neilios

I’m planning, via e-mail, drinks with a friend and Google displays the following ad next to her message:

Cougar Bars
Find Local Cougar Bars Near You. 100% Free. Join Now!
www.DateACougar.com

Good lord.

Thanks to C for the photo.

I’m curious what people think of this stuff. For $170, you can have a small, battery powered GPS that you can hide in someone’s car and later, after recovered, get a map of where they’ve gone for the past 36+ hours.

Of course, we know that the technology for all of this was a done deal once GPS was available, but while they market this for “keeping your family safe” (by spying on them), I can’t help but think that spurned lovers and other crazed individuals will make the most use out of these things.

See the video

I’m not the kind of guy who thinks that we should avoid technological advances for fear of the unknown, but this kind of makes me go “ick.”

…and it was carried by Xanga.

Why is it sleazy? Because it doesn’t say anything about who it is… it doesn’t tell a story…. it just shows a middle-eastern looking dude and we’re all supposed to be outraged and, more importantly, scared. If you click on the link for more information, you don’t get any. That’s the whole site and the whole ad. Just a place to sign up to join the cause against scary looking people with facial hair who talk with their hands. And it’s qualified in some weird way so we don’t even know WTF it means. “unconditionally.” So when people point out anti-American leaders McCain has met with, he can say “oh, well, but that was conditional.”

The vast majority of the world is anti-American thanks to George Bush, so if this is the test of whom we’re supposed to communicate with, it’s a pretty small world.

The original site is here. If you like the ad, sign up there and stay away from here.

Let’s get back to America the brave and America the beautiful and try to put America the afraid behind us.

This has been a hell of a week. I’m moving in six days and have barely packed anything except for my calendar for the upcoming week. I’ve had some huge, important things (it’s not like it’s brain surgery. Oh, wait, it *is* brain surgery) tossed onto my calendar at work and the result is my defaulting on promises that I’ve made to people, both personally and professionally. Combine that with friends who are attacking me for my lack of availability and my head is going to explode. I literally had a close friend say that she would have to host a party so that visiting her was more worth my time. Quite frankly, that hurts a lot.

I HATE missing my obligations and not living up to promises that I’ve made because my boss doesn’t consider that I’m an adult with a schedule and both personal and professional commitments. I cannot be everyone’s “goto guy” for everything. I just can’t.

On an amusing note, my shredder literally shredded itself tonight. The Staples Mailmate is such an amazing piece of crap that I’m left dumbfounded by its existence. This is my second in two months. The only upside is that it literally swelled as it tore apart its insides and its guts pressed out on the plastic parts of its case. It was pretty fun to watch, actually. Also, I blame Unicef for the offending piece of mail. I now regret those years of “trick or treat for Unicef.”

From a favorite photography photo-a-day site:

http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/08/05/31/

Yahoo Finance finally updated their graph generator so we can go back to a time long before GWB, when men were men and the economy wasn’t in the toilet.

The point of all of this is that we’re not in an “economic downturn.” It’s pretty much been straight downhill since GWB was elected. And apparently no one noticed prior to the last election.

(the graph shows the US dollar versus the Swiss Franc. It’s pretty much the same compared with the Euro and don’t get me started on the Chinese Yuan. China used to tie the value of their currency to ours. Until ours wasn’t worth crap and they dumped it. Now the relationship between the almighty US Dollar and the Chinese Yuan is, let’s just say, rather more limp than the graph above.)

(note also that the value of one’s currency is not the be-all and end-all, however it’s a good indication of what investors around the world think of the economic status of your nation.)

(also note, I was kind to Bush with that line. If I drew it correctly, it would be sloped slightly more downward).

I’m happy to announce that Congress passed a revised GI bill with generous college benefits for soldiers who served more than three years since 9/11.

I’m not so happy that this bill was opposed by both Bush and McCain:

Mr. Bush — and, to his great discredit, Senator John McCain — have argued against a better G.I. Bill, for the worst reasons. They would prefer that college benefits for service members remain just mediocre enough that people in uniform are more likely to stay put.

They have seized on a prediction by the Congressional Budget Office that new, better benefits would decrease re-enlistments by 16 percent, which sounds ominous if you are trying — as Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain are — to defend a never-ending war at a time when extended tours of duty have sapped morale and strained recruiting to the breaking point.

See the rest of a short editorial here and thanks to Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, for the link to it from his blog.

Thanks to those who put themselves in harms way in order to serve our nation. Let’s hope that the next President doesn’t take that commitment in vain.

See photos of Memorial Day on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=memorial+day&s=rec