Job Vacancies Through Email [Spamfilter]

Based on True Events:

From: Jason Bytheway
Sent: 23 October 2008 14:53
To: Neil Holmes
Subject: FW: Best Vacancy!

Hey Neil!

Just got this – what you think?!!

—–Original Message—–

From: The Russian Mafia [mailto:iwanttodie@scammocorp.ru]

Sent: 23 October 2008 14:43

To: Jason Bytheway

Subject: Bestest Vacancy Ever!

Have you got your own clown nose and baggy pants?

Have you ever been hit in the face by a flan and liked it?

Do you have 3 hours a week to spare and no dignity?

We are a growing circus group looking for open-minded freelance Street Entertainers. If you have more spare time than you should, a passion to horrify entertain and have no sense of self worth you could be earning up to 300 GBp (Great British pence) per hour!

If you are interested, mail iwanttodie@scammocorp.ru

Best regards,

The Russian Mafia

Tags: clowns are shells of real people, email, jobs, random, spamfilter

Pirate Finder General

Cory Doctorow, a man I have nothing but respect for, has just posted the following to BoingBoing:

Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson — or his successor in the next government) the power to make “secondary legislation” (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).

That’s got to be a joke right?

I’d hope that it’s hearsay, but Cory is a founding member of the Open Rights Group (disclaimer: Stoprco buddy UK Pirate Party a few months back, follow ORG’s blog, do something! Copyright is your right to make copies, not the government’s right to stop you.

Tags: copyfight, Cory Doctorow, Open Rights Group, Pirate Finder General, Pirate Party

The best form of Offence…

A story came to my attention this week regarding a TV show and a comedian I rather like. The basics of the item were that Frankie Boyle had been disciplined by the BBC for a joke he made on the panel show Mock the Week. He said that Rebecca Adlington (of Olympic swimming fame) resembled “someone who’s looking at themselves in the back of a spoon”. This lead to 75 complaints and precipitated a BBC Trust meeting that decreed the comments may have caused offence to the audience. Boyle has since discontinued his involvement with the show, but the story went on, covering Miss Adlington’s agent recently stating that they thought that he’d not been sufficiently punished and that the BBC had let him off lightly.

I reacted in several ways to this article, and they were as follows:

+ I loled, finding the joke reasonably amusing and “it’s funny ‘cause it’s true”.

+ Well that’s a shame, I like that show and he’s the funniest comedian on it.

+ I’m not too keen on her any more. I thought she seemed quite nice, but if she can’t laugh at herself then she’s not as British as I supported her for being (let’s not forget she is from Mansfield after all).

+ What the hell is it coming to when a COMEDIAN can’t make a JOKE on what is quite obviously a COMEDY show.

I can’t believe that anyone could realistically think that regular viewers of Mock the Week don’t realise that some of the content may be a little cutting and would therefore be offended by it. Therefore my conclusion must be that this judgement was made as a horrible knee-jerk reaction to the personal involvement of a well known sporting personality, which is no way to run a public funded television station.

This does obviously raise larger questions about where you draw the lines in comedy and how they should be policed. There are some things we can broadly agree aren’t appropriate for people of certain ages, but that’s not what we’re talking about here, we’re talking about adults in the society we “of-age” inhabit.

Personally I’m a proponent of the Stan Marsh school of thought on this question, “Either everything’s alright or nothing is”.

You can’t start laying down rules, because everything risks offending someone somewhere in someway. Especially when it comes to comedy, as you’re laughing at something and that thing can easily be a person, a group of people or something people feel passionately about.

What exactly is the problem with causing offence anyway? A great number of things offend me. Pumping billions of pounds of tax payer money into the banking system, only to have them immediately start paying out bonuses again. The National Lottery being run by a profit making company, people actually voting for X-Factor contestants, oh, and Miss K Price being at all paid attention to by anyone ever.

However, I’m adult, so I take that offence and channel it into rants like this. I don’t start stamping my feet like a baby and tell them to stop, stop, stop. I simply take note that those people are probably idiots and move on with my life with that in mind.

It is a human right we all have to free speech, the problem I see is that few people realise that it comes with the responsibility to maturely manage any offence you might suffer as a result of someone else exercising that right.

Tags: auntie, bbc, comedy, expression, free, offence, rant, speech

I have your movies…

Hey guys and gals and none gender specific trolls (I’m lookin at you Squeil). I just came up with a lovely new game I’ve been playing with myself (please do not insert your own grammar into that sentence and that’s not new, it’s the second oldest game, just behind the game*). It involves entering a message into your mobile/cell** phone and then using the predictive text to deliberately alter the meaning to obscure your true intentions, thus rendering the recipient blissfully unaware of truth that lies beneath…

This can be done for best effect when having something horribly hateful to say but simply disguising it as an informational text or, even better, something nice and complimentary.

If you want to have a go and then wish to share that go with the world*** post your best tries in the comments section, either with the actual message you have subtly camouflaged in [square brackets] or leaving us all to hazard foolish guesses.

* not the wrestler
** delete as applicable
*** world may only extend to the three people that read this blog ever now and then

Tags: camouflage, cellphone, games, modile phone, movies, predictive text, Squeil, word

Dental Appointment

I have a dentist’s appointment today at 2:30pm.
2:30!
You can’t make this shit up.

Tags: crap jokes

The Bleeping Bleeper

So I’m sat there in the wonderful silence of a just emptied office.

“Bleepy, bleep, bleep…” says my phone and I ignore it. It’s probably just Vodaphone telling me I’ll get free texts for an hour in February if I spend another 43p on ring tones or some such.

[Five Great British minutes pass]

“Bleepy, bleep, bleep…” erhhhh, I sigh. I’m trying to get some open-eyed sleep here. I glance to my phone and it’s glowing it’s little flashy “I have something for you” glow. “Leave me alone world”, I think out load and continue to ignore.

[A further five minutes go by]

“Bleepy, bleep, bleep…” I take a cleansing breath, sit up a little straighter and turn to the handset. The screen is progressively lighting up then darkening out as I stare. “Oh well” I think, “it could be a dirty text…”.

I take hold of the phone, closing my eyes wearily as I bring it closer, flicking the screen up with my thumb, revealing the keypad beneath and unlocking the myriad delights that lie within.

I pause for a second then open my eyes. “Low Battery” it says on the half-dark screen. The closing down animation begins and blingy-blongs at me as the phone dies.

Placing the silver now brick aside, I close my eyes and hold my head in my hands thinking about the genius that decided a cell phone’s final resources would be best spent on bleeping and flashing the technicolour death rattle I just experienced. Probably the same wonder-kint that devised the system that sent me 17 e-mails while I was on holiday, to inform me that I had too many e-mails in my inbox.

I raise my head, a solitary tear trickling down my cheek with the final realisation of why they’re actually called cell phones…

Tags: bleep, bleepy, cell, Emo, mobile