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James B. Comey (Director, FBI) emailed me today.
Kind of strange that his return email is Lucasshawn53@yahoo.com, but maybe Mr. Comey wants to remain incognito. Unfortunately, it looks as though I was only eligible for this exciting offer for 24 hours after receipt of email, which was sent August 5. So, sad face. But, boy oh boy, looks like the FBI is ON THE JOB. Oh, by the way, I did edit the spacing of the message when I reproduced it here to make it a little more readable.
Here is his exciting email, in full:
OFFICIAL LETTER FROM
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION FBI
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FBI FEDERAL BUREAU OF
INVESTIGATION
FBI.WASHINGTON DC.
Mr. James B. Comey
FBI SEEKING
TO WIRETAP INTERNET
ATTENTION:BENEFICIARY,
We the Federal Bureau of investigation (FBI) through our intelligence monitoring network has discovered
that the transaction that the bank contacted you previously for was legal. Recently the fund has been legally approved
to be paid via United Bank of Africa Nigeria. So, we the Federal Bureau of investigation (FBI) Washington Dc, in
conjunction with the United Nations (UN) financial department have investigated through our monitoring network
noting you that your transaction with the UNITED Bank of Nigeria is legal.
You have the legitimate right to complete your transaction to claim your fund $4.7 (four million seven hundred thousand united
state dollars) Because of so much scam going on internet. We the Federal Bureau of investigation decided to contact the
NORTHEHILLS COURIER DELIVERY SERVICE in Lagos, Nigeria for them to give us their procedures on how to send this money to you without any further complain or delay. We just got an information from the Zenith Bank and they have loaded your
$4.7 (four million seven hundred thousand united state dollars) in ATM MASTER CARD and submit to the NORTHEHILLS
COURIER DELIVERY SERVICE for immediate delivery to your doorstep. You are required to choose one option, which
you will be able to pay and also convenient for you, for quick delivery of your parcel containing your ATM CARD and
other two original back up documents.
Service Type | Delivery Duration |Charges/Fees
———————————————————— —————
Premium Express (24hrs Delivery)
Mailing $200.00 00.00
Insurance $150.00 00.00
Vat $100.00 00.00
TOTAL $450.00
$450(Four Hundred and fifty US Dollars Only).
Special Express (2 Days)
Mailing $180.00 00.00
Insurance $70.00 00.00
Vat $150.00 00.00
TOTAL $380.00 00.00
$380(Three Hundred and Eighty US Dollars Only).
…………………………………………………… …………….
Economy Express (3Days)
Mailing $100.00 00.00
Insurance $150.00 00.00
Vat (5%) $50.00 00.00
TOTAL$300.00 00.00
$300(Three Hundred US Dollars Only).
…………………………………………………… ……..
You are hereby required to advice us, on your parcel delivery option by filling in the required form
stated above. Please note that the deadline for claiming your fund is exactly 24 hours after the receipt of this
email. After this period, your fund will be return back so take note. We request that you reconfirm your mailing address to ensure conformity with our record for immediate dispatch of your parcel to you. Only valid residential/Office address and postal address are certified Ok.
DELIVERY DESTINATION INFORMATION:
———————————————————— –
Receiver’s Name: …….
Address: …………….
Tel/:……………….
Delivery Information/Parcel Description
———————————————————— ———–
Delivery Terms: InternationalDelivery
Condition of Delivery: PriorityDelivery
Consignment Note No: MI 49866-2110
Color of Parcel: …Brown.
Total Weight: 3.2 kg
Total Net Weight: 1.7 kg
We are here to protect you from any problem till you receive your package; you can as well get in touch with the NORTHEHILLS
COURIER DELIVERY SERVICE assigned to deliver this financial package to your doorstep. Below is the delivery
company’s contact information:
Companies Name: NORTHEHILLS COURIER DELIVERY SERVICE .
Directors Name: Mr shawn lucas
Email:lucasshawn53@yahoo.com
Cell phone:+2348106178721
Looking forward to hear from you as soon as you receive this message.
Best Regards,
Mr. James B. Comey.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue,
NW Washington, D.C.
20535-0001,USA
Seriously, Eye Doctor Receptionist?
As the phone rang, I noted the time and the number and realized the eye doctor’s office had made a scheduling error since they were most likely calling to find out where Mr. Taylor was, since he wasn’t at the appointment.
I explained I had changed the appointment to blah blah, which she was able to confirm, and then she said, “we were just hoping he wasn’t wrapped around a tree and that’s why he wasn’t here.”
Hmmm. Catastrophize much? Kind of extreme, I think. Gosh, I hope she wasn’t seriously worried about that. If so, that must be a hella stressful job, man.
I don’t know. I think I’d just leave off the whole “wrapped around a tree” bit. Just say you were expecting him and then listen to the reason he’s not there.
Fat Tuesday Update Number >1 but <100
Thought I’d let you know what is working.
For a couple months now, I’ve removed simple carbs, and fruit from my diet. I eat protein, fat, and carbohydrates from veggies and beans.
The trick is, for 156 of the 168 hours each week, I stick to this. For the other twelve ( Saturdays from about 11am to 11 pm) I eat whatever I want.
So far, Saturdays have included donuts and pizza. Sometimes I have ice cream too. Allowing myself this freedom makes it very possible for me to be careful the other 6 days.
156/168 is just under 93%. It’s a different approach for me to actually encourage anything less than perfection. But it works to be careful 93% of the time.
I do not have a scale, so no idea what might be changing, although we did take measurements near the end of July and about as month later, and I have lost about six inches off my biceps, thighs, waist, chest and hips.
Some Days are About Keeping on Moving Forward, You Know?
Some days we have breakthroughs in our thinking. Some days we just keep taking baby steps on our journey.
Yesterday, on Quora, I answered the question, “What are some everyday life hacks?” I find that many questions on Quora are general and almost impossible to answer, but I and plenty of others still answer anyway.
Here is my answer:
1. You see more of what you are looking for. Therefore, look for the good in things, in people, in situations, everywhere.
2. Be more willing to live with questions than to demand immediate answers. The answers that are lasting and sustainable take some time to find.
3. Take care of yourself as you would someone you treasure. How would you talk to that person? How would you feed that person? How would you allow others to treat that person?
4. Smile at people.
5. Drink enough water. Some say that’s 8- 8oz glasses per day. Others say take one half of your body weight and drink that many ounces. Water is good for simply everything in your body. Your cells, your brain, your digestion, your elimination, and quenching your thirst. If you need some flavor, add a bit of lemon juice, but try to keep the water free from any form of sugar.
6. Find ways to be playful and childlike in your life. Most people forget how to play, and it is essential for anyone of any age to do something that helps them lighten up and release some of the tension from all of our adult responsibilities. Note: childlike does not equal childish. Childlike has to do with the qualities of wonder and joy and lightness.
7. Make your bed every morning. It makes your room look nicer, no matter what the rest of it looks like, and it’s always nicer to get into a bed that’s been made.
8. Find ways to experience and appreciate beauty, whether through art, music, nature, or some form of creation.
9. Take large projects and divide them into smaller pieces or steps. This is the best way I know to be successful in completing tasks.
10. Be a force for good.
A Katzenjammer of Miscellany
7. I am now drinking one cup of bullet proof coffee each day. This elixir contains coffee, 1 TBSP XCT oil, 1 TBSP butter, 1 TBSP collagen peptides, and a small scoop of whey protein powder. I was not a coffee drinker before (other than as an excuse for dessert at Starbucks), but I really like this.
1. I often have ideas which involve polling people to find out more about what they think about certain subjects.
012. Sunday, in my first foray into gardening, I pruned our grapevine down to the nubbins because they clearly have black rot and it doesn’t go away once it has a grip on this season’s fruit.
22. I think everyone who ships merchandise should provide a tracking number.
5. I just watched “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” Slow and beautiful.
6. Maybe the Drunk Ex-Pastors should consider not getting so drunk on their podcasts. Just a thought.
7a. I love Apple products, even though I have given up my Apple watch for the time being.
X. Donald Trump is just something else, isn’t he.
99. Children’s literature is a gift to the world and I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t get to read children’s books regularly. A good place to start is Officer Buckle and Gloria, by Peggy Rathmann.
10. We are about halfway through the library adventure and I’m wishing my vision for my movie was Really Exciting, but it seems kind of boring.
12. I think the postal service really does a fantastic job, you know? I’d love it if it could be run without a huge deficit, but I appreciate the USPS.
11. Just sent an inquiry about some “theradoodle” pups just born at the end of June. Perhaps Kepler’s dog will come to us soon.
42. Life is just pretty dang amazing.
Where is Eli Writes?
Good question. More later.
Guest Post by Another of my Sons
I think a word of introduction is in order here. This post is written by my 21-year-old son who lives in California. He has learned a great deal while out there and that is what this post is about. I love his heart and his passion. For those who don’t know, SJW means Social Justice Warrior.
From my son:
Earlier this week my dad shared a satirical Facebook post that mocked people who get offended about everything. The first line was “TRIGGER WARNING,” a favorite punchline of the cabal of new-school right-wing reactionaries to whom “SJW” is analogous to McCarthy-era Cold War America’s “commie.” The rest of the article explored the many ridiculous ways in which a picture of a potato could “trigger” someone.
The rest of the post carried on the narrative: getting too offended about things is silly; “trigger warnings” are symptomatic of a paranoid, hyper-sensitive world where jokes are banned and political correctness is law. Given that my girlfriend and I had seen my parents as recently as Christmas, and I’d done my best to be diplomatic in explaining this new “social justice” movement I was now part of—not to mention how distraught my dad was about the death of Eric Garner—it was disheartening to see him share a post like that.
If you frequent Reddit, as I do, or a handful of other allegedly liberal news sites, the first thing you’re likely to hear is that “it’s just a joke.” “Why are you getting so offended? It’s just a joke. We’re poking fun at the crazy Tumblrinas who think they need ‘TRIGGER WARNINGS’ for everything! Loosen up. Goddamn SJWs.” Even my moderate, diplomatic dad asked me (humorlessly) if I understand satire. As if, by virtue of being a joke, any joke’s content is a-OK.
Let’s put aside the fact that including the phrase “TRIGGER WARNING” in your post with no context is essentially the fart joke of satire. A trigger warning is a common courtesy afforded to people who suffer from PTSD—not, as is popularly believed, a no-fun-allowed mantra invented by a Tumblrina, Reddit’s word for any person who uses Tumblr and is not both heterosexual and cisgendered. It should be obvious to any decent person why mocking a victim of PTSD is in incredibly poor taste.
(An interesting aside: for all their self-proclamation of neoliberalism, Redditors react to nonstandard sexualities and gender identities the way cats react to a vacuum cleaner. They are the new conservatives, believing themselves to be progressive and open-minded by virtue of comparison to their Republican baby-boomer parents, and because the gay marriage cause now has so much political momentum they have no choice but to accept it.)
Back to PTSD. “Oh, but we’re not making fun of PTSD,” cry the trigger-warning parrots. “We’re making fun of privileged white girls on Tumblr. We don’t have any problem with PTSD victims. It’s the Tumblrinas that want trigger warnings!” (Privilege, by the way, can be applied to people you don’t like to invalidate their experiences, but don’t worry, it doesn’t apply to you!)
I’ve also heard “SJWs wanting trigger warnings on everything distracts from the people who ACTUALLY need them!”, as if these people cared about PTSD victims before they could use them to support their arguments. This is “you’re the real racist!” applied to PTSD jokes. See The Internet on why that counterpoint is stupid.
But the crux of the matter is the fact that there are things you really just shouldn’t joke about. Turning “TRIGGER WARNING” into a punchline sends the message to everyone reading it: “trigger warnings” are a joke, and anyone who needs them is a hysterical crybaby. It doesn’t matter if that’s what you meant or not. That is what people see when they read it.
I saw a series of tweets a few weeks ago that summarized this issue much better than I can, though they were about rape culture instead of PTSD. The gist was the same: for every 10 people that read a rape joke and think “heh, that’s funny,” but understand that it’s just a joke, there’s an actual, real-life rapist who reads it and thinks “Nice. Rape is a joke. It’s not a big deal, and clearly nobody takes the victims seriously, because someone’s joking about it.”
This is what’s called normalizing abuse, and it’s a problem whose impact is difficult to overstate. It’s part of the reason so many women (much more than men) are afraid of walking home alone at night, why LGBT athletes find it so intimidating to come out, the ridiculous amount of homophobic and transphobic abuse non-straight kids hear in school, why trans people are eight times more likely to be murdered than their fellow cis people—the list goes on and on.
It’s disturbing how difficult it was to convince my own dad (straight, white, male, and middle-class though he may be) that him sharing the post was actually a problem, and not just my brand-new hypersensitivity to “just jokes.” To hopefully eliminate the remaining possibility of “it’s just a joke”, I pointed out to him that one of the most-liked comments on the article said “#PotatoLivesMatter.” I brought up the fact that he could, because he shared the post, feasibly be associated with the kind of person who thinks that campaigning against police who murder black people is worthy of mockery.
But it didn’t do any good, until my mom had some words with him offline. Maybe he needed a voice of reason closer to home. Either way, that’s one down, fifty million to go.
Eli Writes
A few years ago, I went to go see the Liam Neeson movie “The Grey” with my brother and mother. My anti-depressants weren’t entirely regulated yet and I remember it being an incredibly emotional experience. When I returned from the movie that night, I wrote in my journal about it to capture the experience. Somehow, I tracked down that journal entry. The following is 16 year old me reflecting on a piece of cinema that affected me dramatically.
The Grey came out today. Mom and Joel and I went to go see it. I was excited! I love movies, I love my mom and my brother and I love doing things with them. I love sitting in comfortable chairs with a tub of popcorn clasped firmly between my thighs with my head tilted back, staring in awe at the gorgeous silver screen that inspires me so. Tonight, The Grey was a different movie going experience than I usually have. I couldn’t stand the movie because literally every single person (except MAYBE Liam Neeson, they didn’t really say) died in that movie. Even worse, pretty much every single one of them died from their worst fear. How shitty is that? I know a lot of people who loved it because it was “realistic” or a “great study of naturalism,” but I don’t really give a shit. It wasn’t just depressing, it made me cry. It gave me this deep ache of sadness that the (mostly) kind characters in the movie died because of these stupid fucking conditions. The guy I liked the most, of course, died in the worst way – getting caught in a strong current and trapping his foot under a fucking log, drowning inches from the surface. Fuck that. I don’t know what the movie was trying to say, but from my perspective it sure as hell looked like it was trying to tell us nothing we fucking do matters, we’ll all die isolated and terrified. This seems like an inherently wrong idea to me because I don’t think that’s the case. Of course what we do matters. During the movie, though, I had trouble separating my beliefs from the director’s. That happens a lot because I’m still developing my way of thinking and worldview and stuff so I’m bound to get influenced heavily by any media I consume, albeit most of it not for long. Anyway, I hated that movie because it made me grieve for the guys in it. I feel like depression or sadness isn’t a strong enough word – it was like this empty hole of grief. It was how I imagine I’ll feel when my mom dies. God willing, that won’t be for like 20 years. All I want is time with my mom. I love my mom so much I can’t even begin to explain it. She’s always been there for me and always will be. She’s forgiven me for everything and, even though maybe it didn’t seem this way, she has not once given up on me. I really appreciate that and it’s made my life a lot better. She’s the reason I’m in the better place that I’m in today and I’m eternally grateful. I seriously would not ever want to trade my mom for absolutely anything. She is more valuable to me than my own life. I love my mom.
As obvious as it is, it bears repeating; The Grey, although masterfully filmed and acted, stirred a feeling of unfathomable grief in me for characters I had only just begun to know, characters that were whisked away one by one with deaths that intentionally screamed nihilism. When I got home that night, I held my mom and my dad and cried, and cried, and cried while I thanked whoever was up above that I had them both to hang on to. The reason I’m bringing all this up is because The Grey, while it repulsed me, affected me for a reason. It was my worst fear brought to life. My fear, deep down inside me, that screams the horrifying question: what if nothing matters? What if my life means nothing, that I will be extinguished in a heartbeat and leave a legacy of pain and suffering? It sounds so laughably angsty, but it’s a very real fear that follows me everywhere. As I held my parents while tears streamed down my face I was struck by a sense of hurt, of anger, as though I couldn’t believe the director of the movie had the gall to suggest to me that I was as fucking useless as the people he created onscreen.
Today I still am overcome with love for my parents, and the relationships, while more of a roller coaster than ever, are so precious to me I wouldn’t trade them for absolutely anything. Today I’m still confused and wandering, but I no longer am as afraid as I used to be that I don’t matter. I know I matter to some people, several people in fact, and my life might even be more meaningful than that! But even knowing how I affect the ones I love in a positive way is so uplifting, and something that was entirely absent from The Grey. 3 years later I see the movie more clinically, and I’m able to take a step back from the film and more positively reject the viewpoint.
Love is such an important part of my life. I still haven’t found the exact purpose of my life yet, but I know that a huge part is receiving and giving love. It makes me so happy, and if not happy, at least satisfied. And that is why the movie offended me so much. Those thoughts of love were nonexistent, and that pained me so much I could barely stand it. I am simply bursting with love to share, and that is how I know deep down in my heart that it is a crucial part of who I am and what my purpose in life is. I’m just so glad that I can see this three years later. Not that I have it all figured out, but it’s a hell of a lot better than seeing a movie that makes me feel like I just witnessed a funeral without me even understanding why.
Sort of a rambling post today, but love is always on my mind, whether it’s physically, emotionally, spiritually, or sexually. I just wanted to make a post about love. How much it means to me, how much I have, how much I appreciate its role in my life. I’m so glad I have people who love me, and I am so so so honored to love them.
Go out and show someone you love them today.
Customer Service via Online Chat
So my dishwasher lost its mind last night.
There had been signs that something was amiss, but it wasn’t until this morning when I tried to tell it what to do that I realized it had flipped its lid. Well, I know what it feels like to have too many people talking to me at once, but I can’t really see that this is Dishwasher’s problem. Only one person talks to it at a time and usually says the same thing. What’s the problem here?
Probably most people who have dishwashers don’t care to be without them for long. I do go through spurts where I have some sort of religious experience and I want to wash dishes by hand for a few days. However, I do not want to wash dishes by hand when I am forced to.
Somewhere in this house I have the warranty information about the d/w but I figured the magic elves on the internet could solve that problem for me. I turned to the Sears repair site for help. HELP is Customer Service via Online Chat. I LOVE online chat. There are no phone menus to wade through, very little wait time, and for visual learner me, reading the conversation is just the best.
If you haven’t ever tried using the online chat function of a company, let me tell you — this is the way to communicate. The online CSR is just as keen as the phone CSR to get a high rating, so they work hard to resolve the issue. I find online chat extremely efficient, enjoyable, and allows me to multi-task while it’s happening. I can’t do that while I’m on the phone. But on online chat, the chat box tells me “customer service representative ‘Joey Boutino’ is typing.” This alerts me to an upcoming communication.
On the phone, when they put me on hold, I either hate the muzak they play while I wait, or I worry I have been cut off because there is no muzak playing. No muzak at all with online chat. I don’t know how many people take advantage of this wonderful service, but I HIGHLY recommend trying it out.
ClearingSpace4Joy 