buffawhat.com

Anti Teen Weaponry is a $1,500 ringtone

• CNN - A wall-mounted gadget designed to drive away loiterers with a shrill, piercing noise audible only to teens and young adults is infuriating civil liberties groups and tormenting young people after being introduced into the United States. The Mosquito, which targets loiterers, projects a shrill noise audible only to teens and young adults. Almost 1,000 units of the device, called the Mosquito, have been sold in the United States and Canada after the product debuted last year, according to Daniel Santell, the North America importer of the device sold under the company name Kids Be Gone. The high-frequency sound has been likened to fingernails dragged across a chalkboard or a pesky mosquito buzzing in your ear. It can be heard by most people in their teens and early 20s who still have sensitive hair cells in their inner ears. Whether you can hear the noise depends on how much your hearing has deteriorated: How loud you blast your iPod, for example, could affect your ability to detect it.

The device costs $1,500 to install, but some cities are claiming that it is an unnecessary and cruel form of a deterrent. A device like this has no regulation, and others are afraid the device would be mismanaged in the hands of private owners.

However, the shrill noise is nothing new, most commonly used as a free stealth ringtone called the “mosquito.”

listen to a sample of it below. Can’t hear it? that must mean you’re old.

• CNN -Conflict follows device that drives away teen loiterers

Stupid Facebook.

I tried to be subtle about this, I didn’t even twitter it, yet. Unfortunately, when you start the wonderful process of changing profile statuses to “single,” and one of your social means is Facebook, subtlety gets hard. After about a half dozen im’s and emails from folk that are facebookers, I’ll make it public.

• Michael  and I are no longer a couple.

I really don’t want to hear how Michael was bad for me, or how I’m better off. Truth is, it doesn’t really matter. Not being with Michael was something that I had to do for a new year for myself.  This has been that hardest decision for me to make, because instead of something catastrophic to trigger this, I had to realize on my own that we weren’t meant to be past a year.

I’m just gonna take some time to myself, hang out with friends and focus on me. I’m not going to be dating anyone else from Buffalo for a while, the supply of decent single have long been exhausted and I don’t feel like trying to disprove that claim either.

Should Office Coffee be a perk or a Convenience?

Office Coffee comes in many flavors, colors, and smells, but we can all agree - unless you live in Seattle - that its not too particularly good. Whether 3-day old grinds, Dollar store brew, or the tar-like qualities a pot gets when its reheated for the umpteenth time, we still drink it. It’s a commodity and a convenience, a welcome blessing when rushing to work so unprepared your cowlicks bear calves by noon. Sometimes the coffe pot was brought from home, if you are lucky, you have a Bunn. And its all managed under the watchful eye of the “coffee clutch”

The clutch is that group of up-in-age office management bitties, the ones that order supplies and do your timesheets. They don’t actually drink the coffee, though some claim fealty, but by god there is always a full jar of sugar packets and a box of creamers, straws, napkins on the table; everything you need to forget that the coffee still tastes like shit. All they ask is that you pay.

Our coffee has the bittiest of crones to oversee the clutch. We have a 2 dollar/week subscription to coffee. There are 4 gallons of water at all times under the table to refill the pots, and if you empty one, yo must immediately go in search of a faucet to replenish it. Another thing, the 50cents refers to “one” serving in an 8oz. cup.

I buck the trend, and incur the ice stares when I walk in with my 20oz Starbucks seasonal mug and gingerly fill to the top. I pay when I feel like it; random coins in my pocket making the jingle in drop box just loud enough to satisfy the ears of the clutch. I’m quick and determined in the morning, as i have just five minutes to walk in my lab, grab my mug and run upstairs where the clutch is sanctioned. I slosh out yesterday’s stains with hot water, refill it with black death and trot downstairs, spilling a trail of black tears which are symbolic of my disdain for the morning.

The other day, this email popped up, note the “Angency Wide”

The clutch has been disbanded, the refrigerator moved. No more the quiet trot upstairs, coffee is now at the opposite end of the building, in the noisiest busiest room in the mornings… the cafeteria. Stealing coffee is impossible, too, you must wait in line like a poor orphan waiting for soup, mug in hand. I tried this today and immediately got into a fight with the cashier over the size of my mug and how I take up a whole pot in one shot. The upside, however, to cafeteria coffee is that Karen (the cafeteria manager) understands portions. The amount coffee you need is determined by the size of the mug you bring; $0.50 per mug. Period.

Same grinds, same taste, but now I have to pay. I don’t think its fair. The agency buys giant boxes of bulk office grinds from some paper supply company, The 50 cents isn’t going to the people managing the clutches either, just back into the agency to “cover” the costs. Bullshit. I don’t think its right that I should have to pay for something I need to ensure my happiness in a company designed to make me miserable. Coffee provides insurance against incidents and loss of patience, a very serious thing at my job.

I don’t wanna pay anymore, I guess I’ll have to sleep with the lunch lady… again.

• UPDATE: A few co-workers and I have decided to get our own fancy coffee pot and have our own special clutch, course I’m still paying for coffee but the principle of the matter makes us rebels.

Dr. Blackman hates Microsoft Gays, rallies Christians

“I am a black man with a righteous cause with a whole host of powerful white people behind me.”

• From the Telgraph:
  An advocate of a “biblical stance” against divorce and homosexuality, Mr Hutcherson, 55, is asking millions of evangelical activists, as well as Orthodox Jewish and other allies, to buy up Microsoft shares and demand a return to traditional values.
  Microsoft, he declares, will be just the first company targeted in an escalation of the culture wars between evangelicals and corporate America.
  “There are 256 Fortune 500 companies alone pouring millions upon millions of dollars into pushing the homosexual agenda,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
  “I consider myself a warrior for Christ. Microsoft don’t scare me. I got God with me.

Quoting the Gizmodo, “fuck this guy.” Not cause he’s black, not cause he’s a pansy ex football player following the path of Reggie White (to the end perhaps?), its because it makes no sense. Who the fuck cares if a couple of Microhomos wanna get healthcare together and save money a couple of bucks? This is not worth wasting the money of your 3500 member church and all the other religious groups you are calling for help to change the stance of one of the biggest companies in the world. Leave the fags alone, how about you work on your brothers on the field who are fucking up left and right, and destroying whats left of the sanctity of marriage that you think is so great. Get your own heterosphere fixed first bucko!

Fighting against the fags is a losing game now. Why don’t you get this?

• Via the Telegraph
• www.theblackman.org

No Money on the Internet

I’ve come to accept that Heroes Origins will never be aired, and I’m not too worried when the Bionic Woman goes off the air, but can someone give them their extra bit? I actually get their argument, because I primarily consume my television online by form of legal downloads and network streams.

Here’s the latest Youtube Video Blog from the writers of the Colbert report.

This whole strike thing has been very entertaining, if it wasn’t for everyone else losing their jobs as a consequence.

• United Hollywood

Turkey Cannon not as fun as it sounds, but makes you respectable.

With Thanksgiving only a week away, Camp Chef brings you yet another new-fangled turkey cooking device for you to get into an argument over with your mother-in-law. The $25 Turkey Cannon will not turn Thanksgiving into fast food (horrible pun, but works everytime). No, its a roasting stand with a speculum curved cylinder attached that you slide the poor bird over and stick in the oven. Oh, yea, you can fill the cylinder with beer, wine, booze, rubbing alcohol, ethyl alcohol, Aqua Dots, or anything else sufficient enough to help ease the pain of having your whole family in your house. I guess spices would work too, like Salvia, or oregeno. Once in the oven, little arrows surround the turkey and turn it beige… this has something to do with the liquid in the cylinder boiling and releasing flavored steam.

This is essentially a beefier version of the hick tested, Martha approved, Beer Butt Chicken.

p.s. - catch my enthusiasm for Thanksgiving?

• Buy it - Camp Chef
  
• Via - The hardware Aisle

Social Networking will get you Every Time

The email you send to your boss because you want to go to that awesome party that your stupid job would otherwise obstruct your attendance of:

The picture you upload to Facebook, because Facebook rules your life and demands that you do so:

Then, because Facebook also rules the life of your coworkers, someone notices it and figures out that you really didn’t have a family emergency. He shows your boss, who chuckles and sends you this reply, with condemning photo attached, and bcc’d to the entire office:

Your coworker then, realizes that this is a blogging goldmine, sends this to valleywag, which results in the entire blogosphere reposting it and making you an example of how social networking destroys your privacy and the once foolproof “family emergency email.”

• Via - Joe.My.God.
• From - Valleywag

Weekend over

Saturday is here, thats the end of my work week.  I’ve dealt with enough drama, politics, little kids, candy, alcohol, and homo’s to last me the rest of the year. But I can’t escape it, that’s my life and I’m sticking to it.

A quick recap of this week..

• My OPTS proposal is locked down in limbo land.  A new law change, and a new Gov’ner nixed the OPTS  funding model, which went into effect a few months after the last of the OPTS projects were submitted. Those not already verified and approved have no available forward action for now.  This means I need to find $50k+ elsewhere for my lab. This also means that over a year of work is now worthless.
• I’ve been smoke free since last Wednesday. Thats 10 whole days. I’m doing the gum (its outright expensive, though in the long run I’m saving money); tastes like I’m chewing on  a camel. I feel ok, but I caught Strep from work so I can’t really enjoy my new lungs.
• Michael and I are in the early stage of contemplating a place to live together. A year came and passed with no fanfare, and little change. I’ve stopped defending why I’m still with him. He’s a good guy, I love him, and he is a stable form of chaos that I need right now.
• Marcella’s is getting more and more annoying and overrun with rumors and drama.  No one’s bought the club, and we aren’t closing. Where the hell would all the bitter queens and uppity homo’s go to strut their false sense of security if we closed? Marcella’s is a mainstay, bullshit and all.

Halloween’s Over for the grownups

Taken 29 Oct ‘07, 8.36pm EDT PST.

i don’t know if I’ll ever be able to experience that pure juvenile experience of dressing up and knocking up on folks’ doors, mischievously chanting “trick or treat” and holding my bag for impending cavity catalysts.

A good southern baptist boy as a kid we had “harvest festivals,” which were a mimic trap for conservative families to escape their children from a national joy. Sure, i bobbed for apples, came home with a sack of sweets, and got to dress up, but I was either David from the Bible, or some impotent pop culture figure sanitized for religious consumption.

Now that I’m grown, Halloween is the earliest Saturday and we still dress up, not to scare but to impress our friends and a panel of bar owners. A trick means we got laid, and a treat is we woke up in our own beds.

Sunday we shower and wash the glitter out of our hair, read the text messages from those whose fates weren’t so fortunate as ours ( a friend of mine SMS SOS’d after finding himself cracked out and lost on Main street after leaving his friend’s place where he vomited on 65% of the dwelling), and relate the evenings triumph’s and dissapointments.

We pass the rest of the days till the the real Halloween comes and goes, tired and jaded from our preemptive strike into debauchery that we scoff at others for enjoying a history unaffected by our previous actions.

i guess I really am kinda jaded. I just want some wax teeth and a few crushed butterfingers bars, is that too much to ask?

Have an extra 5 hours?

If so.. send it my way. I haven’t had much time to do much and this blog got the smackaroo.

Thing is I’ve got about 5 massive projects under my hand and three jobs to juggle. When I get a second, I’m normaly too stressed to blog and I’m off doing something else.

However.. you do get updates from me regularly… you just may not know it. On this sidebar to the left of my blog is my miniblog.. ala twitter. I update at least twice a day as to what i’m up to.

so check that out cause its recent and mebbe sign up for a twitter account yourself!

 buffawhat@twitter