This is only a test

Just a test to see if comments are now enabled. I just migrated my blog to the new platform.

"This is a test. This station is conducting a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test."

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with the Federal, State and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, the Attention Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news or instructions. This station serves the (operational area name) area. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System."

Just for the heck of it, here's a picture of my son.

Damn it!

Here I went to all the effort of reactivating this blog, and as far as I can tell there is no way to add people to my friends list. Why? THERE IS NO FRIENDS LIST!

Unless I just missed it?

I haven't written anything here for three years, since I moved to LiveJournal. So why am I posting now?

Because there are people on Blogger/Blogspot or whatever the hell this is who I want to read, that's why. I don't know if it's possible to have a "friends list" here, but if it is, there are at least two real and one fictional person that I'm going to add.

However, I don't expect I'll be doing much posting here, if any. If you want to read whatever crap I'm writing at the moment, go to http://bobquasit.livejournal.com/.

Hmm. I wonder if this site has improved in the last three years? It was really annoying, three years ago.

He's in a happier place now...
Yeah, I've moved to LiveJournal - the comment function works well there, and it's just a whole lot easier to use. I've already put up a lot of new stuff there, as well as all of the posts from here. So bookmark the new, and delete the old!

See you there!

The Shout Out thing seems to be broken most of the time, so if you want to reach me, email me. pm36@maranci.net should do it.

An Immodest Proposal

The popularity of the National Do Not Call List (60 million Americans are expected to sign up) has led some telemarketing trade associations to point out that the resulting loss of tens of thousands of entry-level telemarketing jobs will be a body blow to the already staggering American economy.

Now, I have to admit that I signed up for that list myself. But I also have a lot of sympathy for low-income people who are struggling to make it; I'm one of them, basically. Come to think of it, I once interviewed for a telemarketing job myself when I was young. So here's my modest suggestion to alleviate the problem: why not start a national program to retrain all telemarketers as prostitutes?

It's almost Biblical: force the people who have irritated so many to instead bring pleasure to millions. Overall public health would probably improve as people gain the benefit of more easily available sex (less stress! More orgasms!). And prostitutes make more money than telemarketers, so the tax base would increase. At the same time, most prostitutes aren't in a high enough tax bracket to benefit much from the Bush Administration's tax cuts. Another savings.

Changing over the industry would be fairly straightforward. A set of local boards could be set up nationwide to judge the attractiveness and potential earning power of every worker. Deficient individuals would be sent for complete makeovers, with the cost to be deducted from their future earnings. Seriously unattractive workers could get low-interest government loans to pay for plastic surgery and body enhancement.

Since the ratio of males to females in the telemarketing industry may not match the need for female versus male prostitutes, some individuals would probably also need to undergo sex change operations. These operations would also be fundable via government loans (the money for this program could be diverted from something unimportant, like Head Start or the EPA).

Since some telemarketers are actually prisoners, converting them to prostitutes would alleviate unpleasant living conditions in jail; not that anyone in jail deserves less unpleasant conditions, but since they're all raping each other anyway, at least it would be less overtly homosexual if some of them were turned into women. Another advantage: the regendered prisoners couldn't possibly reproduce!

Another possible option...well, this may be too visionary. But down the road, once the rage of the American people against telemarketers has subsided, perhaps selling could be combined with prostitution. I can see it now. Get a blow job and change your long-distance company! Go around the world and get new aluminum siding! Have a hand job and refinance your house! The possibilities are endless.

Some may have noticed one key group which has been left out of my proposal: telemarketing company executives. But the answer is obvious with only a moment's thought.

They'd be the pimps, of course.

Damn. Maureen Dowd beat me to connecting the string of serial cat mutilations in the midwest and Senate majority leader Bill Frist's admission that he used to collect and vivisect stray cats while in medical school.

Oh well. Here's something even funnier: a mirror of the long-lost Dysfunctional Family Circus. Warning, it's almost as sick as the First Senator.

No. I am NOT going to copy

Okay. Start over. I've been writing an online journal since July 27, 2000, which was before there were blogs. If anyone is desperate enough to read all that, go here. Have yourself a field day. Don't forget to wash your hands afterword.

This is a test. This is only a test. Do not attempt to adjust your controls. Have a nice day.

Time out for a poem. I dislike words, so it's punctuation only today, sorry.


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Okay, that's the end of that.

Today's featured bumper sticker is "Down with King George!"

Want a cool site? You probably shouldn't be reading this then. I'm late-30's married with kid former roleplayer current science fiction freak former APAzine editor current website publisher always early adopter angry abandoned Democrat geek. I've got a BA and a mouth, and I'm not afraid to use either one (the BA doesn't do much, though). You're losing coolness by the microsecond, just reading this.

I HTML by hand, for god's sake!

Still here? You're a better man than I, Gunga Din!

Okay, here's something incredibly obscure: "Good Morning World", a Levis jingle from 1972. http://www.maranci.net/levis.wav. If you were born in 1964, you might remember this. Turn your volume down, it's loud.

Not good enough? How about this? Something really, REALLY good. And obscure. Space Moose! It silently disappeared off the web a couple of months ago, and I was apparently the only person who snagged it. The snag was flawed, but most of the strips were saved. And I sent the files to someone who set up a mirror. Flawed, like I said, but still some of the best sick humor ever on the web. And virtually no one knows about it.

I recently found some more of the missing strips and annotations, and maybe that guy will use them to improve his mirror, but if not...I'll still have them.

Anything else? Oh yeah, the name. I used to write political humor online under the name "Quasit". Then I realized that most online activists would rather spend time circle jerking and whining than doing anything meanigful, and that the Democratic Party couldn't be less interested in actually providing opposition to the Boy Tyrant, so I got pissed off and Quasit died.

Now I'm playing with the Google toolbar until my Windows dies. Probably next Tuesday.

I tried to take the name "Omac" when I got here, but somebody else had already grabbed it. Which makes me suspicious. Who else knows about the One Man Army Corps? I thought Jack Kirby had lived in vain.

Okay, stream of consciousness goes here. Half-assed simulation of rationality goes there (on my old site). Do not mix, let stand for three hours, and serve at room temperature.

Chatter
Good Morning World (Levis commerical wav file)
The Lost World of Space Moose