Fire and Knowledge

Are you not very good at billing? Consider yourself a failure? Send your resume to GoDaddy’s “Failed Billing Team”!

Here’s an email I got yesterday:

Dear Joshua Sowin,

A member of our Failed Billing Team recently called to alert you to a problem….[blah blah blah]

Sincerely,

GoDaddy.com, Inc.
Failed Billing Team

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.

—Oscar Wilde

As Jeremy said, “If you love Jesus and America you will forward this to everyone in your address book.” Also, Bill Gates will give $500 to a starving child for every person you send it to.

From: [Redacted]
To: [Redacted]
Subject: WHO IS BARACK OBAMA?

There are many things people do not know about BARACK OBAMA. It is every American’s duty to read this message and pass it along to all of their friends and loved ones.

Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times. Even in the shower.

Barack Obama says the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE every time he sees an American flag. He also ends every sentence by saying, “WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.” Click here for video of Obama quietly mouthing the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE in his sleep.

A tape exists of Michelle Obama saying the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE at a conference on PATRIOTISM.

Every weekend, Barack and Michelle take their daughters HUNTING.

Barack Obama is a PATRIOTIC AMERICAN. He has one HAND over his HEART at all times. He occasionally switches when one arm gets tired, which is almost never because he is STRONG.

Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his stomach. It’s upside-down, so he can read it while doing sit-ups.

There’s only one artist on Barack Obama’s iPod: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.

Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.

Barack Obama goes to church every morning. He goes to church every afternoon. He goes to church every evening. He is IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW.

Barack Obama’s new airplane includes a conference room, a kitchen, and a MEGACHURCH.

Barack Obama’s skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.

Barack Obama buys AMERICAN STUFF. He owns a FORD, a BASEBALL TEAM, and a COMPUTER HE BUILT HIMSELF FROM AMERICAN PARTS. He travels mostly by FORKLIFT.

Barack Obama says that Americans cling to GUNS and RELIGION because they are AWESOME.

Next time you need to ask for a donation, consider modeling your request on this awful piece of work:

Seeing that nobody donates nothing (logical and normal). Lately I consider that I cannot be eaten the keyboard to live, so I have begun to make a Web of contacts, which she is very generic and that each one finds something that fills in its day to day, friendship, love, a site of char them, cotilleo, marujeo, not, that is not centered in the love like the majority, but that is generic. Of there, I hope to be removing something from money that cheers a little to me and perhaps it causes that I follow with projects of free software. Asi that I leave the page here that is, hoping that if sees in lack something, any thing that could be improved, that suggests it.

MonoCalendar is free software. Your you do not have to pay nothing to use MonoCalendar and you did not find spyware, adware or some other publicity in MonoCalendar. Like in any type of project, to make MonoCalendar it has been long dedicated time, and still more, pays a dominion, a servant, Internet, light and any thing that can arise. For that reason, it is thanked for to all that that can help very with a donation by peque&ntiled;a that is, please, you do a small donation so that projects as this they can exist. Thanks.

Now doesn’t that build confidence and motivate you to donate? I’m sure you can’t wait to help offset the costs of dominion and servitude.

I’m not much for wearing t-shirts with messages anymore, but I did get a kick out of this shirt:

An unfortunately funny quote from eight years ago about Bush’s plan for reducing oil prices:

Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said today that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude.

“I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply,” Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. “Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot.”

(via Gruber)

Seth Stevenson writes a humorous letter to a young procrastinator from a veteran slacker. Excerpt:

The root cause of my procrastination, in technical terms, is this: I’m lazy. Extremely lazy.

Don’t judge, pal—you’re lazy, too. It’s why you procrastinate. When there’s a difficult, disagreeable, or tedious chore that needs to get done, guess what? You don’t want to do it. So you don’t. Until you have to.

It’s just that simple, my slothful friend. And guess what else? The trick to overcoming procrastination is even simpler. Ready? Here it is:

Get off your fat badonk and stop procrastinating. Right now. No, not after the Gilmore Girls rerun ends. Now now.

Will you do this? No. You will not. You will dabble at the crossword for a while. Later, you might get a yogurt. Eventually, you’ll start reading pointless crap on the Internet. You see, you’re doing it as we speak! Because: You are lazy.

Understand that this will never, ever change. You will always be lazy, and you will always procrastinate.

Humor… is urgent work. It’s an attempt to say important things in a special way that regular writers aren’t getting said in a regular way—or if they are, it’s so regular that nobody is reading it.

—William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 209.