Having said that, I would like to make it clear that I'm not Mitnick cheerleader. Whatever else Kevin Mitnick might be, a guy with a lot of common sense he isn't. How many times do you have to get caught to figure out you're not good enough to keep doing what you're doing? I don't think that that has occurred yet, so I predict another installment in this story a few months after release: Kevin screws up again and lands in jail because he wasn't smart enough to figure out his every move will be watched for the rest of his life.

They're giving him enough rope to hang himself; the question is will he be stupid enough to take advantage of it? I personally suspect he will, and if getting screwed by the government for four years isn't enough to keep him on the straight and narrow, I can only offer the following sentiment:

The new material is as follows:

From: johnnyk@cybermax.net
To: johnnyk@cybermax.net
Subject: You have been found GUILTY.

You have been found GUILTY.
Of creating wars, starvation, poverty, crime etc. worldwide by overpopulating the world to death.

Your Sentence is DEATH by self annihilation to be carried out starting in january with the collasps of all the economies and everyone starting to eat everyone

You have a month to live.
Are you comfortable? Got enough food in the house?
Electricity working? Got fuel for the car?
Well come January 1, 2000 all that is going to change.
Well that little Y2K problem is going to collapse all the economies in the world. No more food, electricity, fuel, communications etc. all those things are going to shut down like that "snap" (maybe a week or so) with them multi-warheads flying around and everybody eating everybody and the survival of the fittest will become the law until the antichrist takes over the world.

YOU CAN STAY HERE FOR THAT
IT'S BEST TO GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE THAT HAPPENS

The rest continues in the normal fashion we've come to expect.

I wonder if it hurts to be this hardcore? Sending thousands of crappy "this e-mail changed my life, work at home!" mails is bad enough, but how do you reconcile yourself to sending virtual death threats?

And as far as human extinction goes, I believe the best way to go about that has already been covered.

To hell with "you have a month to live", you only have two weeks to shop for xxx-mas. If for some reason you do decide to engage in wacky millenialist tension relief, do it in style rather than wrap yourself in unnecessary Christian baggage.

Stripped finger size crispy white meat in hot garlic sauce embroiled w. broccoli.

Even if you don't agree with his politics and agenda, you can't impugn the man's ability to hit home when he was in a ranting mood. He weilded sarcasm like a chainsaw.

Don't take my word for it. Get a taste for yourself:

It suddenly occurs to me that I forgot to stop by the local department-store-style pet shop; my three cats were out of food.

Let me pose a question - maybe it's rhetorical, so feel free to ponder at length:

Why are 3.5 pound bags of dried cat and dog food even sold?

Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 01:51:25 -0800
From: _____
To: gimps@eef.r33t.org
Subject: doodie.jp

congratulations.

ep-sample has forever sealed my fate at [a certain Califoria university]. it has also proved itself as an invaluable tool for weeding out the losers in your crew.

one student (we'll call him "steve" cuz that's his real name [name changed]) that we were trying to ditch due to a high annoyance factor happened to be in my dorm room while i was showing off all my videos (a large portion thereof from r33t.org)... the door was open, he saw the one with the poor sod getting whacked over the head by a shovel in Suburbia, IL, USA. he decided to watch the rest with the crew... i guess he's sick like that.

he's asian, too. not that it means too much, take it as you will.

the time came for the last one... ep-sample... i had been avoiding it and everyone wanted to know just what it was. like the big red button with the sign that says, "don't push" ... they all wanted to push the fucking button.

"alright," sez me, "i've only been able to watch this once and i refuse to watch it again. i'm going to start it, and leave and close the door behind me. feel free to come out whenever you want."

one by one, they all came out, but i made sure that "steve" stayed in the room. steve is a hardcore christian and we knew he'd just bring a downer on our crew whenever anyone insulted asians or christians or homosexuals in his presence. not that we have anything against those groups, but they tend to make for some damn funny jokes.

we scarred steve for life. he refuses to talk to us anymore, and is now a sad recluse who tries desperately to get his AMD K6/3 based system to work night after night so he can play games. he gets very emotional over small things, like Tiberian Sun not working properly.

thank you for this fantastic tool against the masses of weak-minded people in institutions of higher learning.

_____

Love-starved sheep, poor thing
It's not sex if I don't come
I'm not wearing pants

r33t haiku: (English to Portuguese via babelfish)

Carneiros starved do amor, coisa deficiente
Não é sexo se eu não vier
Eu não estou desgastando calças

r33t haiku: (And back to English with the same engine)

Don't touch yourself down there until you've read it.

Her story is that she's going to a class on company business.

I think she's lying.

The ethnic outfit of the American consists of tennis shoes. It's what most of them (us, dammit) wear. They're big, clunky, and utterly tasteless - especially the brand name varieties. I haven't worn them in almost 10 years and I certainly don't miss them, preferring low Doc's or a military boot.

But, as I've dealt with this issue, I've come to the point where I just accept it. It's too pervasive to fight.

But there's yet another war which may yet be won. Specifically, this:

Fanny packs. They're sloppy and trashy looking. For whatever reason, fat girls seem unable to grasp the concept that it makes them look dumpy (or, as the case may be, dumpier). It's like being retarded and wearing a homemade Special Olympics t-shirt with "Special" misspelled as "Speshal". I mean, why fucking advertise it, you know?

Or it might just be because they fuck like wild bunnies while everyone else is watching television.

So - in one of the delicious ironies of modern culture - some of the people whose religious beliefs are most likely to shun family planning and more likely to promote large families are classic examples of the survival of the "fittest" being such a complex subject. And they're also the least likely to believe in it.

It's quite another to be so obsessed that you become blinded, shut off from reality.

...and some very unusual roads lead to r33t.

The Quality Assurance team here at r33t occasionally (read "many times a day") check our web referrer log to see from what oddball route people are getting to r33t. A recurring favorite is the section from search engines. Take a look at some of the ways people have stumbled upon our humble site:

Via Altavista: soap suds
Via Hotbot: smother, rape
Via Altavista: free trademark search
Via Snap: Tele Tubbies
Via Excite: ass fuck photos
Via Askjeeves: what does r33t mean?
Via Yahoo: poontang pie
Via Dogpile: don't fuck with jesus

It terrifies me to think that I'm sharing the road with people who grew up before the era of videogame sensory overload.

McDonald's is well known for creating obstacles. Mini Beanie Babies are a prime example. I'll have ten minutes to spare, and sure enough, I'll get behind a mother and daughter who need to have a ten minute discussion about which beanies they have and which they should get. Then, when they get up to the counter, McD's is invariably OUT of whichever one they want. Then the mother and daughter must confer some more. The clock ticks. Eventually, five minutes later, they're ready to place their Beanie Baby order. Oh yeah, and I guess they'll want some FOOD WITH THAT, TOO. Mom will have the Quarter Pounder with cheese, extra pickle, hold the mustard. Her little girl wants - of course - the Happy Meal, and after asking for a specific toy, she's told they're out, which requires YET ANOTHER DISCUSSION.

The local Burger King - not to be outdone - has trumped this by the new sign next to the cashier - "SING A SONG FOR FREE MEDIUM FRIES". God dammit, I already knew I was in trouble when I got in line behind two large parents and their three kids. Then when I saw the sign, I was glad I still had my sunglasses on because I knew I was giving them the look of death. So - again, after deciding what food they wanted (it's not allowable for them to consider their lunch desires before they walk in the door, by the way), they see ... the sign. The cashier points the microphone (turned off, thank god), and the oldest boy steps up after deciding that singing "Happy Birthday" would be especially funny. He opens his mouth and out comes one of those Star Search voices - the kind with the fakey nearly-falsetto tremelo - the kind that white trash love. He's doing his thing and sings "Happy birthday dear ...", and looks up at Mom for guidance. Mom offers "Pokemon". YES LET'S SING HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO POKEMON DEAR GOD KILL ME NOW PLEASE STOP THE UNBEARABLE PAIN OF LIVING. Then the middle child steps up and offers the same song in Hebrew. I'm no linguist, but I find it odd that the English version has TWO distinct lines, the first repeated three times, yet the Hebrew version is the same single line repeated four times.

To add insult to injury, I then have to stand in line while they decide what to drink at the self-serve fountain. DAMMIT ALL TO HELL, HOW ABOUT A TASTY GLASS OF MY PISS?

I have a suggestion: a line for adults only labelled "no bullshit". You can't buy toys there, you can't ask questions, you just walk up and ORDER SOME GODDAMN FOOD. Anyone who stalls to look at the menu is referred back to the regular line - you know, the one for people who think that fast food restaurants are for buying toys instead of getting a fucking quick lunch.

I received a newspaper clipping in the mail last Wednesday. There was no return address or any indication who sent it. Draw your own conclusions.

The rest is the same as the original spam.

In a such as this, when we have an entire century to compact into meaningless soundbytes and are on the verge of new ways of thinking (for instance "do I write 00 or 2000 on my check?"), it becomes important to look to things we can count on.

> Let us contemplate seveeral constants, a few things that we - as citizens of the world - can be assured will remain true. These are truths that are constant, and we needn't worry about their ability to withstand social, economic, and proctological change.

With no further adieu... Things we can count on:
Quality French automaking. Dependable, stable Italian government. Cuban naval superiority. Value of the Mexican Peso. Microsoft Quality Assurance. Wall Street altruism. American consumer electronics manufacturing. Catholic family planning. Protestant rationalism. Republican and Democratic realization that the "American System" is democracy rather than capitalist libertarianism. Chinese passivity. Canadian colonialism. Congressional morality. Quality Alabaman education. Indian international cinema success. English dentistry. Russian rock music. Singaporan justice. IBM OS/2 market dominance. Turkish foreign policy. Brazilian IRC prescence. Christian charity. Afghan peace. Lebanese tourism industry. Nepalese independence.

I thought the general agreed-upon context of Halloween consisted of four easy to understand steps:

1) Dress up as something or someone else.
2) Go door to door
3) Yell "Trick or treat!" and hope to god some fat bastard's idea of a trick was something other than letting his rottweiler make violent love to your tender orifices
4) Get candy

Now I'm not going to make value judgements on the costumes. Some are very good, and some are stupid or cookie-cutter, of course. You have varying levels of interest, various income levels, varying amounts of parental time and money to invest into this holiday which, if analyzed from a profit/loss perspective, clearlyclearly operates in the red.

What I fail to understand are the kids who come to my door that appear to be dressed up as kids. Wearing their normal baggy-ass clothes, with their jackets tied around their waist, with no sign of character identification, costuming, face paint, or obligatory plastic gore.

So much for step one. Everyone seems to get step two. Only the very youngest (and their parents) seem to have grasped step three.

Usually.

Sometimes, however, we get things that defy description. Rice cake snacks that think they're Chee-tos but taste more like cardboard, those nasty peanut butter and cheese crackers, and chewy calcium supplements.

When I was a child, I would go to Grandma's house. It got boring pretty quick, so frequently I would ask her if she had any candy. She did, all right, but it was grandma candy. Anise drops, pulled sugar candy, and perfumy-tasting pink thingies. Oddly enough, I bet I'd really like the anise drops now, but the rest was pretty horrific.

I'm sure Viactiv would have felt right at home on Grandma's candy shelf. It combines a chocolate flavor with a chalky texture. I suppose the best word to describe the flavor would be ... chalklet. I tried one with someone else who was feeling especially daring. We exchanged distasteful looks and spat them out. They weren't immediately repulsive, they just tasted ... wrong.

It didn't, though it outperformed Titanic during the first few weeks of its run.

Instead of acknowledging this, some people are still plugging away, spreadsheets churning out data (the URL has changed several times, this one will probably be wrong in a week).

OK folks, enough. Charting Star Wars as it reaches 19th place in the daily grosses is beyond absurd. The last day I read as I verified the link put the daily total at $33,340 on something less than 500 screens. Hell, Elmo in Grouchland is still making more than twice that much.

Folks, it's over - I'm embarassed this is even news to anyone. Don't even talk about re-releases and all that, because if you think Titanic made $1.8 billion worldwide just to sit on a shelf for the rest of its life, you're nuts.

The site is interesting in several ways, and their obsessive-compulsiveness makes for a reasonable way to spend 5.6 minutes of your life - they ought to consider becoming a general "top movies" site, as their data content is updated as frequently and rigorously as several trade magazines.

The stuff she would buy was a deep but almost pastel blue, smelled just like cheap purfume (because humans, like cats, apparently go around sniffing each others' anuses), and it was extremely soft. In fact, it probably had more in common with the lint you find in your dryer after doing a load of jeans than the stuff in my bathrooms. Grandma's mystical toilet rolls were so soft and thick, in fact, that as a high-volume toilet paper user, I would frequently stop up the toilet with it.

Contrast this to what the United States Air Force purchases. This was the exact opposite in many respects; it is utilitarian, somewhat rough, functional, no-frills - dependable. It is cheap, but it does the job. You wouldn't want to use it instead of Kleenex to stuff in your nostrils to stop up a nosebleed, but for wiping your sphincteral region, it certainly performs in a satisfactory manner.

To go one step further, though, you'd have to visit the "Secret Government Agency That Does Not Exist Despite Being Well-Labelled Via Highway Signs" in Laurel, Maryland, where I served my last three years in the military. This is a textbook example of the pitfalls of government contracting. To those of you not in the know, government contracting "functions" like this:

The government lists its specifications for a given contract. Lots of contractors bid. The government accepts the lowest bid.

This logic is, apparently, based on the common sense lesson you and I learned as children:

THE BEST WAY TO GET QUALITY IS TO SPEND AS LITTLE MONEY AS POSSIBLE.

The quintessential evidence of this is the SGATDNEDBWLVHS's toilet paper. This abomination comes on those big industrial rolls that are about eighteen inches in diameter. This is the flimsiest, least absorbent, thinnest, most braindead toilet paper imaginable. It rips off the spool sooner than you want it do, and using it on your netherportions is reminiscient of taking a Gideon bible and trying to wipe your exit ramp with the Book of Genisis - in fact, it is much closer to crepe-style bible paper than it is to anything you could find in the bathroom product aisle at your local supermarket. One might assume that I could get a vicarious thrill over this rather blasphemous analogy every time I defecated, but one would be sadly mistaken, as the frustration level was too great.

For home use, me and my wife usually buy something cheap but good such as Angel Soft (I swear the company that makes this should think about renaming it Anal Soft and start an honest marketing campaign).

I had an experience at work, though, that might cause me to re-think that. They've recently switched to "New Charmin". Without getting overly graphic, let's just say this stuff grabs mud from your back door better than anything I've used before. It has a pattern which is inaccurately called "quilting" despite absence of thread. Unlike other quilted posterior cleanliness products, this one might be better termed "textured".

Consider picking up a four pack and trying it for yourself. You will thank me later.

If the people who think the prefix
"cyber-" is cool like to call Internet
users "netizens" started talking about
toilet paper connoisseurs, would they
call them shitizens?

Case in point:

From the Sanrio website:

Pink no Corisu came from the Pinkuru Planet to Earth to see how many flowers she could make bloom here by using the power of the little blossom she wears on her head!

On her planet, there are lots of flowers and it is very peaceful.

She loves it because her mama and papa (the king and queen of the Pinkuru Planet Squirrel Kingdom) live there and the air is always filled with the sweet smell of flowers!

More recently, we've seen the breakup of several nations whose people had divergent interests, such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Alternately, we've seen peoples reunited - Yemen, China with Macau and Hong Kong, and of course Germany.

Yet other peoples remain divided by foreign invasions and revolutions and have remain artificially divided ever since, such as the Koreas, and Ireland from English-controlled Northern Ireland.

How simple it is to forget these very same issues as they fester unattended in our own back yard.

Virginia and West Virginia: One People, One Destiny, One Virginia!

West Virginia split from Virginia over the issue of seccession. Folks, the war has been over for more than 130 years - it's time to heal these wounds, and shape the future of a United Virginia.

SOCIETY FOR THE RE-UNIFICATION OF VIRGINIA

Go there. Now. Drink the tea, watch the video, lick the T-Shirt.

Enter the "California roll". I'm convinced that this is some sort of in-joke among "authentic" sushi chefs; it's a jibe at Americans (probably well deserved), but most don't get it.

The California roll consists mostly of things that Americans are comfortable with - rice, crab meat and cucumber. Of course there's the whole seaweed wrapper thing, but that's pretty low on the "gross" scale, even for sheltered mid-western suburban boys.

The California roll is for people who want to say they like sushi, but can't stomach the idea of eating a raw piece of tuna or flounder.

On the back of most disk jackets were warning in many different languages about exactly what not to put your poor floppies through.

The floppy is all but irrelevant for most home users now, and the venerable 5.25" lingers on only in the basement of your grandfather who, despite having enough money to travel on vacation every summer simply will not spend $500 or less for a brand new computer. He's still got that 286 downstairs, and keeping it running, what with his WordPerfect 3.41 and DesqView, is some sort of strange badge of honor.

In some places, the floppy is still king (like spendthrift government agencies who can justify $200,000 for a new user server (or a few billion for a battleship that replaces a pefectly good model already in existance) but cannot seem to crawl out of the digital Stone Age).

My story takes place in one of these locations.

One evening at work, a friend comes up to me to get some free computer advice. It's no imposition on me, and it beats futzing with crypto, so we talk for a while. The manager comes up to my friend and asks him for copies of a document he wanted - don't worry, it wasn't work related. My friend pulls out a 5.25" floppy and explains that the document is saved, but the disk doesn't seem to work anymore, and it sounds "like it's not turning". He tells him how he's been trying to get it to read for about ten minutes or so.

They're talking, and my friend is holding the disk in one hand, gesticulating with it a little, with his back turned toward me.

I knew just what to do.

Without a word, I snatched the disk from his hand, looked it over for about half a second, and proceeded to LICK THE DISKETTE right on the hole where the medium is visible. I turned it over and licked the other side. I then turned the medium a little in the diskette folder, put it back in his hand, which hadn't moved...

I looked at their faces and it was an assortment of looks the likes of which you remember for the rest of your life - everything from pure horror to utter disbelief to complete incomprehension.

...BUT, goddamnit, THE DISK WORKED.

They were simply amazed not only that it worked, but because I touched the diskette in the SPECIAL HOLE with my tongue despite years of indoctrination about how we're not even supposed to LOOK at that hole the wrong way by every diskette manufacturer in existance.

I think my friend still tells this story about me. It cemented my (mostly unearned) reputation as a voodoo priest of computer troubleshooting.

The only reason I even thought of that was because someone did the exact same thing to me about ten years earlier, whom I immediately bowed down to as a crazed priest of computer troubleshooting.

I was looking at something and my wife calls me over. She's looking at guinea pigs. I'm somewhat confused, as neither of us are what you would call "rodent people". She pokes me in the ribs and tells me to watch.

I watch.

One of the little guinea pigs is looking for tail. I'll call him "Action Jackson". Action Jackson's running around the cage, trying to score with the other little guinea pigs. The tiny rabbits in the same enclosure are very annoyed. Action Jackson isn't very selective, as he's trying to ride every other member of his species. I don't know if any of the others were male, but I don't think Action Jackson was terribly worried. Hell, he mounted one the wrong way. When we saw that, we were laughing hysterically, and so were the people next to us.

There were no people next to us. I look over, and the other two people laughing turn out to be a parrot that does a great impression of ... two people laughing. So we're laughing at Action Jackson, the parrot's laughing at us, then we start laughing at the parrot.

Then the parrot leaps out of the cage and starts gnawing a bunny.

I received some spam today (and you know I'm a target for some of the weirdest) that was rambling and meandering. It was extra cool because it preached some sort of new-agey "let's all believe in the same god" vibe, and it had TWO SPACES BETWEEN EVERY WORD! Needless to say, this refreshing spaciousness moved me. Perhaps you would like to laugh along:

Those  who  claim  to  know  God   have  made  absurd  claims.  And  they  behave   as  if  religions  are  a  competition.
We  thus  find  The First Church  of Jesus  Christ,  and   The First  Baptist Church,  and  The  First Adventist Church.
Are  we  in  a  race ? Does  it  matter  who  was   First ?

Go ahead and read the whole thing if you'd like.

Open minded people everywhere share a common experience at cringing at the subreption within these texts. It reminds me of a story from my childhood.

In my neighborhood, we had something called "The Five Day Club" every summer. Some holier-than-thou proselytizer would have some volunteers from their church come into the neighborhood, round up all the little child-heathens, and tell us bible stories, morality fables, etc.

There was a rather perverse incentive program. We'd get candy for memorizing certain biblical verses and for bringing friends. At the end of each session (which seemed like hours but was probably only 90 minutes or so), lemonade and cookies were served. Even though I was young, say, 7 or so, I found it curious to be lectured on generosity followed by having one of the neighbor's kids large, well-fed parents making sure we only took a single cookie.

To sum it up, it was kinda like AMWAY for Jesus children. In terms of cookies and candy, it was a smashing success; in terms of life lessons, it probably ended up teaching many of us lessons other than those intended.

I suppose this process was supposed to instill a sense of reverence of Jesus and the bible into us. What it ended up doing was teaching us that adults would give you candy for memorizing stuff that you didn't really understand, and that if you let people tell you stories, you'd get cookies and drinks afterwards.

Being competetive boys, God's Candy Competition wasn't quite good enough. My cousins and friends would try to "out-do" each other by getting "saved" more than one another. Often, there was a pool party afterwards, during which we lorded our piety over one another.

"I was saved 24 times"

Although it's probably been lying around here for a year or so, today is the first day I took a look at the writing on it. In big writing, it's labelled "PROPERTY OF U.S.P.S.". And it has a warning below that, in smaller print...

I'm not sure how I obtained this box, but I suspect I brought it home from work when I had to cart a few things home. Perhaps my wife did it and not me. The language is pretty clear, and I can only draw one conclusion: I am bad. Naughty. Not just "shake someone's Etch-a-Sketch upside down while they're not looking" bad, but "dangerous bomb-making internet cult member pedophile" bad.

I've decided that I'm going to stand my ground on this one. If any member of the United States Postal Service wants to have a SWAT team standoff and throw riot gas in my windows, so be it. $1,000 or three years imprisonment with sex-starved extremely hard-bodied men is actually a small price to pay for a slice of kitty joy.

Be careful if you live anywhere near me. I might come up dressed in jean shorts, a loud print shirt, and my favorite Docs - and you'll think I'm an official representative of the U.S.P.S. since I boldly display my Official Cardboard Postal Box. I'm a dangerous fuck. Don't test me, I might even steal a soft drink from your refrigerator while you're not looking.

Well guess what? I've been graced with this one once again, but this time there's more. Reverend Lavelle is a hoot...

Subject: When Everyone Starts To EAT Everyone

Are you comfortable? Got enough food in the house? Electricity working? Got fuel for the car?
Well come January 1, 2000 all that is going to change.
You know that little Y2K thing where many of the computers in the world are just going to shut down on Jan 1.
Well that little problem is going to collapse all the economies in the world. No more food, electricity, fuel, communications etc. all those things are going to shut down like that "snap" (maybe a week or so) and the survival of the fittest will become the law until the antichrist takes over the world.

YOU CAN STAY HERE FOR THAT

IT'S BEST TO GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE THAT HAPPENS

BUT THE RAPTURE WILL NOT OCCUR UNTIL THE UNIVERSE IS PROPERLY DISPLAYED

STAND UP AND OPEN YOUR MOUTH !

The rest is a repeat of the original message. Do you think he's at all bothered by the fact that he's a conspiratorial crackpot with no idea about how to get a point across without evoking a stream-of-consciousness style rant?

Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 00:22:33 PDT
From: Lawrence _____ (_____@hotmail.com)
To: gimps@EEF.r33t.org
Subject: Important Request.

Dear r33t.org staff member,

I have taken a liking to r33t.org. And might like to purchase it. I am willing to pay a figure that you name something within the 4 digit area.

I am very serious, I am the webmaster of n33t.net, and I feal that your site would make an excellent addition to my collection.

You will still run it, but I would like to own it. I want to be able to freely change the pages, and I would like to talk soon to whoever might be incharge of this.

Please do not post this on your site, as some loony bin attempting to be a lamer. Or whatever bullshit might come from this. I have the money, and I am attempting to make a business deal.

Thank you,
_____ (Justin Com)

Serious business inquiries aren't sent via hotmail accounts. Serious business inquiries about purchasing existing content aren't sent by people who have their domains hosted by free webspace providers.

However, it is somewhat enticing... After all, it would free Seros from maintaining all those pesky user accounts on r33t.org since we'd be moving from a real live server to the ass-end of virtualave's webspace. What an improvement that would be!

I suppose if we did make such a move, we'd have to change the 1917 theme to something that looked more ... "capitalist".

I then see the most ridiculous truck I've seen in weeks. This beast is jacked up about two extra feet, and is sporting 24" swamp tires. Best yet, the truck is purple. This is one of those offroad monsters that never actually sees so much as a dirt driveway, let alone any "offroading" action.

So there it is, and there I am. I'm not driving the Mustang, I'm driving an unassuming Pontiac Grand Am - not imposing in the least to a road vet.

You don't drive a ridiculous pumped up truck like that unless you are a showoff, so I settle back down to the speed limit, ride along side him, and hatch a plan.

I fall back a few car lengths, then I push it to the floor and zoom past him, then coast... I make sure I'm looking at him when I pass him. He takes the bait! He hits his pedal and his engine roars, and I act as if I'm trying to beat him but can't. We hit 80mph, 90mph, and eventually about 105mph...

Flashback
Remember when I said I knew these roads, and that I drive them at that time of night very often? This guy obviously didn't know them...

So we head around a right-banking curve, I fall behind a little, and give it ONE FINAL PUSH as we head toward the hill...

...then I slam my brakes and fall back to a nice, smooth 60mph, as the Barneymobile plows over it at about 100mph or so...

Case in point... Meta tags. Meta tags are site descriptors that are frequently used by search engines and abused by webmasters looking for cheap hits. r33t.org and vatican.va share a lot in common in this regard. But don't take my word for it, check out the source:

r33t.org's meta tag
META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="r33t, l33t, r00l, j00, porn, the, a, habib, jew, erotica, xxx, sex, fuck, intercourse, cheese, afro, supercalifragilistic, uneek, gimp, poop, odd, joo, bee, magic beef, skin flute, beanie, baby, heeb, swedish chef, eef, oof, flatulence, Monica Lewinsky, tellie tubbies, bondage, death metal, goot, ITRA, NAACP, slurpie, 7-11, d00nc00n, jesus, mp3"

vatican.va's meta tag
META Name="keywords" Content="Redemptor, Christ, Christianity, Christendom, Holy Land, Jerusalem, catholic, catholicism, Art, Art History, Renaissance, Michelangelo, Raphael, Holy See, Vatican, Sistine Chapel, Cappella Sistina, Raphael's Stanze, Stanze di Raffaello, Raphael's Loggia, Loggia di Raffaello, Vatican Museums, Vatican Museum, Vatican Library, Musei Vaticani, Vatican City, Citta del Vaticano, Splendors, Via Crucis, Way of the Cross, Holy Sepulchre, Bethlehem, Capharnaum, Nazareth, Pater Noster, Crusader, Crucesignatorum, Itinera, Corpus Inscriptionum, Giotto, Bondone, Franciscan, Assisi, OFM, Custody, Berry, Duc de Berry, Riches Heures, Camino, Maracaibo, Iglesia, Tiananmen, Bernini, Limbourg, Sandoli"

If I created an economy car, I'd want it be stinking cute.

If I created an economy car, the only colors I'd even bother offering it in would be varieties of green: neon green, forest green, metallic fleck green, and olive drab.

Pretty much like r33t.org.

Here's a sample:

The bending of light shows that energy also has gravity. So matter and energy are 3D moving with gravity. The universe is made of matter, energy, time and space. That just stated is the matter and energy part. Time and space. Take everything in the universe and stop it. Does time progress? No.

Run - do not walk - to your nearest grocery store and acquire this delicious treat sensation for instant gratification. Your taste buds will thank you. I will thank you.

So there I am, going about 25mph on a back road when all of a sudden this huge white Lincoln Towncar barrels down a road that crosses the one I'm on. It's coming at me, no intention of stopping, apparently. Collision at about 40mph or so to the driver's side of my car might not be something I'd get a chance to tell anyone about. I hit the gas just in time - it missed me by about a foot or two, I think.

This was traumatic, but as I was on time and not early, I didn't have time to confront the woman who prissily exited her boat of a car. The thing that gets me is that this is extremely similar to an incident I had in this same place on a different day. This leads me to the inevitable question:

Was there some sort of THEOLOGICAL EMERGENCY? Why the hell are people driving to a "Christian book store" as if they didn't care if they got there dead or alive?

Notice to middle-America: Stickers of Calvin pissing on logos started out only marginally humorous and got old right about the time I saw the second one - and this was twelve or so years ago.

The biggest culprit is NASCAR. NASCAR pits racers and their teams and sponsors against one another. So to a NASCAR fan, the difference between Ford and Chevy is a religious issue. In that sense, it's much like the difference between Baptist and Mormon - extremely important and worth writing about in tediously hair-splitting detail if you're a member of one of the two "sides", but inconsequential if you're a sarcastic atheist bastard like myself.

In the last decade, Calvin has been busily pissing on anything with a logo, usually while mounted upon the back windows of sports cars and trucks.

Bravo, that's so cool. Now grow up a little and realize that nobody really gives a rat's ass about whether you bore your jackass redneck relatives with your generic humor about the car brand you "hate". Again, much like religion, it has more to do with what your daddy drove than which is "better".

A bumper sticker is not going to make you a better person. The Y2K Survivalist Bumper Sticker is as close as you're going to get. At least, unlike all the "Calvin Pisses on a Logo", "Jesus Fish" and "Darwin Fish", the Y2K-S BSS won't mark you as yet another sheep.

In fact, I have a r33t project for you!

Print out the Y2K-S BSS on sticker stock.

Get a Polaroid instant camera (either the traditional kind or the new disposable variety).

Find a police car.

Quickly, affix the Y2K-SBSS to the police car's bumper, take a few pictures, and get away.

Scan the pictures in and mail them in.

You'll earn my eternal gratitude (unless, of course, it ends up being fleetingly brief gratitude). Your pictures will be featured on r33t. You will admit nothing and deny everything.

Note: Don't try this with a standard camera unless you develop your own film. Processing your film at a local store isn't a good idea when you're tagging patrol cars.