My sister had a minor alien removed from her toe today so I decided to pop off work early and take tomorrow off to chill with her (harass her in her weakened state). We were watching tv and chilling when I started to get very upset. I haven’t really watched tv for about 4 years now, I don’t have cable and I don’t have any sort of tv signal. TV just takes up too much time. Anyway, we’re watching tv and the ads are just really upsetting.
Now, I imagine that ads haven’t changed much since I stopped watching tv so I think it’s a mattered of losing that thick cultural scab I must have had. I just could not believe how many products were being pushed to replace perfectly good and functional products. A regular mop and bucket has served our kitchen floors fine for generations (well, not my kitchen floor, I don’t really mop, but that’s another story) but now you MUST purchase a special floor cleaning system with disposable pads and special cartridges filled with cleaning solution that I imagine are also disposable. So now you have to replace the mop head every time you mop and you have to keep buying special cartridges of stuff.
Then there were the individually wrapped prunes. INDIVIDUALLY. WRAPPED. PRUNES. They were doing one of those fakey bits where they were offering up these prunes and people were commenting on how amazingly nice it was that the prunes weren’t stuck together. Of all the problems the human species has faced, I am so glad they decided to solve the problem of prunes sticking together! I can sleep better knowing that moist, delicious prunes are staying seperated AND we’ve finally (FINALLY) found a use for the plastics industry, because god knows they were having some trouble convincing us we needed to use plastic for something.
And of course I need a new car, special moon soap, 4 to 6 different anti-aging creams and softer toilet paper. It’s amazing how different things look when you walk away and then come back.

Last night, after much running and looking and eating of egg salad sandwiches we saw Autistic License at the Illusion Theatre. The was great, very honest, very sad and very funny. I’d recommend it, but it’s done. Sorry.
Anyway, that’s not why I’m here to talk to you today. I’m here to talk to you about a different, more pressing issue.
Last night as we were walking from the theatre to the car we happened by the new and oddly named B.A.N.K. restaurant. I probably would not have given it another thought but they had a tent sign out front. On this sign they were advertising “Handcrafted Cocktails”. What does that mean exactly? Could somebody define “handcrafted” as it might apply to cocktails? and as such, how is this different than other places that make and serve cocktails?
Of course the word “handcrafted” brings to mind a long trained and deeply serious artisan, one who uses a cocktail shaker “handcrafted” by the reclusive cocktail monks of south jersey. A man so well trained in the art of cocktail making that he might tell you the difference between a cosmo and an old fashioned or something like that.
Somehow, I suspect that in this usage, “handcrafted” might be a very efficient way to say “we have a 3 page menu of shitty, overpriced ‘martinis’ with vaguely dirty names chock full of cheap flavored schnapps.” Yes, I can see the bar filling up with a crowd of suburban women out on the town for a bachelorette party! They got kicked out of the 90’s for being too obnoxious during the drag show and went to B.A.N.K. to get wasted on “Royal Mounties”*, “hula hoops”** and “linebackers”***.
* vodka, cranberry, maple syrup
** vodka, cointreau, slice of pineapple
*** vodka, lemonade, rohypnol

once again I think I fixed the regular vs spam comment issues.
Many regular, real, non-spam comments were getting junked because I put the raised the Junk Score Threshold too high. Amusingly, all my real comments were junked and still quite a lot of spam was getting published.
Today I installed the Comment Challenge plugin. It is similar to most CAPTCHA programs but instead of the swirly letters on loopy backgrounds, I set up a challenge/response scenario.
Currently, I am just asking you to type a specific word before you post your comment. if you type it correctly, your comment gets posted. If you type it incorrectly or do not type it at all (as in the case of the automatic spam) you get an error. The comment does not even get to the system unless the word is typed correctly.
I went with this instead of the crazy swirly word options because I’m one of those people who has a hell of a time deciphering those. Half the time I type stuff in incorrectly because I can’t tell if that’s a “7” or an “R” or if it is case-sensitive or what. since I figure I’m not all that terribly unique, others probably have that problem as well.
I had previously tried to use TypeKey authentication but none of you got a TypeKey account and that meant that I had to approve every damned comment anyway making more work. This way you are self-authenticating.
So, please test it out, see if it works.
Also, in updating the site with this I accidentally reverted to the default templates. Damn. I went to go see if the plugin was working and damned if you know it, my site was all grey and blue. Not awesome.
Well, my dinghos, it’s the weekend. There’ll be some dog park fun, perhaps some kite flying and maybe magic.