Spam just in that made me cough up my muffin. Bonus points for “qualified ghost-writers” and for the fact that I got this from the (still-unsecured) linux kernel version announce mailing list.

From: Subject: My visit to BookExpo America 2005 (New York)
Date: May 10, 2005 2:05:23 AM PDT
To: unlisted-recipients:;
Reply-To:
Hi,

I apologize for intruding into your busy schedule. Please allow me to introduce ourselves to you.

We are a professional outsourcing partner for all book and journal-related work, including book-writing and typesetting
services ([url]). Located in India, we cater to both organizations as well as individuals.

Our range of services include, but are not limited to:
Book Writing (using qualified ghost-writers)
e-Books Creation (including MobiPocket)
Proofreading and Copy-Editing
Formatting, Pre-Press and Typesetting (in FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, InDesign etc)
Scanning and OCR (for re-prints, archives etc)
Translation (all major languages)

Many companies are now outsourcing their work to India. Not only do they achieve substantial cost savings, but the
availability of a large number of professionally trained personnel also ensures a high quality of work. We can serve you
efficiently and cost effectively, and deliver as per your customized needs.

We are one of the leading Indian organizations in our field, and serve many international organizations. For accomplishing
jobs with us, a team of highly trained and dedicated professionals work at our state-of-the-art facilities located in New
Delhi, India.

We understand the basic international business processes and ensure that all projects undertaken by us are completed within the stipulated time period with complete confidentiality, accuracy, and quality.

For your first project you do not need to pay us a deposit. You can make the entire payment after receiving satisfactory
delivery of service.

If you are interested in cutting your current costs to at least half, increasing your profit margins without compromising
on the quality and turn-around time, then please do get back to us. We will be glad to send you a most competitive business proposal.

I shall be at the BOOKEXPO AMERICA 2005, New York (3rd-5th June) and would be most happy to meet you there and personally discuss your requirements. If so, I would be obliged if you can kindly grant me a prior appointment at the fair.

Sincerely,

Dhiraj Aggarwal

via do_not_lick CATHOLIC RADIATION

DAVE SINGS!

In 1978, a German guy named Syberberg made a seven hour movie about Hitler starring puppets.

Yow.

I return from my vacation to find my friends & family in heaven and hell simultaneously. The count among people up to 2 degrees from me is:

1 animal bite requiring ER visit and antibiotics
1 big promotion and raise
4 bone fractures (in four separate people!)
1 new and incurable liver disease of unknown origin
2 breakups
2 acceptances to good academic programs
1 new cancer diagnosis
1 government grant
1 childhood asthma diagnosis
2 new apartments that were greatly desired

If I touch you, either you’ll get $50,000 in small bills or your left patella will explode.

WHERE’S MY MONEY?

As I was showering today, I kept thinking about how much I like the great selection, free shipping, and fantastic customer service at Zappos.com. It’s really better than any other online shoe store!

Folks it’s great to mix these three things: South Orange County asshats, homeowners associations, and internet bulletin boards! I especially like how he wants material he’s politically opposed to removed from the board, but when they ban him he says “we’re all adults here”. Also, website designer. Also, the phrase “graphic argument”. Also.. oh never mind. let’s read!

http://stephan.com/widgets/zaptastic/

Widgets can autoinstall. Widgets are hard to remove if you don’t know what you’re doing. Widgets can screw you really hard in the wrong hole. There’s even a goatse widget! Oops. Perhaps they should have thought this part of Tiger through just a little bit more.

tuliphead: do we get to pick the one we want from the tank
substitute: mmm, clown tank
tuliphead: i hope they rubberband their horns shut
substitute: i hate it when the butcher hits the clown with the cleaver the first time and it squeaks
tuliphead: it’s neat to hear them rattle the pot lid when the water boils, though

Privilege, wealth, entitlement, perception. Those are the four words that keep recurring over the last six months.

Privilege can only be seen from outside and below. As a straight white male U.S. Citizen from a prosperous suburban Southern California home, I’m only about an inch from the top of that hill, but it takes effort and education to see it. It looks as though there’s a huge peak of wealth and power towering above me that I can’t achieve, but the real mountain is beneath me and it’s vast.

Because of all these advantages, which were mostly invisible to me, I had a very easy time of my first 18 years. I recommend a suburban middle-class environment for any child. When you’re demanding, immature, and helpless anyway it’s a tremendous help to be in a community designed for such people.

After that, my privileged status was notable in the negative. I didn’t suffer the full consequences of my nervous breakdown after college. Instead of being dead, I was kind of broke for a few years and got a lot of help from family and friends, and got decent medical care, and was able to be partially employed, and finally able to use my educational and other advantages to recover financially and build a new career. Everything about my background served as a cushion, and I survived a nasty depression and a series of personality and mood disorders and came out okay. During this time I got to see a few rungs down from my own place in this society, and who was clinging to them, and I got some idea why. That was my education. I didn’t get my face smashed in when I had my car crash; I got a nasty shock and a couple of burns from life’s air bags.

Now I’m back in suburbia and making a decent living. I’m effectively insulated from my own capacity to fuck up. I could lose my job. I could get a new disease or injury. I could get into legal trouble, acquire a new addiction, crash my car, whatever. If I didn’t kill myself I’d be okay. Not just my own personal situation (my family is okay for cash and owns some property, etc.) but the entire framework of society will save me. It’s very, very unlikely that I’ll experience poverty in my lifetime.

So, why am I droning on about this?

The privilege of this suburban, entitled life creates an illusion of flatness. Looking around me I see what looks like a universe of people like me. There’s a perception of that “level playing field” where everyone can get a job, everyone has a working car, everyone has a little free time and a reasonable education and a few bucks in the wallet. If someone succeeds, it’s because he worked a little harder and a little smarter. If someone fails at life, maybe he’s not too bright or he drinks too much. People who want to go back to school, or buy a condo instead of renting, or travel, they just make it happen with a little elbow grease.

Far too many of the people around me resent this existence.

They want more! Television shows them wealth porn and then explains that anyone can achieve this, with just a bit more of the elbow grease. They fall for it, reliably. Since the only things holding them back from the MTV’s Cribs lifestyle are welfare queens, whiny liberals, and tax-and-spend politicians, they can be induced to vote against all of these things. Once these obstacles are removed, every man a king! The message is that we are all entitled to more wealth, and that wicked or mistaken people are trying to rob us of it.

That mountain stretching above us looks so huge and inviting and beautifully unreachable; we can’t see how tiny it is without looking down. And that’s a painful view, because suddenly we see how rich we’ve been all along, and how many people we’re sitting on. The people on the summit would rather we kept adoring them.