Demotivational Message of the Day

Survivor: Abyss Island – Buff Enough?

Tribal flag and mount. Artist I am not.

A recap of Day 5 action including tribe ZeitGuru’s first reward challenge.

Only one person in the tribe? At last a team I can get down with.

After five days of living on absolutely nothing but water, plain beans, rice, coconut, banana, pineapple and kiwi, I was really looking forward to my first reward challenge.

What would be the reward? Perhaps salt? Oh yeah, that would rock my world. Coffee or tea? Even without sugar that would turn my entire existence upside down.

It’s only been five days.

Whatever the reward, I knew getting it wouldn’t be easy. My wife as Survivor Host, the Probst with the Most, would surely be out to get me. She doesn’t mess around.

On that score, at least, I would not be disappointed.

The Winning Sinning

Unlikely amoebas.

What is winning? What is risk? What is glory?

To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
– Pierre Corneille (1606 – 1684), ‘The Cid,’ 1636

Tough questions when it’s early on a Monday morning. Too tough. But I can tell you this much with 100 percent certainty: The continued existence of Charlie Sheen has absolutely ruined the internet for the term “winning.”

Out of the first 31 results in a Google Image Search for “winning” a whopping 28 of them had something to do with ye olde whack nut. On the highway of life Charlie Sheen is a single-vehicle accident.

I guess we could say he’s a winner when it comes to publicity.

Idiots at the Helm

There I was stuck in dead end job #2 during the Decade of Dispair. An opportunity had presented itself in the help wanted section of the local fish rag that seemed to be up my alley but I was wary. After all, I had jumped from the frying pan and into the fire so many times in a row there was little of me left except for a charbroiled piece of gristle. Life is a cruel teacher and I had learned the lessons well: You may be up to your nose in shit but the next job could be worse. Much worse.

So yeah, you might say I was wary.

The one encouraging sign was the fact that the ad actually contained the word “ethics.” That caught my eye. Was that the tiniest glimmer of hope I saw there on the distant horizon? No. It turns out that cheater liars don’t have any compunction about using the word “ethics” in a deceitful way. Duh!

I skillfully and cleverly googled the scanty factual info contained in the ad and quickly had the name of the business, the address, the owner’s name, and his Facebook page and that of his wife’s. I studied it carefully, asking myself: “Is this guy an asshole? A giant douchebag? Or someone I could actually work for?” I devoured everything I could find but there were no easy answers.

I found the company website and studied it. If hired, no doubt I’d be hitching my wagon to that horse. It was a hideous piece of garbage and looked like it had been designed by a small child. I checked the source and saw it was made in Microsoft Frontpage and was probably 10 years old. Ugh. It did have some personality, most likely pompous (this was a small business after all) and I tried to get a read on how that might translate into working for them. No dice.

I studied his Facebook profile picture. It was hard to read this particular book by the cover. Asshole or nice guy? It could have gone anyway. No help there. Now that I know him, though, I estimate the picture is at least 10 years old. There’s another picture of him that I’ve seen since. He loads it on the office computers as the login avatar. If I had seen that version I would have run for the hills. He was wise to keep it far from his Facebook.

Make me Viral

Did you ever think you were born for a particular moment in time? For me, that moment is the so-called Robin Hood Tax. Bring it on!!!—
Tom B. Taker (@shoutabyss) December 17, 2011

According to the Pooper-Scooper law you have to pick those up!

This humble missive, by far, with 10 retweets and counting, is my most successful tweet of all time. Sad, huh?

If you care about baby kittens (as opposed to the full grown kind) and children named Ndugu in other continents you’ll click on it in that magical way (don’t ask me where) and gimme a retweet, too.

This could be My Moment (Rebecca Black style) and I really hope you’ll help make it so. I promise to fanatically remember each and every one of you who clicks the DISLIKE button.

Top 10 things to do during a Twitter outage

What? I can't hear you! Something about fail and a whale?

Have you prepared your Twitter Disaster Response Kit yet? Hint: When Twitter is down, that might be a good time to think about it. Suddenly you’re going to have plenty of free time. Not that you’ll be able to microblog the experience.

Okay, first things first. Twitter is down. Maybe you get the legendary “fail whale.” Maybe it just sits there and just sits*. (Trust me. It’s not thinking.) Maybe the little circular “wait” icon keeps spinning and spinning to let you know it’s doing something. I tried to out-wait the icon but gave up after a quarter hour, thus burning any shot I ever had at my 15-minutes of fame.

If you merely get a blank screen, try to refrain from punching your monitor. That won’t help anyone.

Twitter is down. The first thing to remember is: Stay the fuck calm!!!!!! Do not bludgeon the heads of passerby unless absolutely necessary.

Classmates.com can eat my ass! (via Shouts from the Abyss)

Am I prescient? I must be. This has happened so many times. I love it when something I’ve bitched about becomes a class action lawsuit. Because of my luck (or lack thereof) I have been in many!

This morning I got an email that informed me, essentially, I am already a winner!

There has been a settlement and Classmates.com has agreed to pay $2.5 million.

In 2008, San Diego man Anthony Michaels sued Classmates.com for using the names of his former classmates to mislead him into upgrading from a free membership to a paid one. Michaels claimed the site had sent him emails to alert him that his old peers were trying to contact him, and when he upgraded his membership and logged in, he learned that it was all a ruse.

As part of the settlement Classmates.com, of course, denies any wrongdoing. Duh. But we all know you’re a bunch of ass weasels.

At least I’ve got one thing in my favor. Unlike Anthony Michaels, I didn’t fall for their bullshit. You see, I already knew it was impossible anyone from high school would ever try to contact me, therefore the Classmates.com fishing expedition was exposed.

Nice try.

The only problem now is where do I go to cash my $2.5 million check? I’m thinking the 7-Eleven down the street.

Huh? My share of the settlement will be approx. $5 to $10? What the fuck?

I want to buy all of my reader a round! The drinks are on me! (As long as they cost two cents each.)

In theory, Classmates.com is a neat idea. You can hook up with people you used to know. Fun. Or not. I did sign up as a free member knowing full well that some of the “premium” features would be unavailable to me. I did so under the assumption that Classmates.com wanted me to check out their service and, hopefully, later on decide to whip out my wallet and fork over some scrilla. I have to admit. I wasn’t so moved. I was quite content to remai … Read More

via Shouts from the Abyss