I Got Mooned on Mainstreet

The other day, as I was returning home near 1 am, a group of young people, probably in their early twenties, were standing on the sidewalk across the street as I turned onto the main drag through our sleepy little coastal town. 

 At first glance, I barely even noticed them, as I was tired after 12 hours and looking forward to relaxing at home. However, just as I began approaching them, a number of young men and woman started out onto the street, laughing and looking my way. Then, without further ado, they turned around and mooned me, a total stranger, taking supreme and giddy glee in the rather cheeky act. 

 So, why would I even mention such an insignificant and childish act? After all, I was driving by, and it was all over in less than a moment. 

The reason is that as I drove home, I thought about what might inspire a group of normal young adults to get their jollies lighting up the cool coastal night for strangers with their gleaming little buttocks. 

The answer is, the act was caused by the same mentality that you hear spoken by young people in communities everywhere these days: "There's nothing to do!" 

I've lived in or visited many communities over the years, and have heard the same expression many times - young people and parents complaining that there's nothing to do in their community. 

We build arenas, skateboard bowls, rec centres, swimming pools, hiking trails, theatres and more, but there's "nothing to do" in our communities. What's wrong with this picture? 

It's simple. The mentality today is that rather than creating entertainment, everyone is saying, "Entertain me!" Laziness is rampant, and young people want everything done for them, including their personal amusement. 

I've personally never been bored. There's more to do in any place I've ever lived than there's time to do! In fact, I've found that people who have lived in a community all their lives often don't even know what's in their area. They don't know where the hiking trails are, where the good campsites are, where the hidden fishing holes are, where that road goes, what's at the top of that big rock, what the inside of their library looks like, who's singing at the community theatre this week, and the list goes on and on.

Unless someone is laying it all out for them and organizing their fun, they're completely lost. Gone, today, is the adventurous spirit of youth, unless it's first sparked by alcohol or drugs (as was most likely the case with those youngsters on the street that night.) 

Imagination in many, if not most young people is dead, and they're completely lost if no one is laying their entertainment right in their laps. 

Perhaps we could begin to help by putting some pressure on our governments to quit experimenting with out kids, and go back to teaching the three R's, promoting healthy competition, and actually rewarding kids for accomplishing something and standing out above their peers. 

Parents, too, can challenge their kids to strive for excellence, to create their own fun, and to look for adventure, rather than sitting for hours with a gamebox or TV in front of them. (What a horrible waste of time!) 

 As I said earlier, I've never been bored. (OK - except for a very short time with a mindless job I once had.) The reason is that my parents strongly encouraged me to succeed, to use my imagination, and to create my own entertainment, and to work. 

My siblings, friends and I spent hours acting out great adventures inspired by books that we actually read ourselves! (what a scary thought for modern kids!) As we got older, we explored the area around us, hiked, camped, canoed, fished and swam, even slogging through the snow in the winter time in search of new areas yet undiscovered by our enthusiastic quests. 

We also enjoyed concerts, plays, music fests, flee markets, parades, our local library, and much, much more. When we weren't out creating our entertainment, we (horror of horrors!) had CHORES to do! Yes, we actually cleaned our own rooms, washed dishes, helped clean the house, mowed the grass, washed the car, chopped firewood, worked in the garden, mended or built fences, and whatever else needed doing that we were capable of doing. We simply didn't have time in between to be bored. 

Where is our modern, Western society headed? What will these young people be like when it's their turn to run things? Will we able to even function as a society? 

Hopefully, the answer is yes, and perhaps, even, our young people will see what a mess the thinking of the latter half of the twentieth century has made of our world and do an about face. That is, if they set the gameboy down long enough to take a look around.

Big Brother AOL

AOL is watching you.... They want you to help them in their noble quest to become richer by quietly and joyfully accepting a whack of spam from advertisers they are giving guaranteed delivery to YOUR email box to, all for a very tiny fee.

It has been with much interest that I've been following the debate over AOL et al. My advice to anyone who is worried about AOL and friends charging advertisers for delivery of commercial email to their members is this - if you want to get your email, don't use AOL or anyone with similar policies. 

 For a long time, now, good lead companies have been excluding certain ISPs - especially AOL, as it has been virtually impossible to send commercial messages to AOL customers for a LONG time. 

 AOL has become so bad that children sending birthday greetings to their aunties are having their email bounce, simply because AOL has blacklisted their local ISP or because several innocuous words in the body of their email, like, perhaps, "Hi," have triggered AOL's draconian spam filters. 

This new pay-to-mail system is NOT the death knoll for email marketing - it opens up a HUGE market to those who want to pay a small fee to guarantee delivery of their mail to practically half the market (yes, AOL is that huge). 

 Remember that it has been virtually impossible for several years now to send commercial email to AOL users. Now, for a small fee, it is guaranteed! 

 However, for AOL users, this means that their spam holiday is over. Now, while Aunty may still not receive that cute e-card from her little nephew, Aunty will DEFINITELY receive plenty of junk mail, AKA AOL-approved spam. 

 In my opinion, it's high time people stopped fighting AOL and others like them, and started looking for smaller, freer, more open and user-friendly services. 

 Scampay - the Saga Continues

I have never liked Stormpay, became a member only to make a handful of purchases that were not available any other way at the time, and held my nose every time I used them. 

 During the 12DP debacle, I did a lot of digging into their background and found them to be some of the shadiest characters to ever cloud the sunny shores of cyberspace. How they've been able to survive as long as they have proves that in the online world, at least, crooks and scammers are a lot harder to stop than in the real world. 

 Many have said, "I told you so," regarding 12DP, and rightly so. It was rather obvious from the beginning that they and others like them couldn't possibly legally create the kind of revenue necessary to pay the returns they offered. 

Yet Stormpay was happy to be the payment processor for these ponzi organizations, AND happy to certify them as trustworthy companies through their sister company, NetIBA. 

 Furthermore, they collected even more money by convincing Stormpay members who were involved in paid autosurfs to get certified themselves in order to pay far lower processing fees when they used Stormpay to pay and receive payment from the paid autosurfs. 

 As things heated up with 12DP, Stormpay told its members all manner of tall tales, attempting to paint themselves as the good guys, all the while sitting on a small fortune in collected fees from illegal companies they knowingly supported over the past several years. 

 Now, just when you thought that things might get back to normal with Stormpay as the dust settled and they got back to the business of being a "legitimate" payment processor, they've suddenly locked out even more of their paying customers by making it a requirement to do ALL your Stormpay business through Stormpay auctions. Read their announcement at https://www.stormpay.com/stormpay/handle_gen.php 

 What this means to all the legitimate businesses who have been using Stormpay for recurring subscriptions is that ALL their subscriptions via Stormpay have now been cancelled, leaving them with a greatly reduced or even non-existent cashflow even after following all the rules. 

 It is an absolutely disgusting way to treat hard-working, paying customers and a shame to the business world to think that they are peers in business. I personally hope they fall flat and crawl back under the same rock they crawled out from.