He sounds that young in his posts, but his photography history in that other thread made him seem like he had a long illustrious career.

He reads likes he's in his thirties but the photo talk has me thinking he is late fifties.

Just turned 62

63

Thanks for participating; alas, no one guessed it. Please try again next year.

A combination of being young at heart and blending with a younger crowd because IRL no one thinks that I look my age either.

On asking someone today what their job was, they answered "I am a seaman." ... one fun part of what was an essentially crap day.

This is more than mildly amusing, this is cracking me up to be honest, but there's no "What's cracking you up today?" thread...

So like 5 years ago, I bought a CD from a cute little independent website called CDBaby. Flash forward about 3 years, I get an email from the owner of the site talking about how he has sold the site for a ridiculous sum and used all the money to create a charity promoting music classes for underprivileged kids.

It was a nice story and all, but the tone of the email was more than a little pandering. The whole thing was written as if we were good friends, mail-merged with my first name, the name of the CD I had bought way back when, and even my shipping destination city. (As in, "Hope you've been enjoying that great weather in Austin!") Of course it had been sent to the entire email list of everyone who had ever purchased a CD from him, and was basically asking, in a super chummy way, for donations and other support for his new charity.

Well, I was bored that day, and more than a little bemused, so I wrote him an email in reply--as if yes, we were in fact good friends, and here, since he's given me such an extensive update on his life, let me in turn give him an extensive update on my interests. I told him all about the autism treatments, my cooking blog, sent him links to the progress videos, etc. He did write back with thanks and cursory interest, then it fizzled out after one or two more back-and-forths.

Then a few months later, he spammed me again with more self-serving links and information about his "projects." Again, to his whole list, again as if we were old friends from before the war. So I replied again in kind.

And again. And again.

Every time this dude contacts me about shit I don't care about, I send him one back about shit he doesn't care about. Today, my email said this:

Etc., etc., lots of details about how great he's doing, the Tae Kwon Do school where no one has any idea he has (soon to be had) a diagnosis, and the current balance of digestive meds. But the real kicker was my closer:

God, I hope his email program has a preview function that will load the image without asking.


I know it would be more effective to just ask this guy directly to take me off his email list. But this is so much more fun...

you are an evil genius, CF

:lol: That's awesome.

I've taken to messing with the system lately. If I ever get anything addressed "to the householder" with a return address that looks unimportant, I return it marked "not known at this address". Or "deceased".

Make some bored drone in the dead letter office have a total WTF? moment.

Nicely played!

I should not be allowed in the Tar-jay without a responsible adult.

Luckily I will be returning about $50 worth of the stuff I bought because it didn't fit.

So, like I'm in the female workout wear department. They have a lot of cute stuff, little racerback sports bras, little yoga pants, little Daisy Duke running shorts, emphasis on the little.

There was a staff member stocking and rehanging these cute little outfits. She was a very substantially sized young lady.

I asked her, "Excuse me, but do you have any workout wear for women who actually need it?"

She didn't say a word. She just shook her head, very slowly.

We both laughed in a very jolly manner.

I have to go check out the workout wear section at the Walmart. I think they are more likely to have my size.

My problem was that I decided to go around the whole store. Usually I just head straight for what I went for. And I kind of did. Unfortunately, there was an entire store in between the first thing I went for and the second.

hehe thanks for the laugh clodfobble! :)

That's hilarious Clod. Awaiting the report of the CD guy's reply.

I love this story. :)

Oh, and the "entire store" included the Hello Kitty duct tape, right?

Target gets me into trouble every time!

Yes, wolf your story was funny too but I read it second and so, I forgot after the chuckle fest I had over clods.

"The emphasis on the word little" is oh so true. I've thought the very same thing. They certainly look like a size 3. I pick one up and I imagine a trim toned tall athletic person, tanned and gorgeous and put the item down, thinking it's out of my league.

I saw a woman in the Wally World with an outfit made of those very items, the 'little' ones. I was totally jealous until she turned around and I realized she wasn't a working-out, dedicated, 'my body is a temple' health fiend, she was a hillbilly crackhead.

But she looked GREAT from the back. :lol:

I got my last swimming costume from the internet.
Having scoured three very hot sportswear shops with very badly organised sections, I decided I felt like too much of a freak and would rather take care of my needs anonymously.

Hello kitty duct tape?!? Really??? Either im just gullible or wow. Just wow.

Do pools in the UK have shops attached with swimming costumes for normal people? I've found them to be much better than any other kind of shop that sells swimming costumes.

He did reply this time, actually (doesn't usually.) He said:

He's not a bad guy, just a dyed-in-the-wool PR personality. To be honest, I'm betting he'll out-chum me in the end.

Swimming costume discussions are mildly amusing me today. :D

I can't speak with any authority, having only been to one pool as an adult, but my personal experience is NO.
And the chances are, if they did, they would again only cater for the standard sizes, having limited space and looking for the maximum sales per retail area.

'Cause all I can think is "you mean, like, Batman or something?"

I know it's just a difference in the words we use, but it makes me chuckle.

A lot like when someone comments on the professional football team's new 'costumes.' (And I mean American football, the big bulky guys in uniform, not the other kind where the little guys traipse around and they actually do wear cute little costumes.) :p:

Brits would say Strip or Kit to mean a sports uniform. Uniforms are for schoolkids and soldiers and maybe nurses

No really. I posted a picture in Products I Wholeheartedly Endorse

So, the ill-fitting items are safely back in the store, although I nearly had to get out the EMT shears to release myself from the "compression sports bra" that turned out to be two sizes smaller than what the tag said.

While I was in the mongo-plex returning stuff, I decided to check out a couple of other stores ... Dicks Sporting Goods also does not sell workout wear for people who actually need it, although I did get a very nice firestriker, backpacking chair, a spork, and some drybags.

I had to approach two Customer Associates in the BestBuy looking for an mp3 player whose name does not start with a lower case i.

They had two, they cost nearly as much as the iEquivalent, with less data storage, and so I walked out without getting anything. However, based on this experience, I may be getting closer to buying one of those iThings.

Wolf, try a local non-chain sportswear shop. Or wally world.

ok so how about making a swimming costume out of hello kitty duct tape?

You never know, a beautiful friendship could be born. :D

sold my old wedding ring for enough for dinner and a movie

Jewelry. Feh. Attaching precious metals and whatnot to your body in different ways. I'm against it.

The Germans have it right. Their word for jewelry is Schmuck.

I thought they called it maize... or farfegnugen. One of those.

I guess I don't understand the gold market. I read it's up to $1600/oz. Figure a ring weighs about an ounce and is more than half gold if it's 14k. Wouldn't the ring be worth a lot more?

I misplaced my ring, or it is not where I left it.

I keep hearing a commercial for Chicken Rings. Somehow that does not sound appetizing. I wonder if Chocolate Starfish are on the dessert menu?

Maybe mr. toad meant he was making a movie?

I'm sorry, dinner and a movie FOR TWO

My wedding ring cost 11 quid. yes, it's gold.

9 year old is on his fifth week of summer swim season (and it's not his first season). Every day except Sunday, he's in the pool at 8am, so he puts his Speedo on when he gets dressed. Not once has he remembered to take it upstairs with him as he goes to get dressed, despite walking right past the drying rack. Not once.

Some Doofus left the drain on the 50 meter city pool open overnight. Today is the hottest day of the year. Someone might be in big trouble. It's not really funny, except it is... and we have another pool to cool off in. But there was no high school swim practice today. And if those lane lines are permanently stretched, that's going to be a pricey incident, never mind the water and chemical bill....

a quick snap.....

oops.

I guess you can't just cut off the extra lane line huh? They are sort of like rulers and the colors mean stuff?

right. you can shorten them but they need an element of flex and I'm guessing that might be all gone. Sort of like boobies bounce but eventually there comes a point when they're staying knee-bound. These look like granny boob lane lines to me. Of course maybe I just need more/less caffeine, Im used to dashing around in the mornings, but both pools are now closed today so I'm all discombobulated because i still got up early enough to do that

My pic was used in the local news story!

That's awesome! Can I have your 'graph? :)

Will John's do?

http://blogs.oberlin.edu/bloggeruploads/Graph.jpg

or how about a cookie chart?

http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/...e-internet.png

/yelliknowhellforsure

Mildly amusing me today is that some friends of ours were wondering yesterday why their house was so warm. They though their air conditioner wasn't working right or something. The wife mentioned it to the husband who reminded her that it was her fault. She had signed up at a farmer's market in the spring to be a family that lets the power company control their air conditioning on these hottest days of the year in order to avoid brown outs. She's very "green" and also you save a few bucks each month on your power bill if you let the power company have that control. It wasn't until this week that she really understood exactly what control she was giving up.

She had been talking it up in the spring and had my wife all convinced we should do it, too, but I was like "wtf? Why should we let the power company turn our AC off on the days that we need it most?"

So anyway, I heard all this, and now this friend is posting on facebook that we should all set our AC a few degrees warmer to take a little load off the grid. It's a good point, but I think she's just trying to get others to join her in misery.

I'm already there.

The now defunct A/C in my kitchen (still plugged in so the temp readout is there) read 99 degrees yesterday. Not sure if it reads into 3 digits.

The one in the living room and bedroom are working their little hearts out but just cannot keep up with the extreme extended heat.

I may need to shell out the money for a new one for the kitchen but I keep thinking after the heat wave passes it'll be OK.

How did we grow up without A/C? Schools didn't have A/C. Our house didn't. I don't remember thinking much about it.

As my friend is fond of saying:
"Live simply so that I don't have to."

I grew up in Miami and we didn't have AC.

We were part of a program like that back when we lived within Austin utilities. The deal for us was you got a free programmable thermostat to replace your crappy old one. Aside from the free hardware and installation, you could then of course program it so it wasn't cooling when people weren't home during business hours, thus saving yourself the money that way rather than getting a specific discount each month.

They were very detailed about when and how they could cut off the A/C--it would never go off completely, the temp would just be set to a max of 82 degrees, for no more than 30 minutes at a time. In the three years we were on it, I only happened to see the under-remote-control display kicked on once, and never actually noticed a temperature difference at any point.

I was curious how it worked.

I'm exaggerating of course when I say they turn off your AC. But I understood I would be giving them the authority to take full control of my AC and in theory that was up to and including turning it off completely. It would make sense for them to just tweak it a little bit, since people would drop out of the voluntary program if their AC was turned off entirely for large stretches of time.

Well that's just the contract that Austin Utilities drew up, it's surely a different system in Virginia. It also helps that there are a ton of Earthy/green folks around here who are all signed up on the program, so the burden is split between a lot more houses. If only a small percentage of your area has agreed to it so far, those houses could very well be suffering on a regular basis.

We had a similar arrangement when I was a kid; my dad would shout "Goddammit, this electricity isn't free, turn out the lights when you leave the room!"

Then he would think he was getting over on the power company by installing 55watt bulbs instead of 60s. Despite being a very smart person, occasionally his calculations skipped a step or two.

yes, but it was a dry heat.

I just opened a can of diet coke and a cow orker clear on the other side of the room said "I just heard a beer open!" I said we were having brews and cooking shish kebabs on the grill, come on over!

Well, later on I'll be doing that. ;)

I was mildly amused at the Wally World the other day. A fairly big woman, in her 40s (who could walk quite well, thank you very much) was complaining to the greeter that she'd walked all over the store looking for a riding scooter, but they were all out. Hmmmph.

I thought "keep looking, you'll add years to your life."

I know I know. There are issues I couldn't know about; she might really be suffering. (Prolly "fibromyalgia")

Next time I'm going to go in and get a riding scooter because I'm too depressed to shop. ;)

Max and I are watching Funniest Home Video's, and at the end of every video Max says, 'He fall down' then laughs.

It's just funny.

every now and then we do some work for the USPS ( United States Postal Service ) ,
Its ALLL WAYS a Pain in the ass ,
Back in the day the USPS Scale shop would call Bytoching that we wernt Authorized to TOUCH Their scales , etc,,,,, Even though the Post master had called us in to fix what The Scale shop couldn't,,,,,,

fast forward to 2 years ago , we got the contract to check Lots of Post Offices scales , at 1 location After they had let me in and i had checked the scales the Post master said " Who Autherized you to be here ???"
My responce , I have No idea , My Boss told me to come here and check your scales and what to charge you , i assume we have a contract with the state , well he started going off , i dont get paid to put up with that shit so i left , as I was leaving 2 police cars come Blazeing up to the Post office , i just left the area ,
my Boss didnt believe that the cop cars came , untill today

when he had to call the CEO to call the Postmaster of the State to have one of my co workers released from Police custody !!

HA HA !!!

That may explain why "going postal" is so popular.

I'm mildly amused by the titles of some philosophical papers.

Can Time Pass at the Rate of One Second Per Second?

The No-No Paradox is a Paradox.

The Error in "The Error in the Error Theory".

That last paper is a criticism of an earlier paper, and alas, when the original author replied, he merely called it "Errors upon errors: a reply". Pfft. Spoilsport.

Because the mail never stops.

Tonight I received a strange email from my daughter...