Mister Sloppy's hard drive hygiene hints

Of a recycling eve, I often meet a guy we'll call "Mister Sloppy", due to the perpetual cloud of kitty litter crumbs surrounding him. And because evil geniuses need snappy pseudonyms. And because he refuses to be called the traditional "Doctor Sloppy". Go figure.

Mister Sloppy often carries a computer or two rescued from recycling, because he's wiring together some kind of junkyard supercomputer with which to take over the world. The mounds of grubby beige boxes crammed into his place would confound Michael Dell. I avoid asking exactly what 'ol Slop plans, because the thought of any world run by him horrifies me. He, discretely, eschews details.

But he does tell what he sees on these castoffs when he fires 'em up to wipe off Windows and load his personal homemade Mister Sloppy World Domination Operating System (MS-WDOS). The latest find was exemplary: right on the desktop, two PDFs, each a filled-in loan application form. Birthday, income details, mother's maiden name -- bog-standard identity-theft stuff, really. Not very well hidden in the directories were about a quarter of a sizable hard-drive's worth of pirated MP3s, mostly bad thug rap and Britney's and Christina's (and Bananarama's) sappier stuff. Another quarter-drive was, ummm, educational literature and videos. Or possibly pornography. The rest comprised a truly astounding variety of worms, viruses, trojans, keyloggers, scamware, scumware, pestware and the like. Guess that's what ya get for piratin' dodgy MP3s and porn.

Oh, and a mess of Internet chat logs. Didja know MSN automatically archives a plain-text transcript of every personal text conversation for just any old evil genius to read? Not hard to find, either. The guy who owned this computer apparently had five or seven girlfriends on the hop, judging by the logs. And the photos. He left a startling number of JPEGs of himself, getting slitty-eyed drunk with buddies and appearing to behave somewhat better with young women. I say "appearing" because also in there was a 120-page PDF file disclosing full techniques for boffing one's companion for the evening on the first date, whether she wanted to or not.

Now, Mr. Sloppy has no interest in following any of this up for purposes of penny-ante evil. He has, ummm, far bigger fish to fry.

But I just have to give an advisory shout out to this guy (whom we'll call Pete): PETE! Although the personal information you left hangin' out in the digital wind ironically suggests that you work in a supervisory capacity in a security-related field, I do believe you're insecure (in many senses of the phrase). Don't you know that there's both information and all sorts of free program downloads on that same Internet you so enthusiastically trolled for movies of [redacted] sex and incredibly bad music? That, like, wipe files and hard drives in such a way that interested (or disinterested) snoopers can't read them? Mister Sloppy tells me they're easily available at download sites like this. And this.

Now, certain schools think industrial shredders, shotguns or explosives are the only certain ways to ensure that personal data on hard drives are erased beyond redemption. But I disapprove of firearms, and have better uses for explosives. So, Pete. Next time ya kick a computer to the curb, do yourself a favour, search out one more tiny little download from Bit Torrent, and cover your ass in all senses of the phrase. Because right now, Mr. Sloppy and I know way more about you than is good for any of us. And while he has deleted it to get on with his own thing - you don't know that, do you...?

Burlesque, yes. Tawdry, no.

Probably more than he can chew: Coyote's photo (yes, he has opposable paw digits) of Spartacat was taken, appropriately enough, at a Phoenix Coyotes game

Photo: Coyote

Buy Me

I took a picture of this ad last August because something about it weirded me out.

Also, notice how:

1. She is not that much taller than he is, but her waist is much higher than his.
2. Her belly button is showing.
3. She looks much younger than him.
4. Her forearm looks like it belongs to a much older woman.
5. Skip to number 6 (this space is reserved for Aggie's "there is no 5th thing").
   
6. She is looking right past him.
7. He is looking right past her.
8. Her eyebrows are plucked in the 70s style.
   
9. He has a visible tan line on his wrist.

If you want to know the subliminal message that I got from this ad that disturbed me, check the labels for this post.

Google Poem – Extreme Love

* I loved him so much that I just never told him.

* I loved her so much that I didn't feel like I could lie to her about anything

* I loved her so much.. that I did lie

* I loved her so much that I started to lay my cards about the coming days.

* I loved him so much that I didn't want to face the truth.

* I loved him so much that I’d rather be forgotten by him than cause him a moment’s pain in the remembering

* I loved him so much that I just learned to overlook things like forgotten anniversaries or Valentine's Day.

* I loved him so much that I let him go fulfill his dreams.

* I loved him so much that my heart fell out

* I loved him so much that I even forgave him that weird habit he had of describing the slightly sagging flesh of women's upper arms and knees...

* I loved him so much that I felt like I was killing off the part of me that loved being a radical feminist dyke.

* I loved her so much that I loved her to death, because two weeks later she got killed in a car accident...

* I loved her so much that I would always go with her if I could. I hate to shop and she knew that.

* I loved him so much that I asked the vet to put me down as well when he was ill and full of suffering ...

* I loved him so much that I gave up my job and moved.

* I loved her so much that I bought a shirt.

* I loved him so much that I held on even when he proved he wasn’t the guy I thought he was.

* I loved her so much that I even accepted her after two breakups

* I loved him so much that I didn't really care if a sexual relationship ever developed.

* I loved her so much that she was never sold, and never ended up on the supper table.

* I loved him so much that it terrified me.

* I loved her so much that I did not stop to think.

* Oh, I loved him so much that his tail and nose fell off. I hope to recreate that love for my daughter one day.

* I loved her so much that I’m even called “t*nga”.

* My wife and I loved him so much, that he went on our honeymoon with us.

* I loved him so much, that I wanted to fix him.

[source]

Not just another tawdry burlesque...

What a richness of embarrassments! This is a day when I could be blogging about how frigid Ottawatamies finally experienced the Big O - with Beaver Tails instead of ESI BeaverBalls™, no less - or the utterly, indefensibly brain dead and lame reasoning (Paragraph seven is the howler) offered up by the Ottawa Transit Committee, for disallowing some gently quizzical atheist bus ads. Which, whether you personally hold with atheists' views or not, they should be reasonably be able to do. Even the Christians say so. And which, if you take an already insane argument to its even more illogically insane extreme, could be grounds for charging every proselytizer for every religion on the planet, past and present, with hate speech crimes. But I, unusually, digress.

We Irregulars know where our valuable core constituency lies. And so I just want to make very, very clear that this is not a kitty blog post. Oh, no. It isn't. Uh uh.

This is partly because the Independent Observer has quite rightly voiced severe doubts about that particular slippery slope to hell, and partly because we, like our current PM, hold exceedingly high - in fact inviolate - principles. We would never stoop to some kind of sleazy compromise, in a cheap and transparent attempt to jack up our public approval numbers. Oh, wait...

Still! Nope, this photograph is not of a kitty. No way. It is in fact a museum-quality image of an exceedingly rare, devastatingly cutesy, and therefore totally hit-grabbing and web-sticky specimen of a Bhutanese Pander Bear. There. I said it. I'm not ashamed.

Thank you for dropping by to see it. Come back often. Bring all your friends. Before I eat it.