Ontario Empoblog

Tricky... I couldn't figure it out. I got the Citibank spam (the one that asks you to enter your ATM card number and PIN so that Citibank can verify your email address), but the listed URL appeared to be a Citibank URL: Dear Citibank Member, This email was sent by the Citibank server to verify your E-mail address. You must complete this process by clicking on the link below and entering in the small window your Citibank ATM/Debit Card number and PIN that you use on ATM. This is done for your protection - because some of our members no longer have access to their email addresses and we must verify it. To verify your E-mail address and access your bank account, click on the link below: https://web.da-us.citibank.com/signin/citifi/scripts/email_verify.jsp --------------------------------------- Thank you for using Citibank --------------------------------------- Then I viewed the source of the email message, and found this interesting

Inconsistent Badgers in a Box On April 20, I examined the large number of random words in a spam that I received. Now it's time to examine seven spam messages that I received today. Here's the first: -----Original Message----- From: xxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 5:13 PM To: xxxxxxx Subject: Re: Your Pharmacy order # 8452 Buy top painkillers without prescription Today's special: Free overnight Fedex delivery Vicodin.....................$2.51/dose Hydrocodone............$2.12/dose Norco.......................$2.99/dose Stock is limited and selling fast, so hurry Buy them here OK, here's the second: -----Original Message----- From: xxxxxxx Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 5:13 PM To: xxxxxxx Subject: Buy V.icodin, 1 day sale Buy top painkillers without prescription Today's special: Free overnight Fedex delivery Vicodin.....................$2.57/dose Hydrocodone............$2.11/dose Norco.......................$2.

Two New Badger/Ludo Cremers-Related Poems Kool Badgers http://ontarioemperor.tripod.com/poetry.html#kool April 27, 2004 Mushrooms left to rot Ludo Cremers sent some smokes Snake dance to hip hop The Late Wesley Willis Sings About Badgers http://ontarioemperor.tripod.com/poetry.html#wesley1 April 27, 2004 You are a bunch of badgers You like to dance around a lot You all try to eat the mushrooms The mushrooms make me hear the voices in my head Lots of badgers Lots of badgers Lots of badgers Lots of badgers You have you watch out for the snake You play the song in the mix over and over again You play the song in the mix over and over again You are big fat rock stars Lots of badgers Lots of badgers Lots of badgers Lots of badgers You play the song in the mix over and over again You play the song in the mix over and over again You play the song in the mix over and over again You play the song in the mix over and over again Lots of badgers

How About A Racing Game? See http://www.weebl.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/badger.html .

Two Great Flavors That Taste Great Together What do you get when you combine Wesley Willis (see 16 November 2003 entries to this blog) with Weebl of "Badger Badger Badger" fame (see 25 April 2004 entry to this blog) ? You get this animation , set to Wesley Willis' song "Merry Christmas." (Lyrics here . The ad is for Allstate.)

Badger Badger Badger For the lover of the non sequitur, PLEASE visit http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/ with your computer sound on. Thanks to PsionicMagWarrior for posting this at Head In The Clouds .

The Orb, 23 Years Later Back in the fall of 1981 several of us college students shared a sparsely furnished off-campus house. The primary decoration in the living was The Orb. I can't remember where or how we obtained it, and I don't know what happened to it. The Orb was a big, round, orange lamp. But more importantly, this was The Orb. Flash forward to the contributions of Mark Weiser (R.I.P.) and his early concepts about ubiquitous computing : Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives. Alan Kay of Apple calls this "Third Paradigm" computing. Eventually, Ambient Devices emerges with a desire to offer commercial devices that use calm tec

i15.info Liz Bartlett states that she has a hobby of viewing model homes, and that she makes her living via web design . She has been able to combine both in her i15.info "web site dedicated to providing a comprehensive and objective information resource for people searching for new homes in the I15 corridor. Unlike other sites, which are maintained by specific builders, or require builder subscriptions to list developments, I15.info aims to list all developments in the area." Information is communicated via a blog entitled "Local Building News." There's one subtle twist in the blog that deserves mention. Although the Ontario Empoblog doesn't currently support this feature, many blogs offer two options at the bottom of each entry: "Comments" and "Trackback." At i15.info, the latter is entitled "TractBack" (with a t). :)

The Long-Awaited Client Album Review Now that I've spent a few days listening to the album in the car, at home, and at work, I'm ready to give my impressions. Client FAIR. I'm not a fan of spoken word non-melodic songs (Kraftwerk's "Numbers" is the only one of this ilk that I like). Rock and Roll Machine EXCELLENT. The second of three singles. Even the people who hate the album reserve praise for this song. What can you say about a catchy song about rock with no guitars in the song itself? The video is good also. Price of Love GOOD. The first of three singles from the album, and the weakest of the three (but still good). Happy GOOD. The jarring music of the song matches the lyrics (which, if you've heard them, are NOT happy). But why the DougOse did they have to include that one word in the song? Diary of an 18 Year Old Boy GOOD (music EXCELLENT). Sorry, but I don't particularly care for lyrics about the thoughts of an 18 year old bo

Ludo Evangelism I've highlighted some of Ludo Cremers' most notable phrases here . (Head in the smoke-filled clouds?)

Lovely Spam, Wonderful Spam I took a moment to actually look at one of the dozens of spam messages I receive daily. It's especially interesting to note how the spammers reduce the percentage of "spam words" in their messages by including a number of random words in the message. For example, this [edited] message only includes one obvious spam word (the misspelled word "V1codin" in the title) amongst an array of other words (not, unfortunately, including Ludo Cremers' "vibrant urban multicultural smoker"): -----Original Message----- From: marcene Hacker [mailto:gktflpxr@acumark.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2004 1:33 PM To: authority@ftpbox.[suppressed].com Subject: tooth V1codin punishment why question bone end heat baby library and blue brake have coat bird wise material wing order picture measure left Please Wait..Image Loading If image fails to load cl-ick here and design early responsible camera development push berry chan

More on Client I finally bought the Client album on Saturday morning. You can hear song samples from the album at the Tower Records entry for the album . I posted my first impressions of the album at Head In The Clouds (the message board formerly known as Eddyland).

Even Calculated Modesty is Refreshing The Client official site includes a reviews page. Unusually for an artist-sponsored site, this review is included: Sleazenation, 01.09.03 Two women from Britain's industrial wasteland dig the style of Detroit's Adult. so decide to make an LP of awful electro-pop. This is as pseudo as it gets. Client is a zeitgeist exploiting abomination that is as about as sexy as a used rubber in a Homebase carpark. Yes, it's that over. Ditch the Human League impressions and get back to the knitting ladies. I've only heard two songs so far, but agree with the general consensus that "Rock and Roll Machine" is better than average. Michael Elves, a reviewer for the University of Manitoba Manitoban , agrees with the positive assessment of "Rock and Roll Machine," but doesn't go much farther in praising the first Client album: The album contains a couple of standout tracks, but they are scattered amongst so mu

Trendsetting Multicultural Smoker Revisited I have posted excerpts from and comments on a Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder editorial in this Eddyland thread .

More on Mike Bullard Cancellation From a March 12, 2004 CBC article : Mike Bullard, Canada's only network late-night talk show host, is out of a job. That's because the Global Television Network announced Friday it is cancelling The Mike Bullard Show, effective immediately.... On Global, Bullard averaged 72,000 viewers per night. When he left CTV, where he had been host of Open Mike for six years, he was drawing about 129,000 viewers. Hamilton was unable to explain why Bullard's audience didn't follow him to the new network. "I'm a little unsure of the reason why it didn't catch on," he said, adding that Global did not see any reason to believe the numbers would improve. Industry observers noted that the avuncular comedian had his work cut out for him. Not only was he up against David Letterman and Jay Leno, but when he left CTV his former bosses also replaced him an American import, Jon Stewart's highly popular faux newscast, The

Not End of an Era, But End of a 6+ Year Period Whenever I would travel to Canada, I would make a point to watch the Canadian variety show Open Mike With Mike Bullard . Let's face it, you can't see it back at home. (I would watch The Weather Network for the same reason.) After my last trip to Canada in July, I signed up for the mailing list for the Open Mike show. Funny thing, I never got any traffic from that list. Now I know why . Mike Bullard's contract with CTV expired shortly after completing his sixth season of Open Mike with Mike Bullard, at which time he began talks with Global to move his show to their network. In August 2003, he signed a multi-year deal with Global to host a new show on their network that would be similar to Open Mike....Since its debut, the ratings for The Mike Bullard Show weren't very good. The show pulled in 96,000 viewers on its first night, but that number dropped to 54,000 on its second night....After only 60 shows aired over

A Little More on Slim Whitman Not counting Daryl Jenks, I saw four major concerts in Portland in the early 1980s: Devo, Willie Nelson/Kris Kristofferson, Jan and Dean, and Slim Whitman. With apologies to Jan Berry (who died not long after I wrote about him), the Jan and Dean show was the worst of the lot. Slim Whitman was by far the best. He and his son Byron gave a good show for the audience, and he patiently stayed after the show to sign autographs. (Not sure where my autograph ended up...pity.)

OPM Some time after visiting Eddyland and We Will Entertain You , I got the Pat Benatar song "Love is a Battlefield" stuck in my head. Don't know why; it just happened. This song stands out as Benatar's foray into OPM (OverProduced Music). As such, it's brilliant - vocals coming in and out of nowhere, screams, guitars, keyboards, almost the entire kitchen sink. Let's put it this way - this song was popular at the time of Slim Whitman's comeback, and Bentar made Whitman sound conventional . By the way, here's Slim on "Indian Love Call": "All I did was throw in a few yodels for good measure, and the folks seemed to go for it."

For broadband music lovers Enjoy the di.fm trance channel .

The Seventeenth Minute Trista & Ryan Vow to Boycott Iams over Cruel Experiments on Dogs and Cats OK, I'm still mad about the comparison between Trista & Ryan and Gerald Ford . (12/11/2003)

False Rumor Alert I hadn't even heard this one before, so I guess I should count myself lucky. There's a whole thread of posts on one of the Yahoo! message boards (not Pepsi's board). I won't dignify the rumor by posting it, but here's Pepsi's response : We wanted to clarify an erroneous report that has been circulating around cyberspace for some time. Pepsi has not created any packaging containing an edited version of America's Pledge of Allegiance. A patriotic package used in 2001 by Dr Pepper (which is not a part of PepsiCo) was inappropriately linked to this rumor. Dr Pepper's position is very clearly articulated at: http://www.dpsu.com/drpepper_can.html . And Dr. Pepper says: A Note to Dr Pepper Consumers: In February 2002, several news media outlets in the country reported on a special edition Dr Pepper can that was created to show support for the patriotic fervor that has been sweeping America since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 20

Let's review the concept of teleconferencing... I am a member of a mailing list. The following message was posted to the list a few days ago (see excerpts; emphasis mine): I would like to extend a special invitation for you to participate in the 25th installment of International Biometric Group's "Biometric Business and Technology" monthly teleconference series this Thursday, April 8, at 1pm ET.... The call will take place on Thursday, April 8 at 1:00 pm ET (10:00 am PT). There is no charge to join the call , which will last up to an hour, and participants will have the opportunity to ask questions.... A follow-up question was subsequently posted to the list: who will pay the travell [sic] expences [sic] ?

I'm trying... OK, name any one site that mentions Ludo Cremers, Bill Wyatt, and Reinald Steck on the same page . I defy you to do so.

Update on Reinald Steck From Little Green Footballs : Dear Mr. Johnson, Thank you for your concern and support. Unfortunately the letter is not only true but the “author” has admitted writing it. Best Wishes Esti Sherbelis International Relations Coordinator Israel Medical Association 2 Twin Towers 35 Jabotinsky St. P.O.Box 3566 Ramat Gan 52136 Israel See my April 6 entry for background.

It's nice to share! Need to make sure that my friends know about the inspirational prose of Ludo Cremers.

This is what he said. This is what Ludo Cremers said. After running across the "trendsetting multicultural smoker" line, I wondered what else Ludo Cremers has said. "Kool understands the vibrant urban world of the trendsetting, multicultural smoker....Kool is the menthol authority. At the same time, Kool keeps it real and remains linked to the latest urban trends." "Flavored products are a trend in many categories....From beverages to chewing gums, this is a universal trend with broad interest." "KOOL is truly on the cutting edge of menthol technology....KOOL established the menthol category and continues to reinvent it to give consumers a product that fits the lifestyle of today's urban, multicultural smokers. The new KOOL Smooth Fusions cigarettes are perfectly balanced, yet deliver intriguing refreshment with a taste that bonds with any special occasion....Each style evidences KOOL expertise in menthol and its ability to masterfull

Forget cute animated characters, I'm taking my family to see blood and gore! I'm sure that Steven Mallas at the Motley Fool is a knowledgeable investor, but this statement from him left me bewildered: (certainly the recent religious juggernaut, The Passion of the Christ, is proving an unexpected capturer of bucks that might otherwise have made it into Disney's coffers) Huh? This assertion rests on the faulty assumption that most Christian families like Disney entertainment, and most people who like Disney entertainment are Christian families. I'll take my kid to see a Disney picture. I won't take my kid to see Passion . Now, let's present this list of films to conversative Christian families and see how many of them would attend these movies: This 1937 film is an occult thriller that includes a reverse "Three's Company" domestic set-up (one woman, many men), as well as a poisoning. This 1940 film includes an extended se

This Person is Not a Trendsetting Multicultural Smoker Bill Wyatt claims to be the second-most popular Republican candidate for President. And he is - if "uncommitted" is ignored. As of today, Republican primary vote totals are as follows: Bush = 4,555,451 votes Uncommitted = 67,572 votes Bill Wyatt = 10,847 votes (write-in/others) = 10,672 votes Blake Ashby = 1,245 votes No other candidate has received more than 1,000 votes. Top Ten Campaign Planks for Bill Wyatt 1) You Make a Difference: Don't let your vote be taken for granted. 2) Truthfulness: Create a tansparant administration to put sincerity back into the White House. 3) Enforce Our Laws: The Bush immigration reforms that are proposed would weaken our borders and lower our wages. 4) Health before Wealth: The medical industry is ripping us off with exhorbant cost, let's make sure we all have insurance so that we don't have to be afraid of getting sick. Decriminalize marijua

Kool! I don't believe that tobacco companies are the antichrist, but they sure are funny at times. Look at how Kool can be cool : FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 17, 2004 Contact: Steve Kottak 502-568-7193 KOOL CELEBRATES HIP-HOP CULTURE WITH YEAR-LONG EVENTS Louisville, KY - Kool is staging a massive series of events this year to celebrate the energy and creativity of the urban Hip-Hop culture. The cornerstone of the celebration is Kool Mixx 2004.... "Kool understands the vibrant urban world of the trendsetting, multicultural smoker," said Ludo Cremers, divisional vice president, brand marketing. "Kool is the menthol authority. At the same time, Kool keeps it real and remains linked to the latest urban trends. We'll showcase these trends this year through Kool Mixx and other promotions and events."

We May Have Some Presidential Nominees Soon Both the Republicans and the Democrats are close to officially determining their nominees. For example, John Kerry currently has a hard delegate total of 1,819 delegates; he needs 2,162.

Christian Trance? Anyone know anything about Andy Hunter or his album Exodus ?

Reinald Steck and the Commandos The Little Green Footballs weblog has posted an e-mail message, purportedly from a Reinald Steck, addressed to a representative of an Israeli medical association. The message read, in part: We will release the requested information to you after you become a MediConf customer: http://www.mediconf.de Sincerely, Reinald Steck P.S. We are pretty sure that your previously so desperate need for information about medical conferences in San Diego in June and July has suddenly vanished! ;-) P.P.S. Are you going to send an Israeli commando to kill us now, because maybe you don’t like what we wrote? P.P.S. Why don’t you kill all the Palestinians? You have taken almost all their land, and they are all poor, inferior, brutish, violent terrorists anyway, aren’t they? You might as well finish the job already started. Just a few million more. Thank God all Jews are compassionate doctors (according to TIME magazine). When I tried to access w

Now what you hear is not a test There's a common joke about the people in Tornado Alley who continue to rebuild right in the tornado path. (One comedian has stated that "your houses have wheels...drive somewhere else!") However, some people choose not to rebuild. Here's the opening lyrics of Phil Rosenthal's song "Muddy Water" : Mary grab the baby river's rising Muddy water's taking back the land Well this old house it won't take one more beating Ain't no use to stay and make a stand. And the chorus: I won't be back to start all over 'Cause what I felt before is gone Mary grab the baby river's rising Muddy water's taking back our home. Phil recorded this song while he was a member of the Seldom Scene . I heard this original version over the weekend on the Music Choice Bluegrass channel . I'm much more familiar with Johnny Cash's cover version, which appears on his album Silver . Phil

Route 66 Website The California Route 66 Preservation Foundation website is here . Follow the interactive map from the Colorado River west to Santa Monica .

Am I the Only Person Who Likes TOTAL DEVO? Wilson and Alroy I can understand, since they have extremely high (?) standards. Here's what they said : Bizarrely, breath-takingly, brain-batteringly bad. Well, "The Shadow" isn't that bad...but the rest is: lifeless, hermetic dance-pop that you won't want to dance to ("Disco Dancer," my butt). Every tune is based on relentlessly repetitive drum programming ("Some Things Never Change") with equally unsubtle keyboards. "Disco Dancer" sports funk-style rhythm guitar, but it's as dry as the rest.... Here's the All Music Guide entry : No longer innovative and not incredibly compelling....Diehards may want this album for the "Disco Dancer" single, but overall, the album doesn't really approach past Devo successes. Excerpts from some customers reviews at Amazon : Devo is great but as far as recordings go this is about as fun as watching paint dry. 1988