I shall avenge all 300+ deaths of my own. Someday my army will stomp into your petty Alliance cities and take down the city as our own. You’re goin down buddy–it’s just a matter of time before you do.

*Breathes a couple times*

OK. Except for the rants on customers, I think I’m doing pretty good. I think this will conclude my post. I’m pretty sure I’ve already dug a nice hole for me to try to get out of, but like I said–the argument against Jon is like 300 to 1 (Unless you count his two girlfriends, then it’s 100:1).

This ends my temporary exemption from the “not a lot of rants on this blog” rule. We now return you to our regularly written blog…

~Jaker