Start Your Visit With Some Dead Boys - Sonic Reducer

A cracking good read!

 Here is something everyone should read! And THIS is a handy spot as well. Now get out there and learn!!!

I think everyone has heard this at some time: “This call may be monitored to ensure quality of service.” Ah, such an obvious, thinly veiled breach of privacy and wiretap laws. Rather than slogging through the mountain of paperwork required to obtain a court order to listen in on private conversations they perceive as a potential threat to National Security, Law enforcement agencies can simply have one of these many companies ‘randomly’ monitor a number of interest. No evidence, no due process, just nice, legal invasion of privacy. In the U.S. alone, over 10,000 of these ‘random quality checks’ are carried out each day – I wonder how many of them are legit?
And while I’m still wound up on the topic of breaches, let’s take a run at my all time personal favorite. In ancient 1982 Canada, before the enactment of the Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms, police would engage in a jolly little game called the ‘routine search’. The rules were simple – pick a car or pedestrian you don’t quite like the looks of, pull them over and just search the Hell out of them right then and there. The Charter sought to remove police ability to do so in the section covering Legal Rights, which I quote here verbatim:

8. Search or seizure – Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

Well, that sure stopped them. Nope, it barely even slowed them down. In a totally out of character fit of smarts, the Pork Soldiers cleverly goose – stepped right over the entire issue with one simple phrase: “You match the description of…” By claiming that you “Match the description of” someone who was allegedly seen committing an offence, they can now, under the pretense of ‘Belief on Reasonable Grounds’, proceed with their beloved illegal search. All it took was some swift, jack-booted stomping on the Charter when no one was looking. Here’s my own personal experience with that blatant disregard for one of the few documents that actually tries to work in our favor.
I was leaving my apartment building to do some shopping when I was approached by a law enforcement creature known to everyone as ‘ROBOCOP’. He explained that I was being stopped because I “Matched the description of someone seen walking through the halls of the building”. I told him that was because I AM the description of someone seen walking through the halls of the building, and have been for the 4 years that I’ve lived here. Not finding my response particularly satisfying, he took another angle and demanded to know where I worked. I could see that he was quite pleased with my reply this time, as it gave him the opportunity to exercise his authoritative, no nonsense outside voice. “Oh, I don’t work anywhere…” I let it trail off.
ROBOCOP was well into a loud, insulting tirade, righteously indignant that he should be supporting “Low life scum of the earth” like me, when I finished my sentence with “I don’t really have time. Got a full course load at university.” Good, let him squirm just a tad, then SMACK him with the Grand Finale! “Yep, 4 years of Criminology and Canadian Law doesn’t leave much room for the job search.” I swear his voice went up three octaves as he warbled out “So, how do you like living in Surrey, sir?” How’s about that? I went from ‘scum of the earth’ to ‘sir’ in under seven seconds and I silently thanked Hollis, my first Crim Prof. His opening words to our first ever Crim class were “The best thing about taking Criminology is watching a cop’s face collapse when you tell him you’re taking Criminology.”

No rest, no sleep

Ok, I’m screaming pissed about this one: Popup blockers. You know, the programs you can get that put an end to those FUCKING irritating little ads that ‘pop’ up on your screen whenever you go online to surf down a bit of porn, usually right in the area you wanted to look at. Well, my popup blocker does a fine job of blocking these little 3 or 4 inch advertisements. It does such a jim-dandy, crackerjack job that it can’t wait to let someone know about it, so they can rally round the intrepid little intercept program and pat it’s little binary back – “kudos, young software, kudos!” It’s chosen method for disseminating this VITAL, CRUCIAL information is this: EVERY SINGLE TIME this electronic go-getter blocks an ad, it fires up a FULL SCREEN MESSAGE saying “Ad Blocked”. Did I mention it was FULL FUCKING SCREEN?!? Really, what’s the point? I installed the binary bugger so I wouldn’t be bothered by occasional ads taking up 4 inches of my screen! Now, every time an ad tries to sell me something, I get my entire screen filled with this Fortran Fuck’s triumphant declaration until I grab the mouse and minimize it by hand because the piece of shit that wrote it was so pleased with himself that he neglected to put in the extra couple lines of code it would take to close it down automatically!! Plus, I can’t shut the fucking thing off. Thanx for letting me vent.

It's always something

Here's one I feel we should reinstate the death penalty for, and we've all heard it, no matter what music you listen to: It's nearing the end of the concert and the lead singer/guitarist /whoever is singled out by a bright spotlight…

“(pant pant gasp) thank you (insert town here) we're gonna do an old tune , we bin playin this one for 25 years. It's one of our faves, and we hope it's one of your’s, and I think... it goes a little... like this…”

STOP TAPE RIGHT FUCKING THERE!! You don't “think it goes a little like this”. You know EXACTLY how it goes – you've been playing it for 25 fucking years!! It's the only song that ever made you any money at all and it's kept your crappy, aging band doing the Sports Arena tours for the past 20 of those years! C’mon, I mean you WROTE the goddamn thing! You know every note, every semi-quaver every minute detail about the thing!! You know what it's about, you know all the lyrics, you know what drugs each band member was addicted to and what dosage they were high on (in milligrams AND c.c.’s) the morning you wrote the stinking piece of shit! For the past 25 years, you have lived, breathed, eaten, slept, shit, fucked and farted this one lousy tune, and yet you still have the nerve, the gall, the unmitigated audacity to say you “think it goes a little like this”? You are a complete idiot, in need of serious killing, an end I would be most happy to assist in with, say, a single shotgun blast to the head, and think it goes a little like this…

Day 2. Not stopping yet.

People who see me in my leather and say, “Aren't you hot in that?” which forces me to answer that their query carries with it the implication that I am stupid: If I were, indeed, hot, I would remove said jacket unless I was either:

a) too stupid to remove it, or  
b) too stupid to realize the temperature was high enough to warrant such action. 

Now, I have gotten to know me pretty well over the past 52 years, and feel I'm in a perfect position to say that I am not, in fact, stupid, and to further suggest that it may actually be you who is lacking in certain gray, matter-y things.

Day 1. It begins.

Dead-end no money fuck-job dealing with idiots, lazy, whiny, constantly complaining (yet also constantly returning) moronic, mouth breather butt-fucks who all think that, for some reason, their tiny wee purchase has somehow become the most important thing in the universe – the sole purpose for my existence. No, you ignorant fuck, we don't have a tube of your favorite toothpaste, it has been discontinued since 1973. It will not magically appear, no matter how many times you say you used to buy it here. No, you brainless simpleton, you do not get a discount because the box has been opened – I just watched you open it yourself. You say you've looked everywhere for your desired product and it's just not here – you have been shopping here for 10 years, the product has been on the same shelf, in the same aisle, in the same section of the store for TWENTY years and I'm looking at it right now and you would be too if you would just bother to angle your stupid fucking head 15 degrees to the starboard. Lazy, arrogant pinheads who try to get a bargain by playing the stupid immigrant card, then blow the gaff by suddenly understanding English when I faintly whisper the word 'discount'.