Credit Where It's Due

This is a rant. I will not apologize for it though I do hope that if you don't take a lesson from it you're at least mildly entertained for a time. If you don't like rants, running is acceptable.


Credit where it's due. It might seem simple and almost meaningless but this is something that is so important these days on the internet. Where information is travelling faster and faster attribution and credit are sometimes essential to people's livelihood.

Okay, sure those are just words. What am I actually pissed off about?

Stealing. Reposting. Claiming something cool and unique as your own original content when you stole it. When you know you stole it. When no attempt is made at all to find the original creator or source of the information you are peddling as yours.

Junk Mail

I feel the need to break my lengthily silence by bring you an important announcement.

SPAM IS RIDICULOUS.

In some cases, such as a Lovely Monty Python sketch about the canned version of this word, are a wonderful kind of ridiculous that makes me happy.

Junk Email version is not that kind of ridiculous, but a worse more aggravating and time consuming mash of crap.

Now you might already know this, consider yourself lucky, but there are a large, massive group of people who do not know. How do I know they don’t know? SPAM STILL EXISTS! If people knew about SPAM, SPAM would be inefficient and a waste of time and money.

So. I’ll give you a snippet from my email to let you see the kind of SPAM I have and how to tell from the title. Besides, you know the obvious that it’s in my JUNK folder.

1.

Okay, this is pretty easy to spot. One: Are you female? Then you probably don’t give a shit and didn’t sign up for enlargements to your nonexistent cock. Two: If you are male did you sign up for this? If so it wouldn’t go to junk. This rule can be applied to just about every email you’ll see, however in this case you should NEVER BUY YOUR DRUGS ONLINE. For real. That’s just creepy shit.

2.

BREAKING NEWS: I ALREADY DO WORK ON THE INTERWEBS!! Job offers to not come to you titled as such, only scams do. They’ll probably then ask for your credit card. Maybe a mailing address or another professional email to send you updates and information on how you can start your own interweb business! It’s Magic! All you do is point and click!

If you think it’s as easy as opening an email wake up. It’s not. Besides, ask yourself, why are they contacting you? Who are you? Why should/would they care to get you working online? Have you ever considered they’re trying to fuck with your shit!?

3.

Paid surveys might have been a good idea once. You see the ads ‘Stay at Home Mom makes 2000/week by doing surveys!!’ Even if it was true (which it isn’t) they’re not telling you about the 98% of other people who sign up for ‘paid surveys’ and get attacked by other offers until their inbox crashes.  Stop. Think. Review. Who the fuck will pay you for your opinion when you can get a million people’s online FOR FREAKING FREE! It’s a marketing scam. An evil one. DO NOT OPEN.

4.

Flags should start going off by the words ‘Social Alert’. What social media platform of ANY kind refers to their alerts as ‘SOCIAL ALERTS’? None! They’ll say ‘Facebook Message’ or ‘Twitter.com’ in the sender’s box. Which could still be SPAM but much more stealthily hidden SPAM. This is just... don’t open it. I really wish when you did the private message read ‘You’re a Tool!” because you are if you do. These are meant to trap you into going to a similar looking website, put in personal information and then lose all privacy you once thought you could never lose. Don’t click anything justDELETE.

5.

Okay this isn’t SPAM, but ended up in Junk because sometimes you need to check and it happens. I am registered with Google Earth (from high school mind you so it’s staying in junk). Think before clicking, Did I ever sign up for this? If you can’t remember it wasn’t important and you don’t need to open the damn mail. This goes the same for:

Maybe I should open that NVIDIA one... but eh. My drivers work, and I do not care about 3D glasses.

6.

OMG this was why I’m writing this. First, it’s brilliant because everyone quoting the insane Charlie Sheen. He’s made of Tiger Blood – did you know? #Winning! But it’s a scam. No one on Sheen’s PR team gives a shit about you or me for that matter. They don’t want you to find ways to stop wasting your time and earn more money. They want you to open your wallet for some tutorial on how to have Tiger Blood and be like a fucking fighter jet while you pay 12.99/minute for advice you can get on Drunk Hulk’s Twitter feed. (Note: It’s awesome, with linky goodness. @DRUNKHULK )

7.

Anyone offering you gold online either wants you to suck their elven WOW cock or they’re trying to steal real money. Cash4Gold my ass.

8.

This is my favourite though. First, note the attachment and run away. It’s bad news bears my friends and you do NOT want to get hacked. Also, you will not have won a random string of numbers! Sometimes you will win actual thing but if they’re contacting you with the name ‘=Ms. E.Mail Lottery’ they’re probably planning to sell your credit card number and financial information. This would be a wise moment to back the fuck away from the computer, have a good laugh and promptly give your screen the finger. Yes. Do it. It’ll make you feel better. Annnnnd delete!

The rest is the same old bullshit as seen above. You might also get some email from Peter something or other who really needs your help! He’s in a terrible situation, he has no bank account to put his 12 million dollars and needs you to just give him your account numbers, he’ll put his money there and then withdraw only 10 million on the ‘morrow. You can have the rest for doing him such an honour.

Please note this is when he takes all your money, credit cards and anything else attached to the accounts you’ve sent him. Peter then never responds to your emails and he and his 12 million disappear from your life as your debt racks up halfway across the world.

It sucks, but these people do exist and you need to stop feeding them reasons to annoy me an my Junk Mailbox. If no one fell for this bullshit my junk folder would only be filled with updates I don’t care about instead of penis enlargements and GOOLLLLDD!!

Be kind. Please delete.

Do not perpetuate the SPAM.

Rage Time: Chain Letters/Emails

This is something we've ALL seen and all felt some sort of pressure from. The chain Email, that stupid little thing your aunt or your friends, girlfriends, little sister sent you that ‘requires’ you pass it on.

I hate them, we all do, but I feel the need to address a certain kind of chain mail, or at least one, that I appreciate and understand the need for.


Irena Sendler. If you don’t know the name you need to stop, go to Wikipedia, look her up read the ENTIRE article then come back.
I’m serious. This is no joke. Irena Sendler Wiki Page



You back?

Good.


I received an email, or better said a chain letter, talking about Irena Sendler. I almost didn’t read it because I fucking hate chain letters with a passion. I am nearly to the point of wanting to walk down the hall and scream at a co-worker for having sent me one of those things AT WORK.


But this was different. It talked about who she was, what she’s done (no, I’m not telling you so go read the goddamn wiki-page already!), and why she deserved the win the Nobel prize but didn’t.

Of course it’s a tear jerking story but that’s not what I want to talk about.

It’s the importance of messages like this: the ones that actually mean something instead of the crap guarantying luck, money, happiness if you just click ‘Forward’.


I’ve never had a ‘real’ chain letter, just chain emails. And when you think about it, shouldn’t a letter be something so important you have to tell people, take the time to write it down and really think hard? Hell at one time it was something so important you had to pay for people to know?

Why do emails NOT fall under these rules? Sure it’s easier but don’t we all have something better to say to the multitude of people on our contact lists??


Like yesterday there was a woman on the subway. She was a chatty, middle-aged, Asian who had trouble with English but just wanted to talk. I was a few seats away and super tired, but there was a young man sitting in front of her. She started talking and he answered and talked back.
He wasn’t condescending.
He didn’t get up and move when she started to annoying him.
He played a long and indulged her.
Should he have had to? No. But it was nice.


He’s no Irena Sendler, but he was a kind young man, no more than 25 on a subway at 10:30 at night chatting to a strange little woman when he was obviously tired.

I think these moments are more important to me than hearing about how I can win 1 BILLION dollars by sending this to 52,000 people in the next 5 minutes.
I WANT people to know about this kind young man who sat there while this woman told him he should get a better coat because his mother might worry about him being cold. I like that people can know that I appreciate moments of kindness like this and that there are good people out there who aren’t so concerned with their own lives.


Kindness. Sadness Compassion. Heart. Soul. Tenderness. Hilarity. Important things belong in emails. Important.Like the drawing my aunt made of her late husband that she wanted to share with the family.
Updates from my father on what his yard looks like this spring.

An email from a friend I haven’t heard from in ages telling me the horrors of her ex and why she was so stupid for dating him in the first place.



Yes there’s all that other stuff we get in the mail. Bills, messages for Facebook, twitter follows and other crap. But they don’t mean what real emails/letters should mean.


So try this. It may sound stupid, and I don’t care what you think right now but just try it and let me know how it goes.

Send someone you like, love, enjoy an email telling them about something you like, love/hate, think is important or enjoy. It can be about another person. It could be a rant even. But send a good, heartfelt, honest email today. Or if you’re super artsy and silly like me send a snail-mail letter, hand written on pretty paper.
You will feel better for having shared something real. You will make someone feel just a little bit more special then they did before.


And so help me if you send a goddamn chain letter with one of those ‘send to five people if you want luck’ I’ll find you and take a pound of flesh for every person you demand the email is forwarded to.

No joke.

I'm that nuts.