Small Bores

Militiamen : I've been getting hate mail from US right-wingers, militiamen, gun-freaks and other small bores, due to my anti-Shrub satires. Many appear to be semi-illiterate or at least dyslexic (just like Dubya!) if the spelling in their Emails is anything to go by. Perhaps this is a byproduct of the zero-goal US public education system that I was ranting about earlier this month? But I found a US militiaman's website which has correct spelling, grammatically correct sentences and which even makes his points succinctly. It turns out than he is a white ex-South African, which would explain the better education. Certainly he and I have different political views and the unceasing gratuitous gun pictures give a whole new meaning to the term "big bore".

No Hope : Bob Hope has died, age 100. He spent his life entertaining people, especially distracting US troops from killing people. That was the bright side. But there was a dark side too. Bob Hope was a landgrabbing capitalist who ruined the environment in and around the Ventura Mountains. He also killed off most of the mom-and-pop corner stores there by forcing the growth of all those LA shopping malls, merely to get more rich. Charles Eicher has more details, dated July 28.

posted by Stu Savory on 31st July 2003 at 06:17 Central European Time

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All mixed up

Cryptography : Wanna keep a secret? Then you'll need some really random numbers (NOT a PRG). I recommend LavaRnd.

posted by Stu Savory on 30th July 2003 at 05:57 Central European Time

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Blog Feedback

Sunday's shaggy dog story turned out to be quite popular, given the Emails I got about it. Thanks, "Jaques E.(Doc)" fans, you know who you are.
One Email points out that it is just as well I don't make this stuff up professionally, since e.g. Sky News (UK) suspended journalists over a bogus story. BTW, my shaggy dog stories are usually headed "Jaques E. (Doc)" stories (Geddit?).

Another Email points out that the CIA cannot claim to be winning the fight against terrorism as long as a spanish-cartoon CIA Sabotage Instruction Manuel (sic!) is available on the Internet. (For legal reasons, I've removed the link to the actual CIA document).

A third mail - alledgedly pro-Shrub - claims "It's nice to know that the most powerful man in the world is on top of things, isn't it? Wait...you mean he isn't? Well, is anyone REALLY surprised that someone born with a silver foot in his mouth does so little of the heavy lifting required of the Presidency??". I seem to have seen that line on the web somewhere. It IS a good one, but I think the mailer lifted it!

No Empty Bottle a'hanging on the wall :( Stavros the wonder chicken (aka Emptybottle ) is taking a blogbreak whilst he gets his life in meatspace reorganised. I'll miss his Blog and am looking forward to it restarting someday (soon?).

posted by Stu Savory on 29th July 2003 at 05:24 Central European Time

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Teneted Rumours ;-)

At home 1 : Yesterday evening, a saturday night, we decided to stay at home and watch TV instead of going out. So I thought I'd boringly blog what was showing, so you get a feel for what TV is like here in Germany. First we watched a documentary about the Three Gorges Dam in China, biggest in the world. It's a sad dam that, barely completed, starts to crack and maybe leak!

Afterwards we switched channels to watch the biography of Stan Getz who played great tenor sax jazz in bygone decades. Great jazz, indeed!

Then I went to the store to get some Sachertorte - that's the best chocolate cake in the whole world, made by Sacher in Vienna, Austria. Unfortunately the store had run out of chocolate cake, so I bought a lemon meringue pie. So we ended up having yellow cake instead of brown cake. Rather good though!

The late night movie turned out to be Out of Africa, which was really good too.

Finally we watched the late late news. It was reported that the CIA has developed a software which scans through webpages (like this blog). The CIA SW assumes that the links on the page are what the author regards as really important, so it prints out the links sequentially, concatenating the texts used to call the links. So I guess my blog for today we be responsible for starting a new rumour, that gets reported by Dubya, since their printout for this blog entry reads sad dam Getz yellow cake Out of Africa ;-)

At home 2 : Got our own domain now, www.savory.de, which I've redirected to existing content. So this link should bring you to the blog. No email addresses there though, just continue with the regular one ('cept you spammers of course!).

posted by Stu Savory on 27th July 2003 at 06:15 Central European Time

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We don' neat no edukayshun

The US education system : The US Supreme Court has ruled that it is unlawful to decide freshman university admissions based upon objective academic qualifications! Presumably the president set a precedent ;) The US educational system was designed to keep 90% of you uneducated and docile. My IQ score would equal two normalized ebonic rappers in today's US zero-goal education, still a full point above their peers' median score were it lawful in the US to test for it. But keep trying, Liz!

Mickeysoft security : YACFFIW = Yet another 'Critical' flaw found in Windows. So please go and read all about it, then go get your patches. So its not just spam!
And while your about it, read how a Web cafe WiFi fraud highlights PC insecurity. Presumably the Mickeysoft security programmers are a product of the late lamented US education system about which I was ranting in the previous paragraph.

UK politics :The Hutton Inquiry's hearings into the death of Iraq WMD weapons expert Dr David Kelly will not be broadcast on television or radio, it has been announced. Sounds like another Tony Blair spin/cover-up to me. Like master, like slave :(
And if that's not enough, go read this. TREACHERY is a word you don’t often hear these days, but it is stalking Christopher Hitchens.

posted by Stu Savory on 25th July 2003 at 06:15 Central European Time

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Infuriating Spam!

Look at your male(sic!) : This morning I opened my mailbox. Nothing but spam! Makes me sick. 33 of them, all in english (Merkin?). Good that my spam-filter catches the junk.

• one, real, genuine mail. (Hurrah, thanks, lass!)
• 2 "quit smoking" ads. One had a virus(sic!) (I don't smoke.)
• 2 "get cable TV" ads. (US cable? But I live in Germany.)
• 5 "lose weight" ads. (I have a page explaining how I already did that.)
• 6 "refinance your mortgage" ads. (I don't have a mortgage).
• 7 "fill prescriptions via the Internet" ads. (No need, thankyou).
• and of coarse (sic!) 11 s*x ads, being Viagra Plugs, secrets of satisfying women (note their use of the plural, even in a mail to a married man!) or how to lengthen my p*nis. (If I had followed up on all these emails alone, my pen*s would now be nine miles long, and thus incapable of satisfying anyone, and needing probably three tonnes of their cheap Viagra to straighten it! Swallow fast or get a stiff neck!)

It really is high time there was a concerted worldwide effort to fight spam. However, whilst Europe is going for "opt-in" schemes, the US is only aiming for the much weaker "opt-out" schemes. Typical capitalists!

posted by Stu Savory on 24th July 2003 at 06:15 Central European Time

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Je t'aime

Today's blog points you some funny(peculiar) websites I found.

Courriel : The French Culture Ministry has recently announced a ban on the use of the term "e-mail" in all government ministries, documents, publications or Web sites, the latest step to stem an incursion of English words into the French lexicon. So now they are supposed to use "courriel". Unfortunately, to us here in Germany, that sounds like "Kuh reell", which is a cow really. No bull!

Get some ass : Back on 17th June, residents of India's southern city of Bangalore married off two donkeys, in the hope that the ancient ritual would usher in good monsoon rains. Of course having donkeys working for you doesn't work. Remind me again, please: which US political party consist of donkeys?

'Serving' the US public : US patent 6,497,718 has been recently granted. It claims: "By simulating moonlight with nocturnal light exposures [with a 100-watt lightbulb], the menstrual cycles of women could be brought nearer to the lunar cycle of 29.5 days.... The idea behind it is that, during evolution, the fertility cycle of humans and other primates was phase-locked to the moon and that [the] full moon coincided with ovulation.... It would also explain, on a rational basis, the cause of the well-known 'romantic' effect of the full moon." US patent 6,497,718 is assigned to the secretary of the U.S. Air Force. Inquiry minds want to know why? Maybe a research project directly financed by the Clinton administration, looking for a sure thing?

He ain't heavy : An ancient burial casket, claimed by its owner to contain the bones of Jesus' brother, has been declared a fake by Israeli antiquities experts. The small ossuary, inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" in Aramaic, had been previously hailed as the oldest archaeological link to the New Testament. Oldest? You mean Jesus was a younger brother? Go tell that to the Pope!

Legal charges : If you pushed your naked clone off a tall building, would it be:

• murder
• suicide
• making an obscene clone fall ?

posted by Stu Savory on 22nd July 2003 at 06:15 Central European Time

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What didn't you say?

Tabu rant: Censors rule US school books! Diane Ravitch is a US teacher and historian who has written a book titled "The Language Police". She documents her case well, using many examples. So that the religious feelings of Goys not be affected, the word "Jew" has been censored from Isaac B.Singer's memoirs of his childhood in Poland. A chapter on slave-trading removed from a history book, because it would be 'too depressing' for the Blacks. And fundamentalist Christians ensured that evolution theory be removed because it contradicts their bible. She explains that the publishers do this to avoid potential law-suits from extremist pressure groups and lobbyists.
Of course, here in Germany the Nazis burnt books some 65 years ago, and we all know where fascism takes us :( If not, please read Norman Spinrad's Iron Dream.
Is this George Orwell almost 20 years on?

UN rant: The United Nations are putting Hun Sen (head of the Cambodian gov't) under public pressure for being 'the worst smoker of all government heads". Hasn't the UN got anything better to do???

• What is the wording of the UN resolution on Premier Hun Sen?
  • Smoke him out!
  • We have satellite photos of packets of Marlboro. That means sanctions!
  • Send WMD inspectors to confiscate his ashtrays and lighters!
• Isn't it more important to set up the tribunal against the Red Khmer?
  • First we have to put the Red Gauloises behind bars.
  • No. The red Khmer were without filters AND scruples.
  • Premier Hun Sen offers us a tribunal 'light'
• What are the other Health priorities in Asia?
  • The Junta in Burma should eat more vegatables.
  • Abbu Sayyaf members in Jolo should use suncream with factor 35.
  • Al Quaida terrorists have been sneakily smoking in the bathroom again.
• and worldwide?
  • Kosovo shall be declared a non-smoking zone, just like New Yeuch
  • Marines will go after Saddams dog-ends - and 12 year old girls that they think are 19 :(
  • Chancellor Schröder's cigars are declared to be WMD (Wet Mushy Dogies)

posted by Stu Savory on 19th July 2003 at 06:15 Central European Time

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We are (not) amused!

Cyberterror : In Holland a lot of spam-SMS (telephone short text messages) have been sent out this week. They all say effectively "Call the Buck house for good telephone zex, and ask for Liz". Not this Liz! Recipients assumed that the B in 'Buck' was a typo for an F. Lots of randy recipients dialled the call-back number provided. Turns out this was the number of Buck-House (UK) - i.e. Buckingham Palace, the home of Queen Elizabeth (2 of England, 1 of Scotland). The resulting Denial-Of-Service attack caused the palace phone exchange to collapse. So now you just get a recorded voice saying you have been the victim of a practical joke and that HM is not amused!
Blair will probably claim now that cyberterrorists are attacking the Royal Fambly :(

Grave error : When Uganda's tallest man died, it is reported that the local villagers made a grave error :( It seems that when the undertaker called and said to the grave-diggers "we need a tall grave for a tall man", they understood "we need a tiled grave for a toll man". The grave they dug was too short by far. Follow the link to read the 'hole' story ;)

Child in Time: Parents will sympathise with this, singles may just turn Deep Purple (geddit?) and decide to forego on the breeding thingy. The library of the Montessori schools has an evocative and funny article entitled What I learnt from my children.
Laugh? I nearly turned Deep Purple myself! Do go read it.

posted by Stu Savory on 18th July 2003 at 17:09 Central European Time

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True Lies

Robotics : Scanning through today's newspaper (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) I saw an article about Steve Porter of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He has cultivated rat-brain cells (it says here). Not sure where the verbs are in that sentence! And goes on to explain that these bionic components are the "brain" used to control remote waldoes at the University of Western Australia in Perth. The headline reads "Minature brain in US controls arms several thousand miles away". I read the article half way through, before I realised it was not talking about Dubya!

Politics : And whilst on the subject, it seems Bush-the-usurper was not really lying. He was told by Tenet just to ape (sic!) the video recording session and the CIA would add the audio channel later. Bush asked Tenet if that would work, and Tenet replied "Sure, we'll just dub ya!" :)
Now George may be anally retentive(?) but his short term memory is really short, so he only remembered the words "Just Dubya" and knew he was a righteous man, doing nothing wrong ;)

posted by Stu Savory on 16th July 2003 at 18:29 Central European Time

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Vacation Paws

No Blog Today: Not true. Actually no blog entries for the last fortnight, due to having been on vacation. Hill-walking in the Austrian alps, the healthy way to get high. We took our bulldog bitch Wilma along too, and she thoroughly enjoyed all the walks, even if she did get very tired each day. Even her subsequent snoring didn't stop us getting a good nights sleep too! Even managed to blogcomment Meg from 10,000 feet up, thanks to WiFi :)

Bow Hunting: One of the attractions offered at an adventure park there, was bow-hunting. Hidden up in the densly wooded hillsides were about twenty 3-D lifesize styropor models of local animals. You got a bright orange jacket, a simple recurve bow (with no sights), 3 arrows, quiver and an armguard and off you went. At 3 different ranges (about 70/35/20 meters) were poles marking shooting positions. Great fun, but a lot more hill climbing than shooting! In a real situation, there was no way I could have crept up on anything, I was panting so loud! The whole parcours took about 2 hours. I even managed to miss a deer at 70 meters, losing an arrow in the long grass (downhill shot) in the process. As compensation, I got the squirrel fair and square at 30 meters.
And while were talking about beaux hunting, I read that Naomi Campbell is looking for a man to father her children. Join the queue going back around six blocks quietly, lads.

posted by Stu Savory on 15th July 2003 at 19:19 Central European Time

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