lounge nouvelle

John's inbox, Saturday, 3:59am:
"jon/, i effing hate you, why cant you juxt love me like i love you omg, love jane<3"

Not cool, Jane.

Fortunately, Google introduced "Mail Goggles" last month, a new feature in Gmail that, when enabled, attempts to protect us all from this kind of social disaster.

You can read about it in the Gmail Blog, but basically Gmail will just have you pass a sobriety test before sending out email when it thinks you may be trashed. Specifically late at night on the weekends (or whatever days/time windows you specify), you're prompted to answer some simple math problems before your message is sent.

To put it simply; I do not have a pig in the race. I do not believe that either frontrunner is the best, or even a good candidate to run our country for the next four years. There are a few thrid party candidates that sound good, but because of the electoral college, voting for a third party candidate effectively discards your vote.

Some would say that if you do not like Obama, you should vote for McCain to effectively vote against Obama (or vice versa). But this is not true. If you vote for a candidate you are endorsing that candidate even if you do not think that it is the right candidate.

Maybe it's because I'm in Lincoln, Nebraska--we're always the last to get to try these fancy new marketing ideas. I'll bet everybody in California has been doing this for years.

There is an Arby's near my workplace, and I noticed a sign posted recently telling me to text the word "Lincoln" to a certain number and I would receive a free order of curly fries. I accepted this offer and was texted back with a "coupon" as promised. At the drive-thru window, the employee asked to see it, so I handed him my phone and he checked out the message for himself. Sure enough, free curly fry for Lacy.

Maybe text message coupons aren't new to you, but I found the process fairly curious. And anyway, he was probably reading my other private messages while he was at it. I know that if I was working there and handed random phones all day, I'd probably change some display settings and ring tones too just to mess with minds.

As we all know, the economy is in a freefall, the war in Iraq is going on with no end in sight and it costs the average person $65 to fill up their tank. In hard times like these everyone simply needs something to cheer them up. To do this, I found some facts that assure you our tax dollars are being spent responsibly and in a way that will solve current problems facing out nation.

-In 2003, $24.5 billion were totally unaccounted for in the US budget.

-Between 1997-2004 the Defense Department paid for and left about 270,000 commercial airline tickets at a cost of $100 million. The best part is that they neglected to refund the fully refundable tickets.

-In a sampling of credit cards used by the Department of Agriculture over a six-month period, 15 percent of the cardholders sampled abused their cards. This totaled a cost of $5.8 million. Purchases included everything from Ozzy Osbourn concert tickets to bartender school tuition.

Dear Ignorant New Facebook Haters,

If you think that you can make a group that gets 5 or 10 million members to get the "old" Facebook back, try again. It is not going to happen. It just will not. Deal with it. I have seen these groups get upwards of 3 million members, which sounds impressive. But only for a little bit, because then you realize that Facebook has 110 million active members(http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics). That's right! So your petty 2.7% means nothing!

I just read each states requirements for voting at www.declareyourself.com

As long as you have "Not have been officially found to be mentally incompetent " you're free to vote.

So if you live in Nebraska... work on a farm from sunrise to sunset and then go to the bar every night or you were just in an accident and are half retarded... feel free to vote.

Does anyone else feel like the voting requirements are way to lax in every state?

I don't care if on average only 30% of the people vote. Make everyone take competency tests, make everyone understand THE JOB the person they're electing is going to have.

Of course, this method would alienate and ultimately destroy 90% of voters that vote republican and would leave us with voters that are at least aware of their own existence.

They go off at noon the first Wednesday of the month. Apparently my new office is right next to a siren and it is blasting in my ears.

Has anyone seen Silent Hill? It came out a few years ago and it's about this little town that has tornado-like sirens go off to warn people before crazy shit goes on.... (Monsters, zombies, fire etc...) Now tornado sirens officially creep me out.

Just throwing it out there for absolutely no reason.

What the heck? Now they are testing the fire alarms and intercoms? Jesus Christ.

They media are reporting that Washington Mutual collapsed because of a prolonged withdrawal of deposits. What we’re seeing is a progressive collapse of the entire system. Like with skyscrapers, it doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in sections. Leaning twisting bending thump. Leaning twisting bending thump.

I’ve been hearing other media reports that Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson got down on one knee on the Capitol steps and begged Nancy Pelosi to pass the bank bailout bill. It reminds me of an initiation ritual my college fraternity does. We didn’t have Nancy Pelosi around, so we had to settle for an officer of one of the sororities. And we weren’t trying to get $700 billion out of her. I think we were just supposed to ask her to escort us to class.

Can someone tell me what is going on in this world. I have not been watching any television lately. I've been so busy with everything going on in my life that I never have time to watch the news. Are we at war with anyone new?...lOl..no seriously....what's up with Russia? While doing a Commission Interior design job, i overheard something on the radio about russia but did not quite catch the story. I also heard from some friends in short conversations that alot of crazy things have been happening with the banks these days but never really got the scoop on that...help me out my friends. Let me know the deal....So here is a story starter for someone who is up to date with World News. Dina DePina

I've heard of people carrying pooper scoopers with them when they are walking their dogs in a public place, a park for example. I've heard of people carryiing baggies to put it in. But please tell me, IS IT THE SAME CONCEPT FOR A STREET? Here's the thing, my husband and I were watching a neighbor's dog while they were out of town. HUGH WHITE LAB We were taking her for a walk in her neighborhood when all of a sudden, yep you guessed it, nature called. Now, we were in the middle of a street, she didn't go in someone's yard or driveway. Secondly, it wasn't even "pick-up-able" if you catch my drift. Well, the guy who owned the house on the left side of the street blew a gasket!