Just One Question About the True Blood Finale (No Spoilers)
I actually have more questions than this, but those get into spoiler territory. For now, I just wanna know...
What... The... F**K was going on with Alcide's hair at the beginning?
Photos of this Abomination Courtesy of HBO Go
You Gotta Fight For Your Right...
On this day in 1920, women received the right to vote. But some of you still don't do it. Why? Because you hate politics? That's a dumb "reason."
And yet still others of you vote exactly how your husbands or fathers tell you, without any independent thought or research on your own... or even if you DO research, you still defer to the opinions of some man because you assume he knows better or because you don't want to "rock the boat." Once again, dumb.
We have this right. We should exercise this right… wisely. That means do your own research [whether you like politics or not is irrelevant] and vote your own economic, social, and other self-interests. Demand that your elected officials (whether or not the person you voted for) be held to a high standard. Don't let anyone tell you how you should vote—not your father, not your husband, not your best friend, not some pundit, and not some blogger.
Prove that we deserve this right.
/soapbox
I Never Thought I Would Pass on Advice from Kelso...
You may have heard about the now-viral speech Ashton Kutcher gave at the Teen Choice Awards last week. You probably ignored it, as I did originally, because who in the world can take someone from Two and a Half Men, who wears a flannel over-shirt to accept his "Ultimate Choice Award" seriously? But you shouldn't ignore it. And if you have a teenager in your life, you should pass on some variant of this advice.
Ashton Kutcher at Teen Choice Awards (Getty Images)
Ashton started his acceptance speech for the "old person award" by admitting, "I feel like a fraud." He then revealed to the (apparently non-Googling, Wikipedia-stupid) audience that his real name is Chris. Ashton is his middle name, but he changed his name at 19 when he started acting. Ashton/Chris then launched into his list of "Amazing Things I Learned When I Was Chris." The list was comprised of three categories:
1. opportunity
2. being sexy
3. living life
On Opportunity: "I believe that opportunity looks a lot like hard work.... I never had a job in my life that I was better than. I was always thankful just to have a job."
On Being Sexy: "The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart... and being thoughtful... and being generous. Everything else is crap--I promise you."
On Living Life: Taking a page from lessons he re-learned while making "Jobs": "[L]ife can be a lot broader than that [learning to live in the world exactly as it is] when you realize one simple thing, and that is that everything around us that we call 'life' was made up by people that are no smarter than you, and you can build your own thing. You can build your own life that other people can live in. So build a life. Don't live one, build one... find your opportunities, and always be sexy."
The Great Binkie Fake-out of 2013
What happens when you try to take away your 22-month old's Wubanub to take a picture, and it turns out she was prepared for you? Something like this:
I'm pretty sure that's the toddler version of gangsta.
You've Been Lawyered!
This afternoon, I received an e-mail from a collections agency, containing a PDF of a delinquent account settlement offer. The offer wasn't for me and wasn't related to one of my accounts. The e-mail and letter were addressed to a woman with the same last name as me and a first name starting with the same letter, but otherwise wasn't anywhere close to my name. I assume this company found my e-mail address by randomly sending e-mails to any vague Gmail account with the last name, which looked like it might be hers. Or, perhaps, her original creditor had her correct e-mail address but left off numbers or other identifying characteristics when transferring this information to the collections agency.
This is not the first time I've received e-mail intended for another C. [Last Name]. In fact, I am now connected on LinkedIn with another person who has the same first initial and last name as me, because I was getting so much of his e-mail, that I finally had to do some Google searching until I found a valid e-mail address for him and implored him to please remember to add the "70" when entering his e-mail address on forms, because I was really tired of getting his magazine subscription info, house listing updates [he is a realtor, which is how I found him], and lunch invites from friends. The whole mix up was pretty funny, and it's kind of an odd way to meet someone with an overlapping industry and possibly distant cousin relationship [he certainly looks like enough of my family members for it to be possible]--even though it was really annoying at first.
I haven't had as much luck with the other C. [Last Name]s who have accidentally (or on purpose?) directed their e-mails to me. There is one woman in particular, who apparently lives in California, who especially irks me in this regard. I suspect she just doesn't actually know her e-mail address. From all of the correspondence I have received for her--from AARP, from Match.com (that was the worst!!!), from friends from her former church, from the volunteer center when she apparently worked on Hillary Clinton's local campaign efforts in 2008, from the... iCan't...--I know she's a woman in her early 60s, so I'm guessing she's just not 100% caught up on her technology? [my parents, for example, can read and post on Facebook, but ask them to change their security settings or even their names, and you get blank stares] I actually now know a lot about this woman, but have yet to find enough to track her down to tell her to Stop. Giving. Out. My. E-mail. Address. I've actually responded very sweetly to the people who actually seem to know her (including the Clinton campaign) and asked them to pass the message along. Some of them have even confirmed that they have. However, she continues to give out my e-mail address, and every three months or so, I get a new e-mail directed intended for Constance from California [stop it girl, stop it!].
But I digress...
This is the first time I've gotten highly sensitive information for another person. This PDF attached to the e-mail had this lady's name, her address, her creditor, and her partial account info [in fact, instead of the last four digits, like creditors are generally supposed to use, they included all but the last four, which meant if I wanted to, I could easily get this woman's entire account number. I don't want to.]. Instead of my usual annoyance at the misdirected e-mail, I just got nervous. So I fired off this response to the collection agency:
This isn't [NAME REDACTED]. I don't even know anyone by that name. Heck, I don't know anyone who lives in [LOCALE REDATED]. I would suggest that you try her at whatever address and phone number you have on file. I will delete the correspondence so as to not be held legally liable for retaining any of her private information, and I'm sure you would not want to be held in violation of any consumer privacy laws.In the future, you may want to password protect such e-mails with identifiable account information with the last four digits of the person's social security number.... << This is just a suggestion and should not constitute or be construed to constitute legal advice.Please remove me from your e-mail list.
A minute or so after sending the e-mail, it dawned on me—Daaaaaaaamn. I am such a lawyer.
Oops.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The collection agency actually responded thanking me. Apparently the agent filled in the wrong e-mail address.
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