"I could not take this gift for granite anymore."

Yet again I’m judging entries for the local PTSA’s Reflections essay competition. I’m glad that I only get a binder of entries with designated codes. If I had to meet some of the authors I would never ever stop slapping them. Only halfway through the binder and so far: 3 stories of getting lost while skiing, 4 stories of how their parent is their hero, 2 stories about how great Jesus is, and the obligatory story about how a retarded person will make you grateful for your life (while getting lost on skis). All but 3 of the total are filled with awkward writing, wooden characterization and inappropriate word choices. I know that not everyone is going to be a good writer, but every one of these students should really know how to compose an essay that doesn’t read like it was written by an ESL student with a head injury. No offense to the brain-damaged immigrant population.

A Loaf by Any Other Name

I listened to Frank Zappa’s album Broadway the Hard Way an awful lot in college, so no wonder confinement loaf popped back into my head. According to the song, it’s “bean by-products compressed into a loaf, which is administered to problem prisoners. Their diet will be a slice of ‘Confinement Loaf’ and a cup of water, and it seems to mellow them out right away. So my question is: How long before ‘Confinement Loaf’ appears in United States High Schools?”

Similar loaves seem to pop up in the news from time to time, here’s a few:

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Tasty Turks, 70's Style!

Source of many excellent digital poster archives, those groovy Socialist historians in the Netherlands present us with photos of Turkish migrant workers in the Netherlands between 1965 and 1975. No one can do sideburns like Turks in the 70’s! Bonus: the unintentionally-hilarious-in-English caption “Turks brood.”

More spam research

A later specimen of the cheating housewives spam had a site that was still active, so I was able to go find out the scoop. It turns out

Some married Woman feel they need more than they are getting at home. The Internet is great way to meet local woman who are looking for discreet sexual encounters with local men in their cities. No Strings attached! These ladies are ready and willing to meet right now. They don’t play games. They know what they are looking for they don’t play!!

And

For just $1 you will get full access to our entire horny house wives data base.

They also claim to have loads of adult content available for members, and even if you’re not a member, they’ll send you, "100% FREE PASSWORD SITES IN YOUR EMAIL… NO SPAM JUST FREE PASSWORDS TO TOP ADULT WEBSITES!!" if you’ll just give them your email address.
Somewhat closer reading reveals that the $1 is for a one-day pass to the site. I’m a little surprised that it consistently purports to be a dating site, though I’m guessing they make most of their money selling email addresses.

Spam research foiled

I was going to go find out what kind of site the “cheating wives” spam would lead me to (dating? porn? escorts?), but the DNS is not answering for the domains included in the specimens I have available. Google turned up only some discussions of the spam, and of the blogs I checked, only a comment in one of them remarked that all we apparently care about with these women is height, weight, and bra size. And no one involved in that discussion noted that the proportions are freakish. The first housewife listed is 5’9″, 120 lbs, 36c. I mean, I suppose it could be done, maybe even without silicone, but I’m not sure I’d want to see her naked, for fear some protuding bone or boob would put my eye out. I like some curve with my housewife (or working wife, for that matter), thanks.
And yeah, this post is ever so likely to end up attracting search engine hits, but since the spam bots have already found the blog (so we’ve turned comments off everywhere), there’s no use steering now.