Pilot's Log

This both is and is not related to Life On Mars.

I was just looking through my e-mail and saw an ad from JC Whitney, a company I first learned about around 1973 and have casually following--and sometines done business with--ever since. Their business is in replacement parts and upgrades for cars and other motor vehicles.

Well, the ad in question included in-car entertainment systems...devices that combined radio, television, and video/audio storage/playback formats. They're getting relatively inexpensive now. But I just don't feel like getting one for Moonshine will ever be the right thing to do.

Moonshine is still nearly entirely how it came from the NUMMI factory circa 2001. The sound system has a CD player but doesn't play MP3 files. I wouldn't mind an MP3 upgrade, but it's not a big deal. Anything beyond that strikes me as being needlessly over-sophisticated and tasteless.

It's not just the sound system, tho'. I see ads for uber-tech ovens and refrigerators and flat screen TV sets and cell phones with a zillion features these days. Hewlett-Packard has a new desktop computer with a touch screen device built-in and the user interface software to take advantage of it. This is all very heavy stuff for a fellow who remembers a time before everybody had a computer, when all phones had rotary dials, when newspapers only had color for Sunday editions, and in-car entertainment was the kids in the back seat singing along to Elton John on the AM radio.

It's telling that people in the early Seventies were nostalgic for the Fifties (the song being sung in the above memory was "Crocodile Rock"). There was a very sudden growth in the standards of living at that time, and a mood of optimism that lasted practically the whole decade. Whereas the Seventies were when the social stress cracks were threatening to bring down the whole nation--just like NOW.

Anyway, the push for a greater standard of living just because, that's just selfishness. There was a time when I did want it all and wanted it right then and there--but it is not now. I don't feel like I deserve much more than what I have. Because of my fear of losing everything. There are many times I hate the simple life--but I wonder if anybody envies me.

FP

[Error: unknown template qotd]

I'd seize control of all the Oak Ridge nuclear plants and all the TVA hydroelectric dams, and use that power to electrocute all those people who e-mail ads for Erectile Disfunction remedies and come-ons for bank transfer swindles. Ka-ZAPP! And None of Them Be Missed!

Today I got an e-mail solicition from "Davison Design and Development, Inc". Since it was addressed to me personally rather than just my address, it seemed more legit than the come-ons I usually get.

After a little internal wrestling with the prospects, I submitted one idea for an invention and tried to submit another, only to have their submission form go wonky. Perhaps I'll try again later.

Then again, I may not.

If they're going to pirate my idea(s), power to them...the idea(s) won't do me any good otherwise. If they didn't get the second idea that I tried to submit, then they should pay me for it.

FP

"hi [YOUR NAME]
I saw your pic on line and you are hot
add me to msn messenger my name is [YOU ARE A SUCKER]
and lets have fun there"

[READING BETWEEN THE LINES ABOVE]

I get variations on this e-mail message about 20 times a week, along with the usual bogus lottery winnings notices, phish attempts, drug pushers' ads, and African inheritance sob stories.

I hate it that the Internet is still seen as the exclusive territory of the immature, sex-starved male geekoid. It's been ten years now. *Sigh*

FP

Hey.

If somebody showed up in your neighborhood and wanted to sell you drugs or porn or get-rich-quick schemes...or wanted to loan-shark you...you'd be in your rights to call the cops and have them hauled away. So why do these losers think they are welcome in your e-mail Inbox? As far as I'm concerned, they aren't.

I hate these spammers with an intensity I reserve for terrorists, genocidal regimes, hardcore political extremists, bubonic plague, toxic sludge, thermonuclear destructive devices and black holes. An "online pharmacy" is no better than a narcotics pusher. I don't need money so bad that I'm going to borrow from somebody who solicits me over the Web. This household already belongs to a consumer survey (a legit one) so we legally can't join another. The porn spammers' approaches are so tasteless that I want to see them all arrested. I see hundreds of these messages everyday in the SpamTrap and delete them unread. And I wish I could call an online cop to bash in their memory with a cyber nightstick.

I want people to e-mail me for me, not for the money they think I have or the needs I don't have.