The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar

You know you're screwed when...

The Main-Stream Media Keeps Asking You "Gotcha Questions" Like, "Diet Coke, or the other stuff?"

You've stumbled onto another issue of The Crapolla, a journal written for software professionals. No not the managers; I mean the people who do the work.

This Crapolla is sponsored by...

In This Issue...

Lying to children about driving in 3D!

Take A Letter

Fifi in the cube farm writes...

Dear Fek'Lar,

My manager asked me to write an executive summary to be attached to an article I will publish in a journal. What is an executive summary?

Sincerely,

Fifi

Dear Fifi,

First, congratulations on getting published. Peer-reviewed stuff is a full-contact sport.

An executive summary is taking what a normal human could understand and dumbing it down so your executive might get a hint of what the article is about without all the bother of reading the article, or truly understanding it. I suggest you create a derivative of something laying around the house. Did your mom buy you an Ikea Billy Bookcase when you went to college? Still got the instructions? Good. Simple aren't they? Dumb them down. Now a chimp could build the bookcase, couldn't it? Ok, that's the first draft, dumb it down some more.

Since the executive isn't going to bother reading your article, why bother making the executive summary actually about it? You'll just bore them. But if you use the Billy Bookcase instructions, they won't get all confused with things like dates or facts, and you'll be teaching executives a very valuable skill, how to screw. (You know, that's how you assemble a bookcase, right?)

Good Luck!

Fek

P.S. If there's a colophon, mention me.

Lies We Tell Children

Not being a parent, I am infinitely unqualified to give parenting advice. However, that's never stopped me on any other subject, so here goes!

I'm writing this in the middle of December. Most people in America are involved in the annual buying too much crap to celebrate the birth of a poor man ritual. Children are lied to by their parents, and anyone else who thinks they'll be murdered if they don't go along with the lie. Of course, I'm talking about the Santa lie.

Most of us are eventually told who Santa really is. (If you haven't been told, he's that guy who stands at the end of the off-ramp with the small cardboard sign. If you give him money, you go on the "good" list.) When we learn the terrible truth, we just accept that we've been lied to for years. I think we're ok with the lie because we're still getting the stuff. In America, more is better!

We're also lied to about the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. (The Easter Bunny is a diabetic rabbit bent on world domination by rotting your teeth out. The Tooth Fairy is a gay dentist who makes charm bracelets out of human teeth. Rumor is he was in the SS during World War II (the sequel)). Again, we kiddies just go with it, even though the chocolate and money stop showing up.

These are innocent lies. No one gets hurt. In fact, these lies are fun for all involved. (Unless you're one of those kids who yanked out all of your teeth to get enough money to buy your first bong.) There are far worse lies we tell children. They tend to have a much longer and detrimental effect.

The worst lie we tell children is that the human body is disgusting and must be covered up at all times. Any kid raised Christian eventually runs into a conflict. If God made man in his own likeness and image, does that mean God is disgusting and must be covered up at all times? Ask this in catechism, and Sister Hurts-a-lot will hit you so hard, you'll need a knuckle transplant.

One (er... two) of the disgusting bits no one is supposed to ever see are female breasts. It's OK to see male breasts, even if the man is fat and could use a set of B cups. For some reason, which I can't figure out, no one is supposed to see where their first meals came from. That's supposed to be a mystery. Maybe Mom and Dad found a bunch of fresh bottles of baby formula in the cabbage patch right next to you during harvest time.

The funny thing is, once you're 18, you can solve the mystery of the first meals by going to a strip club, or playing poker with different rules. Once you're 18, it's your right to know the truth. Why not just tell the kiddies the truth from the beginning? Do we really think that kids knowing what the fun bags are really for is going to hurt them?

Swearing is an interesting issue. If you are not yet 18, and you swear in school, they expel you. But as soon as you're 18, swearing becomes protected speech. But that's nothing compared to the lie that we have to censor anything broadcast because some kid might hear a word he's heard Dad say. In fact, he's already heard these words uttered on the playground. LowComDom sells a shirt that says...

You should buy one of these. People will envy you. But I digress... I didn't learn to swear from TV and movies. I learned these words at school.

Maybe we should stop lying to the kiddies. Maybe they're grow up not being afraid of the truth. Maybe they would learn the difference between the truth and a lie. Wouldn't that be useful when the politicians roll into town?

Inventions I'm Looking Forward To Part 63 - The Automated Auto

When it comes to tech, the future is always bright. When you consider how much change happens in a 10 year period, about the time I'm getting ready to retire, things are going to be really interesting.

It's possible I have bought my last car that runs 100% on gasoline. By the time the latest FekMobile is worn out, it might be impossible to buy a pure gasoline car. I'm all for this as long as future cars don't drop their quality.

It's also possible auto-pilot will be a standard feature. As technology stands now, Google has invented the self-driving car. The major hurdle for an auto-pilot feature are laws, not technology. (I hear Nevada has just passed legislation to allow auto-pilot cars for experimental purposes.) A lot of people are not so keen on the idea of the car driving itself. I say non-sense. I have more faith in the cars driving than a lot of the people I see on the freeway.

Truth is, there are days I don't want to drive. I would love to get in the car and say, "Home, Sally." and have her deal with the Priuses in the fast lane. Computers are good for dull, boring jobs. That's my commute many days. But on the weekend, I'd go fully manual for pleasure driving.

If you commute on auto-pilot, you should get a break on insurance. There should be more than two modes of automation (on and off). You could tell your car that you want to drive, but it is to not allow you to break the speed limit. That's shouldn't be too hard. Mrs. Fek'Lar's GPS has extremely accurate maps. We once drove through a one-road town in the sticks. As we passed a speed limit sign, the speed limit on the GPS instantly updated. Integration with GPS will have a lot of benefits. So I should be able to get on Highway 17 on a Saturday and floor it all the way to Santa Cruz without driving too fast.

If you've had a DUI, you might have a restriction put on your license that requires a fully automated car. That's better than losing your driving privileges, and protects the rest of us from people who have shown poor judgment in the past. There's also benefits for new drivers. Cars could start close to fully automatic, and the car could ease you into manual driving by monitoring your progress as a driver. In other words, the car could be an extension of driver's ed.

Finally, there's that time, when you need to bite the bullet and take the car keys from your elderly parents. Instead, your parents could go back to automatic driving to compensate for the loss of ability some older drivers encounter.

Bring on the automatic auto. I see better milage, fewer accidents, and less loss of life ahead. I'm for it.

Titanic 3D - The George Lucas Cut

James Cameron recently re-released Titanic in time for the 100th anniversary of the old girl's sinking. This time, he extruded the film into 3D. I was thinking, what if James was too busy to supervise the 3D conversion process, so he hired his friend George Lucas to do it? How would Titanic 3D look?

First, let's be honest, the ship shoots first. The iceberg was an innocent victim. The ship stays afloat, the iceberg sinks. (Ice can sink, I saw it in the G.I. Joe movie.)

Kate Winslet's boyfriend (the evil douche) is really a misunderstood boy who likes to play with steam engines, and particle beam weapons.

Any who's that standing on the bow of the ship? Heres a clue. The final line of dialog in the film is, "Meesa king of the world!!!"

Come on, Jim! Don't scare me like that!

This Issue's Headline submission to the National Daily World Enquiring Globe.

Consumers Are Feeling Gas Pain

Taco Bell is Open Late!

Let's play, "Who said this?"

Heard in the halls of various software companies.

"I'm a bottom-sucking Irishman, and proud of it!"

"You know, you're so lovely, yet dumb as a post."

"Remember, dead men never pay the check."

"I'm having a sexual problem. I'm referring to everything as a stick."

"That's called an FTS. Feature That Sucks."

Excuse Me

Hey! Careful with that knife!

Fek'Lar
They pay me to think. These are my thoughts. Do you think they are getting their money's worth?

Remember: The Crapolla contains my personal opinions. That's right they're mine, so get your own! And you kids get off my lawn!

Although written with the software professional in mind, my mind tends to wander all over the place, and I sometimes write about politics, mass stoopidity, dumb things I saw, and whatever else comes to mind.

From time to time, I use salty language, thus The Crapolla is not intended for children, or certain people from the Christian Right.

feed available from http://www.lowcomdom.com/crapolla/index.xml

EOJ

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