More Than Simple Fans

After going to my first OSU football game the other day, I've come to the conclusion that absolutely nobody takes football as seriously as Ohioans do. What's seen on TV is comparatively little of the stunningly huge crowd that attends the games. Two hundred thousand people, easily, were tailgating outside (and FYI, they make the best food in the world), and flooding into the stadium. The stadium itself seats roughly 150,000; there were no empty seats. Amid the screams of the thousands of fans and the band running through the stands and playing their fight songs, it's pretty clear that when it comes to football, Ohio deserves it's place as the most dedicated fanbase in the country. Just to prove a point, I loathe football with a passion; but the energy of everyone there, along with the food and the awesome halftime show, made it a somewhat unforgettable experience. It was great.

Update

Time for the latest news in my scambaiting. This is what I've accomplished so far:

• Convinced a paraplegic in Bahrain I'll pay him $9,000 for a surgery.
• Gotten three photos of a girl from Senegal who looks suspiciously like Martha Jones from Doctor Who.
• Agreed to give a Nigerian orphanage $25,000 to feed the starving children.
• Promised an investor from the Ivory Coast I would help him invest on buying a London property.
• Promised to help an American soldier in Afghanistan I'd help him smuggle a case of money out of the country in exchange for a share of what's inside.
• Told a Nigerian man I'd help him sign for his family fortune which his brothers are trying to take from him.

If any of these stories are true, I'll be sure to save you all a seat in Hell.

Back Again!

Good news! I seem to have acquired a relatively consistent and easy to obtain Internet connection, meaning I now actually have the time to post semi-regularly on here, seeing as how I'll be using my own PC from here on out.

As a celebratory measure, I've decided to share my latest undertaking to the minute percentage of the world that ever happens to view this blog. For those of you who have ever heard of 419Eater, you don't need to read this. For those of you who haven't, let me explain. 419Eater is a community of tech-savvy people who spend their time and resources in an attempt to waste the time and resources of others; "others" being online fraud artists. All those emails that fill your spam inbox with promises of wealth of fame for a small fee are a gold mine for people like us (we're appropriately called scambaiters). By leading scammers on and getting them to perform complicated steps and a virtually infinite number of favors for an American payoff, not only do we get to revel in our creativity and joy, but we also distract them from targeting otherwise unsuspecting web-surfers. It's good fun for a good cause.

"That smile speaks volumes..."

Back to the point, I recently signed up with 419Eater and I'm already working on four separate fraud artists. I will certainly keep you updated on anything I happen to receive that results in my tear ducts shriveling from so much laughter.

Lack of Dedication

Clearly I'm not as good at sticking to what I say as I should be. This blog has very nearly come close to suffering a slow and painful death in the graveyard that we all know as the world wide web, like countless other blogs and websites. Something about the Internet is unique; it's a great place to quickly post your ideas and get them out to the masses, but it soon becomes such a mundane task that it's not worth doing and we all forget about it. The quality of being able to post something in a minute or less actually seems to work to our disadvantage. There isn't really a point to getting on the Internet solely to put a quick post, and so I'm forced to do so only when I'm online for something else, which isn't all that often.

That being said, I refuse to promise weekly posts--or even monthly. But I will promise to come and write you all a lovely and compelling piece on whatever is going on in the world whenever i happen to be online and feel like doing so. Good day to you.

A Lovely Letter

Dear Nouri al-maliki,
The best way to make yourself not seem like an autocratic leader is to not crack down and silence the media when you don't like them calling you authoritarian.

Love,
Braden

I know I'm very late on that. Shut up.

Jumping On the Indian bandwagon

Seems Obama finally has the sense to acknowledge India as a world superpower. He invited Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the White House Tuesday. My favorite part was this quote from Singh:

"India and America are separated by distance, but bound together by the values of democracy, humanism, rule of law and respect of fundamental human freedoms."

Can I just say, I love how world leaders always kid themselves. This meetng was supposed to be used to discuss trade, counterterrorism (in reference to the Mumbai attacks), the long-delayed India-US nuclear agreement and technology. Yes. The Indian PM did just visit, and they are talking about all of those, but will they honestly make any progress with any of it? Probably not. This is all just to satisfy the people. The two leaders are discussing current issues, so something is going to be done about them, right? WRONG.

A Victim of the Corporation

I know I haven't exactly kept to that one post per week idea, but I've been busy...

Walking through Kohl's earlier, I realized something. Looking around, I saw nothing but bright, flashy colors and big, attention-grabbing letters. I remember being a child, and falling victim to the cool little animations and pictures plastered on everything down the toy aisle, and being subjected to the idea that having one of them would make me just as awesome as whoever was in the picture on the box. Looking back on that, a thought came to me.

Advertising sucks.

I know I'm not the only one who was fooled by fake images and the false messages they convey. Everyone was. And because if that, we've wasted more money, more time, and more resources than we care to remember. So maybe it's time to cut back on it, you know? Force advertisers to send a more realistic message with more creative means. It's doable. Plenty of companies have done it. Why not every one of them?

And Now They See It!

What am I talking about? Why, the new report from the European Union that states Georgia provoked Russia in the 2008 South Ossetian conflict, of course!

Not a lot of people took the time to do any research during the mini-war to find out exactly what happened. I did, and I've been trying to tell people this for months. Basically, Russia was supplying small guerrilla groups and rebels in the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which declared independence from Georgia a while back. Mikhail Saakashvili, the President of Georgia, didn't like this, so he invaded the capital of Tskhinvali, killing 1400 civilians. Russia called an emergency session of the UN after the attack, which was denied. Once word of the invasion reached the major news outlets, all hell broke loose. mainstream media placed all the blame on Russia, saying that it was in fact the Russian army who was invading Georgia and trying to retake the lost territory. However, reprts from eyewitnessess sprouted up all over the internet saying the truth: the Russians sent in troops to protect South Ossetia (losing ten soldiers in the process). I would post a link to one of them, but I can't find the URL I'm looking for.

This is a testament to the anti-Russian feeling spread about by the media. When something bad invloving Russia comes up, they're immediately the ones to blame. Why? Is this still a continuation of the propaganda started during the Cold War? Are Americans still predjudiced against the "Reds?" How can you people be so stupid as to believe one of the world's greatest superpowers with wonderful foreign relations would actually invade two soveriegn nations? It's blasphemy.

For the first time ever, I'm going to thank Fox News for something that the other networks should have done: bringing in an eyewitness. After the invasion, a twelve year-old South Ossetian girl was brought on and interviewed. She said Georgia started the whole thing, and the Russians deserve to be thanked. It's a shame Fox News has such an idiotic base of viewers and such a bad reputation, or someone may have actually paid attention to this.