No Apology Necessary

Have you ever been in a heated debate when suddenly the person opposite you crosses the line and says something so egregiously offensive that you simply can no longer tolerate it? Well I have, and usually I’m the offensive asshole. But in those instances when I’m not, I’ll often hear the words: “Well… I’m sorry if you’re offended.” As if this makes it okay. Is this supposed to be some sort of apology? Because it isn’t. It’s their way of saying: “You’re a huge pussy and I feel sorry for you because you’re simply too stupid to agree with me.” But it works like some fucked-up Jedi mind-trick on people. The receiver of this back-handed apology almost always accepts it as they want to hear it… as an actual apology. Whereas the giver of said not-an-apology gets away with not actually apologizing. Everybody wins right? Wrong.

You can’t let these people get away with this shit.

There are only two correct ways to respond to someone who apologizes “if they have offended you”. The first is to say: “Well, you DID actually offend me. So the question now becomes, are you apologizing for the fact that I am offended, or are you apologizing for that outrageously shitty thing you just said or did that caused me to be offended? One of those apologies I will accept, the other I will not.” Oh, they will act all outraged at your belligerence, pretending that they did, in fact, apologize and now you’re somehow the jerk who is without any sense of civility. Ignore this. They’re busted and they know it. They are now confronted with the reality of not only the initial offense, but the more embarrassing act of attempting to manipulate you into believing yet another of their lies. Chances are they will act offended… this is your opportunity to say: “Well… I’m sorry if you feel offended.”.

The only other appropriate response when receiving a not-an-apology is to take a moment of silence, look them in the eye, extend your left hand for a handshake and then use your right hand to punch them in the throat as hard as you can. When they are lying prostrate on the ground, gasping for air, simply bend over and tell them: “I’m sorry if you’re having trouble breathing.”

Oh, and don’t get me started on the whole “No offense, but…” prefix to a sentence. The next words about to come out of that douche bag’s mouth are guaranteed to be intentionally and purposefully offensive. When you hear that phrase, just re-scramble the words in your head so that you instead hear what they actually mean: “I’m a complete asshole who realizes I have absolutely no fucking idea what I am talking about, but my narcissistic, bullshit opinion must be heard regardless of how racist, ignorant or cruel it is.”

“Hey, no offense, but you’re ugly, your children are stupid and you’re wife is a two-dollar truck-stop whore. But ya know… no offense.”

Evil is as Evil Does

Well it finally happened. Our benevolent Internet Overlords have finally gone rogue. I am, of course, talking about Google. Welcome to the Dark Side Google... we've been expecting you. You may or may not know that I am an Internet marketing consultant. You'd never guess it from my blog, but I actually work with companies to make their online efforts more effective and useful. That includes websites.

Google has a long-held (well since the 2004 IPO) informal motto of: "Don't Be Evil". This stems from a letter from its founders stating: ". . . Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served-as shareholders and in all other ways-by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company."

OK. Cool. I like that. I can get on board with not being evil, just as much as I can get on board with being against Bubonic Plague or airline food. But something has gone terribly wrong. Recently, Google unveiled "Side Wiki" as part of the Google Toolbar plug-in for your browser. This nifty little tool essentially allows anyone to post a comment about the website they are currently visiting allowing users who are also viewing that website to see said comments. So where's the harm in that you ask? What sinister plot does this seemingly helpful little widget reveal?

Let me put it this way. People spend a lot of effort and money on their websites, sometimes millions of dollars. Often it is the core marketing and sales vehicle for their company. In some cases these are regulated companies like pharmaceutical companies. What Google has done here is to provide an effective tool designed to wipe out the investment made by organizations trying to present their products or company the way they want. In other words, companies have spent money to build a site that they feel best represents their interests to their potential customers on the open marketplace of ideas. If there is a differing opinion, other sites are welcome to make their case as well. But if I've spent millions driving traffic to my site... say Microsoft.com, and some competitor pays a college kid to write something terrible about Microsoft Internet Explorer and that everyone should use Google Chrome as their browser... then I am paying for my competitors to advertise against me, right on my own Web property.

It's like allowing General Motors to go to every Toyota dealership and spray-paint the side of the building with: "Toyota Cars Kill Americans!"

"But wait," you say, "There is review of these posts. It is designed to provide helpful feedback and improve the quality of life for everyone not evil marketing practices." Well, you know where you CAN'T post a comment? The download page of Google's toolbar. But you can sure as hell post one on Microsoft's home page:

So I guess now, Microsoft is lucky enough to have helpful tips on their own home page like: "My hope is one day Microsoft with stop trying to make-up web standards and instead jump on board the current and future standards which Opera, Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox have embraced from the beginning."

Did I catch that right? On Microsoft's home page there is now an option to see content that tells users that they should use Google Chrome. Nice.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that now Google is forcing everyone who has any stake in a company's website to first, use the Google Toolbar on their browser so they can at least see all the crap people are saying about them on their own website, second, it forces companies which are regulated, like pharmaceutical companies to report any claims made against their products (true or not) to the FDA and possibly hold off clinical trials for drugs and medical devices that could be saving lives, and finally, it creates a chilling effect whereby companies are now better served by hiding content and indeed their entire websites under login structures and secure socket layers to avoid having their own brand investment used against them by competitors, thereby making the majority of useful content online harder to access for everyone. Gee, thanks Google!

This is just plain irresponsible of Google. But is it evil? I am sure it is well intentioned. The goals are for the common good, designed to help and protect us all. Therefore I can definitively state that it is evil of the highest order.

But more importantly, it's stupid. I control the online advertising budgets for several companies. I'll be damned if I am going to pay Google to send users to my site, and then allow Google to encourage some knock-off third rate competitor to use that traffic against me. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. 

And just in case you don't happen to be a Google shareholder, don't worry this will cost you too. You see, now every company needs to spend time and money essentially writing a blog to repudiate or answer possibly erroneous commentary. That costs money. Money that gets charged back to consumers. In essence, now every company has to have a blog whether they want to or not. But don't worry, the blog is monitored... by Google.

"Run Forrest! Run!"

Fair and Balanced

I’ve been watching a lot of Fox News lately. Well, let me re-phrase that… I’ve been watching programs that appear on a channel that is called Fox News. One must be careful with language here because the name of the channel is a misnomer. The name is purposefully designed to imply that the programming contained on the channel is news, when in fact, it isn’t exactly news that they are providing. It’s like having a channel called “Comedy Central” and airing Police Academy 4. It makes people think that it is actually comedy they are watching, when in fact, it’s clearly nothing of the sort.

This is a common tactic of liars and con-artists… or put another way, politicians and pundits. It’s a form of double-speak that is at once subtle and blatant. It floats on top of the substance of things and envelopes them in a fog of convoluted logic creating a false premise for the delivery of information that would otherwise be considered inconsistent with people’s perception of reality. But make no mistake, it is intentional and it is effective. It is the simplest form of double-speak. I illustrate this as a prelude to a much more complex and insidious tactic commonly used by people who may have no idea they are doing it. The process goes something like this:

1. Accuse your opponent of trying to do something terrible.

2. Explain your opponent’s tactics to achieving that terrible goal.

3. Do that terrible thing you accused you opponent of planning on doing, using the tactics you explained your opponent would use.

4. Be outraged at the hypocrisy of your opponent when they accuse you of doing what you had previously accused them of wanting to do.

5. Use that outrage to focus attention on the outrage itself, rather than the terrible thing you just did.

It’s so simple, a caveman could do it… or even Glenn Beck.

I’d like to come up with a name for this tactic, something like: “A Reverse Reality Logic Bomb” but with a little more zing to it. Maybe I’ll call it Fox News. The point is, this tactic is most effective when the outrage is genuine. In other words, the perpetrator of this lie needs to be so overwhelmingly ignorant of reality that they actually believe they have been victimized. Of course, the liar would never call himself a victim. Instead he would accuse his opponents of having a “victim mentality” and trying to use that to make themselves rich, so they are able to gang up on him, attack him and deny him his rights, which is why you should listen to him thereby make him rich. Perfect.

You may ask: “How can I protect myself against falling victim to this ingenious ploy?”.  It’s very simple. Any time you hear someone upset, yelling, screaming or in any way demonstrably declaring outrage, you know that you are either dealing with a liar or watching Fox News... but most likely you are doing both.

If We Can Put a Man on the Moon...

Why can't we blow it up?

I was recently asked this question: "If the whole world worked together, how long would it take us to blow up the Moon?" Well, the answer is obvious... more than a week.

Let's first assume we're talking about nukes here. And we're not talking about moving it out of its orbit and crashing it into the Sun, or drilling a big hole and using some sort of resonance sound wave to destabilize the core, or any other clever bullshit science fiction trick. No... we're talking about blowing that big white fucking orb in the sky to kingdom come.

OK.

First, the diameter of the Moon is approximately 3,474 Kilometers, or since I am in the U.S. and therefore irrationally opposed to the Metric System, we're looking at 2,159 Miles. One of the largest craters from a nuclear blast was about 106 ft. deep or .02 miles. This was caused by a 15 megaton bomb. We currently have about 30,000 warheads in the world. Most of which we couldn't convert to high yield bombs, but for the sake of argument, lets say we have access to 20,000. So with a little math here we can assume that with a nominal yield of 15 megatons it would take approximately 20,000 bombs just to make a hole 400 miles deep. We're not even close.

But hold on there just a damn minute... man. The Soviets created a 100 megaton bomb back in the 60's or 70's (40 years ago folks). And, at one point, they had amassed around 45,000 nukes and the U.S. had a paltry 30,000. Add some Chinese, French, English, Pakistani and hell, maybe even an Iranian nuke or two and we've got the proven ability to build upwards of 100,000 bombs at any given point. If we worked those centrifuges 24X7 I bet we could crank out 20,000 one hundred megaton nukes in no time.

That changes everything.

If one 15 megaton nuke blasts a hole .02 miles deep, then a 100 megaton nuke would likely make a hole 6.6 times deeper, or .132 miles deep. Multiply .132 times 20,000 nukes and we get one big fucking 2,640 mile-deep crater... which is, of course, about 600 miles deeper than we would need to blow a hole clean through that bad boy.

So how long would it take us, if everyone on the planet worked together to make this happen? Like I said, longer than a week. Maybe even a couple of months.

Dear God...

I've read the bible. The New Testament, the Old Testament, the Catholic version of each. I've read the Koran or Qur'an depending on how technical you want to be about it. Now you may be asking yourself: "Is he really going to take on religion now?"

No.

Well, yes, I guess I am -- in a way. I just want to tackle some basics of Christianity for a moment. Play along with me because it's a little game I think we can all appreciate. There are, of course the "Seven Deadly Sins", but there are also the seven "Heavenly Virtues". Here's the game, read through the "Virtues" and give yourself (be honest now) 1 point for each that you really... REALLY think you have. So, there are seven, a good score is, I guess 5, a bad score being 2.

Here they are -- in case you need help, there are wikipedia links to guide you (you should read them before you decide how you answer: 


 - Chastity
 - Temperance
 - Charity
 - Diligence
 - Patience
 - Kindness
 - Humility

So out of a total score of seven, I rated myself as a five out of seven. "Not bad Malaprop! Good for you!" Oh contraire my friend -- because remember, we must then subtract our score on the religious paradigm of the righteous by the "Seven DEADLY Sins" which counteract these virtues.

They are: 


 - Lust
  - Gluttony
 - Greed
 - Sloth

 - Wrath
 - Envy
 - Pride

So do it. Yep, give yourself a "minus one" on each of those bad boys.

Sucks huh?

I'm going to assume that, as a bare minimum, one's ticket to heaven must have at least a zero stamped on the back.

My ticket? - 1

Shit.

1.21 Gigawatts !!!!

OK, so I’ve pretty much abandoned this thing. But let me explain why. When I took a brief break, I asked if anyone who reads this would send me their email so I could notify them when I started up again. I received exactly zero emails. So I inferred that the interest level is not really high. However, every now and then I get a little post asking me when I’ll start up again, so here goes…


Facebook.


This little social networking application has grown from the domain of college and high school kids to the primary tool for coordinating 20 year reunions. I should know, I’m being recruited to facilitate just that. It seems that every week people from my past are crawling out of the woodwork discovering this “new” technology. “Isn’t this great!?!?” “So glad to see you on FB!!!” “Here’s an embarrassing picture of you puking in your underwear in the school bathroom at the Prom 20 years ago… hope your prospective employers see it!”


I won’t deny that there is a small segment of the population that have tracked me down that I actually wanted to hear from, but in the end, they could have much more easily Googled me. I mean, if it’s someone I really wanted to keep in touch with, I would have found them by now or more likely (being anti-social myself) they would have found me. I am, after all, easy to find. So what do I get? Thirty “Friend Requests” from people I don’t know -- or worse, don’t like. It’s getting to the point where I am actually getting “Friend Requests” from people whom I consider enemies.


It’s the online equivalent of a DeLorean fitted with a flux capacitor that is fueled entirely by painful memories. “Hey remember that time when I spray-painted the word ‘FAG!’ on the side of your car? Ha Ha Ha -- will you be my friend?” Fuck You McFly!


The amazing thing is, that for the most part these people haven’t really changed. Instead of taking their senior photo with their 1987 Nissan Sentra and forcing those little wallet-sized photos into my hand, they now post annoying pictures of their kids dressed up for Halloween as a drooling bumble bee. Should I feel bad that I’m only number eleven on the list of coolest people? Jesus, it’s like they all aged backward. It’s the Curious Case of Benjamin Beavis and Butthead.


To all you people new to this whole thing, I’ve got some advice. You see, the rest of us have been living in the 21st century for nine years now. Take your “25 Things I don’t Want to Fucking Know About You” list, shove it up your ass and when you finally pass it back out, use at as fertilizer for your “Little Green Patch“.


Oh and here’s a big FYI for you, if we weren’t actually friends before… we still aren’t.

The Never Ending Story

Without their very own “Luck Dragon”, the Democrats are fucked.

Last night the NC and IN primaries came to a close and with it, the chances that Hillary Clinton could be elected President went to zero. Well… maybe. You see I, like so many others, still think that she is so focused on this, and has committed so much of her self-esteem into the race that she can’t see that it’s over and may therefore fail to release her pesky little tallons on this thing and come up with some extraordinary methods of snatching it away from Barack Obama. I envision some sort of closed, smoke-filled room where they hatch a plan to re-introduce FL and MI into the mix and hold instant runoff, winner take-all primaries in those states, giving Hillary the closing lead in the required delegates. This will of course, fulfill the mission of the Democratic Party, which is to torpedo itself into a loss in November. They can do it… I have faith.

I am not a big fan of Obama. I mean, yeah he’d be a fine President. We could do worse, but there just seems to be something about him that smells like form over function... style over substance. But I decided to do my own digging. If you look at energy policy I think it is demonstrative of my concern. According to the Washington Post:

Clinton voted to oppose the federal boost for grain-based ethanol (read corn growers in IA) while Obama supported it. For my money that’s one good point for her. As we’ve seen, corn-based ethanol is not the answer to the energy crisis. It is however one of the causes of the global food shortage. The vote in question was an effort to block a proposed amendment to the 2005 energy bill that would have established an ethanol mandate for refineries. Obama voted for the ethanol mandate. Hmmm. Go figure, a Senator from a corn growing state in favor of this one. Also, Clinton supported a bill to expand oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, while Obama voted against it. Until my car runs on hydrogen, I think we need to do what we can to exploit home-grown oil resources. The bottom line is that he may be trying to do the right thing, but's leading to an energy crisis and starvation.

You see, it’s those unintended consequences of well meaning politicians that always fuck us over. Like that tool in Duluth MN and his damn cel. phone legislation. He wants to save lives, but all he’d really end up doing is driving people on the edge of the lower middle class into poverty. He means no harm. In fact he means well. You see that’s the problem with idealists, they tend to try to fix things... to make change happen. Frankly, the less they do, really the better off we all are and I think the American public believes that. Any guesses on which of the three candidates will actually try to do the least? I just get the sense that this is a contest between optimism and pragmatism. I think we all know where I fit on that spectrum.

All of this is, of course, irrelevant because barring the previous scenario involving FL and MI there’s no way she can win. Unless of course, Obama is found to be a “Secret Muslim”, something that Jeremiah Wright has firmly eliminated as a possibility.

So there you have it, Obama is going to be the nominee. I can deal with that. Fine. But there’s something troubling me. As I have stated before, Democrats can’t win in 2008. The reason is two-fold.

First, in case you haven’t noticed the racial lines are being drawn more distinctly as the campaigns move forward. Clinton was getting 20% of the black vote at one time, now it’s down to 6%. Obama is getting virtually all the black vote now (over 90%) and though maintaining a certain percentage of upscale white voters, it’s still around 40% in many cases. As this thing moves to the general election, the divide will become more polarized not less. The Republicans will make this about race. They have to, and 30% of the white vote is not enough to win the Presidency. It’s pathetic and sad, but as I’ve said previously, we’re just not ready for that. I hope I eat my words come November, but something tells me McCain will win this thing. Worse than that, the country will be much more racially divided than we were at the start of this thing. If the demographics in the voting continue to trend the way they have (increasingly divisive), I think it’s safe to say, we’re screwed.

The other reason Democrats stand to lose is the way they elect their nominee. You see, Clinton has this right. If the States were winner-take-all like the Republican system (for the most part), then she’d be the nominee. Maybe the Democrats should nominate their candidates using the same sort of method that, you know, the Country does when they elect a President. I mean, we have this little thing called the Electoral College (delegates) and this winner-take-all system per state. Maybe, just maybe, Democrats should apply that system to their selection process. Howard Dean, are you listening?

World's Greatest Dad

I have an announcement to make. I’ve decided that I have children. Not that I am going to have children, but that I already have. Molly, age six and little Spence, age four, sure are a handful. But it’s rewarding. I mean just the other day they were playing in the living room and Molly said the cutest thing: “Daddy, why do birds and bees have sex?” Adorable. Needless to say, it was also a bit awkward. Ha ha ha. They’re just so honest about everything it reminds me of what’s important in life. I have a big picture of the two of them as my desk-top image, my background photo on my phone and a little one of the three of us as my instant messenger icon. That way they are with me every day, wherever I am. And more importantly, everyone else can see them too and realize how much I love them and how they are the priority in my life. It’s tough being a single father.

So you’ll have to forgive me if I talk about them all the time to exclusion of anything in which you may be interested. I’m going to need some extra time off this summer because I’m taking Molly and her friend to summer camp. I will miss her for a week, but we’ll be on the road for 3 days each way. Imagine the memories we’ll forge together. Because you know what’s most special about being a father? The memories. Not the bad ones mind you, just the good ones. There must be like a dozen of them by now. I can’t recall off the top of my head, but I know they are there. Like the time, Spencer fell down the steps and we had to go the ER on a Monday morning. I was so concerned about him I totally forgot to call in to work to let them know I wouldn’t make that client meeting. But hey, it’s my kid! They HAVE to understand.

Okay, I can’t keep that up without vomiting in my mouth. I get it. Really I do. We love our kids. But I get the sense that the real benefit here is all the memories. The first words, the first steps blah blah blah. “They say the darndest things!” Well, that’s because they have no sense of responsibility or accountability for what they say. You know what, I can do that too. In fact, I often do. As far as the memories go… hell, I can make those up and have them be just as real. So there we are. I’m a great dad! In fact, according to my coffee mug, I’m "The World's Greatest Dad!"

The point is, from now on, I have kids too. Deal with it.

You must now feel sorry for me raising two children on my own. Cut me some slack when I get short tempered. Understand that I can’t do you that favor or loan you that tool because I need it to take care the home I am keeping for my children. Yes, you have to listen to all my stories about them (really about me). So give me an extra tax credit or two and understand that I have to leave work early today, my daycare provider is leaving early and I have to pick up the kids. I can’t wait to see what the little rascals do tomorrow. I’ll be sure to tell you all about it.

People are people so why should it be?

Well it finally happened. I have given up on humanity. I’m always teetering on the edge of converting all my assets and credit into cash, changing my name to Miguel and going off the grid. But this weekend pushed me more than one step closer to a life of south-of-the-border siestas. At roughly 11:00pm Saturday night my girlfriend and I were at Blockbuster video in St. Paul. We went through all the new releases, took our time and found our selections for the evening. Aside from the annoying people in line ahead of us who didn’t have their membership information, it was a generally typical and not entirely unpleasant experience. I even purchased a bottle of orange soda for the drive home which turned out to be a more important purchase than I could have imagined.

Having my plans for the evening set and even my very own Orange Fanta, I approached the driver’s side of my girlfriend’s car with a sense of contentment. With my movies and my soda in my right hand, I reached down to lift the door handle of the little white KIA Rio with my left. “What the hell is that?” I ask myself as I quickly pull my fingers away from the now open door, feeling some sort of slimy texture. I looked down at my hand, not believing what I am seeing at first--I am in denial. “No, it can’t be…” But it is. There is simply no denying the familiar color and odor. There I stand, in muted horror, looking at my left hand covered in dog shit.

Yes, you heard that right my friend. Someone crammed dog shit under the handle of the driver’s side door of the car while we were in the movie store. Not just any dog shit mind you, but the light-brown, still warm, semi-liquid variety… just viscous enough to adhere, out of sight, underneath the door handle.

Calmly I walked to the front of the car, resigned to my fate, and using my Fanta, washed my hand off wiping it on the pavement, the grass, the dirt anything I could find. For some reason I did not panic, I did not issue forth a stream of obscenities, I simply walked back to the car, got in and looked at my girlfriend. She had this expression on her face that simply said, “What were you doing out there?” I answered in the only way I could. The only way anyone who had experienced such thing could: “Someone stuffed dog shit into the door handle.” What else can you say?

Really, what more need be said?

The Big Suck

So if you have anything important to say to anyone in your life, I suggest you do it within the next 45 days. You see, the Universe is about to unfold at a point and collapse in on itself. Not as the result of God’s final judgment on mankind, but rather as the result of curiosity. The Large Hadron Collider project is underway. The goal essentially is to bring about the Grand Unifying Theory of the Universe by bringing together such elusive concepts as gravity and energy. In other words, there are a bunch of scientists in an underground bunker in France trying to create black holes and inject matter into the Universe while simultaneously attempting to disrupt the gravitational constants that bind our little planet together so they can… “See what happens.”

This is the kind of shit that keeps me up at night.

I’m less afraid of nuclear war than I am of some Swedish scientist somehow ripping a gaping-wide whole in the space-time continuum or collapsing matter into itself in order to see what happens. I’m less afraid of killer bees… but only slightly because they still scare the hell out of me. I don’t think we’ll have time to see the effects of global climate change destroy our civilization. No… I am afraid of nerds. I went through this same anxiety about 5 years ago when some punk European scientist claimed that he was able to transport a particle of light or some such nonsense and have it exist simultaneously in two places. Wait a minute… is he actually adding matter to the Universe? WTF? Hold on a minute there… are you sure you’ve thought this one through? I mean, won’t that sort of break physics? It turns out he was wrong. How do I know this you ask? Well it’s simple really, we still exist.

I know, I know… “They said the same thing about breaking the sound barrier or the Manhattan Project”. Comparing the Manhattan Project to this little experiment in Universal Russian Roulette is like… well I am not sure what it’s like. I’m not sure what to compare this to other than it’s like comparing an atomic bomb to a black hole that’s filled with a bunch of atomic bombs.

That said, I can’t wait to see what happens.