My Favorite Bastard

Every so often I get curious about what Kip McKean is up to these days.  It doesn’t happen often, I think the last time was over a year ago.  Today, I saw this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kip_McKean

There’s a flaw in the Wikipedia philosophy.  Mostly it works, but on edge fringe cases like this, it simply can’t.  If you can make it to the bottom without vomiting or suffocating from incredulous laughter, note how the tone changes.  At the beginning the writer(s) makes an honest effort to sound legitimate, as though everything reported is mere fact.  In a sense they are, in the same way North Korea reports facts on their state sponsored news agency.  Towards the bottom all pretense is lost.   Note the use of exclamation marks and the use of the words “we” and “our”.  It’s not too hard to figure out the perspective of the writer.  How many other Wikipedia articles use “we”, especially in an article about an individual?  I was tempted to “correct” the article, but I suspect that’s already happened a couple of times.  It’s surprising to see the “critical” links at the bottom haven’t been removed.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this article has been “cleansed”.

For an alternative view of Kip McKean, try out these sites.

He has an official website, but I don’t recommend you waste your time.  http://www.kipmckean.org/  It’s boring as dirt.

A bit more interesting reading is http://www.kipmckean.com/.  How pissed off do you think he was when he saw that domain was taken?

This man started a cult, this cult grew to frightening proportions, and damaged countless people.  Eventually the ICOC (his cult) more or less kicked him out for not living up to his own standards (nobody can live up to those standards, incidentally) and went to Portland Oregon to start again.  The ICOC more or less collapsed under it’s own weight without the charismatic cult leader to hold it together.  He’s still out there and he’s still ruining lives.  He’s since moved back to Los Angeles and more or less rebuilt his “movement”.  Apparently the current name is the Los Angeles International Christian Church (Ironically, I.C.C instead of I.C.O.C., the International Churches of Christ.  Creativity does not appear to be one of his sins). 

Why do I tell you this?  Simply this.  If you’ve read this post then you’re most likely not a member of the church (they don’t allow members to browse the Internet unsupervised, this post would be considered “spiritual porn”), but you might know someone who is.  They might approach you.  If you’re even mildly on the fence about the existence of God they’ve got an in with you. 

Mostly, though, I hope that I’ve completely wasted your time.

Today, the world is a slightly better place

BushPoster

I’m still keeping up on the news, and despite several Republican attempts at revisionist history (e.g. “Bush defeated the Taliban/Al Queda” which still hasn’t happened, the economy problems started before Bush, blah blah) I see the mess beginning to be straightened out.  Apparently President Obama was shocked to find out that he had the authority to declare American citizens as enemy combatants, and could indefinitely detain them and deprive them of their civil rights without due process.  Yep.  Apparently the damage done to the Constitution didn’t just apply to Iraqis. 

I got a slight chuckle when I heard there’s a movement in Canada to have George Bush detained on suspicion of torture (which shouldn’t be too hard to prove), where he is headed now to give his first post-presidential speech.  I believe that it will be an American first to have a president arrested for war crimes.  As embarrassing as it would be for the country, it would still be good to see.  One can hope…

I like President Obama.  I think he’s shown moral fibre in his first couple of months as President which has been sorely lacking in America’s leadership for a very long time (e.g. more than eight years).  It saddens me to see Republicans still playing politics.  The Democrats do too, but Obama seems (so far) to be above it.  The fact that he’s a Democrat seems almost incidental to him.  He’s out to repair the damage of eight years of Sith rule. 

I don’t hate all Republicans because of Bush, nor do I like all Democrats because of Obama.  I wonder how people justify what happened to themselves solely because they call themselves “Republican”.  I wonder how many people no longer call themselves “Republican” because they couldn’t.  That’s the danger of being a party-liner.  I’m neither Republican nor Democrat.  Neither Conservative nor Liberal (well, maybe just a bit Liberal).  This gives me the ability to be a bit more objective about politics.  I didn’t like what I saw and I didn’t have to rationalize it.  I like what I’m seeing now and I can be confident I’m not rationalizing.

I wish he weren’t a Democrat, but if he weren’t he wouldn’t have been elected.  It still bothers me to see our government stuck in the grip of these two massive political parties that for the most part seem interested in nothing but bickering.  I think there’s light at the end of the tunnel, though.

Darwin was wrong, duh!

All this time, I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been.  I thought I had a basic understanding of the Theory of Evolution, but finally, at last, I’ve been freed from my delusions by the smartest of the smart, the wisest of the wise. 

You see it’s quite simple.  Darwin was just mad at God, he had no scientific grounding for his theory.  Thousands of us idiots just simply bought it without question, not even once considering that when certain animals like, say, a dog spontaneously sprang up from the primordial goo, they would have simply died out had not a female dog also spontaneously sprang up fully formed and fully evolved at the same exact moment from the primordial goo.  What are the odds on that, eh?

Why, it’s so simple now!  How could I have been so blind?

Enjoy the latest thing to spontaneously induce a migraine in my primordial head.  Warning, take the aspirin first.

Oh Cowboy, where art thou? (part deux)

You may have noticed a serious drop in the frequency of posts on the goodness we refer to as Another Idiot with a Blog.  There’s a reason for that.  I’m sure it’s a good one.  I’ll let you know when I think of it.

The truth is about every couple of years I seem to re-invent myself.  It’s not intentional, it just happens.  Usually after a breakdown of some kind. 

I’m going to be focusing on something else for a while.  Don’t worry, loyal legions of Cowboy-ites, the Cowboy is not gone.  The wisdom you need is still contained within the posts of this blog and will not go away (again), and I’ll still be back from time to time to impart more wisdom your way.  You’ll be angry at first, you might even turn away from your faith, but you cannot resist the Cowboy.  He’s not just a man, he’s a freakin’ force of nature, baby!  You’ll be back.

I’m working on another blog at the moment.  The reason is I’d like to be taken seriously for once, and let’s be honest, that ain’t happenin’ here.  For those who care, post a message or send me an e-mail.  If I like you and want you to know where it is, I’ll tell you.  If not, I’ll fart in your general direction, you silly English kanigot. (If you don’t get the quote, I can’t help you). 

I’m also spending a lot of time with my new Zune.  If I had only known how easy it makes it to follow podcasts, I would have gotten one years ago.  And it probably would have been an iPod.  Then I would have gotten angry at just how shittily Apple software runs on a PC, and chucked it against the wall.  Then I would have taken the shattered remains back to the Apple store demanding a refund.  There would have been an awful row after the resident Apple “genius” calmly explained to me that you can’t return a smashed iPod, as the smashing of said iPod voids the warranty of said iPod.  It’s right there under paragraph 411 subsection 831 part b, where it states that willful destruction of the iPod is cause for termination of the warranty.  Yelling loudly that the crappy iTunes software brought my poor PC to it’s four year old knees and eventually caused it to blue-screen itself in despair and that they should give restitution for the pain and suffering I’ve endured as a result probably wouldn’t help.  *sigh* That’s Apple for you.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been quite interested in XNA, despite my complete inability to produce a working game.  It turns out that if you subscribe to the Channel 9 podcasts tagged XNA, most of them were done by Mr. Rory Blyth (so far, anyway).  Who knew?  That guy’s everywhere.  I wonder how I could get him to move to the Midwest and come to work where I work?  I’d move to Portland, but the whole moving thing didn’t work so well last time.  We’re not talking about that anymore.

So, farewell for now, my lovely fans.  I love you all too!  Don’t despair!  Go forth and live eventful lives, and always say: WWCD? 

Cowboy, where art thou?

After reading Rory’s recent “where the effing hell has Rory been” post, I realized that I’ve disappeared in much the same way, although my reasons weren’t nearly as interesting.  Then my company decided to send me to New York at 6:30 in the effin’ morning.  They should know better.  Having missed a flight for the first time in my life (I tried, I really tried), I find myself sitting at the airport wondering what to do as I wait for my now 9:30 flight.  So I pull up a few blogs.  Then I find Rory’s post, then I realize, the masses want to know where the hell Cowboy is and what’s been going on.  This forced me to think about why I haven’t been posting.  So here goes:

  • Left Minnesota, went back to my old job in effin’ Kansas.  Woohoo!  Honestly, the job isn’t all that bad, but it’s a little like trying to wear that shirt you had when you were a freshman in high school, it doesn’t quite fit anymore.  Close, but not quite.  You’ve grown, the shirt didn’t.  I’ll endure the awkwardness of wearing a shirt that doesn’t fit for a while, but I’m gonna have to go shopping eventually.  Anyway, moving across three states tends to take a bit of your time.
  • Obama was elected.  While this may not directly affect me, I realized that recently the vast majority of my posts has revolved around Evilbush and his personal war that has cost us thousands of American lives needlessly (and far more Iraqi lives).  My main beef with McCain was his support of said needless war.  Obama wants to withdraw (albeit not soon enough), so I don’t have as much to bitch about now.  I’m just counting down to Bush’s last day.  The electoral college still bugs me, but since Obama won despite the skewed electoral college results, I’ll leave it alone.  Give me about another four years and I’ll be all over it again. 
  • Wife and kids are a bit demanding on one’s time.  This hasn’t been as much of an issue recently, since I’ve been living the bachelor life in Minnesota.  On a side note, the bachelor life is overrated.  I missed my kids terribly, and they missed me as well. We’ve spent a lot of time together.  It’s good.  My wife is there too.  She demands a lot of time, because apparently not having a job consumes a lot of her time.  She needs me to do a lot of the housework she doesn’t have time for in her daily regimen of Oprah, Doctor Phil, QVC, The Food Network, and teaching the kids how all science is wrong. 

Anyway, that’s it in a nutshell.  Last time I was in New York I decided to make some changes in my life.  I’m still getting around to it, but the effect the town has on me is interesting.  We’ll see how it goes this time. 

Oh, and one last thing.  I ran across a blog that claimed mentioning a certain name seriously boosted the hit count.  In the interest of seeing if that’s true, I’m going to try it myself.  Here goes:

Sydney Brooke Simpson

Let the hits roll!

Are people really still falling for this?

My GMail account gets a LOT of spam.  I’m not sure how I ended up on so many spam lists, but I suspect GMail themselves are partly to blame.  There’s also the issue that there are about four other people in the country, and one in Australia apparently, who think my e-mail address is theirs.  These people are apparently not very bright when it comes to where and when it’s appropriate to give out your (or rather my) e-mail address.  They also appear to like to sign up for e-mail distribution lists on sites that apparently do not verify your e-mail address.  There’s not much I can do to stop it, but I do appreciate GMail’s rather thorough spam filter. 

Today I took a look at the spam folder.  I do this occasionally just to make sure there isn’t something there that shouldn’t be.  I generally get tired after the first two or three pages and just delete it all anyway.  Today I had 828 Spam messages.  That’s something like 36 times the number of real e-mails sitting in my inbox.  In fairness, I had just deleted several real messages from real distribution lists I’m really subscribed to, just because I know I’ll never get time to read them.  Sorry CodeProject.  But still, 36 spam e-mails for every 1 real e-mail I receive.  That is beyond ludicrous. 

As I’m looking through, I scroll past the messages letting me know important things like “Free pass for Enticing teens” and “Don’t Delay get Money Today” and “Vaigra cailis” (whatever the hell that is), offers for free Anti-Depressents, growing my organ to a big hulk (I prefer the piano, myself), Make myself 10 years younger, Branded watches, several in Chinese I can’t read due to a lack of speaking Chinese , Generic Meds, getting bang for my buck, Free Prescriptions, 90% prices, free Blackberry (that I can believe.  They would have to force one on me), larger rods (but will it fit in my car’s engine?), “Zohan’s secret to success”, the bailout package I need, an imperative to “stop being a disappointment in bed”, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.  And that was just today’s spam.

If it weren’t for spam filters, I would have sworn off e-mail by now.  That is absolutely ridiculous.  And why is it so damn hard to spell ridiculous?

Then one caught my eye.  It was so obviously a phishing scam it might very well have had blinking lights and a marching band playing “All your monies are belong to us, L00zR”.  I had a brief flash of those commercials where the old lady is giving a diatribe on identity theft in an inner city young boy’s voice. 

This one was a warning that my Chemical Bank account information needed verification.  Out of curiosity I opened it.  GMail dutifully put this disclaimer at the top:

image I know that’s hard to read.  It says (in a very danger sense arousing red color) “Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be.  Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information.”  Ya think?  I don’t have a Chemical Bank account.  I’ve never even heard of them.  I had to Google them just to find out they actually do exist.  I thought it was a made up name.  That would have to be the worst phishing scam in history.

Here’s the content:

image

I have to admit, that’s pretty good.  It looks real enough, and the styling looks just like the branding on the real bank’s website, but there’s just a hint of Engrish there.  Just enough to tip their hand.  No place I’ve ever worked for would allow that kind of grammar to go out in an official e-mail.  The link was disabled (Thanks again, GMail), but you can be sure if I had enabled it, it wouldn’t go to to that URL. 

This kind of scam has been around for years.  This e-mail is completely classic.  It’s better crafted than most.  For most of us, the first indicator that something isn’t right is the “I don’t have an account with that bank” issue.  The purpose, of course, it to hit the handful of people who actually do. 

Not long ago my wife asked me about a very similar message that managed to make it past three spam filters to her inbox.  I said simply “We don’t bank there, delete it”.  I then had to continue on to fully explain the scam that was occurring before she would believe me.  She finally deleted it, “If you’re sure”.  Yes, I am.

How is it, in this day and age, that there are still people who fall for this?  There must be, or they wouldn’t still be sending this kind of crap out.  I think I can safely assume that anybody who reads this blog is smart enough to see this for what it really is, even if it hadn’t landed in the spam box.  Have we, the technically elite, failed our not so technical counterparts here?  Have we somehow failed to let everybody know about the basics of e-mail security?  We must have, if there are still people out there running one of the oldest scams in the book.  They don’t need to make up new scams, the old ones are still working. 

If you haven’t told your wife, husband, mom, dad, sister, brother, half second cousin in law about what we consider to be common sense in handing e-mail, now would be the time.

I, Human

Who knows you?
Who understands you?
Who accepts you for who you are without reservation?

We’re all together, but each of us alone.
Huddled together in our cities, like rabbits.
We’re closer together then ever,
A fellow human nearly always in sight
but never within reach.

We tweet, we blog, we facebook
We say, “Hello world.  Please, somebody, care.”
And they look away, afraid you’ll see them.
Avoid eye contact at all costs.

We obsess with Things
computers, cell phones, our XBox
The machine doesn’t judge, it just is
We like that.  We crave that.

Nobody knows what it’s like to be me.  Or you.

The best presidential choice yet

I’ve been thinking, and that’s a dangerous thing.  I still like Henry Rollins for president, but perhaps there’s somebody I trust to do the right thing even more than Henry.  Who could it be?

Then the answer hit me like a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster:

ME!

Of course, why didn’t I think of it before?  I’m the one person on the planet I trust to do the right thing in office.  Cowboy: President of the United States.  Nice ring to it…

I hereby announce my candidacy for POTUS!

Here’s a summary of my qualifications:

  • I’ve never been convicted of a felony (convicted, mind you…)
  • I’ve never had a DUI (that one-ups Dubya)
  • I’ve never been involved in a sex and/or financial scandal as a perpetrator, but occasionally as a victim. (One ups Clinton)
  • I’m smarter than George Bush FWIW.
  • I have less experience than Barack Obama (remember, that’s a good thing).
  • I’m a white guy, but I’m not as white as John McCain.
  • I’m not a creationist like Sarah Palin.  Neither would my teenage daughter’s baby daddy stand up on stage with me, as he wouldn’t have any working legs in order to do so.
  • I believe that freedom of religion means freedom to follow ANY religion, not just Christianity. 
  • I’m aware that there are more than two points of view when it comes to evolution.  Science should be taught in schools.  Creation theories should be taught in relevant religious temples.  Debate solved. 

As president, here is my first term agenda (in order):

  • Withdraw all troops from Iraq immediately or even sooner.
  • Send a few Navy Seal teams into the mountains where Bin Laden is believed to be hiding, kill the fucker, mount his head on the hood of my brand new $400,000 Maserati, drive around America, withdraw from Afghanistan.
  • Hire T. Boone Pickens as Secretary of Energy.
  • Hire Henry Rollins as Secretary of Defense.
  • Hire Rory Blyth as Secretary of the Treasury.
  • Hire Celes as Secretary of State
  • Make Morgan Webb my Vice President.  I know she’s smart enough to do the job, but mainly I just want her to be around a lot.  I’m pretty sure she won’t shoot anybody in the ass either (video games notwithstanding).
  • Hire Bill Clinton as Secretary of How To Get Away With Having Hotties in the White House.
  • Banish George Bush to the Middle East.
  • Energy Crisis: Get an energy plan that will work via Pickens.  Kick the crap out of anybody that tries to put a rider on it, intimidate corrupt old politicians until they recant their evil ways and pass my bill.
  • Health Care: Model health care after Europe, where it actually works.  Change farm subsidies so that farmers are financially encouraged to grow fruits and vegetables.  Make McDonalds illegal.  Banish Hillary Clinton to Cuba.
  • Abortion: I’m personally against abortion, not for any religions reasons, but because I believe a life is taken when one is performed.  Instead, I plan to offer free Government Sponsored Surgical Sterilization to everybody with an I.Q. under 110 or from southern California.  Said procedure will be mandatory under 95. 

In the coming weeks, I will create a way that you can contribute to my campaign, as I know you already see the value in my Presidency.  In the meantime, spread the word to everybody you know, and tell them to vote Cowboy in November.  Good, yo!.

I’m the Cowboy and I approve this message