Virtual Proctology 101 - The Facebook Enema

Dear Numnuts,

Over the past week I have had several kind readers contact me and ask “Why the Semi-Qualified Proctologist?” They then go on to say that I owe them money; I should do something creative with my time, and for all of our sake increase your medication.

So why do I consider myself a Semi-Qualified Proctologist?

Well, when you have dealt with as many arseholes over the past 25 years as I have, you would have to be at least Semi-Qualified. My friends and relatives with medical backgrounds will be divided to whether this is a serious issue that needs to be reported to a government authority of some sort, or whether he is just being “like that” again and what good would a government agency do anyway (for crap sake we work for one, we should know)….and so on.

In order to give some credibility to my claim let me present the following essay;

The Facebook Enema – Keeping Your Friends Close, And Your Enemas Closer

There are times when we peruse through the pages of a social network site like Facebook and wonder out loud “What the hell is wrong with these people?” Why do I need to know that they feel like a sandwich? Since when is it important to know why I am at the shopping centre, how many pairs of socks I just bought, and why I now regret going to the shopping centre in the first place because I didn’t really need the socks at all and now I can’t afford to buy the marshmallows I have just seen in another aisle and cannot possibly go another minute without telling everyone I know how much I need them….Enough!

A purging of the source of this material is sometimes in order, or what I call The Facebook Enema. Take a moderate dose of reality and think “How many of these people would I be happy to stand next to as they said these things” and “How many of these people would I be tempted to fake a major need for toilet, just to get away from when they drone on about these things”.

Those that fall into the second category may need to be removed, so boldly remove them from the virtual friends you subscribe to. This is the only enema known to be successful by blocking.

I felt that I needed to know more about the psychology of making virtual friendships with people who annoy you in real life, but suddenly become necessary in the on-line community. I consulted an expert in this field, Frank No Pants, and with a moderate size glass of Wild turkey at the ready; I have learned the following.

The need to engage with vast numbers of people that you barely know via the internet is a primitive one, and directly related to the obsession we have had with the shiny objects in the night sky. This combination of Astrology and Astronomy is called Astrologonomy, or Star-gawking. Although this may sound like nonsense, it encompasses why we desire to look at the stars, be with the stars, take candid photos of them on their holidays and sell them to magazines, and all the time wonder about how much time we spend obsessing over them. This is the Time/Space continuum.

The planets are largely to blame for the way Virtual friends behave on Facebook. Put simply, Bars are from Mars, Jupiter is a casino on the Gold Coast, and Saturn provides high quality bed linen for major retail outlets so therefore most status updates on Facebook come from Uranus.

Scientists from The Clusterfuche Institute in North Eastern Victoria are currently working on the origin of the self-actualization derived from posting such pointless updates, and it’s correlation to the orbit of the 13^th planet Clymaxo Minor. After several years of telling themselves that they knew what they were doing with the heavenly bodies, these scientists stumbled onto this one afternoon by mistake during a game of Spin the Test Tube.

 The discovery of Clymaxo Minor gave them an enormous feeling of self importance for several minutes before the euphoria passed and they all felt like taking a nap. The same feeling of self importance is obtained when you tell all of your virtual friends that your eye hurt when you stuck your finger into it, and they “like“ it. The person now feels good about regularly doing boring things, which leads to self actualization. Therefore they don’t have to get a real life.

So once again Frank No Pants has been able to take what is essentially one of the more difficult questions facing today’s generation, and simplify it. I will now post on Facebook how happy I am about learning this, and how I wish I had a Mars Bar right now.

And so, I tell yer fer why.

DB

Wordy Wordy Num Nums – word verification

Dear Numnuts,

A very smart person commented on my toe-dipping into the world of Blog, with the suggestion that we should find out more about the “give way” sign at the bottom of each post – The Word Verification. Obviously my first reaction was ….the word what???

It was only after returning to the site to add a comment to someone else’s work that I noticed this annoying little feature. What is it for? Who put it there? Why is it so? Is there a glass and a half of full cream dairy milk in each 200 gram block? I would have to investigate.

If you type this into a search engine, you will come up with thousands of articles on the subject. When you go to log a comment on any of these, it asks for word verification. And if, like me, you have difficulty deciphering the combination of letters and numbers, you won’t be able to leave that comment, ask that question, or do anything productive for the next six minutes because you have to wipe the spit off the screen for all of the cursing that you have done because of the damn word verification…

So I called another very smart person who knows about such things, and asked for a brief explanation.

This person (let’s call him “Frank No Pants”) explained the concept to me. Unfortunately I couldn’t understand very much of it as I was bored within 25 seconds and starting to think about how much beer was in the fridge. What I can remember roughly translates like this;

Word verification is called CAPTCHA and is designed by people with glasses and Star Wars t-shirts to try to prove that they are smarter than computers. People in X Files t-shirts with poor social skills (called Hackers) have already figured this out so it is pointless.  So if the human user gets the code wrong they cannot progress to say what they wanted to say and this decision is made by a computer which generated the scribble in the first place…and so it goes around. The Star Wars t-shirt people are constantly trying to outsmart the X Files t-shirt people, who probably live in the same filthy unit as each other and in the meantime neither has a real girlfriend. Apparently you don’t need word verification to get to porn on the internet.

Frank No Pants was not helpful really, but he gave me the email of a local guy who writes these things. The correspondence went as follows;

Darcy Barkers - Can you explain why you make these codes?

CAPTCHA Nerd – To mess with your head..

So that only told me that half of these guys were kids that grew up cutting letters out of the newspapers and creating  messages with them, while the others become kidnappers and magazine editors.

Now I have labored long and hard over this word verification issue, and come to the conclusion that it is here to stay so I’m going to have to adapt, evolve, and learn how to read them. Thankfully for you, dear Numnuts, I have trained myself to do this, and you can too by following these simple steps;

1.       When confronted with a word verification window, go to the kitchen and get a bottle of Wild Turkey
2.       Drink two double shots and put on some loud music, preferably The Doors
3.       Take a permanent marker and inhale the fumes gently up the left nostril, while carefully pouring another Wild Turkey with your right hand
4.       Toss down the third shot and try to put the lid on the marker with one hand. This will give the Wild Turkey enough time to work
5.       After you drop the marker on the floor the second time, slowly haul yourself up to the level of the desk and lay your head on said desk approximately 45 cm from the screen
6.       Stare at the screen for 15 seconds without blinking and the word verification code will start to become clear.

      7.  Type the code in as required. If you get it wrong, return to step 2 

Note: If you start seeing little purple goblins dancing around the edge of the computer screen, you have probably left the lid off the marker too long, or forgotten to blink.

I have found that it is easier to have a friend assist with the typing in of the code as this will stop you developing a serious drinking problem.

So there you have it – word verification explained and solved for all of us.

 I will finish by saying that if half way through reading this little story of mine you paused, typed word verification into the search engine of your web browser, and started trying to find out the background to this test, then get up now and put on a Star Wars T-shirt, eat some cold pizza for breakfast and let some fresh air into your room…you deserve it.

Now it is done, an I tell you fer why….

DB

Before you read any further........

Dearest Numnuts,

Before you read anything I will ever post on this blog, you need to know some basic rules;

• I may say something occasionally that will offend some people
• I may contradict myself in the next paragraph in order to be absurd
• I have this inside voice which, no matter how hard I try will come out occasionally (read regularly)
• I like saying things that offend some people, but in fairness I try to insult everyone equally
• I will deny having written anything in this blog that offends, as I have obviously been hacked
• And finally, where possible, the names and places have been changed to protect the identity of stupid people. Of course, this is a pointless exercise as Stupid people have a way of identifying themselves without my help

Usually this blog would be best described as written by a rambling fool, and probably not the place to go for life coaching. Over time you will discover why I am a semi-qualified proctologist, what darcybarkers are, and why I talk to my dog and cats. There may be points of view on topical subjects, and anything sensible will have SERIOUS ALERT posted in the title.

There may be old stuff some of you have read before, probably not for a while so you have forgotten most of it like I have.

And, of course, you can comment on anything I have put here as I appreciate the time the reader has taken to do this, and I have seen how I can delete comments if I wish.

Finally, I address all Blog postings to Numnuts. Well, Philip Adams used to talk to Gladys on LNL, so my conversations will be addressed to Numnuts. As seen on Alias Smith and Jones, it will be an idiot who knows everything talking to an idiot who knows nothing.

'An' so I tell you for why'

DB