I Blame It All On Rene Belloq

I have an image blog today. Enjoy!

Internet Scammers, I Cast Thee Out

They never learn. They never take a hint and just stop. I speak of course of the spammers who try to infest our posts with crap that we didn't ask for, totally off the topic nonsense. Most of the time their comments go straight to spam folders. Sometimes they get published, but not for long. One such spammer (or several, using the same technique) has been doing the standard comment with a link for a Thai gambling site for some time on several photoblogs I follow. The other day I noticed a number of comments from the same person on several blogs- 'lovely, you may be interested in my posts.' The link led back to his blog, which turned out to be something along the lines of a book review theme, perhaps Turkish. I had a look for a simple reason- he had posted that same comment on a photoblog I follow from Florida, in a post that the writer had made about Hurricane Michael coming and being worried about it. Imagine that, writing 'lovely' in a post about an oncoming hurricane. While his site might not be spam, the generic comment and the inappropriateness of it made me leave him an unpleasant comment calling him out. He actually replied back with a generic 'thank you for your valuable input.' Had he actually listened, he might have instead said, 'wow, you're right, it wasn't appropriate to write that.' So I've permanently deemed him to be a spammer.

Then of course there are the internet scammers. The following came through my email the other day.

How are u doing today ? Apologies! I am a military woman ,seeking your kind assistance to move the sum of ($10,500,000.00 USD) to you, as far as I can be assured that my money will be safe in your care until I complete my service here in Afghanistan and come over next month. This is legitimate, and there is no danger involved. If interested, reply immediately for detailed information. Regards , Sgt. Monica L. Brown

I've seen the military NCO as a scammer routine before. And if you google that name, you'll get notifications of two things- scam notifications and a Wiki page for the actual Sergeant Monica Lin Brown. Yes, she exists, with the distinction of being an actual US Army sergeant and medic who was the first woman during the Afghan War to get the Silver Star. The real Sergeant Brown is well decorated and I presume absolutely nowhere near Afghanistan... and is probably well aware that her name is being used by scumbag internet scammers (yes, scammers, you are scumbags and always will be. Don't like my saying that? I really don't give a damn).

This time it's a relatively short one. Punctuation and spacing issues are a tell tale of the internet scammer. So to is the mix of formal and informal phrases- I don't know about you, but when I'm emailing a complete stranger, I'm not likely to write u in place of you. Hell, to be honest, I wouldn't do that with a friend; I find it lazy writing.  The formal writing- a phrase like "seeking your kind assistance to move"? Definitely written like someone for whom English is a second language, because generally speaking, we don't talk that way.

They dangle the big sum of money in front of us, as if that'll disarm any suspicions we might have of this unsolicited email (note to the scammers: suspicions still well entrenched in place. I just thought you should know). They claim they want me to sit on this money that they're moving out of the country (wow, I wonder what the Afghan government would make of a Yankee soldier swiping ten and a half million USD worth out cash out of their coffers). They assure me that they think the money will be safe in my care (note to scammers, it wouldn't be, because first, it doesn't exist, this is all about trying to con me out of money, and second if it did exist and some complete stranger gave me ten and a half million dollars to take care of until they get back into the country next month... I have to be honest, I'd totally disappear with it, and you'd never find me.

And of course there's the proviso that "this is legitimate and there is no danger involved." Uh huh. Right. Sure, I'll trust you on that. Right after I start trusting a shifty French archaeologist with no scruples whose fashion tastes are being duplicated in the strangest of ways. 

Nice try, scamming scammer. You take the name of someone who's actually served her country, someone whose profile is readily accessible, and use it to your own ends, hoping that someone will be dumb enough to bite and send off five grand as a sign of good faith that you're going to send them the ten point five million. Maybe someone else on that list of hundreds of thousands of email addresses you're randomly sending this crap out to will bite. But not me.

In an ideal world we could have Sergeant Brown and her colleagues come track you down, military style. And drop a bunker buster on you.

The Rampage Of A Fired Sitcom Celebrity

Fallen Network Star Fumes, Gets New Opportunity

Los Angeles (AP). The fallout of the cancellation of Roseanne Barr’s show after a racist tweet continues, with things going in different directions on multiple fronts. The turbulence-loving star, who was summarily fired by ABC after her remarks against a former Obama adviser, has spent time lashing out at other cast members of the Roseanne update who expressed disappointment in her. Barr and her supporters have been busy feeding into conspiracy theories. From the White House, Donald Trump has been busy lashing out at ABC and demanding why he hasn’t been apologized to as opposed to doing his job. Others have been wondering why the woman with the world’s most obnoxious laugh just won’t go away.

There have been suggestions about how to salvage the show, at the very least to give the cast and the crew a continued source of work, particularly given the high ratings that the update has been having. It was removed from the schedule in the wake of the controversy, as were syndicated reruns of the original series on other stations. “It’s been done before,” an ABC network executive admitted, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Valerie Harper left her show, and the show went on without her. When Charlie Sheen lost his mind and got fired off Two And A Half Men, the show retooled and went on without him. The network is still open to exploring possibilities about saving the show. Just not with Roseanne involved in any capacity, because between you and me and the network, she’s nuts.”

The scenarios suggested have varied. Picking up the series a couple of years later with Dan Conner a widower, and Roseanne’s name never mentioned again is one idea. Another notion picks up threads from the Dallas series or the finale of the sitcom Newhart, with dreams being a central concept. Producer Bruce Helford confirmed that there are ideas being bounced around about salvaging the series.

“One of the more amusing ideas is that we start an episode with Dan waking up in bed in the middle of the night in a cold sweat,” Helford told reporters yesterday. “Sits up straight and yells out, ‘honey, I had a horrible dream! I was married to the world’s most obnoxious woman for years on end and she just wouldn’t stop cackling that awful laugh and spewing conspiracy theories and being a bitter….’ And then his wife sits up in bed. And of course instead of Roseanne, it’s her sister Jackie, but in this reboot of the show, Jackie’s an only child, has no sister, and she and Dan have been happily married for thirty years.”

“**** that!” Roseanne Barr bellowed in an unsolicited call to Fox & Friends during their Monday morning broadcast, slurring her words at times and using colourful vocabulary, leaving one wondering if she was mixing meds with booze again. “They can’t take the characters I created, the show I ****ing created, and wipe me out of the show! I’ll never ****ing let them! I’d rather burn the ****ing set down! Scorched ****ing earth, you ****ing ****ers!”

Her ex-husband, Tom Arnold, once seen as an opportunistic, untalented snake when he leeched onto the show during its first run for a time, has had a few things to say on the matter, mostly in interviews with the networks. “She’s bipolar, okay?” he said on CNN last night. “She doesn’t handle stress well, and she craves attention. The best thing you can do right about now is just ignore her. Meanwhile, how about in the reboot, we have my character come back as a used car salesman and comic relief?”

As noted, the issue has made waves around the White House. Roseanne’s character was written as a Trump supporter in the revisited series, and the tensions between she and other family members over politics was a subplot in the series. This has elicited sympathy out of Trump, who has been vocal in support of the actress and using the matter to further his own grudges.

On Monday evening he made an announcement to the press at the White House. Instead of addressing matters such as the impending G7 meeting where he’ll be quite unwelcome, or the on and off North Korea summit, or the fact that he’s going out of his way to alienate and irritate allies, the President chose to focus on a matter that he found more pressing. “The way Roseanne Barr has been treated is very unfair! Unfair! Very unfair bigly! They fired her for something that doesn’t really matter, because she’s a fan of me, and I’m a fan of her. Big time! And those crooked networks, that mainstream media that hates me, they’re never gonna let her back in. They’re never gonna apologize to her or to me. So I have decided, as my job gives me absolute power to do whatever the **** I want, to screw over those ****ing networks by doing something different.”

Trump smiled in that leering smirk way of his, and continued. “I’m giving Roseanne a job. An important job. A big job in a prestigious place. Because she’s one of the best people. And I only hire the best people. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that. Now I could be making her my chief of staff, and who knows, maybe I will. I mean, that ****er Kelly is gonna be on his way out any day soon now, and I’ll tell you, I’m sick and tired of that mother****er telling me I gotta control myself. Control myself? I’m in control, I’m the best at being in control, believe me, folks.”

The orange tinted chief executive paused a moment, as if trying to keep track of what he was saying. “Where was I? Oh yes, the job. Now I want to give Roseanne the right kind of job. Something that requires tact and grace and all that bullshit. Something important. I thought diplomacy. In an important place. But I can’t make her an ambassador, at least not yet. She doesn’t have the experience, and besides, where I’m sending her, the ambassador’s a close personal friend of mine who donated to my campaign. So instead I’m giving her a chance to build up some experience in the field. I’m making her the official communications director for our embassy in Great Britain. Isn’t that covfefe great?”

The press corps was in a state of stunned silence for a moment, until someone spoke up. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Shut the **** up!” Trump answered. “She’s gonna be great in the job, tellin’ those stuffy Brits what’s what and who’s for. She’s gonna pave the way for my first official state visit to Old England, Scotland, whatever the ****, I mean, who cares about what the ****ing difference is between the British Brits. English, Scottish, it’s all the same. So where was I? Oh yes, state visit! We’re talking me shaking hands with that old battleaxe Lizzie, tellin’ her to put a big Trump Casino sign up at that Burpingham Palace place, because let’s face it, that place needs a bit of Trump class. We’re talking me giving a big speech for the ages to their worthless little parliament and telling those stuffy mother****ers who's in charge. And they’d better ****ing show me some ****ing respect, and apologize to my buddy Vladimir for that whole ****ing overreaction to that spy being poisoned thing. Now, no more questions, I gotta get busy on this afternoon’s ****ing tweet rampage before I give an official ****ing pardon to the corpse of Charles ****ing Manson.” With that, Trump stormed out of the press room.

Needless to say, the British are not amused. Prime Minister May, busy trying to wrangle some kind of solution out of the Brexit fiasco, was displeased by the statement. A formal statement from Ten Downing Street indicated that the American President is not welcome on British soil. Another statement from Buckingham Palace noted, “the Royal Family is not obliged to receive someone incapable of tact and respectful behavior, neither in the capacity of an embassy staffer or a head of state. It is recommended to the current occupant of the Oval Office that should he visit Britain at any point during or after his presidency, Her Majesty has the Tower of London at her disposal, and while it is largely a tourist attraction, the infrastructure for its old uses as a prison are still in place, and she sees no problem with detaining, quote, an insufferable lout, end quote, for a few weeks.”

When the statement reached the White House, Trump’s latest Twitter storm was magnified ten times worse, and Chief of Staff John Kelly has reportedly told military officers not to let the President near the nuclear codes. “What the hell was I thinking,” he said to reporters last night outside the West Wing. “Taking this job? Did I lose control of my faculties for a moment? Say, do the networks have any job openings coming up for former White House staffers as pundits? Because I could use a less stressful job right about now.”

Rantings Of A Demented Candidate

So, the Republican convention is underway, and I thought I'd take the obnoxious voice of Donald Trump again and speculate on the sort of crap he might blather on with. Needless to say, finding his voice is highly revolting. And odds are what he actually says will be much worse.

“I’ve just gotta say, folks, it’s great to see all of you out here ready to confirm what we already know: that the only person who can take this piece of crap party back to power is me, me, and me. Donald Trump. Because I am the best. I am the greatest. I do great things, folks. Everybody knows it. They know that the Trump name stands for quality and integrity and all that good stuff.

Hello, Cleveland! Well, those members of the community who got in here, anyway. I don’t give a crap about any of those stupid protesting ****ers out on the other side of the police lines, let me tell you. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in Cleveland, and let’s be honest... this is probably the last time I’ll ever come here, because let’s face it, the place is a hellhole, folks. Hell on Earth, let me tell you. When I get into the White House, I’m gonna build a wall right around this cesspool of a city and turn it into a prison, just like that movie, Escape From Forrest Gump, with Kurt Russell taking shots at Tom Hanks, right? And I’m gonna sentence Rosie O’Donnell to spend the rest of her life right here, believe me. Have I mentioned what a disgusting cow she is? It’s terrible, just terrible.

I know, some smarty pants reporters are going to be saying, hey Donald, you can’t sentence anyone to anything. You’re not a judge. Well, you know what I say to that? **** you! First thing I do when I get into the White House, I’m gonna be passing laws that revoke your rights and let me do whatever the **** I want! Emperor Donald, folks, that’s me.

And let me tell you something, folks. There are a lot of people out there who look at me and they criticize. They dare to question me. They think they’ve got the right to make fun of me. They refuse to bow down and worship me as I so richly deserve.

Well, **** that! Because I’ve got big plans, folks, big plans. As part of naming myself Emperor For Life, Supreme Majestor, and His Stupendous Greatness Lord Donald, which all of you vermin are gonna have to memorize, I’ll be passin’ a law that makes even the slightest criticism of me illegal and punishable by terms of seventy years hard labour in the Donald Trump re-education camps. You heard me right, folks.

Because anyone who makes fun of me, says I’ve got little hands, or thinks my hair isn’t actually real hair, they’re gonna end up there. Along with everyone who voted against me, believe me. Because the Trump campaign is gonna keep track of every ballot and who voted for who and what their social insurance number is. Don’t ask me how we’re gonna do it, we got ourselves a hell of a system. And after the election’s over, we’re gonna be busy settlin’ scores and puttin’ people behind bars and into forced labour and all that great stuff, am I right, folks?

You know what I expect outta life? What I’ve already got. Incredibly hot wife, I mean have you looked at Melania? She’s smokin’ hot and sexy and never in her life would even dream of plagiarizing anything. Let me tell you, folks, she’s almost as hot as my daughter Ivanka. And don’t worry, just because I’ve already divorced twice for younger women every single time doesn’t mean that’s gonna happen again anytime soon.

I haven’t had a chance to go out to Eastern Europe and scope any hot babes for the position of Mrs. Trump #4. Just kidding, believe me, trust me, that’s just a joke. Hey, if I’m lyin’, may lightning strike Justice Ginsberg.

Speaking of the old bat, let me tell you, she’s absolutely disgusting. First order of business after I’ve suspended your rights and all of democracy, I’m havin’ the whole Supreme Court arrested and locked up in my Trump re-education camps. Just because. We don’t need nine morons in black robes lookin’ like something outta a bad movie from what’s his name? Oh yeah, a bad movie from Olaf Bergman tellin’ us what to do. We just need me tellin’ you what to do. Like it was always supposed to be.

Where was I? Oh, right, tellin’ you what I expect outta life. Like I said, I already got that hot wife, and she’s gonna look all hot and sexy and gorgeous and amazin’ as First Lady. I got lots of people sayin’ to me, yes sir and right away, Mr. Trump, and let’s not forget, as you wish, dread lord of darkness. I got all of that. I got respect, let me tell you. I got respect from everybody and everything. I got respect comin’ outta my ass.

Everybody knows what a great guy I am. I mean, the blacks love me, even when I’m dumpin’ all over them or havin’ their homes torn down or plannin’ on revoking the 13^th Amendment. The Mexicans love me. Doesn’t matter if I’m callin’ them rapists and demandin’ they pay for the yuuuuuuuuge wall I’m gonna have built. Muslims love me, even if I think all of them should be kicked outta the country, believe me folks, that’s the first order of business when I get into the White House. Civil liberties, my ass.

Anyway, who else loves me? Women love me. Because every woman wants nothin’ more than to have a rich guy take care of ‘em and tell ‘em what they should do, right folks? Well, to be fair, not every woman. I mean, that Megyn Kelly, she doesn’t seem that impressed with me. Don’t know why, what did I ever do to her? Except that whole thing about blood comin’ outta her whatever. Hey, you know what? I still stand by what I said.

Hey, there’s Scott Baio, ladies and gentlemen, give the great guy a big hand. Did I promise this whole thing was gonna be star studded or what? And we all know that Scott Baio, he’s a hell of a guy, real A-list material. Scott, I’m seriously thinkin’ of havin’ you be my Head Honcho Of Culture, or whatever the **** I’m gonna call it after the dumbasses vote me in. Nobody can do that job better than a truly great actor like you.

It’s great to see Scott out here. And Kirk Cameron. Hey, Kirk, any thought to becomin’ my Grand Poobah of State Theocracy? We’re gonna need one, but you’re gonna have to shift your focus to the Worship of Trump first. Because aside from bein’ an Emperor, I’m elevatin’ myself to god status too.

Hey folks, there’s old Pat Robertson there lookin’ like he’s about to stroke out. Fooled you, did I? You thought you’d be the Grand Poobah of State Theocracy in the United States Of Trump, right? Well, sorry, old man, but that just isn’t gonna happen.

You know who’s not here tonight, folks? Lots of Republicans who are refusing to bow down and acknowledge me as their rightful master. We’re talkin’ two former presidents. We’re talkin’ two former GOP presidential candidates. And yes, John McCain, I still stand by what I said. I don’t like guys who get caught and end up prisoners of war. They’re losers. Losers! I like winners. Winners like me.

And we’ve got plenty of Republicans out there who decided not to show up at all. They made up all sorts of excuses. They snickered when they asked if they’d support me. They said they were busy mowing the lawn this week. Well, boys and girls... mostly boys, because I don’t give a **** about career women. When I’m in the White House, I’m comin’ after every single one of you in this party who show me this kinda disrespect. 

You don’t disrespect a Trump. And what I end up doin’ to the Mexicans and the liberals and the Muslims and the blacks and the Daughters Of The Revolution isn’t gonna be anywhere near as bad as what I’m gonna do to you traitors, believe me, folks, I know what I’m talking about. We’re talking scorched earth, people, the mother of all throwdowns.

That reminds me of my old pal Saddam. You know, when you really got to know the guy, he wasn’t that bad. Sure, he slaughtered lots of people, but he made an effort to take pride in his work. You know who else does that? Winners.

Anyway, I’m gettin’ carried away with myself. Make America Great Again. That’s my motto. That and Donald Trump Is Master Of The Universe. Because let’s face it folks, believe me, I am. Everybody knows that, and when I’m done and Crooked Hillary is spending the remainder of her days in a prison cell, it’s not gonna end there. Because I’m gonna have her daughter and grandchildren serve her sentence after she’s gone. All part of my Destroy Freedoms And Rule With An Iron Fist agenda. Wait, did I say that out loud? I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud. Forget I said anything, okay, folks?

In closing, I just wanna thank my running mate. Mike Pence, governor of that great state of Indiana. This man, folks, he and I think alike. Mike, I swear, you’re not gonna regret hitchin’ your wagon to the greatness that is Trump. I mean, seriously, am I right, folks? We got the best team, the most amazing people workin’ for us, and we got all the suckers believin’ every line of bull we feed them.

Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, can possibly go wrong now. So don’t worry, Mike, we’re goin’ all the way to the White House.

Or as I’m gonna call it, the Trump House."