Worst Practice Embetterred

The Worst Practice got a hold of me and I attributed to Kevin Marks the excellent piece written by Jerome Klapka Jerome. Neverthereless the award stays with Kevin since he, by himself and without any help from the Submarine Wives Club, has quoted those nice paragraphs from the travelling writer.

Thanks, but not my work.

That was Jerome K Jerome, in his 1891 book 'Diary of a Pilgrimage'

Honey. I have to leave you for 3 months

Submarine Wives Club presents a free advice aka. 10 Tips for Handling stress. And while you are at it visit the 'Depression' section.

And the winner is

Kevin Marks has just won a fresh supply of nuclear submarines to be parked in his fish tank. Congratulations.

Why is Kevin Marks a winner you may ask?

Well, because he writes brilliant shit and I write about submarines, that's why.

Here is the winning piece of prose:

"As a man works, so Society deals by him.
To me Society says: "You sit at your desk and write, that is all I want you to do. You are not good for much, but you can spin out yards of what you and your friends, I suppose, call literature; and some people seem to enjoy reading it. Very well: you sit there and write this literature, or whatever it is, and keep your mind fixed on that. I will see to everything else for you. I will provide you with writing materials, and books of wit and humour, and paste and scissors, and everything else that may be necessary to you in your trade; and I will feed you and clothe you and lodge you, and I will take you about to places that you wish to go to; and I will see that you have plenty of tobacco and all other things practicable that you may desire-provided that you work well. The more work you do, and the better work you do, the better I shall look after you. You write-that is all I want you to do."
"But," I say to Society, "I don't like work; I don't want to work. Why should I be a slave and work?"
"All right," answers Society, "don't work. I'm not forcing you. All I say is, that if you don't work for me, I shall not work for you. No work from you, no dinner from me-no holidays, no tobacco."
And I decide to be a slave, and work."

- And I decided to write about Submarines. As you can see I am screwed in the eyes of society.

I've invited this man

David Williams:
1. is reading Gonzo Engaged
2. is as cross with Amazon's Customer service cyborgs as I am
3. has good taste in blog colour schemes.

A Winning Ad. Single Female Looking

Hello, I am an attractive, fun, caring and giving 31 year old woman. I try to always be honest and to be understanding. I want to enjoy life and spend time with someone who is kind and fun. I want someone who is my best friend first of all, lover and partner in life. I am easy going, easily amused and I want to try new things like being a female submariner.

More about me:
My most ideal place to live is: Submarine
When it comes to my place: it's not perfect but it's close and everything is within easy reach.
When it comes to Television I: surf indefinitely until I throw up.
My fashion sense can be described as: Uniform. Not dressy

Turn Ons:
Skinny Dipping
Ocean

Turn Offs:
Long Hair
Body Piercings



Bada Bing

The necessity for female sumbariners

"Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France, May 1431, under the general sobriquet of witchcraft. What can the distant mirror of that 19-year-old's execution reveal to us about the Inquisitionesque opposition of American admirals to female submariners?" That's a very good question.

"...The student of military affairs must come to terms with the global-historical ascension of the female-at-arms...For example, Clark University professor Cynthia Enloe explores the causes and ramifications of the militarization of what was once patronizing known as the "fair sex" in an exhaustive study covering almost all of the most controversial aspects of expanded roles for women on the doorstep of 21st century warfighting. The author explains that the globe's servicewomen, increasing integrated into the combat arms, (e.g., a picture and discussion of Bosnian female soldiery charging positions during training with submachine guns is particularly striking) exposes the fallacy, sterility and fervid impracticality of US restrictions on females-at-arms. Professor Enloe points out that "many women have been maneuvered to play a military supportive role," limiting their horizons artificially."

Hollywood will make a movie about it.
Please send your scripts soon.
We must make another war movie. This time about female submariners. It'll be a hit.

BaDA bING.

Shakespeare's modern rewrite for the Plasma Screen

"TV or not TV.
This is a question"

The End

Stay Tuned for an award winning video of the title song performed by Hamleta MC.

Banana self-defense

Sgt.: ....Bananas.  How to defend yourself

       against a man armed with a banana.  Now you, come at me with this

       banana.  Catch!  Now, it's quite simple to defend yourself against a man

       armed with a banana.  First of all you force him to drop the banana;

       then, second, you eat the banana, thus disarming him.  You have now

       rendered him 'elpless.

Palin: Suppose he's got a bunch.

Sgt.:  Shut up.

Idle:  Suppose he's got a pointed stick.

Sgt.:  Shut up. Right now you, Mr Apricot.

Chapman: 'Arrison.

Sgt.:  Sorry, Mr. 'Arrison.  Come at me with that banana.  Hold it like that,

       that's it.  Now attack me with it.  Come on!  Come on!  Come at me!

       Come at me then!  (Shoots him.)

Chapman: Aaagh! (dies.)

Sgt.:  Now, I eat the banana. (Does so.)

Palin: You shot him!

Jones: He's dead!

Idle:  He's completely dead!

Sgt.:  I have now eaten the banana.  The deceased, Mr Apricot, is now 'elpless.

Palin: You shot him. You shot him dead.

Sgt.:  Well, he was attacking me with a banana.

Jones: But you told him to.

Sgt.:  Look, I'm only doing me job.  I have to show you how to defend

       yourselves against fresh fruit

MORE FLYING CIRCUS HERE...

Xmas Nigerians Amazon Invasion

We are very sorry Mister Marks for causing a fuckup in your xmas. We have been testing our Nigerian Bots at Amazon for this holliday season and you were hand picked out of the millions of shoppers to be part of the study. However we didn't realize that a bunch of real flesh Nigerian were hiding inside of bots that were transported to Amazon HQ. The Nigerians tore up the Bots and started attacking Giant Teddy Bears mistaking them for some kind of demons. The inasion has been squelched and all Nigerians have been sent back to tending their sheep back in the hot African interior. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused you and would like to make it up to you by offering your 20% of a possible millions in payout from the money stashed away in Nigeria. If you are ready to help us and receive your reward please email your credit card number and a secret pin and we'll return your Amazon money plus the handsome 20% in our loot.

Please keep this correspondence private.
Dr. Oseke Gumbaratolgbna

Permission Statement

Craig Jensen of Booknotes responds to the Ad Hominen article - "We're giving ourselves permission to be outlaws"

Twas the night before Christmas, and Amazon suck

Extracts from a seasonal correspondence with Amazon's bots.

NAME: Kevin Marks
COMMENTS: this hasn't arrived and is not showing up in tracking at
all. What happened to it?

ORDER DETAILS
***********************************************************
Shipping Details (order will arrive in 1 shipment)
***********************************************************
Shipping method: Two Day Shipping
Shipping estimate: December 21, 2002
Delivery estimate: December 24, 2002

----------
On Tuesday, December 24, 2002, at 04:07 PM, cust.service02@amazon.com
wrote:

Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com.

We have cancelled your order (#002-6250770-4146435) because we were
unable to successfully charge your credit card for this order. You are
welcome to return to our web site and place a new order for the same
items using an alternate method of payment.

We appreciate your business and hope to see you again soon.


Happy Holidays,

Tim Winter
Amazon.com... And You're Done
http://www.amazon.com
==============================
Check your order and more: http://www.amazon.com/your-account


We would appreciate your feedback on our customer service. Follow
the link below if you would like to let us know how we are doing -
your input is invaluable!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cs-experience-survey/-/raty5047
--------------

Date: Wed Dec 25 01:37:38 PST 2002
Subject: Re: Your Amazon.com Order (#002-6250770-4146435)
To: cust.service02@amazon.com
From: kevinmarks@mac.com

Well, you have thoroughly fucked up my christmas by not bothering to
tell me this.

The last I heard from you was an email on the 21st saying the order
was coming on the 24th. My wife is now missing a very personal present.

Frankly, this is not the standard of service I expect from Amazon. I
have plenty of credit on both my credit card and my debit card, so I
can only assume you have charged an obsolete card in your records.

Tim Winter is a suspiciously fictitious name.

Amazon's customer service is your only real asset, as this account
makes clear.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/19/business/19SCEN.html

You have violated my trust, and I don't expect to be buying from you
again.

Rest assured I will tell my friends.
---------------

On Wednesday, December 25, 2002, at 01:40 AM, orders-reply@amazon.com wrote:

Thank you for writing to us at Amazon.com.

Unfortunately, we are unable to determine exactly why your credit
card was declined. A charge can be declined for a variety of
reasons, some of which may not be related to the validity of the
credit card. For example, sometimes a technical error during
processing can cause a charge to decline. For this reason, we often
try processing the charge again at a later time.

However, you may want to contact your issuing bank to inquire about
their policies regarding electronic or internet purchases. Some
banks do place certain restrictions on such purchases, and this may
be the source of the problem.

Alternatively, if the card has been updated or revised in any way
recently, we will need to receive that new information so that we
can process this order successfully for you.

You may submit new or updated payment information for this order
by clicking the "Your Account" link at the top of our web site
and then clicking "Changing payment."

I am sorry not to have more specific information for you regarding
your credit card. We appreciate your business and hope to see you
again soon in our store. Thank you for shopping with Amazon.com.


Happy Holidays,

Sachin Verma
Amazon.com... And You're Done
http://www.amazon.com
==============================
Check your order and more: http://www.amazon.com/your-account


We would appreciate your feedback on our customer service. Follow
the link below if you would like to let us know how we are doing -
your input is invaluable!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cs-experience-survey/-/geuy4875

--------------
From: Kevin Marks
Date: Wed Dec 25, 2002 2:09:58 AM US/Pacific
To: orders-reply@amazon.com
Cc: Jeff Bezos
Subject: Re: Your Amazon.com Order

Be that as it may, not informing me promptly after it had been declined was unconscionably lax on your part. Silently dropping the order meant that I had to dash around the neighbourhood at 4.30pm on Christmas Eve to find an inferior substitute gift.

The whole point of using Amazon's expensive service is to get a service. If you drop my order on the floor and cannot explain why, and don't bother to tell me until after I complain because it is too late you negate the whole reason for your existence.

Next time I want some esoteric CDs for my wife to enjoy I'm off to eBay, where there is at least some sanction against fuck-witted response from vendors, instead of endless boilerplate exculpatory responses from people who fail the Turing test.

Rest assured I will be publishing this correspondence.

Uncle Sugar Wants You

"Persons of the Year..." gag me with a farghhing spork. "Men," in the generic sense - or "women" because they are three - or even "PEOPLE" because that's a plural identifier: TIME Magazine, embroiled in lawsuits even now with Stephen Hawking for brand infringement and trademark devaluation couldn't risk using PEOPLE of the year 'cuz they own both trademarks, TIME and PEOPLE, and they didn't want to dilute the other brand. That's gotta be it.

Of course it's not. These clueless birdbrainians thought they'd step up swinging with a hip, trendy and POLITICALLY CORRECT descriptor, so they chose "Persons of the Year."

I must puke now.

Time Learns of Bloggers--Reverses Its Person of Year Award

It appears we at Time Magazine have made a terrible mistake. we were not aware of this thing called "blogging" when we selected the corporate whistle blowers as persons of the year. holy shit. How long have you people been doing this? We just read this article by one of your blogger friends and now realize we have been scooped! It appears others have lost their jobs for speaking. It appears that these "blogger" people brought Trent Lott's recent racist remarks to the surface before others in our business, well, before us.

WHO KNEW? We at Time did not know. We do not like the Internet. Oh, sure, we have a website. But that is just so the dweeby guys here have something to do.

We have reversed our persons of the year. Bloggers are now our Persons of the Year.

We hope you will buy our magazine.

Time Persons of the Year. What the fuck?

Disclaimer: By reading this post you must agree that the following vomit is a work of pure fiction and you have mental health insurance to take care of any damages to your sensitivities. Proceed with caution. Please keep children, senstitive persons, baptist preachers and stuffed animals away from gazing.

Someone please fucking explain this bullshit to me. Time has these 'whistleblowers' persons of the year. And please don't give me this shit about them being women and this new age empowerment mindfuck. Is this the best we can come up with? Time's article sucks royally.

Ladies and Gentelmen. May I present to you the best communist style propaganda for the Little People of America. Yes. You too can be a fucking hero. "They were people who did right just by doing their jobs rightly—which means ferociously, with eyes open and with the bravery the rest of us always hope we have and may never know if we do."

I am so fucking pissed. Please don't read the rest of this vomit I am about to write but I have to. I have to write something. Look at this sentence " For every one of them, the decision to confront the higher-ups meant jeopardizing a paycheck their families truly depended on." - what the fuck? You mean to tell me that makes you the person of the year? Jeopardizing your next fucking paycheck? I better stop now. It hurts to read this shit.

"These were ordinary people who did not wait for higher authorities to do what needed to be done". I feel like I am in a fucking Communism again. I have heard this shit growing up all the time. All this shit about ordinary people. Yes comarades. We will go out there and give fucking 120% and not just 100%. Message to Time: While you were at it you should have just used some fucking soviet communist propaganda posters. Hey, I found one.


And don't ask me what the fuck it says on this poster.

Update: OK. The poster is a typical fucking soviet style brainwash. In English you could say that the guy in the middle basically says to the other guys "Hey. Listen Fuckers. Stop in the name of love before you breat that fucking tracktor". And more literal translation is 'Hey Guys, This is not a place for Haltura'' or "That's it, boys! Shoddy goods won't fly" as it's on the original website where I found this pic

How do I explain Haltura? OK. Haltura is when you are pretending to do a good job, pretending to be a professional, expert with a diploma and you are supposed to know what to do but you know you are just fucking around and you are flying by the seat of your pants and you are not going to admit that you are fucking up cause you are a nice person and you have finished the right schools and have the diploma to show that you are nice person. And what's worse is that your boss also pretty much knows what's going through your mind because they have also gone to the right school and have the right diploma too but they are not going to tell you that you are fucking up to your face and they will pretend that you are a valuable employee because you are pretending that they are a great boss. So in the end Haltura Rules untill someone becomes a whistleblower to show that we have been fucking up all the time. You knew it. Your boss knew it. We knew it but now you are gonna become a fucking person of the year for it. Fuck it.

OK. One last thing. quote again from Time "they risked all of them to bring us badly needed word of trouble inside crucial institutions". Hello. I risk fucking nothing here to bring you badly needed word of trouble inside your fucking crucial institution. My message is this: Wake Up Motherfuckers. Burn your diplomas and start talking like normal people

Follow the Rainbows at the Yellow Brick Roads

Dear Komrades
We welcome our sister who calls herself Sheepdye. She has used the yellow brick road to escape The Cult of 2440002 Colors Rainbow Makers and the one they call CordialBoy. We will not leave you at peril. Even now as we speak there are many great things of which it is too soon to speak of happening in the land of Oz. But pay no attention to the man behind the cluetrain. Just bring the wool so we can build our secret eye-pullers weapons for the victory is near.

Stay calm. You can bring Sam also if that will ease your pain.

Anonymous Komrade J

I wuz robbed at the dropspot.

To His Honourable (thought I may be wrong) whoever you are Sir.
Regarding your note signed TSLF Inc.

I believe you may be in danger. You de-clocke-ed-panix dot com your secret organization to me and I believe your communication with me was intercepted by the secret spies of Dr Oseke Umalagbaminakumma because I did go to the drop spot and I brought all my cash and other things as you suggested, and I wuz robbed.

The SWAT team you mentioned ended up behaving like a bunch of cult followers. They arrived at the drop spot in a Train car and not by an armored vehicle. That should have been a Clue but I did not listen to my instincts. How could I have been so blind.

Dear sir. I repeat again. You may be in danger. My cash is gone. All that's left is Rage. Boy, that hurts.

Mr Rambone

P.S. Please don't seek your reward with me. I must go off now and take care of my sheep.