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I received my Virginia voter’s registration card in the mail today. It makes South Carolina’s look like a Picasso and the only thing the Palmetto State has going for theirs is that it’s blue. Virginia’s is a long, bland white strip that won’t even fold properly thanks to non-perforated edges.

Screw new roads in D.C. or better rural schools, I want something that I won’t mistake as a crummy business card in my wallet. I think I’m gonna refuse to vote here until a candidate campaigns for new voter registration cards.

I’ve been working on Shyzer for the past 8 hours and I just asked myself if I’m not sitting here wasting my time.

It looks like I’m gonna go with the Flickr Pro account. I actually installed the 4Images program I talked about earlier and it works just fine, but the thought of uploading all the photos and thinking of captions and crap for them again simply was not an appealing thought. Plus it just doesn’t look right, what with the way the categories and photos are displayed. Plus, Flickr is so much cleaner and with the promise of no outside ads being run and unlimited storage / bandwidth, I think it’s the smartest decision. That’ll clear 600megs off my server and free that room up for some other things I’d rather share

I figure I may as well stay up all night at this point and keep working on Shyzer. My problem is that I have so many ideas and things that I want to try to do, that I fail to focus enough and get anything accomplished. Here’s to hoping I can finish at least one of these ideas by the end of the week and have something to show for it.

I always thought it was odd when I walked in a restaurant and saw one of those little “How are we doing?” cards on all their tables. It seemed like a waste of the paper they were printed on, for who in their right mind would think that a small postcard filled with “unsatisfactory” marks would sway the minds of those sitting in a corporate office? And who even filled out those things, anyways? I’d never seen a patron complain to their waitress and then fill the thing out. Usually a new meal and a free Oreo dessert was all it took to make most people happy.

And then one day I received a letter addressed to Mr. Delay.

About eight years ago, Atlanta Bread Company opened a small deli in the local mall and it was all the rage. I admit, they made some damn good sandwiches, but for a broke high school kid, they were a little pricey. One night, however, Chong and I were walking out of the movie theater and decided to grab some dinner before heading home. We strolled over to ABC and were about halfway through our meal when I noticed the small rectangle out of the corner of my eye. I have no idea what movie we had just seen, but it must have been a comedy, because I remember being in one of those giddy and punchy moods. You know the one, where everything is funny and God help you if somebody near by says the word “duty.”

Alex ran up to the counter and grabbed a pen and we proceeded to fill out the card with remarks such as “Our pickles were too soggy” and “The music here is gay” and “The checkout lady didn’t smile OR suggestively wink at me when I paid her my money!” At the end, it asked for our name and address. We settled on using “Art Vandelay” as our name, yet for some reason we actually used my real address.

About two weeks later, we were strolling through the hallways in school when one of Chong’s friend ran up to him and punched him in the chest. “What the hell did you do,” she demanded from him. Knowing a pissed off, psychotic girl when I saw one, I decided it was high time I get the hell away from this scene before it turned ugly, so I began to walk off. “Oh no, you’re in this too! You both were sitting there laughing your asses off while filling out that questionnaire!” It finally dawned on me that this was Chong’s friend that worked over at ABC. However, still being truly confused since we doubted our little review could have caused such a reaction, we asked her to elaborate. “We got a freaking 15 cent pay cut because of you guys! And somebody from corporate is coming to inspect us later this week. Whatever you morons wrote on that card pissed somebody off!”

We were stunned. They actually took that thing seriously? We figured the name would be signal enough that it was a joke since everybody and their cousin in that day and age knew “Art Vandelay” was the fictional character from Seinfeld.

Once we got home later that day, Chong came over to my house for a few minutes and we sat chatting in the kitchen as I ruffled through the mail. I remember stopping in mid-sentence and bursting into laughter when I saw who the envelope was addressed to. I ripped it open and looked at the letter just to see if they’d made a mistake on the outside.

Nope. They’d addressed the darn thing to a “Mr. Delay.” The letter went on to explain how they were very sorry and how they’d make sure to investigate into the poor quality of the food, the low level of customer service, and the “inappropriate” music, among many of the other silly things we’d complained about. We must have showed that letter to everybody we knew and beamed proudly when people asked if we were the ABC idiots. I’ve got no idea what happened to it, though, for I can’t remember actually seeing that letter in many years. It’s one of those many things you look back on and think, “Damn, I really wish I had kept that, if for no other reason as a reminder of how retarded and yet how much fun we used to have.”

However, I still don’t consider this issue resolved since I never got my free Oreo dessert. Maybe Mr. Delay needs to write another letter.

I’ve officially reached the end of my patience with the Shyzer Gallery software (which is oh-so-cleverly named Gallery) and am going to be ditching it. They came out with an “upgrade” back in September and frankly, the only thing it upgraded were the number of headaches their software would give me over the course of a week. I’ll spare you the mumbo-jumbo, but as it currently stands, it takes me 8 minutes to upload a single picture.

Eight minutes per fucking picture.

No thank you.

So, I’ve spent today backing up my pictures and am going to spend tomorrow moving over to something else. As of now, I am considering switching to either 4images, Coppermine, or pay $24.99 for a Flickr Pro account. I would go with one of the two free software, but they both could have me wanting to strangle myself just like Gallery has over the past few years. And while Flickr costs money each year, there are some cool plugins with WordPress that I could use.

I thought about taking the damn pictures down altogether, but once I thought about it and looked at the stats, I actually realized how many people visit the darn things each day. So since people seem to enjoy them, I’ll keep them around – albeit in a new format – and anybody who wants to see me in a freaking dress at 0300 on a Tuesday morning will still be able to come to Shyzer and have a peek.

And just as quickly as it arrived, Puke Fest 2006 faded off into the night. I think my favorite part was when I was talking to my socks, which I thought were my cat. Good times. I expected the house to be in a post-Katrina like state with clothes, toys, and food scattered throughout the rooms. Luckily, it wasn’t too bad and I was able to bring it back to “mom approved” specifications with only an hour or two of work.

I would write more, but I can’t see much since I’ve had to throw my contacts out since I’ve been wearing the same pair for, oh, about 18 months now. When I completely lose my eyesight at age 35, I’m gonna have nobody but myself to blame.

Puke Fest 2006 is in full swing and I must say, I’m ready for it to end. I woke up this morning feeling kinda quessy and by the end of the Patriots-Jags game, I was just coming back into reality. I was so delusional today, I thought it was around noon when it was really 2100.

Some might think I’m sharing too much information when I tell you that for 7 hours, on the hour, I puked. It was like clockwork. Kinda cool actually. But no, my friends, I think the “too much information” label should be applied when I tell you that once I spewed up the Pepto Bismal that I had taken and it didn’t taste that bad the second time around!

And somebody give Juls a medal for taking care of the house while I was bedridden.

This video clip is flying across the Internet at a faster pace then the Star Wars or Numa Numa Kids combined, but I wanted to take a minute to talk about it and point out a few things. I’m talking about the Bill O’Reilly – David Letterman clip, of course, where surprisingly Letterman doesn’t back down to the obscene claims O’Reilly begins spouting.

I’ve uploaded the clip here to Shyzer and even though it’s 12 MB, I’d highly suggest you download it to at least watch it once, if for no other reason than it’s highly entertaining. Right off the bat, you can see Letterman dipping his pencil in O’Reilly’s drink and stirring it around for a bit. Five minutes later, O’Reilly asks is that’s his drink, Letterman answers yes with a grin, and the crowd laughs as he takes a big gulp.

But what I really want to take a closer look at is the technique Bill O’Reilly has seemed to master – the art of deceptive implication. About ten seconds before the seven minute marker, O’Reilly is trying to explain to Letterman why he detests Cindy Sheehan. Listen to him carefully:

We believe that the United States, particularly the military, are doing a noble thing. A noble thing. The soldiers and Marines are noble. They are not terrorists and when people call them that, like Cindy Sheehan; called the insurgents freedom fighters, we don’t like that.

Now look at that quote again and more importantly, listen to the way he says it in the clip. This is classic O’Reilly chicanery. He starts off by praising the United States, the military, and the soldiers. He calls them noble three times in a row in order to strike the sympathetic chord within his viewers. He’s baiting us for his next sentence so that our brains will subtly make the inference on our own.

They are not terrorists and when people call them that, like Cindy Sheehan; called the insurgents freedom fighters, we don’t like that.

Do you see what he did there? Do you hear the two heavy and drawn out pauses he makes in his voice so that we are given the impression that Cindy Sheehan is calling our soldiers terrorists? If not, allow me to show you. This is what he’s saying, broken down even further:

“Our noble soldiers are not terrorists and when people call them that, like Cindy Sheehan (pause long enough for us to make the assumption that Sheehan is calling our troops terrorists); called the insurgents freedom fights, we don’t like that (again, long pause so our brain can wrap it up.)”

It’s the same method the Bush Administration used for linking Iraq and 9/11 back in 2003. This is not some awkward sentence that O’Reilly is stumbling over. When read, it loses some of its power, because you can see by the punctuation that he is saying Sheehan called the insurgents freedom fighters instead of calling American soldiers terrorists. However, when spoken and combined with the right mixture of pauses and innuendos, it’s a powerful tool of deception. He never comes out and says that Sheehan called our troops terrorists. He knows that if he does that, he can be called out for it by others for spreading false lies. So what does he do? He speaks with sentences that would make an English Lit teacher cringe, but that make the American viewers at home think he’s saying what he won’t come out and say. And I must say, he’s amazingly superb at it.

The problem with O’Reilly is that he rarely places himself in situations as the one that occurred on Letterman. On his show, if somebody begins to disprove what he’s saying, he essentially drowns out their voice by screaming at them about how American is under attack. He did appear on The Daily Show, which I’ll give him credit for doing so, but even then Jon Stewart went much softer on him then I would have hoped for. It seems he prefers to let O’Reilly make an ass of himself on his own show and then just laugh along at the absurdity of it. (For a great example of this, check out this clip from about a month ago.) But like I said, O’Reilly rarely places himself in a situation where somebody could, let’s say, pounce on the Ridgeview, Wisconsin example he so proudly paraded as an example of the “war on Christmas” that liberals were waging. If you only took O’Reilly’s word for it, you’d be left with the impression that a school board in Wisconsin had changed the lyrics of “Silent Night” to “Cold in the Night” in order to be politically correct. In reality, the “Cold in the Night” version is part of a coherent children’s musical written in 1988 called “The Little Tree’s Christmas Story.” As with other musicals, the words to some traditional Christmas songs were tailored to tell the tree’s story. Of course, after all the negative attention and publicity O’Reilly has focused upon the school, they are going back and redoing the musical with the carols’ tradition tunes, which will in essence render the musical incomprehensible. Bravo, O’Reilly. Bravo.

The examples go on and on and Letterman clearly proved in this exchange that he’s no Jon Stewart by hiding behind the thin veil of “I’m not smart enough to debate you,” but he also confronted O’Reilly on almost every talking point he tried to bring up, which is rare for main stream talk show hosts in this day and age. I only wish Letterman’s staff had done some homework and given him some examples and cases where O’Reilly has flat out lied on his television program. The interview would have been even more powerful had it ended with O’Reilly tripping over himself and his past quotes, but alas, I’ll take what I can get and appreciate every second of Letterman holding his ground. Especially when you remember the fact that The Late Show isn’t supposed to be some political debate forum, but instead a place for celebrities to pitch their latest book or movie.

All in, this clip at least proves that (A) Letterman can still be entertaining from time to time, (B) Not all crap goes unchecked, and (C) Bill O’Reilly is still amazingly ignorant.

And just as a little side note for O’Reilly, since this has always been a pet peeve of mine. It’s M-eye-6, not M-1-6, as in Military Intelligence (section) 6. When’s the last time anybody called the Central Intelligence Agency C-1-A?

Remember the post I made way back when talking about how there was a site giving away free iPods? Of course you do, because you’re all loyal Shyzer readers who know and remember everything I do here. I ended up getting my free iPod from them only a few months after making that post and happily spent the next year or so jamming out and enjoying it to the fullest extent.

And then while I was over in Australia, I stumbled onto a message board that had lists of all the free stuff you could get from these companies and I was astounded. IPods, desktop and laptop computers, digital cameras, flatscreen monitors and televisions, video game systems and games, even designer handbags for the ladies – you name it, you can get it for free. I made a mental note to look into it again when I got back to the states and I did just that. I signed up for a few sites, began getting / buying referrals and started going “green” on a few sites in December. (Going green is slang for getting all your refs, having your account go through the normal review process, and be approved for your freebie prize)

When I got back from picking up Colton at school today, look what I found on my doorstep.

The shipping time was actually remarkable fast. None of that 6 to 8 weeks bullshit. I went green on Dec 28 and they tried to deliver it yesterday. I filled out the form telling them to leave it and now today I’ve got myself a 30 GB, black, video iPod.

If anybody is actually interested in getting into the oh-so-lucrative market of getting stuff for free, I’d suggest starting by reading the walkthrough found over on Hey, It’s Free. (link since removed) The one I wrote in that post a year and a half ago is a bit dated since it was written, well, a year and a half ago. One Hey, It’s Free, there is not only an up-to-date walkthrough, but a Tips & Tricks section, an offers rating, and a FAQ about the freebie world.

Also, if you are going to sign up for a freepay site, don’t just go to www.freewhatever.com and create an account. Try and sign up under somebody else so that you become a referral for them. It’s pointless just to sign up without becoming a referral because then you are essentially making it harder for other people to get their freebie and it doesn’t help you or hurt you either way, so why not just help out somebody else? If you don’t know anybody who is signed up for the site you want to sign up for, leave a comment here and I can give you my ref link since I’m signed up for just about every site there is I’d certainly appreciate it!

Many a nights I stay up late working on the computer or reading or whatnot and it’s not unusual for me to drift off to sleep at 0400 or 0500. And while I don’t watch hardly any TV during the day, the few shows that I do watch usually start between 2100 and 2300. After my shows end, I tend the flip the TV on mute and go about my business since there’s nothing but crap on TV from midnight until I go to bed. However, sometimes I’m sucked in and I can’t help but watch something late at night. And whenever the show I’m watching goes on commercial, I’m of course subjected to phone sex after phone sex ads.

It’s no secret that I love LOST. In fact, I’m thinking about digging up that post I made about a year ago breaking down the show and updating to include the massive amount of info we’ve received since then. It’s also no secret that I think Kate is hot. I try to ignore the fact that in real life she’s dating Charlie and instead pretend in my little world she’s just sitting at home at night waiting to meet me. But still, no matter what hobbit she dates, it still doesn’t change the fact that she’s hot and that she’s hot.

As a 1988 edition of COPS went to commercial the other night, I diverted my attention back to my laptop to finish wrapping up a future post. In the background I could hear some 900 number being given to talk to young hot studs and while the offer was temping, I figured I’d pass. Something told me they weren’t gonna want to talk about the Mariners or my latest computer upgrades. I then heard a voice that was somewhat familiar and which caused me to glance up towards the screen. I couldn’t place where I knew the voice from, but I couldn’t see the speaker since the commercial was showing happy couples lying in front of fire places and going for walks on a beach. Then, right as the commercial was ending, I saw this chick talking to me. A hot chick. Wait a minute….Kate?!

Kate is the freaking LiveLinks girl. I watched it during the next few rounds of commercials and by the end there was no doubting it. I called the number looking to see if she’d pick up, but all I got was a message saying, “to talk to women, press 1. To talk to men, press 2. To talk on our free service, press 4.” The message then started to repeat itself, so I thought since they skipped the number 3, that might be the secret button you had to press to talk to Kate.

It’s not.

I was watching Margaret Cho on C-Span last night and every second word was mother f*%#ker or a word that rhymes with punt and/or lock. Being that it was Margaret Cho reading an essay about Ann Coulter, this didn’t surprise me, but one thing did.

They allow this on C-Span?! During prime time television? SWEET! If they talked like this in the Senate, I certainly would watch more often.