Posts Tagged ‘rant’

Five things I hate about blogging

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Saw this over here at SoMi Speaks. SoMi wrote about a post she had read where the author challenged people to write interesting content by discussing a viewpoint counter to your typical opinion. She chose to write about reasons to hate blogging. Rather than choose another topic, I think I'll steal her idea completely:

Five things I hate about blogging:

  1. Theme days. Wordless Wednesday. Half Naked Thursday. Thursday Thirteen. Haiku Friday. Sunday Stealing, Shitty Saturday, Moron Monday. Write on your blog because you have something you want to say. Write on your blog because you want to commit to creating content every day. Write for a real reason. Don't think to yourself "Oh, self, I haven't posted in a few days. I think I'll just stick up a photo and since it's Wednesday, I don't have to write a post and I can call it Wordless Wednesday." If you want to just put a photo up, put it up any day. You don't have to write anything if you don't want to. But following along with these theme days is just lazy blogging. Don't blog that day if you don't have anything to say.

    EDIT: Let me be clear that I'm talking about global theme days, not themes that you come up for your own specific blog. That's a huge difference. One is following and one is leading.

  2. Cutesy Pseudonyms. Just like someone else, I despise cutesy pseudonyms on blogs. If you refer to your husband as "The Big Sir" and kids as "Little Creature" and "Princess from Space", I won't read you. Those types of names make your writing one-dimensional and make it very hard to see those people as anything other than characters in your shitty blog rather than full-fleshed three-dimensional people in your shitty life.

  3. Twitter. Twitter has made people lazy about blogging. Rather than putting time and effort into their content, the idea is germinated in their brain and then ejaculated in 140 characters onto Twitter to never be seen again. The advent of Twitter has also reduced commenting, which, in my opinion, reduces the feeling of community that blogging provides. I routinely get someone who comments on my post on Twitter rather than ON THE FUCKING POST or who replies to my comment on their post via Twitter.

  4. Blogs on Blogspot. Blogger's comment system sucks. You don't have control over your content, including images you upload. If you're serious about your blog, spend the five fucking dollars it would take to reserve a domain name or even go over to Wordpress.com for free. Every blog I see that's at http://Fuckinglazyblogger.blogspot.com I discount its value, even if its only marginally. If you don't take it seriously, why should I waste my time reading your blog?

  5. Product Review Sites With the exception of very few review sites, most sites will simply post a referral link to the product with scant information about the quality or even the function of said product. If you're going to do a review, actually review the product. Provide useful information about the product. Personal experiences with the item. Cogent details on why the product is or is not worth the purchase. If I'm searching for info on a product, and I see a site that just links to the product with a photo and maybe a rating or a one-line review, I usually hunt down the person who runs the site and throw hot pokers at their face.

Those are just five things that I hate about blogging. What do you hate?

Watch Adam's Head Explode

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Someone who is not at all my younger 25-year old brother manages to almost make my head explode using only good old-fashioned ignorance and Yahoo Messenger:

NotMyBrother: why would someone I am doing an install for want to write me a BOA check from their company for a vehicle which is through their company and he won't make it for cash?

NotMyBrother: its a 2006 lincoln navigator I am doing a full-blown install on on saturday morning.

NotMyBrother: for a guy that owns an avaition insurance company

NotMyBrother: they insure leer jets etc.

adamheathavitable: because he wants his company to pay for it

NotMyBrother: so if its cash they wont?

NotMyBrother: the check made out to cash

adamheathavitable: if it's made out to a company, it's easier for tax purposes

adamheathavitable: for cash, it's not

NotMyBrother: TAX?

NotMyBrother: like 1099?

NotMyBrother: me

adamheathavitable: yes, NotMyBrother. that's what happens when a business pays for a service from another business

NotMyBrother: So he will cause me to get audited with a $500 install?

adamheathavitable: yes, exactly

adamheathavitable: the irs is going to bang down your door

adamheathavitable: because this guy is making sure he does his taxes legally

adamheathavitable: jesus christ

NotMyBrother: Frank has been writing me checks for the past 4 years…and never claims me.

NotMyBrother: How does that work?

adamheathavitable: i'm sure he does

adamheathavitable: when he does his business taxes, every amount has to be accounted for

adamheathavitable: all of those checks are considered as being paid for services rendered by another company

adamheathavitable: that's how it works

NotMyBrother: He pays his detail for the past 10 years with checks and its all under the table. His detail guy doesnt get taxed lol.

NotMyBrother: o ok, but not to the individual as a tax

adamheathavitable: if he writes a check, it's not under the table

adamheathavitable: you don't even understand how it works, so don't get yourself worked up over stupid shit

NotMyBrother: if he's writing check then that will screw me in other words and frank has been screwing me for 5 years then….he told me that its under the table

adamheathavitable: you're both idiots

NotMyBrother: you are making it seem like he is claiming me 1099

adamheathavitable: THERE'S NO SUCH THING

adamheathavitable: FOR FUCK'S SAKE

adamheathavitable: ANYTIME ANYONE GETS PAID BY CHECK AND IT'S A BUSINESS, THERE IS A RECORD OF IT.

adamheathavitable: your company IS an independent contractor of WHOEVER you do work for

adamheathavitable: and if they want to file a 1099 for their own business taxes to show what the money was spent on, that's their right

NotMyBrother: o

adamheathavitable: ok, i need to go before i reach through the computer and slap you in the head.

NotMyBrother: crap…I will have to turn down a $500 + install for this saturday

NotMyBrother: That sucks.

adamheathavitable: why do you have to turn it down?

adamheathavitable: yes, turn it down

adamheathavitable: turn down money

adamheathavitable: i don't give a shit

adamheathavitable: don't ask me another tax or business question ever again

Treasure among trash: the London Symphony Orchestra in Daytona Beach

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Saturday night, as Amy's birthday present, I bought tickets to go see the London Symphony Orchestra perform in Daytona Beach, during the Daytona Beach International Festival. The show, called "LSO Pops! Celebration of Speed", took place at the Ocean Center, and with the exception of the performance by the orchestra, felt like a complete and utter disaster.

Indulge me today as I pick apart the entire experience and discuss why the coordinators of this event clearly don't know their assholes from a hole in the ground.

First, the music. A symphony is all about the sound and feel of the music. That's it. It's the only component that really matters. That's why most symphonies occur in a magical place called a symphony hall. Not a large arena akin to a large gymnasium. In a symphony hall, the acoustics cause the music to surround you. You feel it on your skin and in your seat and it sounds full and rich and tangible. In the Ocean Center, the speakers they had to use hum and buzz and rattle and distract you from the only reason that you attended in the first place.

Oh, but that wasn't the only aural distraction. The floor of the Ocean Center was set aside for the DBIF sponsors, one table per sponsor where dinner was apparently served. That was a neat idea. The not-so-neat idea was the bartender operating the cash bar. Rather than closing down the bar during each piece, the bar was open and active, and during quieter and subtler parts of a piece, you could clearly hear the lovely sounds of the cash register, the click-hiss of cans opening, and other miscellaneous noise from the bar. Did I say lovely sounds? I meant fucking obnoxious sounds.

If only the distractions were the sole element of annoyance. Ah, but we can't forget the unwashed masses who descended like shrieking morons rushing the door at Wal-mart on Black Friday. Let's have a little multiple-choice quiz, shall we?

What Things Don't You Do At A Symphony?

A. Bring in concessions, like popcorn and beer and candy that you unwrap and munch throughout each piece.
B. Talk to the orchestra while they perform, saying intelligent things like "Yes. Thank you. That was wonderful." loud enough that everyone around you can hear you.
C. Refrain from clapping your hands so that you can stomp your feet loudly instead, just like you're at a high school pep rally.
D. Come to the symphony a full thirty minutes late, or, if you're the usher, allow idiots who come late to enter during the middle of a piece, slamming the door, using your flashlight, and forcing people to interrupt their enjoyment and stand up so that some shitlicking fucknuts can get to their seat.
E. All of the above.
F. None of the above.

The answer, of course, is E. However, in the white trash capital of Florida, apparently the correct answer is F.

In the end, though, all of these are minor complaints compared to the audio/visual component of the evening. I'm not sure which moron was responsible for this amateurish display of idiocy, but I think it was either the design "firm" Zgraph (which, honestly, even if it wasn't, they designed the piece-of-shit website for the DBIF that has fucking autoplay music. What a joke) or Godonis Design, a company whose website has a flash intro, which is about as trendy as leg warmers. Whomever the culprit is, they should immediately quit their job, walk to the nearest McDonald's, and apply for the burger line there. Because that's honestly the only job for which they're qualified. "Why is that?" you may ask. Allow me to explain.

Above the orchestra hung three large screens. A reasonable person may assume that these screens were to be used to display video sent by the cameras surrounding the orchestra, showing the entire audience close-up video of the orchestra as they played each piece. A reasonable person would think that displaying these experts at their craft would be the only thing that would make sense for these screens. This reasonable person would be completely wrong.

Ten percent of the time, these screens were used for a reasonable purpose, and it worked excellently. Getting to enjoy the visual experience while listening to the music helped supplement the tinny sound coming from the speakers and the other distractions.

The other ninety percent of the time, however, the screens were used to display completely random, poorly edited and spliced clips from movies that had little to no relevance to the piece being played. An example, you ask? Ah, but there are so many. One that comes to mind would be the time that the orchestra played John Williams's Superman score (let's not get into the fact that the pieces chosen were all designed to pander to the white trash Daytona audience and were completely dumbed down). The screens started out by showing Iron Man, then switched to the Flight of the Navigator, the Neverending Story, Harry Potter, Spider-man, Zorro, Batman, and then finally Superman. Another example would be when Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" was accompanied by video of ants and birds. It was arbitrary, it was amateurish, and it was stupid. Every piece was distractingly supported (or detracted, actually) by a jumbled mess of video clips that looked like it had been created by the audio-visual club of a remedial high school where everyone is classified as mentally retarded. And their teacher was actually a monkey.

The final straw was the piece played by the concert master, Carmine Lauri. I'm sorry to say that I cannot remember the name of it and the program we received did not in any way reflect the actual pieces and the order in which they were played (another shining example of the poor job done). At any rate, it was an extremely quick tempo violin piece, where it felt like he was playing 10-15 notes a second. Some mental midget made the decision to avoid showing him play this masterful piece at all. Instead, we got clips from Highlander. What the holy fuck is that all about?

In the end, we enjoyed the music and tried our best not to let the horrible environment (I forgot to mention the layout, which required everyone to sit in their seats at a 45 degree angle to be able to face the orchestra), white trash attendees, and amateurish work performed by so-called A/V and design firms ruin it. It is a testament to the quality of the work done by the London Symphony Orchestra that the coordinators pretty much did everything wrong that someone could do for a symphony and, even with that, the orchestra's skill still remained clear and undeniable.

It's all relative

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

Just an excerpt of a frustrating, hair-rending, exasperating, interminable instant message conversation with a close relative of mine:

Me: you have some type of spam on your computer
Me: every now and then i get a random IM from you
Me: that's some weird spam
Avitarelative: I know…
Avitarelative: something is up…
Avitarelative: I ran my antivirus for 3 hours
Me: it has nothing to do with antivirus
Avitarelative: then I ran ad-aware
Avitarelative: and that found 27 cookies…
Avitarelative: removed them…
Avitarelative: then I uninstalled windows xp and re-installed…
Avitarelative: still when I go to mozilla or internet explorer when I type in a URL it goes to a different ad site
Me: yeah, search for your hosts file
Me: go to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
Avitarelative: k\
Avitarelative: where is that?
Avitarelative: c drive?
Me: i just told you
Me: jesus
Me: c:\windows
Me: \system32
Me: \drivers
Me: \etc
Avitarelative: k it pulled up a black screen
Avitarelative: ok I see the files
Avitarelative: now what?
Me: double-click the one called "hosts"
Me: then open it in notepad
Avitarelative: k comes up with an open with box
Avitarelative: k open in notepad
Me: copy and paste it here
Avitarelative: its too big
Me: ok
Me: is there a line that says this:
Me: "# Start of entries inserted by Spybot – Search & Destroy"
Avitarelative: yes
Me: ok
Me: ignore everything after that
Me: copy and paste everything that's before that
Avitarelative: its too much
Avitarelative: nothing is after that…
Me: there should only be one line
Avitarelative: bunch of wierd sites I never even went
Me: After it says "# Start of entries inserted by Spybot – Search & Destroy" there should be a bunch of urls on the lines past that
Avitarelative: theres a whole bunch of websites before the " # End of entries inserted by Spybot – Search & Destroy"
Me: jesus christ
Me: I asked if there was a line that said "# Start of entries inserted by Spybot – Search & Destroy"
Me: not # End
Me: for fuck's sake
Avitarelative: nice language
Avitarelative: yes there is
Me: ok, are you sure
Me: is it the same line that i just pasted?
Me: or is it a different line that you're going to say is the same?
Avitarelative: huh?
Me: ARARARARRRGGGHHHHH!

A cat named Twitter

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

About two months ago, I was suffering from some serious Twitter fatigue. Since then, I've learned more efficient ways to use programs like TweetDeck and use filters, groups and other techniques to alleviate the pressure I felt. It's worked great, and I've been able to participate in Twitter more actively without feeling pressure to do so.

In the last 60 days, though, I've noticed a trend with some Twitter users, who like to waste the time of each and every one of us by sending crap like this:

"Good morning, Twitter!"
"Just had my coffee, Twitter. Anyone want some?"
"Going to take a shower, Twitter."
"Dear Twitter, I don't want to go to work today."
"Oh Twitter, what should I wear?"
"Just got dressed. I'm putting on my shoes now. Then I have to go to work."
"At work and I'm already ready to go home. Sigh."
"I'm tired. Is it nap time yet?"
"Time to go to lunch. Twitter, do you want me to get you some?"
"Sitting down at my computer. Time to play solitaire!"
"I'm leaving work and getting on the train now. I'll be home soon, Twitter!"
"Mmmm, mmmm. Dinner was good."
"My cell phone battery is dead. Guess I'll have to charge it!"
"I'm tired. Good night, Twitter."

If your tweets resemble that list, turn off your computer. Then go to the pound, trade the computer for a cat, name her Twitter, and then tell her all about your mundane day-to-day activities. Now you'll be able to share all of your daily shit with Twitter and the rest of us don't have to see it! Here's a good rule of thumb. If it's something that you would mumble to yourself or something that a lonely old lady would say to her cat, it's something that you should refrain from tweeting.

Twitter is like a giant eternal party where you can step in and out of conversations with different people. Your goal for using Twitter (unless you're a so-called social media expert) should be to be one of the interesting partygoers, not the guy who's standing in the corner talking to a houseplant about his latest dice roll while playing Dungeons & Dragons. That guy? People will come up to him, talk to him for a second, and then leave as quickly as they can flee. The interesting person will find that more and more people engage him or her in conversation because they know they won't have to hear about nap time or putting on socks or feeding the dog.

I encourage the rest of you to take the following action. Next time you read a mundane tweet, reply to that person and just say, "@mundaneperson, nobody cares. Tell your cat." And then unfollow them. Only then can Twitter start to shine like the resource it should be. (Well, after we get rid of the new blog post tweets, the blip.fm tweets, the location tweets, the sponsored tweets, the re-tweets, and the twitter parties.)

What else do I dislike?

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

Yesterday's post got me thinking. Even though a lot of people, both in the comments and via email, communicated that they agreed with me (and it was weird how many of them were mothers), I still wondered if maybe I just have a weirder list of things that creep me out than most people.

Let's find out. Here's my (incomplete) list of things that I dislike or hate. Yeah, I know that's broader than just "things that creep me out" but I figured I'd get it all out there:

1. Breastfeeding
2. Eating food with bones in it
3. Eating certain food with my hands
4. Naked old people
5. Farting
6. Meryl Streep
7. Glenn Close
8. Bad breath
9. Scientology
10. Sweat
11. Arguing in public
12. Unsanitary conditions
13. Public restrooms
14. Bad spellers
15. Frat boys
16. Sports
17. Laugh tracks
18. Children
19. Mushrooms
20. Dooce
21. Mouth breathers
22. Crowds
23. Rednecks
24. Guns
25. NASCAR (even I don't consider it a real sport)
26. Underachievers
27. Pants
28. Tattoos
29. Dane Cook
30. Public displays of affection
31. Age of consent laws
32. Television censorship
33. The FCC
34. The MPAA
35. People with no sense of humor


***
In other Avita-news, tonight at 9 PM is another new episode of "Clearly, You're Retarded"! Set LOST to record on your DVR and listen to the best online radio show ever pitched on this blog!

Tonight's topic: Is it okay to bully a bully?

If you listen live, you can join everyone in the chatroom where there is usually a lively discussion going on that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. You can create an account at Talkshoe and download the Talkshoe Pro software or just listen as a guest. I recommend downloading the Talkshoe Pro software because even though it still has problems, it seems like the problems are more minimal with it. Hope to see you there!

It is my goal to disagree with everyone who reads this post

Monday, February 16th, 2009

With only around 20 people caring about the date of the Halloween party, I've decided that my blog is experiencing a recession. And like Black President Jesus said, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

So I figured I'd just act like a Republican and hurry it along. I bet that I can alienate each and every one of you with my opinions on various topics. I mean, since I've been able to do it inadvertently over the last few months, a conscious decision to piss everyone off should be a smashing success.

I believe that:

1. Animals are more important than most people.
2. Every religion is simultaneously right and wrong and if you think that your particular religion, making up a small portion of people in the world, is the only right one, you're stupid.
3. People should be licensed before they can have children.
4. Stupid people should be discouraged to breed or forcibly altered, so that our society can get collectively smarter, not dumber.
5. Every child born today should go to college. If you don't encourage your child to go to college, you're a bad parent.
6. Not spanking your child (even if it's very rarely) is probably going to lead to them being spoiled and being able to manipulate the shit out of you. You'll disagree, but you'll see I'm right in 10 years.
7. Jokes about abortion, molestation, abuse, genocide, and other similar topics can be funny if told properly.
8. Vicious hardcore competition is what makes our country and capitalism great, and discouraging kids to compete by letting everyone win or saying that it's okay to learn from the experience is contributing to the downfall of our society.
9. A boy asking a girl to have sex with him and then whining about it to see if she gives in is not rape, and fuck you for making men feel bad for trying to get laid.
10. People who go the speed limit on the interstate need to lose their licenses.
11. If you can never have fun without drinking alcohol, you're pathetic.
12. If you judge people who do drink alcohol, you're equally as pathetic.
13. If you've never lived in more than two places, your perspective on almost all matters is completely worthless.
14. Bloggers who complain about their spouses or bitch about their sex lives on a blog but don't tell the spouse how they feel are completely disrespecting them and should feel horrible.
15. Mommy bloggers have become the KKK of blogging. They gather together for solidarity and exclude everyone else out of fear and stupidity.
16. Cleanses are unhealthy and anyone who does one is an idiot.
17. The person who works a job in a single income family is working harder than the person who stays home.
18. Having children is a burden that people try to put a positive spin on, when in reality it's ruined their lives.
19. Nobody who's hot hides behind a cartoon image on their blog.
20. Some people are hideously ugly and need to be told so that they can actually go hide behind a cartoon image.
21. I have no problem with attractive people getting more benefits in life.
22. Having more money will always improve life, and if you say otherwise, you're deluding yourself.
23. Morals are just a way for someone to say they're too weak to decide for themselves.
24. People who rent-to-own are the epitome of white trash. If you can't afford a new couch, buy a used one.
25. "Nigger" ceased being an insult the first time it became used in mainstream songs. Otherwise, it's a double standard, and it's just a word.
26. Parents who raise their kids as vegetarians are bad parents.
27. Rules are for other people.
28. If I have kids and they're stupid, I don't think I'll love them.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Anybody left? Well, if there is anyone who's left who didn't get pissed, go say happy birthday to Paul, aka Jester, who's turning 64 today!

Pathetic end to a miserable year

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

Pathetic:

  • It's 10:30 and I'm thinking about going to bed. Amy went to bed a little while ago, and I've actually turned up my music to try to drown out the obnoxious noise of the fireworks going off behind us.
  • I read a comment today on someone else's blog where the commenter said that she and her husband have sex every New Year's at midnight. That just seems unduly complicated.

    "Ok, it's 11:55! Get your penis over here. Stick it in! Wait, not too fast, let's take this slow. Watch Dick Clark on TV – is the ball dropping yet? Oh, there's Madonna and the Jonas Brothers talking to Carson Daly. Faster! Oh, it's that funny Apple commercial. Slow it down – don't ruin this for me. Okay, here we go. The ball's dropping! 10! Ugh 9! Nnagh! 8! Grawf 7! Phlump! 6! Squish! 5! Sigh. Great. You came too early. Now 2009 is ruined forever. Way to go, shithead."

  • When I decide to do something, I decide at that moment. I don't wait until January 1st so I can make it a New Year's Resolution that will be quickly forgotten. Resolutions made during the rest of the year are for mature people. The rest of you can promise yourself whatever you want today.

Happy 2009.

A letter attempting to collect a debt

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

We received this letter in the mail today:

"After a review of your file we find a balance of $3,987.15. Please pay that amount by cashier's check of money order to "Miller and Steeno, P.C." and make sure our file number (######) is on your payment to ensure you get credit. If you are unable to pay in full, call this office immediately to set up a payment plan.

If you fail to pay the amount due or fail to set up a payment plan, further action will be taken without notice."

It was addressed to my wife. Since we both have stellar credit and have never paid a payment on anything late, I suspected this was either a scam or a case of mistaken identity. My guess is that this firm is trying to find this person who happens to have the same first name and maiden name that my wife does, so they thought they'd just send a threatening demand letter and hope that someone paid it.

This type of collections is absolutely despicable. This is no longer a creditor trying to get paid. This is a creditor selling a years-old debt to an agency for pennies on the dollar, and the agency will do whatever it can to try to make the smallest amount of profit. It's pathetic and any attorney who runs this type of business is a piece of shit.

Since I knew this was not a legitimate debt, I called the number. The girl who answered the phone, an uneducated, ignorant-sounding girl who couldn't have been older than 18/19, told me the details of the debt. It was almost five years old, so the agency was desperate to try to get some payment on this debt before the 5-year statute of limitations ran out.

It was supposedly a credit card from a bank that neither of us had ever heard of. I explained that they either have the wrong person or they have a fraudulent account. I suggested that she fax me any documentation they have on file so that I can investigate this, and that's when it became obvious how little information they must have had.

"Ummm, well, ummm, why don't I just mark this as a disputed amount and let my management take care of it? I think they'll just take it off the books."

"You don't want to fax me over documentation? If you guys have something that proves it's my wife's, and I'm wrong, we'll pay it. We don't default on payments."

"No, it's okay. I'll just let my boss take care of it and it will probably just go away."

If they had anything – a signature, a check showing the last payment, billing addresses that corresponded with my wife's known addresses – they would have sent it to me. This means that they probably had an amount, a name, and maybe a SSN, and they were trying to bully her into paying just by sending a threatening letter. I guarantee that if I had called up and said that I didn't want them to take further action and wanted to pay whatever I could, they would have jumped all over themselves to take $500 or $1,000 to "clean up" this potentially negative mark from our credit report.

Parasites like this agency prey on unsuspecting consumers and try to frighten them into paying anything. I had an employee who had that happen and she was practically in tears about a debt that wasn't hers. The agency set a court date and if I hadn't set her up with a lawyer, they would have walked all over her. It turned out that they had absolutely no documentation at all and the judge threw it out almost instantly. There were at least 50 other people there, though, most of whom did not have legal representation, and they were meeting with the lawyer for the agency and trying to make payment arrangements rather than fight it.

Fucking pathetic. Fuck you, Miller and Steeno, P.C.


In other Avitanews, there will be no radio show on Wednesday night. Britt has guests coming into town and so she will be unable to co-host, so I thought I'd just abstain from doing a show. Nobody wants to just listen to me talk by myself for an hour!

Creepy Craigslist Crawlers

Monday, September 29th, 2008

With the assistance of my friend James, I finally cleaned out our garage this weekend. An ad for "FREE SHIT – FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED" went on Craigslist, and everything went down to the curb. "Everything" included a television, over 400 VHS tapes, a VCR, a water softener, five leather barstools, a bookcase, a computer monitor, five years of PC Gamer and Maximum PC Magazine, an answering machine, one of those toilet seats you get when you get out of the hospital, a huge overflowing box of old toys and action figures, and a cardboard standee of Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu.

Those of you who have used Craigslist know that it has its pros and cons. I've hired several employees through Craigslist, but I've also had to weed through a lot of crazies, too. I've sold many items, including a car, but I also got a lot of flakes who didn't show up. It doesn't matter whether you're giving something away free or looking for a casual sexual encounter, Craigslist always brings out the crazies.

Throughout the day, here's a basic accounting of the various crazies brought out by my ad:

1. 14 brain-dead morons who ignored the part of the ad where I said, "No, I will not set anything side and no, I will not hold anything until tomorrow" and emailed me asking if I would either set aside something or hold it until tomorrow. My reply to them was very carefully worded: "I hope you die of a horrible infection. Fuck off."

2. 16 throwbacks to the 20th century who asked about the VHS tapes. What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking Neanderthalic loser? You know how to look at Craigslist on the computer, but what? DVD players are just too newfangled for you? They've been in the market for more than a decade and a decent one costs less than $30. Do you just like rewinding a lot or are you just so behind the trend that your television still has bunny ears and you're actually worried about the switch to digital transmission in February? Have you been locked in a bomb shelter for the last twelve years?

3. 2 supposed adults who got into an actual fight over the box of toys. One was a guy in his forties, and the other was a guy in his sixties. I actually had to step in and decide who got which toys! "You old fuck who lives in my neighborhood, you can take the two Hess trucks and the Kevin Nash wrestler figure. You live in a house that is almost worth a half a million dollars and you should be ashamed of yourself for acting like a baby about three free toys."

"You, the guy who pulled up in the brand new $40,000 SUV – you are completely fucking pathetic. I know that I told you that I was bringing down a big box of toys for you, but "you" can be meant to mean more than one person and besides, you know, THESE ARE FREE TOYS. They're not diamonds or gold or a Nintendo Wii or something that is actually worth whining like a petulant little brat. You disgust me and make me weep for humanity."

4. 1 stinky old man wearing nothing but a pair of shorts – no shoes, no shirt, who rang our doorbell to see if everything was gone. When I told him that it was, he growled, "Maybe you should take down your damn Craigslist ad" and stomped off. Excuse me? Get your ancient BO-riddled ass off of my property before I kick you in the back of your bony motherfucking ass and shatter you into a million pieces. I might feel bad that you showed up and there was nothing there if you didn't smell like a skid mark in the devil's Hanes and look like you just woke up from a four-day bender. Crawl back into your fucking bottle and don't come out until someone bring you some soap and a goddamn shirt.

5. 1 greasy toothless white trash idiot who tried to convince me that all of the stuff he was packing in his truck was for his sick wife when it was very clear that he was probably someone with a booth at the flea market. I might be able to believe you that your sick wife liked to watch movies, so the VHS tapes were useful (although get a fucking DVD player for fuck's sake!), but when you also got the VCR , it was obvious that you were full of shit. I don't care what you do with the stuff. You can resell it, bring it to your wife, give it to charity, stick it in your ass, or use it to make a low-yield nuclear weapon. Whatever – just don't insult my intelligence by trying to pretend that you're only digging through my trash for your "sick wife".

6. 8 smart people who drove by slowly, then realized that they were essentially about to start dumpster diving and decided that they had a little bit of self-worth and dignity, so they drove on without stopping. Congratulations – this whole ad was just a test to see which people are the leeches on society and which people are actually the productive members. I don't hate you nearly as much as I hate everyone else.

Of course, on the plus side, everything was gone from my curb within four hours.