In My Not So Humble Opinion

Over the past 8 years, I have posted a variety of “No Solicitors” and “No Soliciting” signs on my front door. Husband and I work odd hours, and work from home, so the interruptions happen at the worst of times. The signs haven’t been very successful in stopping people from knocking or ringing the bell, so I’ve now created a handout to give to each of these people when they ignore the sign and disturb my peace and quiet. Feel free to print a copies of this and hand them out to the people who disturb the tranquility of your domicile.

DISCLAIMER: I just showed this letter to husband. He said that a crumpled piece of paper on our lawn would be the least of our worries.  Mr. “Voice of Reason” (aka: Killjoy) said it could potentially piss off a solicitor enough for them to key our car or do something else equally evil. Further evidence as to why I don’t want solicitors on my property. All that repressed anger from everyone shutting the door in their face has to come out somewhere. So, another great idea hits the trash bin. Just like my plans for renting out the dog to dig up gardens in the spring. She digs up our backyard for free. It’s about time she earns her keep.

So, on his advice, I’m not handing out the letter. If you decide to do so, you’re on your own. (Download PDF copy)

Thank you so much for disturbing me while I was doing something more interesting and important than answering my door to find you standing there, ignoring my “No Solicitors” sign. I’m guessing you either don’t know what “Soliciting” means, or think the word doesn’t apply to you. It does.

People who solicit, or engage in soliciting, are Solicitors. That’s you.

Soliciting:

To seek orders for trade, as for a business, or to ask for or offer something in exchange for something else, as in conducting surveys, witnessing, etc. If you do this, you are a Solicitor. Please take another look at the sign on the door.

Examples:

1.   You want to ask me some questions about my roof/siding/windows/paint job/gutters/address lettering/lawn, etc. You’re asking these questions with the motive of selling me roof/siding/windows/paint job/gutters/address lettering/lawn care, etc. You are Soliciting!

2.   You want to talk to me about my soul/heaven/hell/the afterlife/living well/being a world citizen, etc. You’re doing so because you want to sell me on your religion/church/synagogue/spiritual path/holy writings, etc.  This is Soliciting!

3.   You have a simple survey you’d like me complete about politics/religion/hate crimes/drugs/war/taxes, etc. You’re conducting the survey because you want to influence my opinions about politics/religion/crime in general /drugs/war/taxes, etc. That’s a Solicitation!

I hope you have found this enlightening, and that you will take this home, or back to the office, to share with your friends/spouse/family/children/boss/co-workers/pastor/life partner, etc. so all of you will reach the level of enlightenment that is achieved by not bothering people who have “No Soliciting” signs.

Please do not crumple this and throw it on my lawn, or I’ll have to explain “Littering” and “Vandalism.”

On behalf of everyone with a “No Solicitors” sign, I thank you for reading, and look forward to having you pass by my home in the future.

With the white hot fury of a thousand suns, I hate spammers with every fiber of my being.

I do everything I can to keep spam out of my inbox. I have anti-spam resources on my server. I regularly blacklist domains that are used to send spam. I keep my private email account private. Because not everyone who has my email address can be trusted to treat it as respectfully as I do theirs, my email address ends up on spammer lists when they  “Send to all my contacts” the latest chain mail, or put my email address in the TO: field to set out a cat picture to everyone they’ve spoken to in their entire life, or they add my contact information to an online database because they get Points.

Normally, I just quietly blacklist the latest offender, but when I got the following email from Maria Bartell at NetProspex, it made me a more than a little crazy.

They want to send me emails to introduce me to special offers, industry events, or invite me to participate in customer surveys, but, “before we begin sending you emails,” they say, “I want to be certain that our emails are welcome. If you do not want to receive these types of emails in the future, click here:”

In other words, they’re going to send spam, and claim I opted in, because I didn’t opt-out. Gaaaahhhhh.

I’ve added them to my blacklist, so I won’t hear any more from them. However, I have a little message for them:

I shouldn’t have to opt-out of your spam. You should request people to opt-in. Of course, you’d do that, if you weren’t a spammer.

But, as a spammer, you don’t care what I think. Or what any of us really want.

A slow, lingering death that starts with searing pain like a hot poker in your most private parts and radiates to the ends of your toenails, as your hair falls out in fiery patches, taking with it your rotting  flesh bit by mouldering bit, until there’s nothing left but your maggot-ridden remains as you lie in a gutter, praying for the final exit as buzzards peck at your skull, and rats tear away at any damp bits left inside of you, is too good an end for spammers like you.

Should I receive another email from you, I will take it as a personal challenge to call upon all the dark forces of the earth and beyond to make your life on earth more dreadful than Hell itself.

Die, spammer, die.

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Update 03/01/11: It appears I’m not alone in my hatred of spammers. Since writing this post, I’ve discovered many other blog posts on this same theme. Here are three. Enjoy.

http://onemansblog.com/2009/05/01/i-still-hate-spammers-die-spammers-die/ – Explains why spam is such an expensive problem

http://www.soft.tahionic.com/download-die_spammer_die/anti-spam.html – Love their anti-spam tool!

http://highscalability.com/scaling-spam-eradication-using-purposeful-games-die-spammer-die

Spam is big business, and it costs all of us more money in hosting fees, management fees, and even internet connection fees because of the extreme load spam places on all servers. Spammers are the lowest of the low. They steal from us all.

Like a couple of little old ladies helping each other across an icy parking lot, our tired old Saturn, and our sparkly new Volkswagen, are both having some problems with mobility. The Saturn, bless her dear engine block, is falling to pieces. We’ve replaced just about every part on her but the engine, which I understand from our friendly neighborhood mechanic is the only solid thing about a Saturn. The latest thing on its way out is the transmission, which will cost more to replace than the car is worth, if we could find a transmission to put in there. Now another relic of the automotive industry, her future, probably sooner than later, is the scrap heap.

While driving home from the dealership after entrusting the VW to their Service Department to replace a throttle body that, thank the dieties is under warranty, and engaging in no criminal or reckless activities whatsoever, (as if the Saturn had it in her) we were pulled over by a police officer in the itty bitty city of Sheridan. Apparently, at the tail end of the final block of a school zone, while driving downhill away from the school, husband crept over the speed limit. No one was even remotely in danger. Kids were all, or should have been, still in class. There was no other traffic on the road. The cop showed no mercy.

If you’re not familiar with Sheridan, Colorado, it’s a mere 2.2 square miles of property shoehorned in between Denver, Englewood, and Littleton. The average annual income of its residents is minimally $20,000 below the neighborhoods that surround it, and home values are 40% lower than the state median. With so little money in the city, they’ve gone to great efforts to get as much money as possible from the people who travel through it.

To pad their straining coffers (someone has to pay for the cop car), they flexed their muscles and ran a bunch of small businesses off a piece of land on their border in order to allow a developer to build a whole slew of retail establishments and restaurants on what was a former landfill. (EPA be damned!)

I’m guessing all the new sales tax revenues aren’t up to snuff, what with all the wonderful incentives they extended to the developer, new businesses, and all, so the police still have to do their part by panhandling issuing as many ridiculous tickets as possible.

Hence, the $200 surprise delivered through the window today, with an accompanying 4 points on husband’s license. The officer explained the ticket would be reduced to 2 points, if paid by a certain date.

Aren’t police supposed to be concerned with public safety? Shouldn’t fines be levied against people who put others at risk? The ticket issued today had nothing to do with public safety, or risky behavior. It has to do with money. Why else would points be reduced for quick payment? If the few miles over the limit was indeed as big a deal as the fine suggests, why on earth are points negotiable?

Thanks to their over-zealous fundraising, Sheridan has seen the last of me. In addition to the $200 donation to the Donut Fund (trust me, she’s had more than her share, thankyouverymuch – what? of course I’m being bitchy; can you blame me?), our insurance rates will likely increase. Every dollar I may have spent in one of the stores, restaurants, bars, or the new movie theater in their city, will be spent elsewhere. It will be no inconvenience in the least to avoid the half-dozen streets that go through Sheridan, and spend my money (and sales-tax dollars) in any of the other suburbs of Denver.

Some of the many Denver Metro cities where I will spend money:

• Littleton
• Lakewood
• Arvada
• Westminster
• Englewood
• Broomfield
• Wheat Ridge
• Aurora
• Centennial
• Edgewater
• Highlands Ranch
• Lone Tree
• Thornton
• Westminster
• Denver (if I have to. I hate them for completely different reasons)

The one city that’s not getting another red cent:

• Sheridan

Sayonara, Sheridan. Hope you enjoyed seeing my tail lights on my way out of your city. You’ll never see them again.

A friend sent me this picture today with this note: I’m having a hard time believing it’s for real. If it is, I’m wondering how much sedation they had to use on the model and imagining masked cats frantically reversing like insane bumper cars.

For some reason, I just can’t stop laughing, and on the list of all the things cats don’t like, laughing at them is pretty close to the top. There’s no way my cat would let me put this on her. “The instructions say: Working from behind animals head, hold side tabs and slip muzzle over face and eyes.” I think they’re missing some steps.

Look closely at the photo, which is not retouched. The handler has some obvious war wounds.

In my house, it would work like this:

Step 1: Catch and sedate cat

Step 2: Attempt to put muzzle on cat

Step 3: Release angry cat, apply Mercurochrome to bite wounds on hands

Step 4: Locate cat behind sofa, lure out with treats

Step 5: Sedate cat some more

Step 6: Attempt to put muzzle on cat again

Step 7: Release yowling cat, bandage lacerations on hands and arms

Step 8: Locate cat under bed, attempt to lure out with more treats

Step 9: Wait for cat to take the bait

Step 10: Give up on cat muzzle, and sedate self.

This may reduce cat bites, if, and when, you actually get it on the kitty, but she is certainly going to make you pay for trying.

(In case you don’t believe this, here’s their website)

We’ve harmoniously co-existed with the chickens next door for about 8 months or so. Every now and then, the dogs go to the fence and sniff really hard, but other than that, you’d never know they were there.

Until this morning. I have a cold/flu/the plague, so when I got up this morning to let the dogs outside, I was planning to climb right back into bed. That never happened.

I should have looked into the backyard before I opened the door. But, with a 6-foot fence surrounding our property, I never expected to have an intruder.

Bob, the overgrown puppy, blasted through the door as soon as my hand was on the latch. Simba was right on her heels. In that split second, I looked up to see a brown Speckled Sussex hen clucking away in the back yard, and it looked like the dogs were going to have chicken for breakfast.

The Plague has given me laryngitis, so as I attempted to scream No! Stop! Leave it! Get back in here!, I chased the dogs as they chased the frightened hen around the yard, her wings and my arms, flapping in time. Finally, the dogs chased her under the deck, I got the dogs inside, and sat down to catch my breath.

Wouldn’t you know, the lady who owns the birds is out of town, and out of cell range. Her husband is hunting and won’t be back until tomorrow night. But, their eldest son was at home, so he came over to see if he could find the hen. She was so far in the recesses of the deck that she couldn’t be seen. He surmised she must be hurt and dying, and went home. He was happy to leave it like that. Obviously, not a fan of the chicks.

I thought about the possibilities:
1. She could come out on her own
2. She could stay under there and die

I was really rooting for option #1. No way do I want a dead chicken rotting under my back deck.

I waited at the window, watching for her to emerge. An hour went by. Then another. My dogs still needed to pee. I took them out on a supervised pee break, headed back in and called the neighbor kid again.

He came back with bird food. Shook the cup, called “here chick, chick, chick” and… nothing. Not a sound from under the deck. No movement. I hooked up the garden hose, and started soaking the deck, thinking a mad, wet hen would come running out the other side.

Nothing.

We looked in one end, and around the other. We stomped on the deck. Perhaps I was overdosed on cold medicine, but I was getting frantic.

There’s a small section where the deck doesn’t quite meet the house. It finally occurred to me to remove the piece of wood we put there to keep the dogs from messing with the outside faucet, and heard a very pissed off bird. We looked in the hole, and there she was, with an egg, down in the window well. Did she get so upset she plopped an egg? Or, did she think she was going to be stuck there for life, and decided to hatch some company? Don’t ask me. I don’t know how chickens think. Or if they do.

Of course, there wasn’t room to get the bird out, so we tramped downstairs, opened the window, and rescued the bird. By “we” I mean, we both went downstairs, and he rescued the bird. And then rescued the egg, which he gave to me.

That’s why I buy my eggs in the supermarket. I can’t take the drama.