Cell Phone Prices

Cell phones are ubiquitous for most people in technologically current countries. Cell phones are almost as prolific as America Online disks, yet, unlike America Online disks, cell phones have not become free, rather, the price of a cell phone has sky-rocketed since inception.

Mobile carries push you to get a new phone every two years or more frequently, they cajole you into going for services that are pointless (TXT, mobile web, GPS), and they convince you that it’s OK to pay hundreds of dollars a month to subscribe to their phone service…yet they also want to rip you off by making you PAY for the phone!

Consider a cell phone bill of $25 a month for unlimited everything. This is far less that what most folks pay nowadays, but will serve for illustrative purposes nicely.

At the rate of $25 a month, a cell phone company will get $600 per year from a consumer. Over the course of two years, that’s $1200, yet they STILL would want to charge you for the privilege of PAYING them for a phone? AND they want to contractually FORCE you to pay them and only them for a period of two years?

Poppycock!

Cell phone companies are ripping off consumers. Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, ad infinitum. They simply picked up in the digital age where the Ma Bell left off in the age of analog! Even if you don’t remember ever paying to make a long distance call, rest assured, the old phone companies made billions and billionsof dollars off of folks who just wanted to call their family who lived far away. They ripped us off then, and now cell phone companies are ripping us off now.

Similar price points across cell phone companies, coupled with two-year locked-down contracts are clear examples of industry-wide collusion.

So did the Telecommunications Act of 1996 work as intended? It depends.

If your bill for monthly phone service has increased, it’s a safe bet that the promise of more competition has failed miserably.

If, on the other hand, you are scoring record profits from every new gadget and price point your ram down the throats of your customers, then it’s a safe bet that you are reaping exactly what you expected and laughing all the way to the bank. Oh hell, you’re not even going to the bank, you’re doing free wire transfers to Switzerland over telecommunication lines you own! Enjoy the money while you can - you can’t take it with you.

Snake! Snake! Snake!

This is about two minutes long. If anyone knows any of the history of this stunt, feel free to post. If not, just enjoy the vid!

That’s gotta hurt…

Sorry about posting an ebaum vid. I couldn’t find it anywhere else.

Anybody know if this is an actual video or some staged thing?

Naked Motorcycle Headstand Crash

I’m Outraged at the Lack Of Outrage!

Earlier this week the democratic house capitulated to King George by allowing the FISA law to be changed in such a way that he can now wire-tap calls and monitor emails from any US citizen to outside of the US, this surveillance needs no suspicion, no pre-approval, and no repercussions if it “accidentally” records discourse within our country. Since Consiglieri Gonzales is in charge of monitoring this program it’s unlikely that the oversight will be anymore than a rubber stamp.

I’m used to the Democrats giving in to crap to get other stuff done (and they’ve gotten a lot done, of which I’m proud) but where is the ideologically driven right on this issue? Why aren’t the right-wing talkers OUTRAGED? The government has officially compromised our constitutional right to privacy. Before now I would have thought that keeping the Government out of our underwear drawers would be at least as important to conservatives as not allowing gays to marry. I was wrong. Do you think they’d be cool with Clinton monitoring them?

YOUR TAX CUTS AT WORK

A bridge in America just shouldn’t fall down.
-Senator Amy Klobuchar D-MN

The Mississippi bridge had a 50 out of 100 rating.
49 would mean it has to be replaced.
Road infrastructure in Minnesota is paid for by the gas tax. Minnesota’s constitution requires that gas tax be spent solely on ROADS not trains, not busses. ROADS! The gas tax in Minnesota has not been increased in 20 YEARS. This is because republicans have spent the last 20 years running on the primary issue of TAX CUTS.
Tim Pawlenty has been vetoing attempts at increase spending on transportation since 2003. The republican party gets support by claiming that raising taxes on gas would raise the price of gas. Consider that Wisconsin pays more than 10 cents more tax per gallon than Minnesota and their gas prices are exactly the same (while big oil makes record profits).

When you hear a republican say “Government is the problem.” Remember that someone needs to maintain food standards, someone needs to educate our children, someone needs to make sure OUR BRIDGES DON’T FALL DOWN. If someone running for office, for a place in government says “GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM” how can we expect them to govern well? Obviously we can’t.

*RING* *RING* Hello? Yes I am a Republican… Of course I think it’s great that Bush pardoned Scooter.

After all he didn’t even commit a crime, everyone knows that Valarie Plame wasn’t even covert…

Oh she was?

Well everyone knows that Scooter didn’t blow her cover… what’s that?

Oh, that isn’t why he was going to jail?

It was perjury?

Oh, Right, I forgot that…

Well, that doesn’t matter because he wasn’t guilty of perjury because he shouldn’t have been on the stand in the first place, since everyone knows that it was Joe Wilson that outed Plame…

What now?

I’m pretty sure it was Joe… that’s what Rush said.

Well, even if it wasn’t him then it was probably Richard Armitage so Scooter should go FREE!

Uh-huh…

You’re saying that none of that matters if he lied to the grand jury.

Umm…

Well, no I don’t know why he would have lied if there was no cover-up. But that doesn’t matter because I’m sure that with any other non-biased special-prosecutor the charges wouldn’t have been brought against him, he’s obviously completely innocent. This was totally political.

Oh…

That’s right… Bush did say he was guilty in his statement but his sentence was way to harsh. So yeah, I mean he did lie a little bit under oath but the sentence was OUT OF CONTROL so Bush let him out.

No, I don’t know why he didn’t just shorten the sentence then…

Well, Clinton totally pardoned people that were really criminals so this is totally OK.

Of course I was really pissed about that then, especially Frank Rich.

YES TWO WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT! CLINTON DID IT FIRST.

I’M TELLING MY MOM!

*click*

Sardine Showdown

King Oscar and Port Clyde. Two of the biggest names on Minnesota grocer shelves. This showdown pits the two products, one on one. May the best sardine win!

The loose criteria used to judge will be:

* consistency
* taste
* aftertaste
* aroma
* texture
* color
* burps

Sardines are generally repulsive and only a few people in the world actually enjoy them. I happen to be one of the idiots who not only enjoys sardines, I LOVE sardines and generally most types of potted meats.

I started with King Oscar. The King Oscar packaging was swell and featured King Oscar II of Norway. It also stated extra virgin olive oil. This aroused my curiosity immediately.

The sardines themselves were pretty small. There were double-stacked and were completely covered in olive oil. there were lots of sardines in the can and they were delicious. The texture was firm, but easily chewable with no bones or other crunchy anaomolies detected. The aroma was a sardine aroma and the fine silvery color of each glistening sardine was very pleasing.

A full hour after eating them and I could still detect the dreamy smells on my breath and the sense of a light sheen of oil lining my teeth.

On the Port Clyde!

The Port Clyde sardines were a mustard-based product. The sardines were larger and the mustard oil was a unique change from the olive oil. I have have mustard-based sardines in the past, but the Port Clyde sardines were just not as memorable as other sardines and they definitely did not stack up to King Oscar’s virgins.

The sardines themselves were sort of mushy and you couldn’t really see the fish themselves. It was as though the mustard sauce was being used to mask the quality of the sardines. The mustard sauce did not taste very good, and the aftertaste was not pleasant. Also, the burp factor was more of a Vurp factor (Vomit-Burp). I was able to choke the Vurp down again and I did not go into full reverse peristaltic action, but it was a test of wills.

After this taste test, King Oscar really is King!

“Ismail Ax” Let the hating begin

It was just released on the washington post site that the “gunman” Cho Seung-Hui at V-tech had written “Ismail Ax” on the inside of his arm.  This is some sort of reference to Ibrahim who used it in a violent manner to allow Islam to flourish.

This development will give this story a fairly long tail and really help the fear-mongering of the admin.  In addition I’m worried that we’ll see further justification for some of the more odious aspects of the patriot act…  It’s going to get ugly.  Buckle up.

Can any prison hold Kasparov?

Kasparov was just arrested for posing some sort of threat to the Putin regime. What I don’t understand is how they expect to keep him in. I’m sure he saw this coming, even if he isn’t at the top of his game he’s probably playing 30 moves ahead. I expect that he knows that by getting arrested he’s guaranteeing that his party will upset the status quo for the next election. Either that or he can just get out and elude capture until he stealthily sneaks into the Kremlin and takes the crown himself (they still use a crown in Russia don’t they?).

CHECK MATE PUTIN!

Political Cliché Reform or 10 Reasons I Won’t Vote for You

Dear Anybody On Earth Running For President In The Next Election,

First of all: TOO SOON!

1) If you announce that you’re running for office more than a year before the election I’m not voting for you. Consider that you have to give stump speeches for longer than a year. With Youtube and bloggers you’re going to have to keep thinking of new material and that’s going to be very difficult. Even if you have the creative chops and miraculous speech writers the longer you run the more likely you are to say something stupid (drop out now Biden). If you’re reading this and you’ve already announced your candidacy DROP OUT. Perot dropped four months before the election and joined up again a month before and almost won. If you drop out now people will forgive you, especially if you say something about how these damn campaigns are starting TOO SOON and costing TOO MUCH MONEY. Re-enter 3 months before the election, you’ll be fresh you’ll have a ton of money (just invest what you have now in Apple, Google and Nintendo) and people will love it. I’ll love it. I’ll vote for you.

Now that that’s said I’d like to get to the real reason I’m writing this letter, Political Cliché Reform. Political Cliché’s are stupid, they make you look stupid, they make the people listening to you feel stupid, they make our children stupid, they make our enemies think we’re stupid, etc…

If you use any of the following clichés I will not vote for you:

2) “_________ the course” Stay, Change or otherwise. Say it and lose my vote.

3) “Talk the talk” or “Walk the talk” or any other variation that is always used incorrectly and always sucks. I definitely don’t vote for people who can’t even use a cliché properly.

4) “America is the greatest country!” This is racist. I don’t vote for racists.

5) “The world changed on 9/11″ This is technically true but so is “the world changed on 9/10″. Don’t use a disaster to justify fear (leads to the dark-side). I don’t vote for fear-mongers… or Sith.

6) “Flip-Flop” Unless you’re referring to shoes I’m voting for someone else.

7) “Keep all of our options open” everyone knows this means, “we will bomb them if we feel like it,” just say that. I won’t vote for you in either case, but the latter is more honest.

“Terrorists” this word is officially a cliché. It’s used for anyone who fights for a cause that we don’t like–no criteria beyond that. Putting this on my list is likely to make it so I can’t vote for anyone… *sigh*

9) “Islamo-Fascists” This makes no sense and using it means you don’t know what fascism is. I won’t vote for someone who doesn’t know what fascism is.

10) “Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here” the dumbest one on this list. It would be equally valid to say “Eat pudding so we don’t have to fight them here”. Anytime I hear someone repeat this, a little piece of my soul dies. I don’t vote for people who kill my soul.