DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

The players:

Me, the wife, the 14-day-old

The task:

Identify who said what.

The dialog:

[thump thump thump thump thump]

“Buuuuuuurrrrrrp!”

(encouragingly) “There you go! That was a good one!”

“Hey, how come you don’t say something nice when I do that?”

Yahoo has released a collection of over 200 recent photographs under the headline Pictures of the Year 2004

There are a lot of sports photos in there. I’m not a sports fan. I know that makes me a the minority, but how small a minority am I?

I sorted the 209 photos into arbitrary categories chosen to illustrate all the things I don’t need to see photos of.

Most of the “other” photos were of politicians. As much as I think George W. Bush is a disaster, I didn’t put those photos in the “disasters/war/violence” category unless he was pictured doing something disastrous, war-mongery, or violent, like posing with troops, or dressing like them, or personally feeding an old-growth redwood, complete with tree-sitter, into a chipper in the guise of “healthy forest management.”

As a public service to Yahoo, I’ll suggest a new set of categories for their Best of 2005 series. These are the photos that will keep me coming back day after day.

Hook me up, Yahoo; I’ll be your low-hanging fruit!

Last June I wrote about RealAge.com, a neat website that conducts a free health survey and calculates a person’s “real age”. I used their site a few times and recommended it to friends.

On December 3 I began receiving email spam to the address I’d given RealAge.com. Note that this address was personalized — I created the email address specifically for RealAge.com, as I do every time I register for online services. This is tedious but allows me to track where spam originates.

The messages I received are pure junk. For example, the subject line of one of these messages reads, “Regarding your pending order.” The sender’s name is “Shipping Department.” The first line of the body reads, “YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED TO RECEIVE A Nokia 6016 AND ACCESSORIES!”

I emailed RealAge.com to find out if their systems had been compromised. I didn’t want to jump to the conclusion that they’d sold out. I haven’t received a reply yet.

I logged in to RealAge.com to see if I’d missed an opt-out. Sure enough, on the account-preferences page there’s a CAN-SPAM checkbox. Was it there last June when I signed up? All I can say is that I’m generally careful about opting out — if I’m given the opportunity to not receive junk mail, I’ll take it.

So, I checked the opt-out checkbox, and a few days later the spam barrage stopped.

Here is a summary of the spam I’ve received to my RealAge.com registration address. If any of these look familiar, and you’re a RealAge.com user, log in to RealAge and check the CAN-SPAM opt-out.

Fall asleep with a nipple in your mouth, and don’t even bother to swallow that last big slurp of milk. Now that’s living!

One doesn’t realize how deeply profane the lyrics to Tool’s Aenima are until the baby’s Opa wanders through the den during the angry closing chorus to “Hooker with a Penis.” Sing along, now: “Fuuuuuuck you buddy! Fuuuuuuck you buddy! Fuuuuuuck you buddy! Fuuuuuuck you buddy!” Etc.