A number of people have made fun of me over the years for hanging around, acting like an idiot, and not “enjoying” what’s right in front of me.  I laugh about it, too, because, sure, it makes me a bit of an anomaly. 
     Every once in a while, somebody’ll come along who gets really angry about it, taking it as a personal affront because I won’t sleep with them.  Why is that?

     I think it all boils to down to one thing: Lack of self-esteem.

     Sure, that’s something that everyone, if they’re honest, struggles with from time to time.  But man, I don’t know what it is about the Internet, in particular, that attracts so many people who have such dangerous issues with self-esteem that it creates such narcissism alongside it.

     “You don’t find me attractive? What the hell is wrong with you? I can get any man to sleep with me!”

     I’m totally used to seeing guys act like that, especially if they’re from Kentucky (*tongue firmly in cheek*).  But this has happened several times, and from some pretty damned gorgeous women, at that.  Women who should have had no hard luck finding someone to sleep with, so I mean, why fixate on me to begin with?

     All of them have had one thing in common: they never realized that they were attractive.

     They found fault in themselves where others wouldn’t, faults which were usually reinforced by their families, by the last asshole they were married to, or the idiot they just broke up with a few weeks ago… It’s sad.

     And as much as I’d love to be able to just label them, “Stupid bitch!” and go on, I don’t.  I know where it comes from.  I file them in the “CAUTION: Has Issues” file in my head, until they manage to graduate to a different file. Everybody has issues, but it’s the severity, and what we do them, that’s the make-or-break point.

     But I’ll tell ya one thing…  I’m more than a little sick of paying for the mistakes that every other man has made.  I shoot straight.  I don’t lead anyone on.  You know the deal beforehand.  Ruining friendships, relationships, or even families, by involving myself in little jealousy wars just isn’t my thing, ya know?
     I have my own convictions, and I stick to them.

     Take an honest look at yourself.  Identify your strong points, but don’t get arrogant.  And maybe, just maybe, you can be beautiful too.

     On one of the Support Foums I hang in, I found this message, supposedly from a Rapidshare.de Support member.  Some information has been removed in order to protect privacy/stupidity, but you’ll get the gist:

Im one of the support members who work for Rapidshare.com/.de who is responsible to make sure that no illegal software is uploaded to our servers. Recently about 1 week ago we have found out that one of your users who is hosting with you – domain: http://XXXXXX1.com indexes illegal links on his/her website.

Myself and other members of our support team has sent number of emails to your departments legal@YYYYY.com and abuse@YYYYY.com tho with no reply and no action taken.

I hope as a respective hosting provider you will take immediate action regarding this issue ASAP as we will have no other choice but to take this action further and report to IWF (Internet Watch Foundation).

Awaiting reply.

Kind Regards,
ZZZZZ

     An hour and a half later, ZZZZZ adds the following information:

Just to add our sytem has found out another domain’(s) hosted by you:

http://www.XXXXX2.com

http://www.XXXXX3.com

which contains illegal content too.

     In case you’re unfamiliar with Rapidshare, they’re a file sharing company who lets users put up whatever they want for download.  Of course, this creates all sorts of illegal uses, and Rapidshare.com is pretty quick about getting stuff taken down — when there are complaints.
     The German side, however, Rapidshare.de, is notoriously lazy in responding to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Requests, complaints about Pirated Software, RIAA Music Complaints, Terrorist Content and, of course, some of the most vile atrocities involving children.  Due to their “slow” nature and their extremely strict adherence to bureaucray, they’ve become the haven of choice for illicit file sharing.

     XXXXX1-3.coms are, for all practical purposes, search engines for the content stored on Rapidshare.de, and host no content of their own.  Instead, they cull the Latest files as published by Rapidshare.de and put them into a nice, easily searchable engine so that most anyone can find whatever content is stored in the Fileshares at Rapidshare.de.

     The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is an anti-child exploitation organization based in the United Kingdom.  They work with police, in the United Kingdom, to assist in the prevention of child exploitation over the Internet.  As noble an effort as they are, their jurisdiction is still only in the UK.

     YYYYY.com is a US-based entity.  Neither are XXXXX1.com, XXXXX2.com nor XXXXX3.com operated or owned by anyone in the UK.

     So, basically, ZZZZZ asserts that YYYYY.com is hosting the sites, XXXXX1-3.com, and that YYYYY.com should take those sites down because they are hosting “illegal links.”  He doesn’t provide those links, of course.  But him, being from a German-based file sharing company, threatens to report a US-based host to a UK-based enforcement organization due to failure to act in removing content that is solely hosted by Rapidshare.de?

     Excuse me, but *cough*bullsht*cough* what?

     This is clearly a case of the Pot calling the Kettle an African Slave, captured by armed men somewhere in the Transvaal region of South Africa in 1789, and the Dutch bastard selling him to the Portugeuse for shipment to the New World says to call him “Stefan.”
     i.e. The irony is so thick you’d have to cut it with industrial machinery.

     And per ZZZZZ’s complaint, anyone can completely understand YYYYY.com not taking the threat seriously…

     Can you say, “Bureaucratic Posturing,” boys and girls?

     I knew you could.

Note: I have nothing to do with XXXXX1.com, XXXXX2.com, XXXXX3.com, YYYYY.com, ZZZZZ or Rapidshare.de. I’m just sayin’… *shakes head*

     A few people have asked where the comment avatars went lately …

     Well, the old suggestion was, “Sign up for MyBlogLog and it’ll pull them from there,” but Yahoo screwed that up recently.

     The best suggestion now is to go to Gravatar and sign up … you can even add multiple e-mail addresses, each with its own picture if you like, to your primary account.

     So check it out … It’ll work automagically on thousands of Wordpress-based sites out there, as well as a lot of other places you might not expect…

     Aside from spending a small fortune cleaning viruses and browser hijackers from your computer after surfing porn sites, there are other, more disturbing dangers of using the Internet to help satisfy your carnal nature…

(Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtOk8Y4Eyxs)

     Could’ve been worse…

(Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=k8E-QaVNgV0)

I have never been interested in meeting anybody in an online setting.  I crusied some of the sites and even checked out some of the adult type friend sites.  But, when it came right down to it.  I never met anyone because I’m too much of a chicken shit.

I mean you hear horror stories of people meeting in person and one or the other, or neither of them, is what they claimed they were.  Or look like that picture they sent you. 

Call me old fashioned, but when I was looking to meet somebody, I would rather it be over the cucumbers in the produce section of the local Piggly Wiggly, or maybe over a goofy “cooking for one” book at the library.

I joined MySpace last year to comment and cut up with my REAL LIFE FRIENDS.  I never accept “friend requests” from people who I have never met in MY REAL LIFE.  Nor do I ever randomly pour through page after page of people requesting them to be my friends.  No.  If I don’t know ya in real life, then you’ll never make it past the gate.

I know more than a few people who have met their significant other online (eHarmony, Match.com, MySpace…) and who have actually made it for a minute.  But I know of none who has made it for the long haul.  Why?

Well, in this day and age, it seems that those in the online dating community just shift around.  Maybe its because there are so many available folks out there just lookin for love in all the wrong places. 

It’s a meat market for reals.  But, it’s not like a meat market as a bar would be.  No.  Say you go to your favorite bar or club.  Yah, it’s a fashion show.  Yah, everybody is there hoping to meet someone unless they are there with someone.
But, at least you now when you are talking to them face to face, they aren’t sitting there browsing profiles of others while they are talking you up.

I don’t know.  I guess I was jaded, or tainted against this kind of crap.  I’m not a very trusting individual since a guy I was seeing in the last century was a total computer dork that (I found out later) was always looking at online personals and profiles. 

Now you’re prolly sitting there thinking, why is she going off on this lame ass tanget?  What the hell pulled her trigger today?

Well, friends, I’ll tell ya.  There’s a dumb-ass on AOL and yahoo who surfaces now and again thinking we’re the best of friends.  Before MySpace, he used to comb AOL profiles and email unsuspecting females.  I guess so he would have someone to talk to or whatever.  Anyway, I guess it was middle of last year, after he joined MySpace, he surfaced again, showing 198360876 (exaggerated for impact) friends, all of which are female.  Which proves my point.  Or maybe it doesn’t.  I’m sort of annoyed right now.

So, today on my little yahoo messenger thingy, I posted my status as “I’ll never paint again, swear to God!”    And I guess it piked his little curiousity button somehow.  So, he (out of the blue) decided to IM me…  Lord have mercy… 

The conversation went a little somethin like this:

Dork:  ok, I just gotta ask why won’t you ever paint again?

Me: Because I have no feeling left in my arms from painting over dark colors with white like I promised my landllord. lol

Dork:  see you should of called me you know thats whats i do for a living**** 

****NOTE:  Actually, I didn’t know that, but whatever

Me:  Nopie, didn’t know that.

Dork:  yes i told you when we first started talking i remodel houses for a living

Me:  How long ago was that though?  And how long has it been since we talked?  Prey tell, do you remember what I do or from what locale I hail?

Dork:  only couple days…lol just kiddon and in winter months

Me:  No, it was well before last summer.  And as I recall I wasn’t interested in talking to you because you find it to be wonderful to collect women friends online. 

Dork:  no it wasnt you must be thinking of that other man lol

Me:  I talk to no other men, other than the one I’m about to marry****

**** NOTE: That is not all together true.  I have REAL LIFE FRIENDS that are male and I certainly talk to them.

Dork:  see

Me:  See what?  You act like you know me.

Me:  He lives with me, I don’t talk to him online  (Also not completely true, he lives with me part time until we actually jump on the weddin train)

Dork:  well that’s cool

Then the dork went silent and didn’t bother me anymore.  I just get irritated that people have so little value for someone else’s time I suppose. 
Anyway, he is like every other person out there waiting to see some long lost person they added on to their buddy list, so they can feel important because they are chatting it up.

GET A LIFE!