For the benefit of the reviewers

Wednesday, June 19, 2002

Sort of a funmail, if you are an experience reviewer anyway. Let's first look at “Self Piercing (GOOD or BAD? Find out here!!!)“. They were denied for two things; first of all they spent the last half of their experience complaining about word count, plus they never put i in caps. Their response:


From: "m.r" <gemini667790@yahoo.com>

ok listen up ass, i had a good this here, and if u couldnt see that this was good then you should not be doing this!!!

and maybe i wanna bitch about the words like who wants to fill out 800 words and if i wanna get my belly button pierced at 11 i will u cant tell me what to do.

The thing that surprised me is that shortly afterwards they decided to write another experience, called, literally, “*~12 year old girl gets belly doen!!~*“. It was also universally turned down, and broke pretty much every rule that had been laid out. Their response?


  ok listen up here

u cant tell me what to do ok

I'm sure they'll submit another soon enough.

This next person didn't include the name of their experience in their email, so I'm not sure what it was exactly, but I'm sure the reviewers will remember a poorly written “stretched nostril” piercing about a 14ga nostril from the UK. Anyway, here was their response to getting turned down, in two emails:


From: JenaliciousMooLa@aol.com
Subject: Fucking pissed off.

Okay, right. It isn't any of your fault. But can you kindly tell the people who reviewed my experience to fuck themselves? Half of them can't spell themselves, and they're telling me to correct some spelling errors? No offence. But whoever you let into your reviewing bit need to get their heads from up their own arses. Snooty bastards. And yes. I am complaining.

Subject: Fucking pissed off #2.

A few more things I'd like to add to the obnoxious arseholes that turned my experience down. Oh, I'm not mad at having the experience itself turned down, I've had many submitted and used, but the comments used by them were pig ignorant.

1) I didn't get the studio to stretch because I WANTED TO DO IT MY FUCKING SELF. Is that alright?
2)I fancy myself as an expert? All I'd like to say to them is: ''Go suck your own cock, you stupid motherfucker.''
3)It might not be large gauge, but 1.6 isn't exactly 'normal' is it?
4) Yes, I warned people about the dangers of doing this yourself, where exactly did I state YOU SHOULD stretch your own nostril? No-where. Exactly. Fuck you.
5)Really. To the first person who wrote the comment about me thinking I'm an expert? PLEASE. Get murdered and die. You pig fucker. 6) 'How does jamming a stud into your nostril make it large
gauge? Bad advice, too' Bite me, fuck head. IT'S CALLED STRETCHING, NOSTRIL PIERCINGS ARE PIERCED AT 1MM. I STRETCHED IT TO 1.6. USING A TAPER TO STRETCH IT WOULD BE STUPID, WOULDN'T IT, YOU FUCKWIT.
7)And who the fuck are these people? Readers of BME? I suggest you point and lagh at these guys in the street. ''There are several spelling mistakes which lower the quality of this experience, consider correcting them before re-submitting your experience.'' WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU TO 'SUGGEST' WHAT I DO. Clusterfuck.

Now, as you can tell, I am very annoyed. =c) Thankyou for your time in reading this. Put this on BME. I dare you.

Hey, she asked me to post it!

This next one was a “mild deny” — that is, the writer was simply asked to clean up a few parts and resubmit, rather than a “hard deny” where the experience is basically totally turned down. This was for “My First Tattoo at 14!!“


From: "chantel macdonald" <telly_55@hotmail.com>

I would like you to know, that my experience was GOOD and well writen. You and your editor people are retarded. I'm not gonna resubmit my experience cause your no longer worth my time. I am surprised that anyone's stories would be accepted with your unbelieveably HIGH standards. AND SHE DID DO A WONDERFUL "JOG"

I got the experience my “first facial piercing!“ from someone calling themselves “Ruff 69 Ryderz” which was absolutley attrocious and was turned down by every single reviewer that read it… Their response,


well.. all i have 2 say 2 ur LIL ppl who revued this is.. fuck u i mean u no wat i made a few mistakes..dont be so god damn harsh having ppl say shit about ur expirence like that is just gonna make them stop using ur site so break ur self fo0l fuck u

The author of “Can you say hot, sexy chick with belly button ring ??“, who goes by the online handle “CheerChic”, wanted everyone to know,


to all those "readers" out there: who gives a fuck if words were misspelled big fucking deal!!! it toook 30 minutes to right that damn thing and i add irrelevant info because there is no way i could write 800 words without some of it. And to those who thin it is not true they need to see it because i promise you it is pierced. so why does it matter if i post it or not i was just trying to be helpful to other people. ill go post my experience elsewhere.

Or then there's “Spoil Me 343″ who wrote the experience “My pain was worth it boys dig chicks with piercings“ which was also universally turned down for obvious reasons (the whole thing is written in text-messaging code) was asked to fix the grammar and spelling problems and replied,


hows this for grammar fuck off

Then there was also “Thinking about getting your navel pierced?“ which was nothing but “take care of your navel” repeated over and over and over until it reached 800+ words. When they were turned down, they (“Cherries”) replied:


You mother fucking, slut, whore, cunt, bitch. You better never fucking contact me again with that kind of language! SO FUCK OFF!!!

“*M*Y* B*E*L*L*Y* B*U*T*T*O*N *P*I*E*R*C*I*N*G*“ is pretty damn bad as well; among other things, I think every single sentance ends in an explanation point! They weren't happy being turned down either:


From: AngelBaby01158@aol.com

SCREW ALL UR WHORES

BItCHES MOTHER FUCKERS

We could also look at the all-lower-case i experience, “stretching them your self“, who's author “Tragedies” had the following advice for us when his experience was turned down for that and complaining about word count and lots more:


you can all suck my balls

Or there's “Lalita's” mostly filler experience about her belly button entitled, “IT DIDN'T EVEN HURT!!!!!!!“ — she was none to thrilled with being turned down either, and asked me to pass on the following message to the review team:


From: Viona <hobbit@comcast.net>

YOU didn't provide speel check and it's not my folt I'm dislcsic and have a hard tiem typing you morons. I spent almost an HOUR typin thaet in and you took it away. I'm NEVER goin to uyour site again. Insultive MORONIC BITCHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

screw you people you think you knows it ALL. FAGS

The person who wrote “*Third*Times*A*Charm*“ was simply asked to split the experience into paragraphs. They replied,


From: ZBeachGirlZ@aol.com

shut up you mother fuckers

This person, who wrote nothing but “i i i i i i i” to fill out 75% of their experience “frenum ; o“, was of course told it was unacceptable to submit a fake experience by cheating on the word count. They replied,


From: randal staats <packmanjd@yahoo.com>

ass hole
 not that it maters but my story is not fake. the reason i iiiii typed such a short story was because thats was all that happened. have you ever read something for a long time then realised it could have been all sumed up in a cupple of good paragraphs(this happens all the time on the net)? that sucks doesnt it, a complete waste of time. i wanted to tell a truthful and short story. i did not want to wright a long ass story bitching and whining about the pain. sence you think im so full of shit i will do one thing for you. my 18th b day is on the 29th of may. on that day i will send a picture of my dick with a frenum piercing that looks bedder then all the ones on your sight.

now im sorry but i have an extreme cace of dyslexia, and it is hard for me to wright. it just pissed me off that you called me a lier.

responed.

Or then there's the one paragraph, one sentance, all-lower-case jumble of letters called “MY SNEAKY LiL iDEA“. Its author, “LiL DEE ROX” replied,


From: XLiDDLEONEZX@aol.com

I PERSONALLY THINK THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE COMPLETE MORANS WHO HAVE SOMETHING BAD TO SAY AND ID LIKE TO KNOW WHO THEY ARE BECAUSE THEY THINK THEIR THE HOTTEST THING UNDER THE SUN ND IMA TELL EM WHERE TO GO UR OWN STAFF SHOULD READ THESE NOT LIL STUCK UP AZZWHOLES

This horrendous “OMG-style” experience, “13 with a navel ring…..can you say SEXY!!!“, was turned down for obvious reasons. Their response was somewhat bizarre:


From: "Brittany Hartog" <beachbabe199@hotmail.com>

listen all you dumb-ass readers, i dont give a fuck if you liked my story, just beacause i have a nice body doesn't mean you have to be jealous like my step mom.

One thing I found fascinating about that one is that they spell their name “Britney” in their experience, but “Brittany” in their email. Odd. Then there's “look at this story-short but important before gettin ur tongue pierced“, which filled out its word count with “MN MN MN” over and over. It was of course denied, and naturally generated a response,


From: "andrew chandler" <andler101@hotmail.com>

hahaha ya not alnly did i do this piercing a now work at sink in ink in hamiltion ontario i my not b the best speller but i can tell ppl how it really feels BECOUSE I NOW TATTOO AND PIERCE PPL so fuck ur readers

This response, to being turned down on “ear stretching with a tv antenna“ for not using paragraphs (which can easily be fixed of course; just resubmit with them!) really amused me… At least it was funny:


From: Angeldust72686@aol.com

well atleast give me a free membership. you i mean you put me down you bad mouthed me you should atleast give me a membertship for like 2 weeks. c'mon 2 weeks thats barely any time

This next experience, “My pointless ear stretching experience“, which starts with the wise words, “I am obsesed with Blink182 and Tom and Travis have their ears stretched so I figures what the hell I'll do it!”, was rejected and got the following simple response,


you all fucking suck

And that's the end of that!

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Tomorrow never comes until it's too late

Tuesday, June 18, 2002

I spent yesterday on a beautiful little island chalet in Norther Ontario with Rachel, Saira, and Michael… (They'll post pictures I'm sure when they return; it's a radio phone there so I doubt they can get online). Weird thing is, once the glory of it all wore off, I found myself falling into a deep depression — I was really quite miserable. I was writing notes in my programming journal (I'll mention that shortly), and I had two thoughts about why I was upset:

ONE: Because I lead every day exactly the way I want to, going on vacation forces me to lead days in a way that I do not enjoy and that is contrary to my nature.

TWO: If I can not say to myself at the end of the day that I have made the world a better place, at least a little, then that was not a satisfactory day.

I have a quick story to tell, but I'd like to introduce it by stating that I am a person unable to do anything in moderation. If I'm drinking, I drink hard. If I'm driving, I drive fast. If I have money, I spend it all and give the rest away. If I have time, I fill every moment with the most challenging work I can find. If I'm not doing this, I'm bored.

On my way back (driving Rachel's Porsche, which I have only driven for a few minutes before today), I was doing about 200 kph most of the way (I think that's about 125 MPH, so, fast, but not crazyfast). Anyway, I picked up a hitchhiker and gave him what I hope was a fun ride — how often do you get picked up and then barrel down an empty highway at breakneck speed in a high-end sports car? It passed the time and I think maybe I got a couple karma points.

After I dropped him off, I drove even faster. The road was hilly, so I should have slowed down; I couldn't see much ahead, and even if I did have a radar/laser detector it wouldn't work. I come flying over a hump in the road at two hundred and change and see a small fleet of highspeed police interceptors parked at the side of the road — which immediately light up of course when they see me.

For a moment I considered what would happen if I just kept going, but I think I did the right thing and pulled over about half a click down the road. Let me interject at this point that I was going about 100 kph over the limit, and 50 kph over the point where they can take your license on the spot. In addition, I have a driving record that tags me as a habitual speeder, along with a slew of other issues. Finally, I didn't have any insurance paperwork.

He didn't even do the “do you know how fast you were going” speech. He simply told me what he'd lasered me at, and all I could do was say “wow, that's really fast!”

I guess I pulled off the “nice guy” routine well enough, because even after all the points stacked against me, he reduced the charge to 49kph over the limit (meaning I don't have to go to court) and let me go with a $350 ticket — of course, this bumps me up into a very high risk category on my insurance (I lost four points just for this), so it's more like a $5000 ticket. Guess that's the end of my driving privledges on Rachel's superfast cars — keep in mind my dirty Corvette (which will smoke anything stoplight-to-stoplight) becomes airborne at 125 kph so I can't even speed if I want to.

Anyway, back to the work things, I had a moment of clarity while sitting on a rock overlooking the bay. I yelled code into the wind and the wind answered back with data structures; I have solved the size issues on IAM. IAM is currently locked to 12,000 users because that's the current performance limit…. Under the new database and search structures, the limit is about a million users, and even with a million users it will go at least ten times as fast as now.

I've also figured out how to link multiple communities on the same engine, so I might fire up my old kit car site again as a test in about six months; this will allow me to actually market IAM should I ever choose to (and I'm not sure if I emotionally want to). I've thought up a scheme for a dynamic spherical grid system to make geographic searches ultra fast, as well as a redesigned IAM to take advantage of the new (lack of) upload barriers; this means everything from integrated image uploading on diaries, video uploads, and audio uploads. As some of you know, my programming background is in voice-telephony, so there may well be an ALL VOICE version of IAM, designed for truckers to use over HAM and CB, or for people to update their page with the telephone while travelling. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I also designed the IAM/BME tie-in (I'll be 100% merging the two engines over the next year), including massive automation of the submissions engine — I designed algorithyms that can tell the difference between a photo that's out of focus, and a closeup photo that was taken with macromode turned off… It's actually not as tricky as you'd think. It's based loosely on splitting the image up into a rough grid, and then running that data through a series of fourier transforms to measure sharpness (that should make it obvious to people who know about that kind of thing how it works).

Anyway… blah, blah, blah, right?

PS. For people who want t-shirts, do keep adding yourself to the RSVP list; the folks who signed by Monday are guaranteed to have a shirt/hoody/whatever waiting for them with their name on it. I'll do my best to get more for the people who requested them late, but don't expect to get a late-requested workshirt. I can definitely do t-shirts, and probably hoodies though.

PPS. Mini-news: Even if they sacrifice Ashcroft, I doubt anything will change (and Ashcroft has played this game for a long time, so don't underestimate his power). This is a brave and noble man. Finally, good luck.

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Gone for a while!

Sunday, June 16, 2002

Wow, I didn't update at all yesterday; you can tell how full the weekend was! I sqeezed out an update last night, and I will try and do a full image update as today goes by. In the current update you can see lots of pictures from NIX and pictures of Chad's suspension, along with all the experiences as well…

I am not doing a “news” thing today, but I did think that people should not forget the Anthrax case. As reported in the Scotsman,

American investigators know the identity of the killer who paralysed the US by sending anthrax in the post but will not arrest the culprit, according to leading US scientists.

[Dr Barbara Hatch Rosenberg] said she knows who that person is and so do a top-level clique of US government scientists, the CIA, the FBI and the White House.

Most crucially, she believes the suspect has in the past actually conducted experiments for the government to test the response of the police and civil agencies to a bioterror attack.

The answer that has been proposed is that they can't arrest this guy because he knows too much. As if they wouldn't just execute him if that was the case. I think it's damn obvious that the anthrax attacks were 100% US government sponsored. I think that now that we're getting more and more solid proof that the US government launched the Anthrax attacks on its own people, and that Bush et al knew all about it, that we can start feeling a lot more secure in stating that not only did the Bush dictatorship know the details of 9/11, but that they helped and encouraged it to happen.

Anyway, enjoy the update.

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The sun rises still…

Friday, June 14, 2002

First of all, I should mention for friends of Jordan and Dan that Jordan father just posted a brief note in the 7ANGELS7PLAGUES forum. Along similarly sad notes, if anyone would like to say something regarding former IAM member Brian Edge(less) who passed away recently I can post it as well.

I've gotten no sleep lately. I try to go to bed early, but when I go to bed early, I just end up getting up even earlier; today I was up at about 4AM. I have a lot to do this weekend, so I tried to go back to bed, but I'm one of those people who wakes up instantly, and then stays awake until they're totally tired again, so that was an unsuccessful mission.

I was supposed to hook up yesterday with Damian who's hosting NIX so we could go over the Internet connections, but that didn't happen. I know what a nightmare organizing ModCon was, so I really have to tip my hat to Damian for organizing a full-scale tattoo convention! In any case, I'll be there even if the booth falls through hanging out with Blair, Mark, Marty, and everyone else who I've forgotten has made it up to NIX. And I will have lots of stickers, and so will Ryan if you want a super-slick BMEbooks sticker!

Oh, and I hear there's a suspension tonight (although if it stays this chilly, I'm going to recommend it be pushed back a day or two).

Now the part that some of you love, and some of you hate… I was reading the news this morning and I'm starting to wonder if it's not corruption we're seeing in the government, but plain and simple stupidity? Of course, maybe that's what they want us to think. The latest with Rumsfield in India is particularly weird — he totally forgot or was uninformed that Musharraf had promised to shut down terrorist camps in Kashmir. Then the press reminded him that a few days before Powell had made this public in a speech. Rumsfield insisted that he didn't think that Powell would say anything like that, and that he was pretty sure Musharraf couldn't shut down the camps.

The government tried to explain that he was “impossible to reach” for most of his time abroad, but I have to seriously doubt that. Yeah, one of the most important US politicians is AWOL while in hostile territory? As if that crew doesn't have a dozen satellite phones. Worst case just as CNN, it't not as if Rumsfield isn't tailed by dozens of reporters.

Or, more along that line, remember how last week Rumsfield implied that Al Quaeda was in Kashmir? Now they've had to admit that was effectively made up and that there's no evidence for it. So who knows… Are they lying, stupid, or misinformed? The whole dirty bomber scam at least blew up in their faces… I just want to know why the (very well armed) Americans haven't revolted. I know if I was Texan, I'd be pushing the Republic of Texas a lot harder nowadays. I know I'd support Texas becoming a free country!

And, rolling the news way back, it's looking more and more like the Anthrax attacks after 9/11 were quite specifically launched by the US government at least in part. More in the “they're all out to get you” file includes this story about how even now the airlines are still trying to avoid reporting incidents out of fear that bombs on planes could mean less flights (well duh).

Finally, I have two more stories I'd like to address. First is this opinion piece in the Mercury News stating that the solution to terrorism is bringing American troops home. Now, I know Americans are told that America is the target because it represents freedom and the opulence of the West… If one is to make such a statement, you have to include the fact that America is one of the most debt-ridden countries in the West (especially now that the EU is making such extreme budget demands of its nations, and Canada just declared a $9 billion budget surplus this year), has pretty much the lowest standard of living in the Western world, has the highest crime, the least education, and the least civil rights (with the exception of guns). America is attacked for one reason alone: its foreign policy and its foreign troop movements.

So I think the solution is quite obvious, and the writer of this piece sees it in my opinion.

Finally, I wanted to link to this piece in the Miami Herald. It points out that of the four US-citizen terrorists arrested recently (Jose Padilla, Yasser Esam Hamdi, John Walker Lindh, and Timothy McVeigh), their rights, as in whether they are treated as foreign military prisoners or whether they are treated as US citizens with rights, is determined almost exclusively by the colour of the skin.

I have friends that are of colour and political activists. I certainly hope they have the sense to not enter the United States. Good luck not being executed.

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On the bearing of bad news…

Thursday, June 13, 2002

I just got this message:

"another iam.bme person has passed away... his username on here is epix .. hisreal name is jordan.. he had a LOT of friends on bme, and a lot of people who knew either him or the band he was in on here... around 3am this morning, compromise.. his band... got in a car accident. we dont know all the specific details about what happened, but we do know that they were hit by a drunk driver. jordan was driving. he and one other member of the band did not make it."

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