Ooh! Not only can you not include a response, out of your 7 responses, which includes, “We jacked our prices up because we’re filthy scum that should have our beds set on fire,” but you can’t even hire competent IT guys or pay for stable servers!

Nice work.

“Note that the payment that is made on the Insurance, Premium & Clearance Certificates are to certify that the Bank Draft is not a Drug Affiliated Fund (DAF) neither is it funds to sponsor Terrorism in your country.”

Well, as long as you’re not giving us this money for drugs or terrorism, we’ll take it! You’ve quelled our fear. Where do we sign?

P.S. Please call and email this person(s) with plenty of useless information to waste their time. We’ve read about others who spend time actually stringing these people along, just to torture them, and love it! We’re busy creating portable roto-golems which sweep hardwood floors and ferment the remains into beer at this point or we’d join in.
—————————————

Dear Customer!

We have been waiting for you to contact us for your Confirmed Package that is registered with us for shipping to your residential location. We had thought that your sender gave you our contact details. It may interest you to know that a letter is also added to your package. However, we cannot quote its content to you via email for privacy reasons.

We understand that the content of your package itself is a Bank Draft worth of $2.100,000.00 USD, FedEx do not ship money in CASH or in CHEQUES but Bank Drafts are Shippable. The package is registered with us for mailing by your colleague, and your colleague explained that he is from the United States but he is here in Ghana for a three (3) months Surveying Project as he works with a consultant firm in Ghana West Africa We are sending you this email because your package is been registered on a Special Order and COD MODE is not operational.

What you have to do now, is to contact our Delivery Department for Immediate dispatch of your package to your residential address; you will have to pay the sum of $210USD to the FedEx Delivery Department being full payment for the Security Keeping Fee of the FedEx Company as stated in our privacy terms & condition page. Note that as soon as our Delivery Team confirm your information, it will take only one working day (24 hours) for your package to arrive it’s designated destination. For your information, the VAT & Shipping charges as well as Insurance fees have been paid for by your colleague before your package was registered. Note that the payment that is made on the Insurance, Premium & Clearance Certificates are to certify that the Bank Draft is not a Drug Affiliated Fund (DAF) neither is it funds to sponsor Terrorism in your country. This will help you avoid any form of query from the Monetary Authority of your country. Kindly, note that your colleague did not leave us with any further information. We

Kindly contact the delivery department (FedEx Delivery Post) with the details given below:

FedEx Online Delivery Post
Contact Person: DANIEL J. NICOLE
Email:fedex90902@kimo.com
Tel: +233-246413804

Kindly complete the below form and send it to the email address given above. This is mandatory to reconfirm your Postal address and telephone numbers.

FULL NAMES:
TELEPHONE:
MOBILE:
POSTAL ADDRESS:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:

Kindly complete the above form and summit it to the delivery manager on: fedex90902@kimo.com

As soon as your details are received, our delivery team will give you the necessary payment procedure so that you can effect the payment for the Security Keeping Fee. As soon as they confirm your payment receipt of $210USD, they will not hesitate to dispatch your package as well as the attached letter to your residence. It usually takes 24 hours being an overnight delivery service.

Note that we were not instructed to email you, but due to the high priority of your package we had to inform you as your sender did not leave us with his phone number because he stated that he just arrived Ghana and he hasn’t fixed his phone yet. We indeed personally sealed your Bank Draft and we found your email contact in the receiver’s column as the recipient of the foremost package.

Ensure to contact the delivery department with the email address given above and ensure to fill the above form as well to enable a successful reconfirmation.

Do not reply this email because this email account is not monitored. Send your details to fedex90902@kimo.com

Yours Faithfully,
Mrs. Jane Betty Blaire.
FedEx Team Management.
All rights reserved. © 1995-2011

We are not conspiracy theorists, by any means, but that doesn’t mean we don’t understand the way the world turns. The U.S. has been at war for 10 years, seeking some unknown enemy. Did we retaliate by carpet bombing and/or spraying various countries with nuclear weapons after 9/11? No, we didn’t. We sent in millions of ground troops to fight a war we can’t win, killing thousands of blue-collar patriotic Americans. It’s very difficult to fight an enemy that doesn’t wear uniforms – we proved that to the British 200 years ago.

So how do we root out the infestation? We can’t. Regardless if one postulates that we brought this war on ourselves, we still have to address the fact that we are fighting an unknown enemy. Several of us flew on an American flight to Thailand recently, and there were 2 captains in the armed services on that flight. One was a captain in the National Guard. Yep, the National Guard, sworn to protect our homeland, was off to get stationed with a way point in Thailand. Don’t ask us why the “National Guard” is being deployed, unless you want to know that sentiment for foreign wars evidently doesn’t run so deeply in the red, white, and blue, or that we’re mismanaging our defenses.

He called the war “useless.” He said, “You know, we go in there, but every one of those guys has a brother, or a cousin, or a step-son, and when we get intel on a base, and then we go in there the next day, they’re all gone. They tell each other we’re coming and to just go hide in the caves for a couple weeks. When we attack they’re gone, and then we leave and they come back. We can’t tell them apart and we can’t actually hold anything because of that.”

We can’t tell them apart and we can’t actually hold anything. Well, that says it all, and it certainly isn’t some racial derogatory statement, it’s fact. No one is wearing a uniform, and unless they are firing weapons at you, you can’t tell they are the enemy.

Now this post isn’t a rant against the fine men and women who serve in our military. Fighting for some things is honorable. Whether or not any particular war is honorable is hard to say. We can imagine that fighting in Vietnam sounded honorable, until the fighters came home, were spit on, lost their legs, whatever, and 20 years later, we’re trading with the Vietnamese and eating their food all over the U.S. Same thing happened with the Japanese, the Russians, and the Germans. As far as we’re concerned, war might be perpetual, but it’s not for the freedom we claim it is. The days of war being lucrative or fighting for the homeland are over. The days of war being honorable are over. We’re not even sure what the hell we’re fighting for – Americans are now just “World Police,” and that is not a complimentary moniker. It is akin to be being the busybodies of the world.

The only thing we can think of is that it’s a great distraction from the fact that we don’t have health care or sincere leaders. That we ban smoking but we allow the constant influx of artery-clogging blubber in the form of McDonald’s and KFC. That we pump high fructose corn syrup into nearly every food, including bread, then sell Lipitor to lower cholesterol and Jenny Craig to lose weight. That we have billboards plaguing our every street.

Shit, we sound like flaming liberals. But we’re not. In fact, we believe Democrat/Republican…Liberal/Conservative to be a false dichotomy. There is no such thing. There is only a person and his choices, and those choices do not fall squarely in the black or white.

So get back to the original quote. Osama Bin Laden is dead. How bloody convenient. Do we remember that Old Bush trained them to fight against the Soviets when we believed them to be a threat? Do we remember, as Americans, that we keep killing then installing dictators in various countries to attempt to “stabilize” various nations? Remember Noriega? CIA punk until he disobeyed. When those assets become expendable, they get assassinated, disappear, discredited, etc. It’s blatantly obvious you can’t trust the government’s motives, and lunatics have been raving about this for decades, so this post is nothing new. We wouldn’t be surprised if this post ended up in NSA headquarters. Probably glanced over and judged as no threat (as it’s not, please don’t send us to the nameless prisons), but even we internally shudder a trifle thinking about it. Scary that we’d even be concerned.

But give us some credit as Americans. We know damn well we’ve been expending billions of dollars, BILLIONS, for the last ten years, and we don’t even have health care for kids dying of cancer. As the minority elders that be realize that the public is getting restless, even feisty, about this ongoing war, they have to chuck us some empty, gnawable carcass for us to feast upon.

And that carcass is Bin Laden. Ooh! We finally killed him! There was some purpose in this war! The end is near! We chopped off the head of the serpent!

Problem is, we didn’t need a ground war to do that. Hopefully Americans can see that. The U.S. government either had his remains preserved for the last ten years, ready to unveil it at the appropriate time, or it really is so incompetent that it let him walk after 9/11 and only now found him. Are we supposed to cheer? Are we supposed to further support this unwinnable war?

We’re all for supporting our country in times of distress or invasion. We’re all for fighting with and for honor. But fighting for the Machiavellian schemes of the government and then cheering about it, 10 years after thousands of our troops died in the sand for no good reason, with no clear enemy?

We don’t think so.

*”We” don’t all agree with this liberal rant. We know Americans have 150 IQs. Some of us are even happy our infinitely funded government found and killed Bin Laden, even if it took 10 years and more than 200 billion dollars of American taxpayer money.

Brobdingnagian Lumberhulks still maintains that prior argument. To summarize, pizza conglomerates like Dominos, Pizza Hut, and Imos charge a delivery fee. Little of this, if any, goes to the driver. The driver, of course, expects a tip for a job well done and this falls to the consumer. However, why should the consumer pay for what should be an argument with the company, not the consumer. It doesn’t make the consumer cheap because he doesn’t want to pay twice. It would be like having a gratuity added to a restaurant bill, and then told that the server doesn’t get any of that gratuity, so it is your responsibility to tip. Ridiculous!

The above is an indisputably valid argument. We tried to stand by it and not tip the driver, but after doing this once, we felt terrible. Back to the $5 tips on regular orders delivered with expertise, followed by muttering and cursing once the door is closed.

Our inability to stiff the drivers is compassionate weakness and doesn’t make the argument any less valid. We continue to shoulder what should be the driver’s problem. Drivers need to say to their companies, “Hey, if you’re going to charge a delivery fee, it should be ours. Otherwise we’re getting stiffed on tips. If you won’t do that, then don’t charge one.” It is their responsibility, as it is any employee’s who is dissatisfied with the company, to take the issue up with management. If they don’t, it’s their bosses’ fault that they aren’t getting tipped, not the consumers’.

We still hold out hope that some more heartless individuals than us with continually stiff drivers because of the delivery fee. That will lead to driver organization, revolt, and possibly unionization. As a union, they can all strike unless they get a huge cut of the delivery fee or it is abolished. Then, the drivers and consumers will both be happy. To hell with the greedy conglomerate.

But pizza delivery? Yes, all of us once delivered pizzas, and even envisioned spitting on the pizza when we’d arrive at a fairly well-to-do house where the tip would be the remainder of a dollar. So we know what’s it like to get screwed and loathe the consumer. But we worked for Pizza Hut, and in those days, there was no delivery charge.

Nowadays, there is at least a $2 delivery charge. What is this charge for? The pizza drivers claim it is for the convenience and that they receive none of it, and we believe them. They still deserve recompense. The forums for delivery drivers – yes, there are actually such forums, welcome to the Internet – claim the same, and advise that you tip the driver. The argument is that the company is taking that money for themselves and the driver deserves reward. And we have always followed that. Tipping $5 on a $15 delivery, etc. But why should we get involved in their struggles? Some social-liberal viewpoint?

The last time we received a pie it took nearly an hour and a half. We said to the driver, “Hey, we always tip you guys like 30%.” We were all slightly intoxicated, but we had a valid point. “We deserve some consideration!” we wailed.

“Unethical,” the wispy-bearded adolescent responded. We swear, that’s what he said. “It would be unethical to give preferential treatment based on tips.”

Reasonable, even applaudable. But irrational. The point of tips is to commend for good service. We’ve already paid for good service with an included gratuity, just like in restaurants. And if you wispy-bearded adolescents refuse to acknowledge that, we won’t tip you extra. Even for exemplary service. If you want more than the already added gratuity, there better be whistles, clowns, and blowjobs.

And yet, there really isn’t good service. Multiple times, oh yes, multiple times, drivers come without pens. Without pens! They give the credit slip without pens! And just now, faithful reader, just now, the delivery woman comes to the door with a $15 bill and we begin our well-planned monologue of why she doesn’t get a tip. We intend to examine the entire system but her weary eyes betray only resentment. During our explanation of why she deserves no tip and should take it up with her capitalist oppressors, rather than hurl everything upon the end user, she says, “Oh, I need change,” and walks to her car. We wait at least 2 minutes until she returns with the change.

The lesson, boys and girls? Be prepared. This is Boy Scout shit now. We now refuse to tip pizza delivery drivers, and fully expect the pizza to be delivered on time, with correct change abilities, pens, hot pizza with no spit, and gratitude. Problems with the fact that we don’t tip? Take it up with your capitalist masters.

We will no longer be the whipping children of this society. Work for a company who allows its drivers to be tipped or go elsewhere. We won’t take the silent berating of a warped system. Why should we, the consumers, be made to feel that we are the villains when the conglomerates are the ones demanding payment for terrible service? This gauntlet should not be hurled upon the witless consumer. We just want fresh pizza, delivered on time and with respect, much like a server.

Problems with this? Don’t work for the companies who refuse to pay you what you deserve. We, the consumers, are not the enemy here. Your delivery-charging bosses are the problem. Stop railing against us and boycott them.

But with this issue, I feel energy coursing through me to do something about it. I was never able to quit smoking, not with any of the available replacements. Not with the gum, the patch, or hypnosis. Not with auricular therapy, cold turkey, or Chantix. Many of you no doubt feel the same. Some of you may even be smoking and wondering what in the hell the electronic cigarette is. With this device I have not smoked in over a month and it was not even difficult. I can already breathe better and I feel better than I have in quite some time. I am secure in the knowledge that propylene glycol was deemed safe in the 40′s and that I am no longer inhaling thousands of carcinogens present in regular cigarettes.

Unfortunately, sales of various types of electronic cigarette, along with the “juice” that fuels it – a mixture of propylene glycol and/or vegetable glycerin, flavoring, and nicotine have cut into the profit margin of pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, who market Chantix, tobacco companies who want you to buy their cigarettes, and all manner of companies who sell the nicotine patch, lozenge, and gum. What does this mean for the consumer?

It means that this success must be cut short. How is this being done? Surely, you reason, if people were able to stop smoking by using a safe alternative, no one would block their progress. You would reason incorrectly, then, because the World Health Organization and the FDA are currently battling a leading manufacturer of ecigs in court to outright ban the right to use the electronic cigarette, or to at least regulate it under strict guidelines.

Either way, the ex-smoker loses. Australia and Canada have already banned them. Oregon has banned them. California would have, but Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. The American Lung Association has released statements that ex-smokers who have quit with the e-cig (a.k.a. personal vaporizer) should go back to smoking. Pfizer contributes millions to the ALA each year. Coincidence?

The arguments are ridiculous. One is based on a flawed study done by the FDA where they found diethylene glycol (a much different molecule than propylene glycol) in one batch of cartridges from China. The health risks are unknown, they say, but potentially horribly dangerous. Interestingly, propylene glycol is in tobacco. The mentality seems to be that smokers should stick with what they know kills them rather than use something that may or may not be dangerous. The other argument is that teenagers will get addicted because there are flavors like grape, bubble gum, and watermelon. And yet there is only data to support that teenagers are still buying regular cigarettes.

One can only assume that these entities, like the FDA and ALA, are not in place to protect citizens, but to profit from them. If heath was their primary concern, they would wholly embrace any possibility which could save lives and meaningfully reduce health care cost from lung disease, heart disease, and cancer.

Until one begins researching all the facts, this essay might seem to be moving far, far to the left, amidst the murky waters of conspiracy theory.

If you smoke, look at the alternative. I’m glad I did. If you already use a personal vaporizer (PV), educate others. If you are not a smoker, think about the benefits for you. Loved ones who smoke can move to a safe alternative. “Vaping” does not smell and will not bother you. The taxes you pay will no longer go towards the multi-trillion dollar industry that funds treating diseases brought on by cigarettes.

Below I have placed some invaluable resources.

General Resources:

• CASAA.org – The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association
  A wonderful source of information regarding the actions being taken for and against the electronic cigarette.
• Tests for the Chronic Toxicity of Propylene Glycol and Triethylene Glycol on Monkey and Rats by Vapor Inhalation and Oral Administration – A research study conducted in the 1940s, in which they placed one group in air heavily concentrated with propylene glycol and one in regular room air.
• Summary of Results – Various research results regarding e-cigarettes and propylene glycol
• E-Cigarette Forum – An e-cigarette forum filled with useful information and populated with experienced, mature users.

 
Reputable Suppliers:

• Vapor4Life – Makers of the VaporKing. They have many delicious juices and fairly nice cartomizers.
• VaporNine – Wonderful “turbo” cartomizers. Good juice.
• Tasty Vapor – Awesome juice. Custom flavors you design.
• NHaler – Makers of the Xhaler, a powerful ecigarette that can run at 6volts!

I do not even bother to compare NPs and MDs. Their models differ. One is not better than the other. The schooling – minus the residency – is nearly equivalent in terms of time spent. The problem is that NPs don’t get a long enough residency. If you take a NP and a MD, both with 20 years clinical experience, the MD does not know more than the NP. Sure, he had a few extra classes 20 years ago – which he does not remember – but that’s about it.

NPs are not trying to steal MD meal tickets, they are attempting to better serve patients. Research has shown irrefutable proof that patient satisfaction and outcomes are just as high, if not higher in certain cases, when being treated by a NP rather than a MD. Some of this data is no doubt skewed because many MDs are so overwhelmed with patient loads that they simply cannot spend the time to provide competent care, but I see that as the fault of the MD for taking on too much.

Finally, I laughed when I read comments on various web sites about “once there was a gold standard – the physician.” That was no doubt true. Unfortunately, it’s not NPs that tarnished that reputation. It’s the fact that nearly 60% of practicing MDs got their degrees in unknown schools in Pakistan, India, or China. Then they did a residency in the U.S. These “physicians” can barely speak English, and if they provide good patient care, the patient certainly doesn’t know it. Next you have the American MDs who went to some Caribbean University for a 6 year medical degree. MDs straight out of reputable schools like Duke or Harvard or Washington University are a rarity these days.

Very soon, the idea that NPs are somehow “less” than MDs will change. A doctor is any learned person with an advanced degree such as a Phd, DNP, etc., and MDs are simply doctors of medicine. Eventually, when the Board of Healing Arts collapses in its ridiculous battles to slow NP progress, only patients will benefit. And NPs will no longer be asked, “Damn, you spent more time in school than a doctor. Why didn’t you go to med school?”

The answer will be obvious.

Our time machine – see Automated Customer Service Will Be Destroyed – shows us the following will occur unless there is an intervention:

“Hey, Dale, what’s that there thing?” the skinny man in the camouflage asked, then belched loudly and farted. His beady eyes were set high on an enormous skull shaped like a basketball, its baldness offset by a wild beard. He took a swig of his Budweiser, the foam coating his red bristles, and pointed vaguely at the writhing mass of tentacles which was sliding towards them.

Dale’s belly hung over his faded jeans so far that if he had been pant-less, his genitals would have been safely hidden. A filthy umbilicus poked out from beneath a mat of curly black hair. He snorted, spit, and stopped leaning on the old Ford they’d brought out tonight. “Damned if I know. Ugly fucker, though.”

The pile of tentacles was perhaps fifteen feet tall and was covered with a purplish, gelatinous substance which gave off an incandescent light. It stopped twenty feet from them and waved its tentacles. Dale and basketball-head stared at it with disgust. It sat there, nonchalantly wriggling its tentacles. After twenty minutes, it began bouncing up and down, still not moving towards them or showing any sign of aggression.

The tentacle beast stopped bouncing and waved first one, then two, then three tentacles in the air. Rick pulled a fully automatic combat shotgun he’d stolen from his days as a Marine from the back of the truck. The creature now wiggled four, five, then six tentacles in the air, paused momentarily, and started again at one. Dale leveled the matte black firearm at it.

Basketball-head threw down his beer and screamed, “Shoot the fucker, Dale! Blow that bitch back to Eye-Rack!”

Dale’s bellow of “Yeeeee Haw!” was drowned out by the thunderous report of his shotgun, which blew off eight tentacles and sent glowing slime into the air. The creature made a noise like a deep sigh and tried to move backwards, feebly dragging itself by the stubs of its tentacles. Dale’s second shot blew the thing in half. The two humans whooped and slapped each other on the back. They drank beer and Old Crow around what was left of the mass of tentacles until they were quite drunk. They sang patriotic war songs interposed with “Hooah!”

Unbeknownst to them, a gigantic spaceship, floating far enough outside of Earth’s orbit to be undetectable to any human satellite, grimly watched the festivities. The avatar they’d sent had been crafted to resemble one of the millions of aquatic creatures they’d studied, one of many they had dispersed about the planet to make contact. By some clerical error which would no doubt end in demotion for the guilty party, the region’s marine avatar had been placed on land and the region’s land avatar had been placed deep in the ocean. Both had been met with swift and brutal violence. On land, two of the bipeds had fired a projectile weapon so crude Xrnlgr’mth had not at first recognized it as an implement of destruction. Exactly 345 leagues within the ocean, several thousand invertebrates had quickly descended on the biped they had accidentally submerged, sucking at the synthetic polymer meant to resemble flesh.

Further research would normally be required. One might hypothesize from the mistake that the two factions, the invertebrates and the bipeds, were at war. Had they sent the avatars to the correct locations, perhaps the response would have been entirely different. However, even the desert avatar with its yellowed teeth and large humped back, had not fared much better. Several of its kin had trampled and spit upon it within minutes. As the planet was classified in the holo-data as obscure at best and trivial at worst, Xrnlgr’mth did not think he would be demoted or – Universe forbid – rezzed if he streamlined the research.

He projected “Permanent Stage 1 – Violent – Unthinking – Irredeemable” to the holo-data, classifying the small planet as Tier 1, the slight better of space debris. This move would save him much work and his superiors would not notice the omission. After all, at best the inhabitants might be Stage 1.1, and based on their reactions, would not reach Stage 2 for millenia, if ever. He projected “Sanitize – Planet 2134.23.”

Below, Dale and Basketball-head were dancing about the tentacled creature’s remains, which by this point they’d tossed onto their newly made campfire. The gelatinous limbs cracked, popped, and blackened in the fire. The rednecks hollered and told lewd jokes and were quite pleased with themselves. The jellyfish in the ocean had suctioned themselves to the human avatar and were in the process of raising the one who had delivered the final sting as their new leader. They quivered with pleasure and excitement. The food would last for months. Four camels stood about the corpse of the desert avatar, coating it with their acrid urine.

At this moment time stopped for Earth’s inhabitants because it was vaporized. The planet simply ceased to exist. Well, that is not quite true. The matter of the Earth was superheated within a nanosecond, resulting in a mote of sand floating aimlessly about the galaxy. The benefit, though, was that Earth’s moon floated away, finally free, thanks to Dale, Basketball-head, a school of enthusiastic jellyfish, and several grumpy camels.

What We Are Doing About It:
Brobdingnagian Lumberhulks are working on eliminating the aggressive response in all species. With humans, this requires a large amount of modified THC. The added benzene ring does not allow one’s motivation to be affected, and is therefore palatable to all. Furthermore, we are educating others, with the help of this poster, on the proper means of responding to first contact. B.L. are currently developing methods for the other species.

The poster: