Church

As a kid I was dragged to church twice every Sunday, including Sunday school. Then many times even on Wednesday. My mother always brought a purse full of crap for me to do while I was there. When I was very young, we occasionally got coloring books and could bring Hotwheel cars. Eventually it all evolved into a few basics to keep me busy – a blank pad of paper, pens, a calculator and an unlimited supply of Juicy Fruit. I think in my later years of church I started bringing books to read. But then my mother banned that once I started getting into Stephen King books. I even brought the books to Sunday school and hid them inside my Bible, reading throughout the class. Looking back, I doubt that was actually fooling the teacher.

But if my parents were so insistant on me going to church, what was the point of bringing me lots of stuff designed to keep my mind busy during the entire thing? I don’t think I actually remember one single sermon or Sunday school lesson from my childhood. I definitely can’t quote any bible scriptures. I do remember all of the songs and how much I hated them. The music service was impressive, with a complete drum set, 3 or 4 electric guitars, piano, etc. But that didn’t change the facts that the songs all sucked and I had to listen to all of the basic same songs for 16 years straight. I don’t care how good a song is – you’re going to hate it after listening to it regularly after 16 years.

Around age 14, I started really getting into church. I went every chance I got, went to Sunday school even when my parents didn’t. I even went on Wednesdays and then to all the after church dinners at Golden Coral. The pastor noticed, I guess, and took me into his office. He had me fill out some kind of forms, applying for official membership of the church and at some point the pastor had me in front of the church, presenting me with something about being an official member. Eventually I even got baptised. The punchline? I didn’t give a shit about the church or anything. I just liked some girl there and wanted to hang out with her as often as possible.

What really sucked as a kid was having Christmas morning fall on Sundays. You wake up, get all these great toys and then you don’t even have time to play with them because you HAVE TO GET READY FOR CHURCH. That was the worst. I managed to quit church forever immediately after turning 16. I got a job and for the next 2 years, instructed my manager to make me work pretty much every Sunday, preferably from open until closing.

War of the Worlds and the Chronic-WHAT-les of Narnia

Kids and I went to see Chronic-WHAT-les of Narnia tonight. I downloaded the SNL Lazy Sunday mp3 to listen to on the way to the theater. (The kids have seen the SNL video so they got the joke.) I told them we should stop by Dari Mart to mack on some cupcakes but we ended up skipping that. Usually we stop by 7-Eleven and buy food to sneak in if I don’t feel like paying an extra $15.00 for a combo and candy. But tonight I splurged. Anyway, the movie was great.

Earlier today we went to McDonald’s for lunch. Since I’m not a big fan of McDonalds (aside from breakfast) I stopped by the Taco Bell drive-thru for tacos which I ate inside. I’m so rebellious sometimes. The kids saw somebody they knew from school there so Payton was at their table for awhile, ranting on about what he got for Christmas and other random things. At one point, his rants shifts into, “And last week my dad was on TV and we got to sit in the studio but his part on the show was really SHORT!” which is about the time I made him come back to our table. Makes me wonder how many other people he’s told about this since Thursday.

That addictive Java thing from the previous entry – I spent probably 3 hours on that on Christmas day/evening. Jammie laughed at me that night when I told her every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was multi-colored sand falling in front of my eyes. I showed it to the kids this evening and they each spent probably 90 minutes on it until we left for the movie, then another hour on it when we got home from the movies. They were each on separate laptops, showing each other tricks with it all evening.

SPEAKING OF EVENINGS! I’m reading Tom Sawyer this week. It’s a great story. I’m pretty sure I’ve read it before but very little of it seems familiar to me. Near the beginning of the book, Mark Twain makes a reference to “evening” and there’s a footnote on the bottom of the page by him, informing us that “evening” is a word that southerners use to refer to the afternoon. Or something like that. Kind of interesting to think that a word as common as that wasn’t very well-known 100 years ago. The book is so dated that it’s hard for me to tell when he’s being serious or not. Like, almost everyone in the book is incredibly superstitious and it’s funny to read about. But I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be funny or not. I’m sure it’s exaggerated at least a little but he’s either trying to make the kids way too cute (in a Family Circus kind of way) or kids were just really stupid back then. I blame lack of TV/internet.

SPEAKING OF OLD-ASS WRITINGS! Jammie got me the 1953 War of the Worlds DVD. I didn’t even know they had DVDs in 1953! (yuk yuk) But I watched it Sunday and it ruled. Oh wait, I think I mentioned all this in my last entry. Anyway, I also listened to the original Orson Welles radio play which was included on the DVD. And that was just as great as the 1953 movie and the book. So far I’ve really liked that story in every incarnation I’ve seen/heard it in. And as I listened to the radio play, I read about all the havoc that it caused when it aired which was pretty amusing. The United States got punk’ed by Orson!

Click here for the page that I read as I listened. For those that don’t know the story, it was a fake news program that caused everyone to think that New Jersey was being attacked by Martians. All kinds of mass hysteria and stuff. I remember something similar happening in the 80’s when a fake news program on TV showed an atomic bomb going off, I think in South Carolina. I half-believed it at the time. I think I still have a copy of that on VHS. Oh, I just did a Google search and found it on wikipedia! Here it is. It was called Special Bulletin and it caused a little bit of a panic too.

So yeah, it’s 1:12am and I’m going to bed.

Boring Christmas and Myspace Cheer


Dec. 25th, 2005|05:16 pm: I’ve had a boring Christmas. No kids today because they’re at their mom’s. But Emily has called me twice and messaged me once. I think this is the first time I haven’t had the kids on Christmas morning in 9 years.

I opened one present of mine today, from Jammie. A War of the World’s DVD! (The 1950’s version.) I just finished watching it and it was great. Well, it was terrible but in a lame 50’s sci-fi movie kind of way. Thanks, Jammie! My parents sent me some cash for Christmas earlier this week and I bought myself a new coat, hat and gloves.

This morning I spread lots of Christmas cheer to blogs, forums and Myspace pages across the country! And by Christmas cheer, I mean tub girl. Earlier this year, I blocked the ability to hotlink images from phonelosers.org. Instead of the images they try to hotlink, they see an image that says “Hey, quit stealing our images!” That majorly cut down on the hotlinking but there’s still a lot of it going on. So I added Tub Girl onto the top of the image. That should gross people out into taking down hotlinked images. So today I caused approximately 100 different web sites across the country to show it’s visitors Tub Girl. I am a bad man. Here are a few of my favorites:

MYSPACE: Check out who she’d like to meet!
MYSPACE: Nice background!
The people on this forum sure love Tub Girl
Xanga: Skinny girls vs. Tub girl

RBCP on CNBC’s Corporate Terrorism

So today…got the invitation for CNBC first thing in the morning. The kids and I had breakfast at the cafe around the block. Around 1pm, we drove to Portland. Hung out at Lloyd Center mall for about an hour. Emily did some ice skating while me and Payton watched. Then went to the studio, about a mile away from the mall.

Sat around in a waiting room for awhile, then went into a studio. The interview was via satellite, so it was just me, the kids and a producer. Hooking me up to the show (I think it was based in NYC) required the producer dialing a few numbers on a couple of phones and leaving them off the hook. Once that was done, I could hear the show in my earpiece and I guess they could hear me. Strange that the audio seemed to be done via a few phones, even though they had the video feed going too. Kind of makes me wonder if I could get the phone numbers they use and hijack the phone lines. Muhaha… The first thing I heard once my audio was working was some kind of promo mentioning Wal-Mart and terrorism. When I heard that, I’m thinking, “Oh great, they’re going to yell at me for being a mean person…” Jammie told me later that they’d called it Corporate Terrorism. I was all worried before the interview that they were going to say that terrorists could use my methods of bothering Wal-Mart to overthrow the U.S. Government.

The interview lasted maybe two minutes. It went okay, I guess. I didn’t get ambushed and the anchor guy was friendly enough about it. I was all prepared for them to ambush me. On the drive to Portland, I’d decided if they called me horrible I would just agree with them and tell them when I wasn’t harassing Wal-Marts, I was out beating up old ladies in the street and setting small animals on fire. But that didn’t happen. He asked a few questions and I answered. I was thrown off a few times and stuttered a little. They played the Christmas Bows call and the call where a customer asks me for directions to the store. And that was it, it was over. The producer from New Jersey talked to me afterwards and told me that I did great and she thought the segment went flawlessly. It was a really fun experience overall. Big thanks to everyone who hounded me into going. And thanks to everyone who left suggestions and encouragement in my previous LJ entry.

The lady in the studio with us laughed when she heard Christmas Bows being cued up before the interview. And she smiled and chuckled as they were played during the interview. After it was over, she asked me all about phonelosers.org and said she would have to visit it. She wanted to know if we’d really taken over a Wal-Mart’s paging system like that and she was surprised when I told her it was actually the Fred Meyer store just a mile or 2 away. I’d told the producer that it was a Fred Meyer too, I guess she just wanted to go with it being a Wal-Mart so it would match the story better. That and half the country has probably never heard of Fred Meyer. The studio lady remarked how incredibly well-behaved my kids were and Payton talked to her nonstop about random things for 5 minutes after the interview was over.

The kids and I went back to the mall and had supper in the food court and then saw Cheaper by the Dozen 2. Payton continually called it Mine, Yours and Ours 2. Pretty witty for a 6-year-old. Played a few games at Tilt afterwards and then drove home.

A few people were supposed to record the TV show but so far all those have fallen through. Jammie’s dad screwed up his attempt to record it (damn adults and that modern VCR technology), her friend Rob completely forgot and Apok0lyps’ Tivo didn’t work. Gordo said he got it recorded, so maybe we’ll get it from him. I’ll put the video up on phonelosers.org when/if I get it.

Boston Herald and CNBC

Yesterday, some lady from the Boston Herald emailed me, wanting to do a phone interview with me regarding PLA’s Wal-Mart site. I told her I’d much rather answer her questions via email and she agreed. I didn’t get put into the article too much, I think mainly because I don’t really oppose Wal-Mart as much as she’d hoped. Here is the article from today’s Boston Herald. And here is the email of questions that I answered for her.

I’m not sure if my answers will be very useful to you, since I’ve never worked for Wal-Mart and I don’t really have an objective. But here you go…

Are you “Joe the Peacock”? (I saw that you live in Alton, Ill., but the link to Joe’s ”mentally incompetent” website has a Georgia address)

Nope, Joe can be reached at joe@—–.com. He lives in Georgia. I used to live in Illinois but I just moved to Oregon a few weeks ago. Joe might be able to give you some better answers than me, regarding Wal-Mart.

Did you formerly work for Wal-Mart? If so, in what capacity, during what period and where?

I’ve never worked for Wal-Mart before and I’ve never attempted to get a job there. I’m merely an occasional shopper there.

Do you shop there now or have you?

I try to never shop there. Sometimes it can’t be helped since they’re open later than most of the other large retail stores or they might have a certain product that the others might not have, such as a kids toy or something. I’d say I probably end up in a Wal-mart 2 or 3 times a year, but I make it a point never to make any large purchases there. While I realize that their prices are quite often lower than the other major stores, I stay away from them simply because I don’t like what they do to communities.

What do you have against the company that would make you spend time on doing a Website like this?

If you look at phonelosers.org, you’ll notice that everything I do stems from just way too much time on my hands. Even if I loved Wal-Mart, I probably would have made this page. Just as I put together the Fred Meyer page at http://www.phonelosers.org/issue/pla025.html or the 7-Eleven page at http://www.phonelosers.org/issue/pla008.html. I spend lots of money in those places. It just seemed like a funny idea when I originally put it together, which was 4 or 5 years ago.

I could say that it’s because of a few bad experiences I’ve had with the Wal-Mart in Wood River, Illinois, which are written about at http://www.brad-carter.com/consumer_alert.html. But it’s not. It’s all in good fun to me.

What’s your ultimate objective?

As far as Wal-Mart goes, I don’t really have an objective. I don’t really care for the Wal-Mart company and as a result, I try never to shop there. My Wal-Mart page honestly has nothing to do with my dislike of Wal-Mart. Since the ideas on it are so generic, really they could be applied to any retail store. I just really enjoy making entertaining content for other people to enjoy, and the Wal-Mart page is a result of that.

Lastly, are you being straight with me? I realize that this could be a prank…

Come on, do I seem like the kind of person that kids around? :)

Good luck on your article. I realize my answers are probably useless to you since I don’t have any kind of serious ultimatum with them. I’d be happy to answer any other questions for you, though, if you have any more.

Brad

I thought it was pretty retarded that she asked me if I was being straight. Here’s where the bizzare part of the story is…a producer from CNBC read the article this morning and emailed me, asking for my phone number to do an interview. I replied that I would prefer to just answer the questions via email if that was okay with her. After a few emails, we finally end up talking on the phone and she talks to me a lot about the site. In the end, she ends up wanting me to drive to Portland to do a live interview with the host of the CNBC show “On the Money.” I politely decline. She even offered to send a car for me.

Then I tell Jammie and Joe Peacock about the encounter. Both Jammie and Joe relentlessly encourage me to do it. Then murd0c starts in on me. Finally, my weak mind gives in. I’m going up there later today to talk live, via satellite, to Anchor Dylan Ratigan. It will be approximately a 4 minute segment starting around 7:40pm EST. They’re going to play some of the sound clips from the Wal-Mart page, including one that has murd0c in it. I just finished editing that clip for her to make it more TV-friendly.

I fully expect to regret this somehow in the end. The producer assures me that they’re not going to ambush me and call me a horrible person for encouraging people to give grief to Wal-mart. She says it’s going to be a “fun” segment. Something about that doesn’t click, though, since it’s a money program. I’ve never seen the show, though, and I’m too lazy to Google it. The producer seemed genuine in her phone calls and her emails, although she gave me lots of fake-sounding encouragement. We’ll see how it goes. Even if it turns sour, it’s not every day that I get to be on a nationwide TV show. That’s probably what those people on Jerry Springer think, right before Jerry spends an hour making them look like fools.

Anyone have any suggestions? Other than encouraging me to rip off my clothes on live TV and scream, “OMG HAX!@#$”

Pocket PC Battery

A month ago, I ordered a battery for my Pocket PC from a company on Ebay. They had a domain name, and a good rating. I paid them immediately after the auction ended with PayPal. Then, realizing that my PayPal account still showed my Illinois address, I wrote them an email explaining that I’d just moved and asked if they could ship it to my new address in Albany. I never got any kind of a response from them.

Exactly 1 month later, I start thinking I should probably get around to complaining to them, or pulling their docs or whatever I need to do. Then I get an email from Ebay telling me that they’re lodging a complaint against me because I never paid for the battery that I won. Suddenly, I think that maybe I’m dillusional and maybe I didn’t pay for the battery after all. So checked PayPal and comfirmed that I did, in fact, pay $30.00 for the battery. I wrote the company a nice email, telling them that I did pay for the battery, giving them the date, amount, transaction number, etc. No response.

A little over 24 hours, I do something a little harder for them to ignore – I file a complaint with PayPal, since they never shipped the item that I obviously paid for. Within hours the company responds, apologizing for screwing up their records and not noticing my payment or something like that. They remove the Ebay complaint against me and they assure me that it’s been shipped out via Priority Mail and that I should receive it within 2 – 3 days. That was a few days ago so it’s probably sitting in my PO Box right now, waiting for me. Unless they shipped it to my Illinois addres, which I doubt since I updated my info with PayPal and Ebay a couple weeks ago.

Just a minute ago they sent ANOTHER email to me which reads, “We have shipped out your battery last week to your new address. We are very sorry for the mixup. Please cancel the paypal chargeback against our accout. Your package will arrive shortly.” I don’t plan to cancel the complaint against them until I at least get my battery. But maybe, just to be a jerk, I’ll leave the complaint on there as long as I possibly can. It sure seems to bug them.

Maybe they just didn’t get my original emails. I should be forgiving just in case, right? Wrong – the email they just sent me was a reply to the original email I sent them a month ago, asking them to ship the battery to my new address. Assuming my battery arrives today, it’s taken them 1 month and 8 days to get my battery to me. That sucks. I should be as lazy as I possibly can about removing the complaint against them. Maybe I can hold out for 1 month and 8 days on removing it.

Feedback? I’ll give them a neutral. Take that, www DOT digitalpowerpro DOT com.

phonelosers.org

Hooray for productivity…

I don’t know why, but I’ve been working on phonelosers.org about 800% more than I normally do lately.

  • Worked a lot today
  • Wrote a new script for displaying random things all over phonelosers.org. Now instead of 50 lines of code, it’s 5 lines of code. My webhost (Cal) should be happy about that since there’s about 10 randomized things on phonelosers.org.
  • Completely revamped my advertising methods. Put it all in a flat file database. This means nothing to anyone reading this, but it’s sure going to make things easier for me. I ripped apart the PHP code from my homepage’s guestbook, found the part that looks at a database and turns it into html, and used that to display ads on phonelosers.org. Did hours worth of advertising junk this evening while the kids did their homework next to me. Guess that’s why it took hours, I kept having to pause and help them. I still need to strip some stuff out of the script to make it a little smaller, but it works. Most importantly, I learned quite a bit about php today.
  • Made a Shoutbox on phonelosers.org! I’ve been wanting to do that forever but none of the PHP shoutboxes I found would ever work on phonelosers.org even though they worked on my homepage just fine. Finally I just wrote my own, using a combination of PHP and Perl. I got hacked on the first day that I put it up – somebody forwarded the shoutbox page to a porn site. Fixed that and haven’t had any problems since then. Once I learn PHP a little better, I’ll get rid of the Perl portion of it.
  • Fixed the Fruitwall – people can post on it again
  • Did a few more anti-spam robot things so that they can’t as easily auto-spam the comments sections all over phonelosers.org. I set up a log to tell me exactly how much spam I’m preventing. Today it prevented 12 spam posts. Yesterday it prevented FIFTY-FIVE spam posts. (I spelled out the number to make it look more dramatic.) Last week I set it up so that all comments have to be manually approved by me now which eliminates 100% of the spam. But now that I’ve done this new anti-spam thing, the spam doesn’t even get to me. I’m only deleting a couple a day. Stupid spammers, they should die.
  • Modded the guestbook on my home page again to deter automatic spamming. So far I’ve gotten ZERO spams there since I did it.
  • Hey Stella – I found a really simply form-to-email PHP processer. I’ll get that working on your site tomorrow if you want.
  • Put the random Christmas banners on the top of the website last night. Jammie made one of them and I put it up this morning.
  • Worked on the PLA book a lot this week.
  • Got the kids a bed finally! Really nice bunk bed for $200 – 1/3 of what it cost at the furniture store.
  • Bought a new table for the kids room today for Legos.
  • Hooked up a hub to my modem and got my Vonage line running again. Now I’ve got twice the free long distance at only double the price!
  • Did Christmas shopping for the kids
  • Took back the $29.99 trash can I bought at Fred Meyer and got a refund. I didn’t know the City of Albany provided our trash cans for free!
  • Finished reading Mentally Incontinent
  • Paid tons of bills

Police blotter

Dec. 14th, 2005|03:56 pm: I’m reading the Albany newspaper and in the police blotter it shows this: “GANG GRAFFITI – Gang graffiti referencing the music group Insane Clown Posse was discovered Monday on the West Albany High School and Memorial Middle School buildings. A student has been referred to the juvenile department for for criminal mischief.”

I’d just like to point out that I pointed out the Juggalo Street Crew issue in my journal almost a month ago! At least I can now do my laundry feeling safe, now that the JSC is safely behind bars.

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