A month ago Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson charged MTV readers with the hefty responsibility of choosing which role he would play in the planned Shazam! movie…

Heh. MTV “READERS”. Am I the only one that thinks that’s funny?

The following is an actual transcription of a tech support chat session I had with a Dell representative.  The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Well, mine anyways.

System:

Thank you for choosing Chat support. The next representative will be available to assist you shortly. While waiting, check some of our self support options above. No fear, you won’t lose your place in line!

Session Started with Agent (160019_Manish)

Agent (160019_Manish):
Thank you for contacting Dell Technical Support. My name is Manish and my rep ID number is 160019. How may I assist you today?

k@os:
This is my third time trying. I was disconnected the previous 2.  I have an Inspiron 1501 and I am getting 2 error messages when I try to boot the computer.  PXE-E61: MEDIA TEST FAILURE, CHECK CABLE and PXE-M0F: EXITING BROADCOM PXE ROM.  I get the error messages when I turn on the power and it tries to boot.  Once the error messages show up, when i hit any other key it just beeps.  The only thing it will let me do is turn off the power.  I Googled the messages and the results were not conclusive.

Agent (160019_Manish):
I am really sorry for the inconvenience caused as we are facing some problem with the network.  I’ll be glad to assist you. Please provide me the service tag of the system.  Please give me 2 to 3 minutes to pull up your account information.

k@os:
Service tag: XXXXXX

Agent (160019_Manish):
Please try to wiggle LCD cable.

k@os:
What?

Agent (160019_Manish):
This is the problem with the LCD.

k@os:
Ok. What LCD cable?  The LCD screen works fine. The computer will not boot.  Last time I check an Inspiron 1501 was a laptop and has no external cables to “wiggle”.

Agent (160019_Manish):
Please let me know if you have external monitor with you?

k@os:
No. Laptop.  LAPTOP!

God save us from outsourcing.  Is this what I have to look forward to now that the McDonald’s in Hawai’i are starting to outsource their drive-thru’s?

OMG! i just saw this trailer for a new ff movie! i can’t wait til it comes out! it is teh hax0r! it totally pwns! advent chldrn just got totally pwn3d by this movie? ORLY? don’t believe me? just watch! OMFG! ROTFL! LMAO! TTFN! BRB! pwn3d!!!!!!!!11111one

Lightsaber training began today. So far only lost one couch, three stuffed animals, and a rubber ball. All family members still intact.

HUBZILLA:
For the first time in a while, we have absolutely no plans this weekend. No events, no parties, nothing. Heck, even the house is clean.

Looks like it’s going to be a perfect weekend!

If I do get bored, I can look online and read a bit of that leaked copy of Harry Potter 7. Then go into Borders at their midnight release party and yelling out the ending. Better have a good escape plan.

I don’t really want to look at those spoilers, since I pre-ordered mine. But it would still be fun to drive by the lines and shout out plausible scenarios. They’d still feel like their experience was ruined. Something like (NOT A REAL SPOILER!) “SNAPE DIES WHILE HELPING HARRY DEFEAT VOLDEMORT. IN HIS SACRIFICE TO SAVE RON & HERMIONE, HE MUST GIVE UP HIS ABILITY TO USE MAGIC.”

In one soundbite, I revealed Snape’s allegiance, who wins, who dies, and a stunning twist. Hmm, I need to work in what the last horcrux is.

k@os:
I still like “LILY HAD AN AFFAIR WITH SNAPE AND HE IS REALLY HARRY’S FATHER!”  That would be fun to shout to the masses.

HUBZILLA:
I was going for something quasi-realistic, so they’d be outraged they got “spoiled”.

k@os:
I, personally, would lean more towards the ridiculous for sheer comic effect.

 “DUMBLEDORE IS REALLY RON FROM THE FUTURE WHO TRAVELLED IN TIME VIA THE TIME TURNER TO HELP GUIDE HARRY AND CHANGE THE FUTURE!”

HUBZILLA:
“THERE WERE BORG CUBES FULL OF DEMENTORS, WHO WERE THWARTED BY THIS NEW CHARACTER…”

“HARRY POTTER WOKE UP AND IT WAS ALL A DREAM. HE STILL LIVES UNDER THE STAIRS!”

k@os:
“GANDALF IS APPOINTED NEW HEADMASTER OF HOGWARTS!”

HUBZILLA:
“HOGWARTS ENLISTS AID OF MUGGLE MARINE CORPS TO TAKE OUT DEATH EATERS!”

k@os:
Another future scenario:

“IN THE EPILOGUE, DRACO SENDS A TERMINATOR FROM THE FUTURE TO ELIMINATE HARRY AND HERMIONE’S SON BEFORE HE CAN GROW UPTO BECOME THE GREATEST AUROR OF ALLTIME!  THIS SETS UP THE SEQUEL SEXTOLOGY ‘SIRIUS POTTER AND THE SORCERER OF SKYNET’”

Evil Overlord training continues. Driving lessons progressing well.

Hubzilla’s rant on the Virgina Tech shooting, which mirrors my own thoughts:

Okay, the murderer had two handguns, a Glock and a .22, each one holds 15 and 10 rounds respectively. He killed (not just wounded) 32 people. That’s an awful lot from a non-automatic weapon. With a .22, you’d almost need to get a head or chest shot to kill quickly.

Unless he was really good, he probably needed 2-3 shots per person. Which means he would’ve needed to reload maybe 2-3 times. Actually, the number would be much higher accounting for the people who were just wounded (29) and inevitable missed shots. Unless he did each one point-blank, but that leads to more complications, especially time.

So allowing for breaks in reloading and carefully aiming kill shots, WHY DIDN’T ANYONE STOP HIM? Tackle him, bum-rush him, throw a chair, shoot a fire extinguisher, anything? We’re not talking Womens Studies or Fine Arts majors here; engineering students are probably 80% male. Other than a professor who held a door closed, no other men tried to stop him?

At Columbine, 2 guys with automatic weapons and explosives murdered 12 high-school kids in a planned and mapped-out attack. This loner who wrote disturbing poetry got 32 college adults with a couple of pistols. None of them remembered Todd Beamer or Flight 93?

More fun with e-mail . . .

k@os	People are officially no fun anymore. No one lets me talk shit about Anna Nicole. My thing is this: If you put your coked-out life on a reality show for everyone to see, you are officially fair game for the rest of us to exercise our freedom of speech on around water coolers. That, and apparently TRIMSPA can kill you.
Hubzilla	Oh dear lord. PLEASE tell me ANS is not the newest “taken before their time” martyr. First JFK, then MLK, then Kurt Cobain… now this. I refuse! This is your brain on drugs… six feet under. They’re all talking “conspiracy theory” over here. Yes, good idea: murder a very public person as part of your “secret plans”.
k@os	Interesting how western civilization has declined. Our martyrs used to be Kennedy and King. Now, Cobain and Smith. We’ve gone from murdered for their idealism to killing themselves with cocaine and heroine. Here’s hoping the American public doesn’t lament the loss of Paris Hilton and her contributions to society if she dies of asphyxiation from sucking too much dick.
Hubzilla	Correction: King was murdered for his communism, not his idealism.
k@os	He was murdered by the secret spork society.
Hubzilla	I thought you wrote “spook society” Ha ha! Something’s fishy because she had a lot of money (or her baby does now).
k@os	Did she ever get the money from the old geezer she married? For love, of course. Not because he was a billionaire. I can understand how she may have sought solace from the death of her son by keeping herself in a chemically induced stupor, but what about your newborn? Apparently that child ranks a little lower on her “things I give a shit about” list.
Hubzilla	To be honest, I never understood the rancor about a billionaire marrying Nicole. If I were that rich, I would certainly deserve a hot trophy wife. When I’m “amorously engaged” with my hot twenty-something, do I really care that she’s only in it for the money?
k@os	“Hot trophy wife” and Anna Nicole Smith contradict each other.
Hubzilla	Hot trophy wife in the mid-90s, that is.
k@os	Nope. Still a contradiction.
Hubzilla	Your momma’s a contradiction. Don’t dare to impugn me.

According to Websters, a RUMOR is “talk or opinion widely disseminated with no discernible source”.

OK now pay attention.

No one can accurately predict earthquakes.

Yet despite that FACT, the RUMOR of an impending 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami was enough to send a large portion of Oahu’s population scrambling for gas and high ground. Everyone heard it from someone who saw it on the news, or knows somebody who knows somebody who works at Civil Defense. One person even said a friend of theirs heard it from a psychic this past Friday.

A psychic.

This town needs an enema.

I have yet to hear of ANYONE who says they got that information firsthand. You’d like to think people would take the time to at least verify the warning before taking such drastic action as packing up some belongings and heading for high ground. The usual response to that is, of course, “better safe than sorry”.

Better safe than stupid.

Jesus fucking Christ. It can’t even rain here without Honolulu buttoning themselves inside their homes and traffic slowing to a crawl. I grew up in the wettest city in the United States. It’s just water people. You won’t melt.

I could probably sit here and vent some more, but a friend of someone I know who had a girlfriend that once went to school with someone who joined the military and went to basic training with some guy that now works for the Department of Defense says that North Korea has launched a nuclear missile at Hawaii.

I have to go “duck and cover”.

Links to the REAL news story:

Earthquake, tsunami hoax alarms hundreds on Oahu

Earthquake hoax concerns authorities

Civil Defense flooded with calls over quake hoax

Earthquake rumors run rampant