Citizens For Better Spam Copy

Why do pop-up ads on websites start off "THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!!  YOU ARE A WINNER!!  CLICK HERE FOR...!"

I thought a joke was supposed to be something like:
Q:  How many hipsters does it take to change a lightbulb?
A:  It's a really obscure number, you probably haven't heard of it.

Why don't the pop-up ads start off "THIS IS NOT A SCAM!!!"???   Why don't they?

Who's afraid of a joke?  Nobody.  People are wary of scams, not jokes.

I think there should be some stimulus money spent on educating those writing spam and pop-up ad copy, so as to annoy the rest of us less.  :-)

people

even though sometimes i miss people, mostly i'm glad to be alone.  people can be mean.  i like being by myself; i almost always know what to expect from myself.  i rock.  and i hope that you rock too.

fear

sometimes i have strong feelings of déjà vu, and they scare me a little.  some of the fear is that i'm about to have a seizure—it's one of the signs i've come to recognize as preceding neural difficulties in my own peculiar brain.  but a scarier (in a way) possibility is that my life is indeed a closed loop, and that i'm simply playing out a portion of it again.

i just hung up my bicycle from a hook i'd just screwed into an exposed beam in my kitchen, and i had a feeling of déjà vu.  now i know that i haven't ever hung up my bicycle in this apartment before; i used to hang it up in the basement of the townhouse i lived in before, but it was a completely different-feeling scenario.

am i about to have a seizure?  probably not.  is my life a closed loop?  i sure hope not.  maybe i'm just jumpy from watching Ally McBeal again and missing the way my life felt in the late '90s.  who knows.

maybe i'm beginning to move on, and it has me a little unsettled.

Ender's QOTD 2011-02-02 -- yay, Ender!

e sort fait les parents, la choix fait les amis.
{ Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends }
{ Chance makes our parents, but choice makes our friends }
-- Jacques Delille, in Malheur at Piti (1803), Canto I

God gave us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends.
-- Ethel Watts Mumford

A good friend is my nearest relation.
-- Thomas Fuller

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
-- Euripides

Friends are relatives you make for yourself.
-- Eustache Deschamps

[from Ender's QOTD 2011-01-29:]

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.
-- Elisabeth Foley
... (also attr. Katherine Mansfield)

---

[and true friends are so hard to come by.  wish i had some near me now.]