Just being silly

Australia has too many women. China has too many men. Sometimes, the Obvious tag is the only way to go

There's another option.

Legalize gay marriage in both countries.

There, problem solved.

Given the conservative slant many mods seem to have these days, I doubt this post will last long at all.

animal900 thinks corporate standards keep chain restaurants clean

Applebee's food order comes with delicious "out of date" sticker on it. Manager apologizes, offers to refresh drinks

animal900,

Corporate standards??

MWHAHAHA!!!!

Franchise owners routinely ignore corporate standards. I worked a Frinedly's in college. The store I was at literally bribed the health inspector, with cash and some "quality time" with one of the waitresses, to get a passing grade.

One of the food prep people smoked in the kitchen and ashed into the slaw.

The manage had huge hairy arms and mixed the slaw by hand, as in dipping his arm to the bottom of the five gallon buckets and stirring the mush inside.

I was once chewed out for throwing out some red onions in the fridge. I'd tossed them because they were covered in fuzzy mold. The manager insisted I could have just washed them off and served them in salad.

By the way, if it was being cooked, they considered it OK to leave it on the floor until they got around to picking it up.

Then there was the time someone cut himself while shopping up salad. He bled all over the tray used to soak and wash salad while it was full. The manager just drained it and served it without so much as an extra rinse.

If you're relying on corporate standards to keep the kitchen clean you're in for a surprise.

Update: Of course it was deleted.

Telemarketing Drivel Post II

FTC essentially bans prerecorded telemarketing drivel. It's not the "electrocute the bastards by pressing the pound key" solution we were hoping for, but it's still a good thing

MaritimeSpeedskating Asking to speak with a supervisor or have your name removed is pointless.

I agree. The best luck I've had was to pretend to be interested and ask a series of roundabout questions that made me look like an idiot. The moment they get someone on the line they think is too stupid to understand what they're selling they latch on like a drowning man to a life vest. If you pretend to be interested and too stupid to say no you can string them along for quite some time.

Two or three calls like this and the given company stops calling.

At a past residence I managed to keep the telemarketer on the line for a good half hour while I tried to get them to "Accept Jesus." I finally ended the call with "I'm sorry, but I can't do business with a firm that employs heathens." That pretty much out an end to the calls.

Those bastards from the Westborough News though didn't stop calling until I sent their parent company the Metrowest News an invoice for about $2,500, citing the federal law that entitled me to the money.

The telemarketing jerks didn't pay but they did stop calling.

Update: The post was deleted within 24 hours

telemarketing drivel

FTC essentially bans prerecorded telemarketing drivel. It's not the "electrocute the bastards by pressing the pound key" solution we were hoping for, but it's still a good thing

Hosebeatings: They insisted he'd called them from my number on a Friday afternoon

A bill collector tried that one on me a few years ago. I immediately started copying down all the information they would give me about getting in touch with them, confirmed their claim that the neighbor (A woman in this case) had called from my number and then breathlessly informed them that I was thankful they'd let me know about this break-in and that I would call the police immediately.

"I can't believe that b**th broke into my apartment!" I yelled. Then I said "Just a second, I need to get a tape recorder. I want a tape of you telling me she'd called from this number when I file a police report."

I put the phone down for a few seconds, and when I picked it back up they'd hung up. That agency never called me at that number again.

Update: The post was deleted within 24 hours

Sex offenders and fast food

You probably shouldn't flash a bikini-clad barista who's holding a cup of boiling water. "Kylie opened the door and threw boiling hot water on his face and his chest and he said oooh yeah."

Something similar happened to a friend of mine in college. She was working at a McDonald's manning the drive through when a perv came to the drive through with his pants down. She "screwed up" his order to give him a cup of hot coffee instead of the soda he'd asked for. She leaned out of the window and into his truck. Suddenly, he learned that she had "accidentally" failed to attach the lid properly. He got a large hot coffee right onto his exposed Johnson. This was before the famous "hot coffee in the lap" lawsuit so it was still hot enough to cause second and third degree burns. He screamed that he would sue, she countered by pointing out he'd go to jail for indecent exposure and have to register as a sex offender if he did.

He pealed out of the drive through and she never saw him again.

The story is of a "mature" bent but given the topic of the thread and the other comments in that thread, it should fit in just fine.

McCain's recent statements indicate he was not tortured in Vietnam

McCain's recent statements indicate he was not tortured in Vietnam

You're missing a critical piece of Bush Administration Logic (tm). It's only torture if our enemies do it.

Update: The post was deleted within 24 hours

Mocking the Violent Core of Human Nature

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert hopes a peace deal can be reached with the Palestinians by 2008, because scientists estimate they will have thrown all their rocks out of the country by then

Please. If there's one thing human beings excel at, it's finding creative ways to kill each other. Out of Rocks? Then compact some dirt to make clods. Better yet, crack up some boulders to make BIGGER rocks than the ones than WERE being thrown. THAT'S human ingenuity!

Easy Pickings: Bashing Hollywood

Life imitates The Onion: Striking Hollywood writers stress over whether or not their picket sign is funny

My post:

2007-11-20 12:11:23 PM
Given the quality of the drek from Hollywood and Network TV, I'm not sure a writer's strike is a bad thing. To tell the truth, I'm not sure anyone will even notice.

The above did appear briefly, but was deleted in about an hour. The post is pretty mild compared to some of content that's still there.

Secret Cities on the Moon!

U.S. scientists unveil NASA’s secrets about cities on the Moon and microbes on Mars

Posted on: 2007-10-31 10:57:01 AM

He claims to have photos from NASA of ancient moon bases, yet the photos in the book are described in that article as being of poor quality. The ONLY photo shown in the article appears to the heel portion of a footprint.

I'd LOVE to see some photos of these ruins. Anyone got any?

(Holding breath waiting for ancient alien moon base photos.)

On Thongs

Victoria's Secret selling children's play dolls scantily clad in underwear. Sure, you SAY you're buying them for your kid. The problem is, some people actually are

My post:

Thong: Butt floss

I never understood why women wear those things. They seem to be designed to create an ongoing, constant wedgie which can't be comfortable.

What's the appeal?

Posted on: 2007-10-31 10:46:19 AM

Gay Footballers

A third of US high school footballers have gay sex, claims sociologist

My post was:

This was why I was in Theater Guild. While we had just as many gay members as it seems the sports teams did, they were out, so everyone knew where everyone else stood, at least on that playing field.

Of course there was always one or two women who made it a goal to seduce the gay guys. Based on how often it worked, I'm inclined to suspect there were a few guys who were only pretending to be gay in order to easily score with these women. Two guys in particular spring to mind. They always talked about how cute such-and-such guy was, but whenever their actual sex lives came up, it was about the WOMEN they'd tagged.

High school was a messed up time.

Oddly, soon after I posted an earlier comment, the Fark Message threads would only load a dozen or so comments even when the main page claimed there were hundreds in the tread. I've noticed this pattern before. Are the servers just overloaded, or is the user experience for "undesirables" downgraded?

Regardless, the comment was successfully posted at 2007-10-31 10:30:39 AM. We'll see how long it lasts.

Update: It's gone

A Tip of the Hat

Fark has many chestnuts, old jokes that get reused shamelessly, as if by repeating the same gag used 1,000 times before you're magically funny. One of these gags is the "I work for ____ so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies," formula. The "joke" is to pretend to be someone "in the know" on a story. The joke however has gotten to the point where it's posted two or three times in every article.

Every once in a blue moon however, it's actually a little bit funny, and this Fark comment was my attempt at complimenting someone who managed it. The article in question was "How shyness became a mental illness: Scientific breakthrough reveals the importance of drug maker profits in the discovery of new diseases"

I quoted the comment to which I was responding:

friendly fire isn't friendly
"I'm an introvert who also has restless leg syndrome so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies."

Friendly, I think that's the first time that gag has been used and actually been funny.

I tip my hat to you.

The first time I tried to post the comment I got the infamous error message:

FARK.com database is down; try again later. (We spilled beer on the servers again.)

If I were Drew (The owner of Fark.com) and I had as many server problems as the error messages claim I'd fire my administrators, but then I'm used to environments where 99.999% uptime is expected, not a happy accident.

The second time I tried to submit the comment it wen through and posted at 2007-10-31 09:48:35 AM. If the past posts are any indication, it may take up to 24 hours for the mods to delete it.

Deleted: Posts about Fred Phleps

This post only lasted a few hours. When I checked at 8:00 pm the night I'd made the post, the comment was gone.

I made the following post in the thread:
Father of fallen Marine is suing the attention whores at the Westboro Baptist church for protesting his son’s funeral in response to people talking about how they want to counter protest Phelps.

You need to do more research into Phelps if you want to really hurt his movement. Look up and read "Addicted to Hate" to get some background about how he allegedly raised his family. When you go to protest bring signs that address the dark aspects of their past. Don't target Phelps, he's too bitter and hateful to care, target his followers.

For example, Fred Jr. was in love with a young woman in high school whom Fred Phleps drove to suicide. Look up her name, it's in "Addicted to Hate" and make a sign asking Fred Jr. if he remembers her. Include an autopsy photo of the young woman if you can find one.

Don't attack Phelps, go after the reasons his followers stay with him. The most devastating thing you can do to Phelps is to get his congregation to desert him.

Approach them with compassion and try to help his followers leave him. Treat it like trying to get an abused wife to leave a violent husband.

Later in the tread I posted this response to one of the more articulate and thoughtful posters (At least based on the posts of his/hers that I read)

technicolor-misfit,

What about making people see him with pity? What if everyone who walked past him reacted with pity and sorrow for the sad, pathetic man and his broken, beaten followers? What if the words he heard the most were to the effect of "I'll pray for your broken, battered soul."

What if people stopped hating him and just pitied him?

How do you think he'd feel about that?

Deleted: The Dell - Apple Thread

Update: As of 10-26-2007, the post below has been deleted by Fark.com. It lasted about a day.

Ten years after Michael Dell stated that Steve Jobs should just "shut down" Apple and give the money back to their stockholders, Apple's value has now exceeded Dell's

This thread had a troll named tomWright who was bashing Apple left and right. I, and many others replied to him for no good reason. Here was my reply:

<b>tomWright</b>

You seem to be confused as to the difference between Microsoft and Dell.

If Apple were to release OS X for use on generic PCs, they'd be competing with Microsoft. Dell sells hardware and so does Apple. Dell bundles a bunch of mangled, semi-functional software (Dell Wirelss anyone?) with their PCs in an attempt to improve their value to end users. Apple bundles an entire OS to make their PCs more valuable to end users.

The only thing Apple would need to change to be a DIRECT competitor to Dell would be to start selling Macs with Windows pre-installed, but even without that step, Apple and Dell are direct competitors. Both sell PCs capable of running the Windows Operating System, Dell just happens to preinstall it.

Notice that the name tomWright is not in bold. The Fark comment box allows you to insert some tags, but instead of bolding the text, my comment shows up with the raw HTML.

The Tracking Begins

I created my Fark account on 2003-02-04. I enjoyed Fark.com and posted every now and then. I occasionally submitted a story but none of them ever got green lighted. I didn't take this personally as similar stories, generally with catchier titles were green lighted. Green Lighting is Fark's nomenclature for a story being promoted from the glurdge gallery of TotalFark to the front page.

All was well, until one day, I lost the ability to include HTML in my posts. I had no idea why this was, but soon after I got an e-mail accusing me of "Stealing" content and informing me that I was being suspended for a few days.

Shortly after that, I discovered that tall mo posts were being deleted within hours, sometimes minutes of making them. I wasn't trolling or abusing anyone but was merely trying to engage in the conversation.

To this day I have no idea what I did to get on someone's bad side. I tried creating a new account, but that didn't work either. I made the mistake of creating it from the same IP I'd always used to post to Fark. Often when I tried to post I get an error message saying that they "spilled beer on the servers again" or that the server "didn't feel like" recording my comment.

I left Fark, which was probably the intention of whatever sad, pathetic moderator was diligently deleting my posts. I frequented other sites when I had the time, but largely ignored Fark.

On October 25, 2007 I posted to Fark.com again. The post was in the thread "It's all fun and games when you let your 11 year old ride her bike down the hill on the street without a helmet. Then someone gets hurt and it's a $27.5M lawsuit. Fark: because the street had a hill and guideposts" The gist of my comment was that when I was a kid and was injured in a bike accident, my parent's didn't sue anyone.

The comment was deleted in short order.

As a result, I'm starting this Blog. When ever I post to Fark.com, I'll post the same content and a link to the thread here. This is being done with the following goals in mind:

1. To record the content before it's deleted. If I wrote it, I don't feel like seeing it vaporized in the ether.

2. To see if anyone else is having similar experiences.

3. To let people see what the Fark moderators are doing.

4. Finally, I have a small, futile hope that if I expose these shenanigans whoever is runnign around deleting posts for no good reason will be shamed into changing their behavior or removed as a moderator.