With a toast of the martini glasses and a casual wink Nancy Pelosi added, "Spend it fast and remember who loves you, baby."

What's up America? You're fighting a losing battle in two foreign wars, neglecting your aging infrastructure and coastal erosion problems, and facing an overdue recession. For the long term, you are falling behind the rest of the world in education and technology standards. But before you start feeling unsatisfied with elected officials they would like to give you: free money! Free Money! FREE MONEY!!

Yep, now that the Democrats 'control' both houses of Congress, they can finally get around to pushing through all those bills that Herr Bush likes so much. As everyone knows, the best thing to do when facing a recession, (economically speaking) is to take on more debt, give out checks to everyone, and encourage them to spend it quickly on consumer items made in other countries. Because if the financial hole is dug deep enough, we will eventually break through to the other side of the world, where all of the money is going.

And the 2018 Academy Award for Artistic Acheivement in Bedhead Goes To...

Guy from The Office using the word "homeskillet"? Check. Retro track suit complete with short-shorts and headband? Czech. Not to ironically beat a dead horse to the tune of an Air Supply song or anything, but you don't need us to tell you what this year's Token Quirky Movie is. You know, that quirky, dialogue-driven dramedy full of scene-stealing, unique, and yes -- quirky characters? You've just gotta pull for that little 'independent' movie as it somehow builds auidience and critical Joementum until it quirkily takes in $100 million at the box office.

Well, sorry dear readers, but in this corner of the Blogosphere, we do not pull for these movies. In fact, we have been boycotting them for a few years. Our decision to label a movie 'quirky' involves taking a Potter Stewart approach to the trailer. Were "I Heart Huckabees" and "Thumbsucker" actually quirky? God-willing, we'll never know from personal experience. Bloggy Blog is annoyed by the targeted, intelligence-aspiring advertising; watching this fluff hasn't made us smarter or more sophisticated. We don't want to "spread the buzz" for this "underdog flick"; these movies generally feature slick and experienced directing and acting. (Really, we just watch The Wire to feel exclusively intellectual) We will always prefer bad movies viewed ironically to clichéd ones with scripted irony obvious enough for anybody to 'get'. After all, how then, are we supposed to feel smug?

And The Funds, Good Sir, Will Henceforth Be Transferred To Your Account When The King's Estate Is Distributed To The Heirs

We here at the Bloggy Blog have long since abandoned the sniping and random S+H of eBay for the more legit pastures of Amazon Marketplace, but that hasn't stopped scammers from contacting us with time-sensitive offers to buy items we have lost bids on:

	from		"lingularii @ gmail. com"		hide details	Jan 16 (15 hours ago)
	reply-to			lingularii@gmail.com
	to			djanes1@gmail.com
	date			Jan 16, 2008 8:16 PM
	subject			Question from eBay member about Item number (310014222091)
	mailed-by			jetta.cgnhost.net

Dear djanes1,

I have for sale: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=310014222091 My price is negociable. If you are interested just give me a fast reply on this email address and you will find all the info that you want. Please contact me as soon as possible for more details directly at lingularii@gmail.com !

Thanks for your time !!

And that is how the script goes. Essentially, the scammer looks at lists of auction losers, and assumes their email follows the script of ebaySN@gmail.com, ebaySN@yahoo.com, etc, and sends something like this. Of course, responding with a 'no' just makes more of these things show up. An attempt to negotiate the price down to 52 cents led to a request for our name and address. This scam would be more believable if our Gmail account name was the same as our eBay account, so if yours is, be aware.

UPDATE: They will stop emailing you if you play with them a bit.

Hard Drive Enclosures Exist, And Are Awesome

So, to go back to an earlier post, lets just say that we're rocking out like only robots on the Autobahn can. The transfer of hard drives from my bricked mp3 player into the used one was fairly seamless. We couldn't get the back case of the newly acquired one and had to rip it off and replace it with the same part from the bricked one, thats all. Now we have two batteries and two power supplies!
This scheme was inspired by an overarching theme of life here at diezer Bloggy Blog, that of Hard Drive Enclosures. Those of you out there in the blogosphere probably have dealt at some point with your laptop breaking. Laptops generally like to break in a way that requires about $400 worth of repair, usually through a break in the cheaply made motherboard. "Fuck it", you say, it's worth it just to get a new one. But before you do, don't get conned in to shelling out another $100 or so to have the data on your old hard drive 'transferred' to the hard drive on your new laptop. If you can take out the old hard drive yourself, you can get a hard drive enclosure for ~$20 and have access to all of your files in the form of a portable, usb-powered, external hard drive. We got this one from Tiger Direct for $17 shipped. It's plug and play compatible with Macs and PCs, and can fit quite a bit of pirated material. Unfortunately it takes up two usb ports when plugged in, but hey, its an external hard drive for $17! Come to think of it, it might even be worth it to have one of these lying around for that inevitable moment when you need your files and they are telling you to ship your laptop to the Dell/Geek Squad repair hub in You Might Never Get It Back, KY.

Geaux Buckeyes!

Oh Yeah! College Football fans, we're here at the Allstate FanFest in New Orleans, your home to celebrate both the Sugar Bowl, featuring the Georgia Bulldogs taking on the Hawaii Warriors, and the BCS National Championship, in which The Ohio State Buckeyes try to stay #1 against the hometown favorites, the Louisiana State Tigers! Over at the receiver challenge booth, you will have the chance to test YOUR football skills against some inflatable plastic targets. Or, if paperwork is more your style, head on over to that table to the left to sign off on some worthless hurricane insurance! Be sure to be on time for your team's Pep Rally where you can show the world who has the best fans! Yes, we here at the Allstate FanFest know your home was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina, but we are unable to award your claim since the damage has been determined to be caused by a storm surge rather than direct wind! Speaking of wind, test your leg against the elements and try to make a field goal on our replica post! We are aware that the only thing worse than stealing years of insurance payments with no intentions of paying the claims is guiltlessly sponsoring high-profile sporting events in the affected region! Our technicalities are as obscene as our shame is absent!

Like the weight of debt and home loss constantly on your shoulders, see if your children can run to the end of this inflaty-thingy with a rope tied to their torso! If only all these settlement appeals were this easy to rein in! Shit, here at Allstate we would much rather spend like 20 million on this naming rights crap than rebuilding homes. One gets us like a hundred million in marketing value, whereas the other only gives us an image of integrity. Don't get us wrong, here at Allstate we love having an image of integrity, but we just pay Dennis Haysbert and his calm, baritone oratory for that. If you are feeling frustrated right now, why don't you just toss the pigskin around and see if your hands are as good as ours. Sure, we could have just waited a year and sponsored some bowl games in other cities, but we really just wanted to show off in front of the communities we've profited so much from! That's Allstate's Stand!