The Perfect Storm

A few weeks back, my Twitter account was successfully phished.

Since I have an image of myself as a person who does not enter passwords willy-nilly on spurious websites, cognitive-dissonance reduction has kicked in to assure me that I couldn't have not entered my password on that fateful day. I was at the mercy of the perfect storm.

Let me introduce all the moving parts in this sequence.

About a month ago, I moved to Toronto. Since I figured I'd need to stay connected to the internet, I sniffed out the cheapest smart-phone & plan possible to get me started. My friends were playing a music festival in town, so I let them crash with me for a few days. Since the place was small, sharing beds was inevitable. Since one of my guests is a total shutterbug, there were plenty of photographs taken at inappropriate times, and threats of ruined political-careers flying about.

A few nights into their trip, we were all dispersed within a single pub, mingling with the locals. My friends and I had been using Twitter to stay in touch while we were apart, so when I got a direct message alerting me to a 'funny picture' of me making its way online, I didn't suspect its veracity. I had seen some of the incriminating photos on his phone, so I clicked on the link to see what the damage was.

The phone I've been using is a piece of junk. It's an Acatel 980S, and it's plagued with a grotesque lack of memory, so it regularly flushes the browser-cache to keep things moving. It's not unusual to be logged out of a website I was just using, so when I clicked on the link from within my TweetDeck app and was presented with the Twitter login page, it didn't set off any alarm bells. I wasn't thinking too much about what I was doing, other than pretending to still be interested in the Canuck droning on about how cool Ireland was when he visited as a nipper.

I wasn't on the real Twitter site, and I didn't realize until I had entered my username and password (probably incorrectly, since the tiny screen makes the onscreen keyboard worthless) and hit submit. The error page wasn't quite right. Something was wrong. I went looking for my friend in the pub and asked him if he has sent me a picture. He had no idea what I was talking about. I had just done something incredibly stupid.

Serves me right for being such a rude prick.

From there on, it was actually quite tricky to change my password - I couldn't find the option on the Twitter mobile site, and the regular Twitter site kept redirecting me to the mobile version. Eventually I had to Google 'Twitter password change' to be brought to the page I wanted.

Lesson learned: pay more attention to links you click on. Fundamental of internet-security proven: having different passwords for different services is essential, and in this case I was quite relieved to think that the password I volunteered to the phishers wouldn't get them in anywhere other than my fairly unimportant Twitter profile.

The Shrug-Shuffle

Note: This be a video-heavy post. It’s probably not worth your while continuing if you’re not able to view videos right now.

Back in the Napster days, and just before Eminem had released his second (mainstream) album, I was online looking for any additional Slim Shady material available, and I encountered a recording of the Insane Clown Posse’s piss-take of ‘My Name is’ called ‘Slim Anus’.


Fun as that was, it didn’t particularly interest me in the group, but for some reason the name stuck with me for quite some time.

Turns out that Insane Clown Posse, over ten years after their attempt to gain attention by piggybacking Eminem’s success*, are still around, and still making music. Their latest music video has made them something of an online phenomenon, and, well, it’s too mind boggling for me to really describe, so give it a whirl yourself:




I'm sorry, I should have warned you that the preceding video features middle-aged wiggers self-consciously boogieing to third-rate music with third-rate special effects whilst spitting despicably hateful lyrics. Hateful for the past few hundred years of human scientific progression, I mean.

There is no hope for these people. It's hard to reconcile their doe-eyed enthusiasm for all the wonderful things in everyday life with their sense of inquiry that extends as far as "I don't wanna talk to a scientist / Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed."

Domestication of animals, sound waves, heredity, the light spectrum, and large meeting places are all ascribed to some 'magical' or 'miraculous force in this video, by a pair of irony-deprived twerps who swear profusely in a pathetic attempt to elicit an emotional response in the listener. Granted, the juxtaposition between lyrics that may have been written by a six year old assigned poetry homework with the usual chest-beating of gangsta-rap is certainly hilarious, but when it's so patently unintentional, it just makes these face-paint-wearing, middle-aged white rappers look a little silly.

"MAGIC EVERYWHERE IN THIS BITCH"

What worries me is contemplating the people who pay money to listen to music like this - or the fact that these chuckleheads make enough money from talking about "shit that'll shock ya eyelids" that it has become their full time jobs. After some cursory investigation, it seems that these cretins have amassed a loyal following by incorporating lyrics that reach out to every downtrodden nitwit misfit imaginable, creating a nice community in the process. Twenty years into the process, just after their ebullient "fuck you" to scientific inquiry, the ulterior motivation behind the previous two decades of violent posturing are revealed:

According to Bruce, the group used profanity and references to violence and sex in their lyrics because "to get attention, you have to speak their language. You have to interest them, gain their trust, talk to them and show you're one of them. You're a person from the street and speak of your experiences. Then at the end you can tell them God has helped me out like this and it might transfer over instead of just come straight out and just speak straight out of religion."^[90] Bruce also states that "The ending of the Joker Cards, the way we looked at it, was death. Heaven and hell. That's up to each and every juggalo [to decide]. We're not an ultra religious group. I don't go to church or anything. I like to believe in God."^[54] - Via Wikipedia

Truly, to be so arrogantly stupid, you most be of the religious persuasion.

"FUCKIN' rainbows, after it rains / There's enough miracles to blow ya' brains"

If you're this ignorant, you owe it to humankind to blow your brains out

If four minutes of watching these morons doing the shrug-shuffle in front of crappy backgrounds (some stolen wholesale from Google Earth) wasn't enough to get you vexed, then feel free to watch this spoof from Saturday Night Live, which succeeds in being less absurd than the source material.


*Ironically, the ICP/Eminem ‘beef’ allegedly started because of the then-unknown Eminem trying to piggyback off of ICP’s success. (Just want to cover myself in case any juggalos come in here)

As seen on TV. Which makes it good, right?

After months of derisive snorts at the Snuggie and its purveyors, I bought one for my mother last Christmas. It turned out to be one of the few gifts that's resonated with her, and I still find myself showered with gratitude for this thoughtful gift well into the new year. The Snuggie far exceeded my expectations, and now I'm investigating what other as-seen-on-TV products I should consider purchasing with an open mind.

The product: Bottle Top, which I encountered during my last trip to the States in late March: The premise: ‘Turn your your drink can into a bottle!’ The contraption: A plastic doodad that looks like the top of a bottle which clasps on to a soda can, imbuing it with it all the conveniences associated with drinking from a resealable bottle. The pitch: Are you too stupid and uncoordinated to drink from a soda can? Is your lack of intellect so overpowering that you continue to buy soda cans, knowing that your handicap prevents you from drinking out of anything other than a bottle? Do you make a habit of drinking from soda cans that have been left out, only to find yourself repulsed by the lack of carbonation left within? Do you regularly place your open cans in the door of your refrigerator with nothing to hold them steady, then complain about the mess it caused all by itself? Well suffer no more, thanks to Bottle Top! The video: Why I opted out: If I purchased directly from the website, I get a free soda-can-pull-tab-opener. I'm not making this shit up (and yes, the video makes it appear really difficult to open a soda can with just your bare hands).

"But wait! There's more!"

"THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY!"

Part of the website that makes me think they don't take it seriously either: "just snap on Bottle Top™ and your done."

My Girlfriend? Awesome

Just heading out the door for a long-ass drive (and away from Internet for two days), so I had to quickly share this one. Within minutes of arriving at the ladyfriend's abode in Wisconsin last night, I got part of my belated birthday gift:

The Creation Adventure Team: A Jurassic Ark Mystery

The blurb on the back of the box:

The Creation Adventure Team travels the world and reveals answers to the mysteries of the dinosaurs. When did they live? How did they die? What do their remains reveal? What about Noah's Flood, and were there dinosaurs on the Ark? Join the adventure as Buddy and the team explore the "X-tinct Files" to reveal the incredible answer to the great dinosaur mystery!

From a submarine deep underwater to an airplane high above the earth, Buddy and his team are out to explore! Biblical Reality glasses [I shit you not] reveal the unseen biblical truth about God and the world around us. This kid-friendly series combines live-action with cutting edge special effects and animatronics, plus 2D and 3D animation. Every episode is accompanied by fun songs and tons of humor.

Christian nut gives relationship advice

Can an atheist an a believer have a happy relationship together? Let's ask one of America's premier voices on theology for a nuanced discussion of the prospects:



"He's going to be serving the Devil. You're going to be serving God. It's that simple!"

Good thing this stalwart intellectual distilled a complicated topic down enough to be accessible to us lay people, eh?