My father's been reading my blog

My dad wanted me to put tips and advice for people on how to avoid identity theft on my blog. So here goes:

1.) Never get a credit card. Now of course, you basically will never be able to do anything of any importance without a credit card, but there is exactly 0 chance that anyone will ever steal your credit card information if you don't have a credit card.

2.) Never use checks. I'm even a bit suspicious of money orders, but hey... If you send someone a check who has a good photocopier and a little skill with any number of graphics programs, you can kiss your checking account good bye. Also, with that kind of information, they may be able to get a credit card in your name, in which case, see #1.

3.) Never ever get on the internet. I don't think it's actually dangerous to be on the internet, but hey, what do I know. Perhaps just being connected will allow hackers to go through your files and find out the necessary information about you in order to steal your identity, open up credit cards in your name, and charge you into the poor house.

4.) Never leave your cave.

My dad actually did have some good advice, but it was mostly stuff we've all heard before. In any case, all it takes is one enterprising person down at the phone company and you're toast. At one place I worked, somebody committed identity theft by simply writing down the 16 credit card number when a customer was busy trying to figure out what candy bar to buy. What are the chances that when you hand your card to someone, they may be practicing their skills at remembering 16 numbers. Hell, there are people who have Pi memorized out to 3000 digits. 16 and an expiration date, that's nothing. And by the way, they don't even have to memorize the numbers; just keep a camera phone propped at a convenient angle and when you look into your purse or your wallet or...up...click, click.

Or hey, how about this. You know those old people in line who look over their receipts like the world is trying to cheat them--studying them like they were the crib notes to calculus or something--well, how hard, really do you think it would be to simply produce a pen at that very moment and right down their credit card numbers? At the place I used to work, the last four digits of their number was printed right on the cashier copy of the receipt--you only have to write out the first twelve. Plus, and I don't want to sound prejudiced or anything, but generally the people who want to study the receipt in this way are old, living on a fixed income, and pretty good prey to the new fangled high tech crime of identity theft. Plus, good credit scores!

Now, I am not condoning any of these activities. Identity theft sucks, and you should protect yourself any way you can, but let's face it, you can't guard against everything, and about twenty times a day you encounter some situation where your identity could be stolen, but that's about a tenth of the numer of chances every day that I have for being a victim of vehicular manslaughter in Massachusetts, and I haven't managed to get run over yet. In other words, that's life: it's dangerous. There are bad people. If they want to, and they are patient, they can catch you unawares. Hell, everyone at the NSA now has all your phone information. I wouldn't worry about some smack head buying tires with your credit card; worry about the government financing their next tax "break" by selling your spending habits to the highest bidder.

But all this is beside the point. The point is MY DAD IS READING MY BLOG. Now, I know that should have me worried, but it really doesn't, but I do think it's kind of funny. After all, his response, in an email to my wife, to my post a few weeks back about Moussaoui getting a broom stick shoved up his ass three times a day for the rest of his life was to simply let me know that Moussaoui would probably be kept out of general population.

Very understated, my dad.

The thing is though, I think he's reading my blogs to my mom. So she tells me the other day over the phone where she saw something about employers looking up their employees blogs and firing them. Hmmm... Well, I'm not getting jobs under the title of Monstro, but nonetheless, I'd like to address this point. Again, I'm not worried about the surveilance the UC system might attempt on me three years from now, but rather that the NSA is recording phone calls between the Drivler and I. Also, it's been a while, but I haven't gotten one of those creepy pro-republican comments in awhile that used to circulate around the blogs seemingly from random people. What? Did the NSA lose their funding for that, or was it automated, and so now they can't get around my comment box. Anyway, mom, dad, I'm already on a list. But then again, so are you.

It's kind of sad that way that we are all on the same list though many of you have never spoken out against the government and may even be its supporters whereas I think that the words "senate hearing" can be directly translated into the phrase "beauracratic circlejerk" and I think half of Bush's staff should be tried for treason, but remember...not executed...exiled to Iraq.

In any case, I love ma and pa Monstro and I think it's awfully supportive that they read my blog, even though it's pretty much foul mouthed left wing propoganda. Though note: I don't really like democrats much either--an entire nationwide party and they can't find ONE guy to run for the job of president...you've got to be kidding me. So, hello dad. This one's for you:

I was reading the New Yorker the other day and they were addressing the stocks in this day and age of GW, Enron, Haliburton, Paxcil, etc.. And there point was that one could make a killing in the stock market, but one has to stop thinking of buying stocks as endorsing them. You can not equate buying the stock with supporting the company, and this is because almost all the stocks that have risen in value during the Bush administration are...shall we say...seedy. Drug companies that are trying to market their products to people who aren't sick, for instance. Or companies responsible for buiding prisons getting large contracts to put Iraq back together (who do you have to piss off at Haliburton, by the way, to pull Iraq duty). It would seem that there is money to be had during the Bush administration as long as one is willing to sink one's money into the forces of fascism, human enslavement, unstoppable greed, and out-and-out evil. If there's a company making money off starving children, then that's the company to invest in. Whose buying all the destroyed land in Louisiana for a song? I bet their stocks are soring.

Now, I'm torn. Because it seems to me that one should not support this kind of business ethic. I, for one, will never again buy a Dell PC, nor will most Dell owners I know, precisely because they've proven their disregard for loyalty to their customers. Furthermore, I personally believe that the CEO's of most major oil companies should have their innards fed to wild dogs through some method that will keep them alive for as long as possible (maybe they could use their record profits to barter for a mercy killing). But then what is one to do? The stock market has never been about throwing yourself ideologically behind a company; it's about selling companies like commodoties. The one's that are doing the best are the one's that are the most valuable. That they raise their value by throwing kittens into wood chippers is sort of immaterial, isn't it? Or is it? I can't really tell you.

But I'm sure my dad can. Dad send me an email on this subject and I promise to print it on my blog. Just remember, no names. We wouldn't want to end up on any "other" lists, if you know what I mean.

I like Bush

Wha...wha..what?

Alright here me out. For years, we've all known that the government has been doing some pretty sleazy stuff. Secret prisons in other parts of the world? Countless illegal phone taps? Spying on our own citizins? Secret wars? All of this stuff was going on before, but we only had a suspicion that it was happening. We kind of thought, 'Hey, I'll bet that our government is really as bad as all those paranoid fanatics think it is.' But then, what could we do. We had no proof that the U.S. was doing evil evil things. We only had a hunch.

Here's the thing though, when a President, like GW, gets a crappy approval rating after screwing over all the really corrupt parts of our government, all kinds of shit gets leaked. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow NASA tells us that GW ordered them to shred the documents proving that aliens exist, or doctor them so that Roswell is located in Iran. That's the kind of thing our president is doing for our country. By being so blatantly corrupt, he is attracted, like a magnet, all the other corruption in our government to where he stands in the lime light. I mean, sure you figured that the president gave jobs to his friends, but until the Fema fiasco, did you really know. And now the president is pissing off the CIA. Can you imagine the sorts of stuff we're going to find out? Hell, that the NSA was spying on just about everyone in the country was just the tip of the ice berg--thank you by the way Qwest. Evidently there is one American company with a little moral fiber.

Now, how did we find all this out? Was it because we have an awesome president? No. It was because we have George W. Bush. Without his incompetence, we would still be in the dark about just how bad things had gotten up on capital hill. The CIA would still have secret prisons, and the NSA would still be filling folders full of your phone recoreds. But now we know what they're doing and they have to stop, or something like that.

Jacking off a walrus

People in New England are assholes. Moreover, their anti-social behavior is a point of pride. Honestly. If they act in such a way as to make you think you're doing something right or that they're happy to see you or that everyone's in this thing together, then they feel that they have failed. In like manner, if they manage to act like having to listen to you is something that they're enduring, then they feel they have completed something for the day.

In our church, for instance, we sing between 6 and 10 songs. Seriously. For those of you who've never been to church, the average is three and the doxology (the song you sing while they take the collection plate from the back to the front of the church). We sing between 5 and 9 plus the dox.. In fact, our music director is sort of famous for picking two songs to sing, back to back, each with six verses. I wouldn't be surprised if she added verses to the dox., just to get us singing more. Also, she will actively switch up the routine songs so that no one ever knows the frickin' words to the children's moment part of the service. We have to look in the supplemental hymnal because the damn music director feels that we've grown to complascent in our greeting the children, who are almost all under ten years of age, and who don't have to sing...neither of them.

But why? Because people in Massachussetts don't want to have any point in the service, in a Christian church mind you, where they will have to turn to people next to them and say, "hey, how you doing?"

Its like an AA meeting. Even the people who've been going to this church for eight years don't know each other's real names, and when it comes time for the census, someone's like, "whatever happened to that one family, you know, the one with the kids?" I have an idea: THEY LEFT! They were tired of going to worship in a place where people wanted to be anonymous. They didn't want their children thinking that this is how people should act. We don't even pray. You know that part of the service where people prey for each other? We bring up prayers for you to do when you're at home, so that we don't even have that personal contact of being silent next to one another.

Anyway, I shouldn't just pick on my church, because they are indicative of the entire state. No one wants to acknowledge your presense. Moreover, it's a sort of badge of honor for a New Englander to get in your way without acting like your there. There are times when, "excuse me," just doesn't cut it. I need a taser. These people haven't been punched enough. That's my theory.

However, in lieu of high tech stun gun gadgetry, I have discovered an alternative way to get people out of my way. I sing.

Yep. In super markets especially. And I shake my ass while I'm singing. Now, if you know me, you know that I'm not the happy go lucky kind of guy who's heart fills with song to the point that he just has to let it out. No. I am singing specifically to get people the fuck out of my way. I want them to feel uncomfortable. As such, my choice of music is perhaps a bit questionable.

You see, the best thing is when there's muzak pumping in, because then you can just sing a long. "Oh What A Night!" is a real aisle emptier, as is "To Be Real," but I prefer the easy listening shit with lyrics that don't make any sense: "You're the Deepest Part of Me."

But let me be straight with you about this: you don't need to know the lyrics to sing along. I find that most songs can be sung using the lyric, "jacking off a walrus." Take that in. You're going to want to sing this with a kind of Andy Gibb and try to pronounce it as close to "checking out a mattress" without losing the actual intelligibility of the words. People will wonder, 'did he just say Jacking off a Walrus, or was it 'Checking out a matress.' Neither will make sense, but if the song has one of those repetitive choruses, chances are that they'll figure out that you're shaking your ass and singing about jacking off walruses quick enough to stop the conversation and get the fuck out of your way.