How geeky am I?

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Over at the Onion A.V. Club, they have a listing of the "20 pop culture obsessions geekier than Monty Python". And they should know geeky because what is geekier than being the serious offshoot of an organization that devotes its time to writing fake news articles because it's funny. It's named the A.V. Club for a reason.

Anyway, I decided to take this as a test to see how geeky I am. I will give myself five points for any of the 20 that I am a fan of, have attended, or have participated in. I don't dress up so I am not the rabid fan I believe they are talking about, so take that into consideration if you are scoring at home. Here we go:

1. Star Trek:

Yeah, I'm a fan. Mostly of the first series. I did a little happy dance when I got volume one and three of the original series at a store's going out of business sale. I'm even down loading the Gold Key comics off of WOWIO.  So, this is one strike against me.

Verdict: Guilty.

2. Renaissance Faires:

I have attended more than one. I could make the argument that I only went because someone I knew was in the cast, but that wouldn't be fair, since I enjoy them. 

Verdict: Guilty.

3. Fantasy Sports Leagues:

Yeah, I'm in these big time. Multiple sports and for every sport I am in multiple leagues. The A.V. makes a point of how bad it is that you have to root for a player to do well against your favorite team, like it's a sin. The point is, I always root for the player to do good, but for my team to do better. That's the secret.

Verdict: Guilty

4.  Michael Jackson:

I own a greatest hits album of his and also of the Jackson 5. Outside of that, I couldn't be bothered.

Verdict: Not Guilty.

5. Wikipedia:

I'll cop to this one. I am not a habitual updater of the site, but I use it a lot in my writing (with everything I take from there taken with a grain of salt). So I'll cop to this one.

Verdict: Guilty.

6. Battlestar Galactica:

I own the first season but have yet to watch it. Will I become obsessed with it? Probably. But as of yet I am not.

Verdict: Not Guilty.

7. The Rocky Horror Picture Show:

I have seen one, ONE, midnight showing of the movie in my life. I did not dress up in character, but I had a good time. I will probably never dress up (because I look awful in fishnets) but I may go again. So, I'll cop to this one too.

Verdict: Guilty

8. Joss Whedon:

Yes, yes, yes. Love Firefly. I have the full run of Buffy on DVD waiting to be watched, and Astonishing X-Men, Buffy  and Runaways in my comic pull list. So, yes.

Verdict: Guilty

9. Media-specific role-playing:

I have role-played about a grand total of twice in my entire 36 years. Not that I have anything against it, but the crowd I hung with in hish school, geeky though it was, wasn't big into it. If I played, I would probably be obsessed with it, but I'm not.

And that goes for media specific too.

Verdict: Not Guilty

10. Magic: The Gathering:

I never got into card-based role playing either. A little after my time (although my wife, who is the same age, used to collect Magic card, so that argument doesn't hold water)

Verdict: Not Guilty

11. World of Warcraft:

It's a streak of role-playing games I never got into. The reason I never got into WoW is because my internet connection speed was dial-up for most of the game's existence, which precluded me from joining in.

Verdict: Not Guilty

12. The Simpsons:

We are back in the Guilty column. Love the Simpsons. I quote the lines, sing the songs, and imitate the voices. At the aforementioned going out of business sale, I completed my set oif DVD set of the series. I did another happy dance.

Verdict: Guilty

13. Doctor Who:

Yes. I love Doctor Who, and I love the mythology. I watch the show whenever I can.

Verdict: Guilty.

14. Frank Zappa:

No, unfortunately. I have heard a song or two, but I am not a humongous fan.

Verdict: Not Guilty

15. Game Show Tape Trading:

No. I didn't even know this existed. It sounds somewhat intriguing, but no.

Verdict: Not Guilty 

16. Anime:

No. I like Anime better than Manga, but neither really cut it for me.

Verdict: Not Guilty.

17. Coplay:

Again, this involves dressing up. And I will never dress up. Because I am too fat and there aren't a lot of fat characters in pop culture for us fatties to dress up as.

Verdict: Not Guilty

18. Live-Action Role Playing:

See above, about role-playing and dressing up. Although I do find this interesting is a "so-crazy-it-might-be-fun" sort of way.

Verdict: Not Guilty

19. Second Life/MySpace/Facebook:

I am not obsessed with these in a "getting as many friends" sort of way, but more in the functionality of it. I love the games in Facebook and getting in touch with bands on MySpace. I am not on Second Life, but I am in Friendster and ComicSpace. Look me up.

Verdict Guilty

20. Fanfic:

I have nothing against fan fiction, I just don't participate. I feel my efforts would be better spent to try and get a job writing the characters for real than writing them for free.

Verdict: Not Guilty

Let's see. That's 9 out of 20, so I am 45% geeky, according to the A.V. club.

I am thankful they didn't include Comics, Action Figure collecting, Sci-Fi novels, video games, music or anything else I am obsessed about. If they did, that score would be much higher,

MySpace HoTrain: Hulda

I just got a MySpace friend request/hoochie sales pitch from a "girl" named Hulda. Is this a real name? If so, it's not terribly common. This is how far they've gotten? I can't wait until they get to made up names. I might actually agree to be friends with a Leia.

MySpace HoTrain: Tricksy, Tricksy

This blog is turning into my running war with MySpace spammers. Trust me, I don't intend it to be. This week I got carpet bombed with friend requests and messages from them, so much that I could make about three posts per day. But just now I got one worth comment.

It was from the same company that I wrote about a couple days ago. But this time for a profile pic, instead of your general hoochie, they had a woman holding a baby. head turned in such a way that you couldn't see their face. Best part is, the fake name they used was a relative of mine. If I wasn't completely paranoid I would have just approved the friend request. Very tricksy!

Because, seriously, that is not the profile pic you'd expect from a porn monger. It comes close to it being a real person, which is the illusion they are trying to portray. They just have to work on the sameness of their profile information, because when you get 20 messages and friend requests with similar syntax, wording and websites, you begin to catch on.

I look upon these spammers the same way parents look upon their young children. I gaze in awe and wonder as the spammers discover new thiings, learn to think, and grow up right before my eyes. They have a ways to go before the trick me, but they are getting better. I have a strange sense of pride for them about that.

MySpace HoTrain Update: Everything is Illuminated.

I got another hoochie friend request today. This is what it said in the "about me" section:

"Hiya Mr. Charged up

I love your pic, is that really you? Well I hope you have a minute to come check out my pics and profile.

Im on this other site that allows all type of pics and also my webcam is live while im on it.Its totally free to sign up!
(WEBSITE REMOVED BECAUSE IT IS PROBABLY NASTY)

Make sure to look for me, See you there.
The round green cat walks."

This is the perfect about me section. From the "Mr. Charged up" greeting to the C.I.A. code phrase to end it. The best part of the whole thing? This is my profile picture:

 

Frank's sign

Yes, that is my picture. I am a lighted sign hanging above a bar. And since I am a piece of electrical advertising, I really am not able to look at your pictures, you big hoochie.

MySpace HoTrain update

I just got an MtySpace message from a spammer which started with the paragraph "I don't check my MySpace anymore because of all the spam.: Then it asked me to go to its website of naked pictures. Brilliant.

I wonder if any moron thought "Hey! This can't be spam! She said she doesn't like spam. Her website must be real. And she must really like me!" I hope he enjoys the virus on his computer.

Oh, and the message was from a "Mirabelle" and she said in message that her name was Amber. I guess Mirabelle is just her stage name.

Seriously, spammers, just give me 1% of what you make. I'll think up much better tricks that this.  

Yet another MySpace Ho-Train update.

Yes, it's been a while, but the MySpace Ho-Train has slowed down a bit. I got four last week from the company with the picture of the bint wearing the cowboy hat. But they must have read my rant on the MySpace Ho-Train and changed things up a little. Only one of the requests had the cowboy hat girl. The others had either a woman in a Hooters outfit sitting on a bench or a photo of three anonymous women. And the background was changed from blue to hot pink. The layout was the same and the text was the same, but I have to give them points for the effort.

Today, I got another friend request from the company who's gimmick was "Hi, I'm Lisa. I know nothing about computers. Visit the site that has my nekkid pictures." Only this time, Lisa chose Chloe as her alias instead of Jen.

And I have noticed around the internet that in this post-Don Imus world, usuing Ho can get you branded a misogynist. And since some people in the world already think that I am one,  I would like to defend my use of the term "MySpace Ho-Train".

1. I got the term from a FEMALE friend of mine. If she can use it, it should take the onus of the term off for me.

2. I am using it to refer to service where women get paid for showing their naked bodies. I am not referring to an innocent basketball team.

3. It is meant in a humorous. mocking, satiric tone.

My Space Ho-Train update.

So, today, as I just logged in to the computer, I had 8 new spam friend requests. 7 from the ones that sent me the 20 yesterday, and one new one, but still spam.

I will keep you updated, if only to annoy you with as much as it annoys me.

The MySpace Ho-Train.

I have an admission to make. I am a member of MySpace.

No, Mr. Chris Hanson of Dateline NBC, I am not a member so I could cruise for underage girls. Most of my friends live out of state, and MySpace is an excellent way for me to keep in contact with them.

However, over the last few days, MySpace has been pissing me off.

Over the last 24 hours, I have been getting repeated requests from hoochies trying to sign me up as my friend. And through some strange and wonderful coincidence, even though each request came through a different name, all of the sites looked exactly the same-same light blue background, same plastic bint wearing a cowboy hat, same inane "about me' section.

This is all part of what a friend of mine calls "The MySpace Ho-Train". Porn site operators create a program where they go through MySpace and carpet bomb it's members with what are essentially ads for the porn sites.

Sure, they kinda look like actual profiles. But each of them has a link which takes you to a site that features pictures that are too racy for MySpace. In other words, a porn site.

This annoys me to no end. For a wide variety of reasons.

If I wanted porn, I'd go to newsstand, plop down $6-10 dollars and buy a magazine. Because it would be cheaper and as far as I know, no issue of Hustler has ever stolen anyone's credit card information or put a virus on anyone's computer. 

I am insulted by the stupidity of these scammers. I'm sure there are people who do not have enough common sense that if they get 20 friend requests from 20 different people all with the same profile that it is a sign of something fishy. But these people are usually institutionalized and have limited or any exposure to computers. I mean really, spammers! Use some originality. Or at least change up each profile just a little bit.

What this means is that I constantly have to do maintenence to not only my  MySpace Friend Request folder but also my junk e-mail folder, which is where the MySpace friend requests go. And yes, I do mark all the requests a spam (Thank god MySpace made that an option)

And what kills me is that I have to look up each and every friend request, even though I know that they are porn. I'm sure there are a cynical few of you out there that think I look them up BECAUSE I know that they are porn. Please. That couldn't be further from the truth. I just don't want to take the chance that an old school friend or someone I knew from work or someone who has read something I've written is legitimately trying to be my friend and I insult them by rejecting them outright.

This brings up the fact that sometimes, while still being annoying, these spam friend requests can be funny. Yesterday, before the string of 20 all the same, I got one from a girl named Jen. Now, I must know about 5 or 6 Jen's, including my wife. And the photo is shot in such a way (black and white, with their head down and wearing sunglasses) that this request could quite possibly one of the Jens I know.

So I open the profile and read the about me. It starts off badly.

"Hi, I'm Lisa..."

Wh..wh...wh...what? Her name was Jen. It says so at the top of the profile.

But there is an explanation...

"I am totally clueless about computers," she explains. "I probably have the wrong photo up there. My real pictures are down below with a link that will take you to even more or my private photos"

So, let me get this straight. This bint is so clueless about computers that she screws up so bad in creating the profile that she LIST THE WRONG NAME AND A PICTURE OF A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WOMAN but gets her shit together enough to POST 5 OTHER "REAL" PICTURES, A VIDEO CLIP AND A LINK TO ANOTHER WEBSITE IN HER "ABOUT ME SECTION!?! Really? Does anyone fall for this?

Another classic I got was another spam e-mail that is making the rounds. It went something like this (actually, exactly like this, I posted it to my MySpace blog when I got it:

"i am not into this freinds trying to find dates for freinds but this colleague of mine was looking at your profile and might have a crush on you. we are trying to find her a good partner, everyone in our group has someone. u seem like a cute good hearted person,we voted 3-1 for u, here look at our freind and see if u are interested, Here is the link"

Let me air my greivances with this:

1. The misspelled "friend", or a variation thereof, not once, not twice, but three times. Why would I want to hook up with a woman whose friends...oh...sorry..."colleagues", were bad spellers? And did you know that "friend" was the word that always screwed me up during the Friday spelling bees when I was in 2nd Grade? Is that why you misspelled the word, you bastards!

2. Since we're on grammar, the "i" should be capitalized. And write out you. Really, it's only two more letters.

2. Oh, my life would have been so much better if other women besides my wife developed crushes on me.

3. And I, and this is not poor self image, am not what you call cute.

4. I won 3 to 1 in the little vote off amongst your friends, hmm? Why wasn't it unanimous, hmmm? Could that one friend voted against me because, oh, I don't know, BECAUSE I'M MARRIED!?! AND IT SAYS AS MUCH ON MY PROFILE? RIGHT THERE UNDER "STATUS"? Yeah, friends don't set up friends with married men. Haven't you ever heard that?

I know this was probably what the Portuguese computer programmer (or whatever country the shipped the computer programming out to) typed into the computer that sent the messages out and it was sent out blindly to married and inmarried people. But I just have to laugh. If they are trying to con me by "personalizing" the spam MySpace messages hoping that I would be naive enough to think they are real but by "personalizing" them they tipped their hand that they were in fact spam. They were crafty, but not smart.