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Satire Wire's New Spam Poets Crowned
Yorrike writes: "With over 600 entries, the winners of Satire Wire's Second Annual Poetry Competition have been announced. I guess my adaptation of Rime of the Ancient Mariner didn't make the cut ;)" Nothing like some howling laughter to cut through one's baleful bellows of pure spam-related rage.
POST!
How I love the first post fights...cracks me up every single time.
maybe not
or maybe you should relax your grip on life a little and laugh! its funny!
Dont ask me...Im just the bass player.
Since it's coming up to the start of a new academic year I thought I'd take this opportunity to explain how lucky you Americans are to have a fraternity system.
;-). And while cliques certainly form in English Universities, the are all much too boring to come up with the idea of hazing. I fondly recall diving off a weir and almost drowning when I was 12 because everyone said I was chicken. If only it had been possible for me to gain respect in later life through similar tests, and if these tests could have been combined with pseudo Masonic rituals culminating in the awarding of a little badge, then that truly would have made my time at University worthwhile. And while I still have friends from University, these friendships seem so hollow compared to bonds of fraternal brotherhood since they are not based on solemn vows of fellowship, mutual sacrifice, group solidarity and owning the same poxy little badge.
English Universities are so dull by comparison. Like most students in England I had to rent private accommodation for my second and third years, but it never occurred to us to build a whole culture around collectively renting a rather dilapidated house in Clapham. It wasn't even single sex accommodation, so we couldn't engage in the fun and games of para-homosexual activities - Girls just don't have the same grip on your loyalties as your Greek brothers
Then there's sheer joy alcohol seems to bring fraternity members.. By the time I went to university the delights of getting dangerously
drunk at parties had started to seem mundane. But to American students in fraternities, the bravado of excessive alcohol consumption is a an exciting new and illicit game where you can prove yourself worthy to all your male friends and simultaneously circumvent college alcohol policy - thereby proving what a rebel you are too. Gosh. I am also rather fond of the references to ancient Greece. It reeks of a history far nobler and grander than anything a British University can instil its students with, and the wearing of togas must make it seem as authentic as a ploughman's lunch. I think what I am trying to say is that Fraternities give young Americans the chance to grow up in their own time, and that it is regrettable that no similar opportunity is afforded to European Students. In particular, I find it sad that even some American students forego the opportunity to wear togas and claim to be Greek. Really this should be mandatory, so every graduate will be secure in the knowledge that they have gained something much more valuable than a degree from an American University - a little badge with some Greek letters on it.
Although I am not American, I admire the system so much that I would dearly love to become an honorary member of a fraternity. I have set my heart on becoming an alumni of Theta Omicron Sigma Sigma Epsilon Ro Sigma. I do so hope this is possible.
What is a "Sexual Asspussy" and where can I find some?
Wait, I'm confused about the movie. So the cops knew that internal affairs were setting them up?
thats what the cops said about my car :(
Beavis: "huh huh hu huh they said penis huh hu hu uhhhh..."
Butthead: "shut up Beavis"
My war on spam begins with all Spammers, but it does not end there. It will not end until every spamming group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.
These spamists spam not merely to waste bandwidth, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every piece of unsolicited mail, they hope that genuine e-mailers grow fearful, retreating from cyber space and forsaking news groups. They stand against me, because I stand in their way.
I am not deceived by their pretenses to piety. I have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the spamist ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing bandwidth to serve their advertising visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded trash cans.
My response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated replies.
I should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic e-mails to ISP's, visible to News groups, and covert operations, secret even in success. I will starve spamists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from ISP to ISP, until there is no refuge or no rest. And I will pursue ISP's that provide aid or safe haven to spammers. Every ISP, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with me, or you are with the spamists.
From this day forward, any ISP that continues to harbor or support spamists will be regarded by me as a hostile regime.
Remove this email address from everywhere you have it in any form that it may be in. I do not want to receive email from you, people who work with/for/around you, people you know even vaguely or even have heard of, people you communicate in any form to, people who look like you.
From now on, I want to never know you, or any product/service/person/etc that you know of.
Given that you're a spammer who thinks they aren't a spammer, you may have found the above too vague. Ergo: please piss off.
All speling, factual, tact, and/or grametical errers be the result of netwerk interpherance or# transmition ererrs.
As a few of my comments may have made plain, the American Revolution is something of a focus of mine. Not so much the battles of the War for Independence as the politics and sociology behind the entire movement.
In particular, as an American who knows that America's teaching of that period is often better at reinforcing the mythos than teaching the complexities of the time, I'm fascinated by the British side of the story. The British must have had reasons for their behaviour, but it's rare in an American high school classroom to hear these reasons taught.
Other books (most notably Chistopher Hibbert's Redcoats and Rebels delve into the British military point of view. But so far, The Long Fuse is the only book I've been able to find that focuses entirely on the view of the American Revolution from the standpoint of London.
The book is intended for a broad audience, so it's not a footnote-heavy reference, but a straight-line narrative. Some of the characters are people that even the most inattentive student knows: George III, whose decision to rule as well as reign, and do so for his entire empire, set him on a collision course with American sensibilities; Benjamin Franklin, the printer, scientist, and gentleman who spent nearly 18 years in London as an agent for Pennsyvlania and an unofficial spokemen for colonists in general. Others are people we know in passing on this side of the pond, but who were crucial to the politics in Britain -- Lord North, Charles James Fox, William Pitt and his eponymous son, Lord Hillsborough, Charles Townsend, General and Admiral Viscount Howe, to name a few. These are the men who argued out the American question for two decades before Cornwallis' failure at Yorktown finally decided the argument for them.
Mr. Cook presents all these characters with a due sense of proportion, dwelling in detail on those who had greater impact, for good or ill. He does not pretend to complete neutrality, but seems to judge each person he touches on not in light of his own American sensibilities, but in light of what the person actually did and how effective it was toward their stated goal. Thus, George III comes off as stubborn and ultimately defeated, but true to his principles -- principles that included a view of an Empire united under not just a single King, but a single Parliament. Lord North gets an almost sympathetic treatment as a man of charm and wit and intelligence, but not the stomach or stubbornness to carry off George's policies with firmness.
From the American side, there is a strong focus on Franklin, the only one of the Founding Fathers to have regular contact with the British government right up until 1775. If, from a narrative perspective, George III is the protagonist, than Franklin is the antagonist. Not that he's portrayed in at all a negative light, mind you. But, since this is a story from the British perspective, it's therefore the story of George III's efforts to hold on to America. From a political standpoint, Franklin was one of the biggest thorns in George's side, despite the fact that his views, at least until the 1770s, were no more radical than the moderate Whigs in Britain. Franklin was, it turns out, a true and faithful subject -- the model of loyal opposition -- almost up until the very moment when he had to choose sides.
As someone who prides himself on being something of an amateur scholar, I have to admit I would have preferred a more well footnoted approach to the same narrative. But overall, I find Mr. Cook's work to be well written and well grounded in the material of the time. It makes no attempts at revisionism, and the final judgement remains much the same as the American mythos would have it. Britain took a collection of faithful provinces and alienated them by adhering to principles which were completely out of date and out of step not only with the American temper, but with a broad swath of British opposition, as well. America's victory discredited George's hand-picked Tory government and brought the Whig opposition back into power, paving the way for greater liberty on both sides of the pond.
US consumer activist Ralph Nader has opened a new front in his war on Microsoft - tax fiddling. In a letter sent to Bill Gates on Friday, Nader and James Love, the director of Nader's Consumer Project on Technology, describe Microsoft's failure to pay shareholder dividends as "an inappropriate and we believe unlawful device."
They argue that by not paying dividends Microsoft is providing substantial tax advantages to its largest shareholders, the largest of these being His Billness himself. If Microsoft paid dividends, then shareholders would be taxed on the benefit at the top US rate of 39.6 per cent. But as Microsoft does not pay dividends, the only way shareholders can realise their assets is via stock sales, where the maximum tax rate is 20 per cent.
Ramming the point home, they note that SEC records show Gates himself sold $2.9 billion worth of Microsoft stock last year. He therefore saved himself a tax bill of something in the region of $580 million. According to Microsoft's 2001 proxy statement, 17.3 per cent of the company's stock is held by executive officers and directors. Gates holds around two thirds of that, and in addition co-founder Paul Allen still retains a significant stake.
This small group of amazingly rich people clearly do very nicely out of the company policy, but Nader and Love question whether this is in the interests of shareholders in general: "This also raises questions about whether or not these persons, including yourself, are accumulating these staggering sums of cash to advance other agendas, rather than to advance the interests of shareholders."
What these other agendas might be, they do not say. Becoming even more drippingly rich than would otherwise be the case seems a likely one, but apart from that...
They argue that Microsoft may be breaking the law by not paying dividends on the basis of US accumulated earnings legislation, which states that company cash piles "beyond the reasonable needs of the business" should be subject to the 39.6 per cent rate. Microsoft is currently sitting on something in the region of $36 billion, a sum analysts reckon far in excess of what it might 'reasonably need,' so they may have a point.
This is "twice the cash held by GM, a corporation that reported sales about seven times larger than Microsoft's. Moreover, the cash holdings by Microsoft are growing at an astonishing rate - about $1.5 billion per month over the last quarter. It is difficult to imagine how Microsoft, which has never paid a dividend, is not subject to the accumulated earnings tax." Whether the US will listen to Nader and impose the tax is of course another matter
I was out on the West Coast
Tryin' to make a buck
And things didn't work out
I was down on my luck
Got tired a-roaming and bumming around
So I started thumbing back East
Toward my home town
Made a lot of miles the first two days
And I figured I'd be home in week
If my luck held out this way
But...the third night I got stranded
Way out of town
At a cold lonely crossroads
Rain was pouring down
I was hungry and freezing
Done caught a chill
When the lights of a big semi topped the hill
Lord
I sure was glad to hear them air brakes come on
And I climbed in that cab
Where I knew it'd be warm
At the wheel sit a big man
He weighed about two-ten
He stuck out his hand and said with a grin
Big Joe's the name
I told him mine
And he said
The name of my rig is
Phantom 309
I asked him why he called his rig such a name
He said Son
This old Mack can put 'em all to shame
There ain't a driver or a rig
Running any line
That seen nothing
But taillights from
Phantom 309
Well we rode and talked
The better part of the night
When the lights of a truck stop came in sight
He said I'm sorry son
This is as far as you go
Cause I gotta make a turn
Just on up the road
Well he tossed me a dime
As he pulled her in low
And said
Have yourself a cup on old Big Joe
When Joe and his rig
Roared out in the night
In nothing flat
He was clean out of sight
Well, I went inside and ordered me a cup
Told the waiter Big Joe was setting me up
Aw!, you coulda heard a pin drop
It got deathly quiet
And the waiter's face turned kinda white
Well, did I say something wrong
I said with a halfway grin
He said
Naw this happens every now and then
Every driver in here knows Big Joe
But son let me tell you
What happened about ten years ago
At the crossroads tonight
Where you flagged him down
There was a bus load of kids
Coming from town
And they were right in the middle
When Big Joe topped the hill
It could have been slaughter
But he turned his wheel
Well, Joe lost control
Went into a skid
And gave his life
To save that bunch of kids
And there at that crossroads
Was the end of the line
For Big Joe and Phantom 309
But, every now and then
Some hiker'll come by
And like you
Big Joe'll give 'em a ride
Here have another cup
And forget about the dime
Keep it as a souvenir
From Big Joe
And Phantom 309
all the mod points are ending up going to trolls, flamebaiters, and offtopicers. well, sign me up to the list!
It would be completely automated, and you would be guaranteed get the coveted FP, at least until somebody else comes up with a similar script. Then I guess you see who can cut it closest to the 20 seconds, and ultimately I guess it comes down to who lives closest to the slashdot server or who has the fastest route.
It just seems that somebody should have already done this, in order to become the undisputed master of the first post universe, but I got one earlier, manually, so clearly it hasn't been done. I only fp once in a while, and don't want every fp, but somebody must.
You mean this dildo and this ass?
and why was this post mod'd offtopic? its about as on topic as you can get.
Dont ask me...Im just the bass player.
Why the fuck would I want to follow your directions??? If I did I bet I would get my massive penis glued up some bitches cunt. The rest of you people can follow what this fuckhead has to say but not me.
Back by unpopular demand, more random crapflooding!
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This is poetry?
ROFLAMO.
-Shaunak.