This One Cracked Me Up

Saint Peter is watching the gates of Heaven, but he really has to go to the bathroom. He asks Jesus to watch the gates for a few minutes, and Jesus agrees

As Jesus is standing there, he sees an old man leading a donkey up from Earth to Heaven. He notices the old man has carpenter’s tools with him. When the old man gets to the gates, Jesus asks him to describe his life and explain why he feels he should be admitted into heaven.

The man explains, “In English, my name would be Joseph, but I didn’t live in America or England. I lived a modest life, making things out of wood. I’m not remembered very well by most people, but almost everyone has heard of my son. I call him my son, but Iwas more of a Dad to him, he didn’t really come into this world in the usual way.

I sent my son out to be among the people of the World. He was ridiculed by many, and was even known to associate himself with some pretty unsavory characters, although he himself tried to be honest and perfect. My single biggest reason for trying to get into Heaven is to be reunited with my son.”

Jesus is awe-struck by the man’s story. He looks into the old man’s eyes and asks, “Father?”

The old man’s face brightens; he looks at Jesus, and asks, “Pinocchio?”

Feedback

I got a fair number of interesting responses to the relationships and cheating post from last Thursday so I thought I’d share them with you all. If you haven’t read it yet, scroll down the page until you find the one called Tough Call.

These responses come from our own comment boards as well as from the Salty Ham Forums where I also posted it since a discussion there is part of what inspired the thought in the first place.

If you’ve got your own thoughts on this or if you want to disagree with something that somebody said, feel free to add your own comments. Let’s go.

First up is Anonymous.

Well you’ve managed to get yourself into to some very deep shit. Been there….and to be honest I don’t know if I handled it right. I think you first have to go to the cheater and bring it up with them….try to convince them to either quit it, or own up and end it. But if that doesn’t get you anywhere you may have to take the chance of losing a friend and tell the guy what’s goin on. Think about it though, if they’re willing to treat this person that they love that way, what’s going to stop them from doing that to you?
Good luck Steve

That’s pretty much what I was thinking. With one small change those would be exactly my thoughts. I wouldn’t aim for either quitting it or confessing, I’d be pushing to get the person to do both. It’s one thing to extract a promise from somebody that it won’t happen again but it’s another thing entirely to make that person keep it. And it’s not me who’s really getting hurt here, it’s the person getting cheated on and in my mind, above all else, that person has a right to know and it shouldn’t have to be me who tells him.

Next up is Carin, who chimed in with this.

I’d tell the girl to fess up. Give her a chance, and if she doesn’t, then I think you should tell the guy what he ought to know.

Well that’s kind of what I was thinking too. Everybody should get a chance to solve their own problems before a third person steps in, but sometimes there’s a point where I can’t justify staying out of things anymore because it doesn’t seem right.

Moving right along, our old friend A Different Anonymous has this to say.

I think I am gonna have to agree with everyone else. You have to talk to the cheating girl and make it clear that though she is your friend, so is the guy she cheated on, so if she doesn’t come clean and tell him, you will. Give her a chance to deal with it herself, and if she doesn’t then maybe it is time to step in.

This one comes from Outburst.

Approaching the cheater is a good idea but personally, I’d steer clear of making it your business. No doubt, you’d have the best of intentions in the above scenarios but you greatly run the risk of getting mixed up in a very messy situation and could find yourself losing two great friendships. Approach the friend. If she does nothing, ask yourself how important your friendship with her is before telling the cheated. Otherwise, I’m fairly confident he will find out on his own and I doubt you’ll really want to be implicated at all at that point.

Certainly an interesting point, but don’t you also have to consider how important your friendship with the cheated is as well? To me that’s the person who really deserves the most consideration here. Maybe I only think that way because I’ve been the cheated before but no matter what my reasons are, be they experience or what I believe to be right and wrong, that’s what I think. However as you’ll see as we shift our focus to the Salty Forum responses, a lot of people disagree with me, like Jeanice for instance.

Wow, what a hard situation to deal with.

You know, I always see “cheating” as a test of sorts of someone’s character. Even though she’s my friend I’d be wary of a person who is supposed to be my best friend and tell me everything but “cheats” with another guy without even telling me. If she told me, maybe I’d be able to understand the reasons why she did it. Maybe she’s not such a scuzzball. Maybe I could have compassion. But she’s hiding it from everyone. That makes her look really shady. I’d be sort of upset about that because the guy she’s with is also my friend, (and even though I used to like him/still like him, that wouldn’t be why I don’t think the situation is cool) and if she can do this to him, what kind of backstabbing crap is she gonna do to me? I guess I’d be more upset over the fact that she didn’t tell me or explain her situation to me over cheating, because everyone makes mistakes you know? Or changes their mind about who they really want to be with. But the fact that she’s continuing to try to decieve everyone is awful.

What would I do? I’d wait for her to tell me/explain her reasons. If she continued to try to play me too, I’d just stop talking to her and keep my distance. If everything is all wierd between us and our little clique why should we still be friends? I woudln’t rat her out or anything, because telling him is not going to make it hurt any less. Of course if he knew you knew he might be upset with you, but whatever. Get yourself out of that situation and save yourself.

I say mind your business.

Personally it wouldn’t upset me that much that the person didn’t tell me. What does upset me is that she’s not telling the guy getting cheated on. She is, in a sense, playing both of us and putting all of us in a tough situation because of the nature of all of the relationships. And it’s the nature of the relationships that makes me disagree with the whole “mind your business” line of thinking. By default, because these 3 people are all so connected to each other, it is my business. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I give my word to somebody I take it seriously and if somebody is a friend and will show me the same respect, when I say that I’ll look out for him or her, I’ll be damned if I’m not going to do just that.

Let’s hear from WT Harmon, who disagrees with Jeanice.

Not me. I’m running up to the Guy getting cheated on(girl in my case) and tell (her) what’s what. there’s not a reason in the world for anyone to cheat, and no matter what my friend could tell me, this girl deserves te be treated with the same respect as everyone. Of Course, I can’t look at this objectavly, as I’ve been cheated on too many times over the years to let this kind of thing slide. As a matter of fact, I once ratted my best friend out to his girlfriend, efectivly ending he and I’s friendship. But that’s another story all together.

Now there’s a guy who stands up for his convictions and does what he feels he has to do. You’re a man of action Mr. Harmon, and I respect that. But having said that, I have to say that while I would do the same thing in a second, I’d also take a minute to think about it first, giving the person doing the cheating a chance to do the right thing and confess. If I don’t think that it’s going to get done, then I’ll step in and for the good of my friend I’ll do the job myself.

Here’s a quick one from TheHoss.

I’m with Jeanice on this one…

Let them get this one out in the open. You’ve done nothing wrong, so just be cool.

In a situation like this, the only time I would consider myself to have done anything wrong would be if I kept my mouth shut when I should have opened it.

Ringo has his own take on this, as well as some thoughts on cheating in general.

Ringo here learned a good lesson a long time ago and will now share it with all of you.

Do not, by any circumstances, get involved in anyone else’s romantic/sexual/s&m/whatever issues and bullshit. Do as I do. If you find out that Mary Jane Rottencrotch is cheating on whoever or Sam Spade is boinking a sheep then just do yourself a big favor and forget you ever heard it. I’ve saved myself countless aggravation by refusing to get involved in my friend’s romantic/relationship situations.

I imagine i’ll probably get called out as not being a good friend, and if you feel this way then fine. I’ll counter by saying that i’m being a better friend by staying the hell out of something that isn’t my business and that I don’t want becoming my business.

As for cheating/not cheating it’s really up to the individual. I like to sleep with married women because they are much more available than the single ones and I don’t adhere to most other people’s moral standards. I have few morals or scruples. I’m a huge believer in looking out for #1 and getting mine.

Honesty, another trait I respect. Here’s more of it courtesy of The Current Big Thing.

Ahhh, don’t you just love porking an older married lady? I don’t mean Mae Young old, I mean Sable old. Awesome. For some reason, they enjoy it better when there’s a risk in getting in trouble. God bless horny older ladies that get reminded of their cute innocent son when they see me until I’m drilling the shit out of ’em.

Not that I don’t care about others. God knows I do.

So the moral of the story is: don’t sleep with your friend’s girlfriend. It’s one thing if your friend cheats on her, but it’s another when you get involved. And if you’re a girl that is close friends with a couple, and find out the girl is cheating, you go ahead & slap some sense into your female friend & convince her to tell her man. If she doesn’t, try to manipulate her to leave him & get with “new guy” & start porking her ex… you liked him didn’t you??

If all goes wrong, look for hot married women near your area.

I have nothing to say about that, I’m too busy cracking up. So let’s end things off by giving the last word to Jeanice.

Wow, TCBT and Ringo, you guys sure don’t mince words about being morally corrupt. LOL.

I still say, what’s the point in dry snitching huh? Is it really worth it? Unless you’re really good friends with the person your guy is cheating on you have no real motive to tell. And even if you are you should just stay out of it and stay far away from those people as possible.

Unless you like drama and broken hearts. If you do, then by all means, get all up in someone’s koolaid.

So is it really worth it? Should you keep your mouth shut and let the chips fall where they may, or do you have a responsibility to make things known even if people are going to get hurt and friendships might be destroyed? Or is the right answer something in the middle, something that we haven’t thought of? If you’ve got thoughts, I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment on the site, sign up for the Salty Ham Forums and look for the love thread, or feel free to drop me an email atsendstuffhere@rogers.comand let me know what you think. The floor is yours.

Honest Honey, I’m Just Sick

Something tells me that this one isn’t going to be a rare disorder for too much longer.

CANBERRA, Australia – If you’re cheating on your spouse and get caught, you could use this as your alibi. Apparently, an Australian doctor has diagnosed one of his patients as having a disorder that leads her to have sex with strangers while she sleeps. According to the doctor, the woman would later not remember her activities. It wasn’t until herpartner woke up, noticed she was missing from the bed, and found her having sex with another man that she realized what she was doing. The doctor tells an Australian radio station that “people are often stunned and overwhelmed” when they find out what’s been happening. He is concerned that those with the disorder might not seek professional help because they are embarrassed and fear that partners and doctors won’t really believe they were sleeping.

The thing that strikes me about this story isn’t that a sleeping person could have sex without realizing it even though that is pretty weird. What I wonder about is who is having sex with these people? How would you even get into a situation like that?

“Hey baby, are you a parking ticket, because you’ve got fine written all over you.”

“Snore.”

“Woe hot stuff, it sounds like you’ve got a bit of a cold or something, but that’s ok, you’re not the only thing that’s contagious in this place.”

“Snore.”

“You sure don’t talk much do you sugar lips, but that’s ok, because you’ll be screaming my name by the end of the night.”

“Snore.”

“Well I must be the man of your dreams because you’re already sleeping. Come with me, we’ll head back to my place.”

How the hell does something like that happen, and how does it happen repeatedly? The mind boggles. And how good can the sex possibly be if it’s not even waking you up? So many questions, so few answers.

So Much For That

Remember the other night when I was all happy because I finally fixed the posting system so that it wouldn’t mangle all of my html anymore and even gave you that link to prove it? Well, that must have been a fluke because everything I thought I fixed is broken again and I honestly have no idea why. All of the settings that I changed and saved are still there but it’s doing what it did before I changed anything.

If you’re wondering why I don’t update as much as I used to, this is a big part of the reason why. I write all of my posts offline because it’s easier for me to do it that way. I write perfectly good html in Notepad and then paste it into the post box and hit publish. What’s supposed to happen is the system will post what I wrote the way I wrote it. It’s a great system when it actually works. The problem is that every time I try to link to something, no matter what I do, the system always breaks my tags and a few times, especially tonight, it even moves words I wrote within those tags to different places or worse yet, manages to put words that were in plain text into the tags and leaves everything else out, completely screwing up not only the tag, but the link itself.

I know that there are other people with their own blogs who read this site and I’d love to know if any of you are having the same trouble and how you managed to fix it or at least work around it if you did. Asking support got me nowhere. they told me what to do and it worked for exactly 1 post so I need some other opinions here.

I’ve honestly just about had it. I don’t want to stop updating and give up on the site, I have too much fun with it and judging by some of the stuff that’s gone on on the comment boards [most of which has been deleted by our board provider because we’re on the free system] and some of the emails and personal comments I’ve gotten from people, I know that for the most part you guys have fun here too. But because of all of the technical problems and extra work that it takes to write everything now, it’s not really all that easy to get motivated to write anything good. I’ve got topics and I’m always finding amusing things to post when I don’t, but when things don’t work like they should and there’s seemingly nothing I can do about it, sometimes I just can’t be bothered to put them up.

Sorry for the rant, but it bothers me to no end when people feel that they need to fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about innovation and improvement, but I find more often than not that what’s being fixed ends up broken when it’s all said and done. For example, how many times have you seen a perfectly good, well organized and easy to navigate website get redesigned into a completely unusable piece of shit while the person responsible for it crows about it like he’s just done the greatest thing ever and should win some kind of award for it? Well to me that’s exactly what happened when the people at blogger decided to tweak the post editor over the Summer. In fact the only reason that I can post at all is because I’ve got a really smart friend and because I was smart enough to figure out that I had to write some sort of weird half html half plain text mess just so that line breaks would appear properly.

I’m sure that the new system is great for some of you, probably most of you but don’t forget that when you’re blind and can’t see all of the snappy new features and your computer access software can’t either because everything is overly visual, all bets are off.

Anybody who knows me or who has read this site for a while knows that I hate to use the blindness thing unless it’s relevant to the situation because I honestly think that too many blind people wine too much but this time I’ll make an acception and go totally blind guy on you. For an organization that claims that they are working to address access issues, Blogger isn’t off to a very good start. If they really cared as much as they claim they do, they would have put an option in place that would allow people to use the old system while they had actual blind people test out the new one to make sure it actually worked. I’ll bet that would have been appreciated by everybody, not just the blind.

I’m sure that by this point some of you are probably thinking “Jesus Christ, for a guy using a free service you sure complain a lot. You get what you pay for, dick,” and I would probably agree if I didn’t think that you were wrong.

Think about it this way. I might not be paying for the domain name, the webspace, the server, the maintenance of it or anything else associated with the day to day operations of blogger for that matter but if it weren’t for people like me and the millions of other people who use this service, there wouldn’t be a company to pay for in the first place. The business model they’ve chosen leaves no room for argument on that point either, allow me to demonstrate.

It basically works like this. Blogger gives me a free place to write things, and I in turn write them for free. People come to the place where I’m writing them and Blogger gets more hits which translates into more ad money for them which means that they get paid. Sometimes the people who come to read the things I write decide that they want to write things too, so they set up their own place to write things and the cycle repeats itself. Doesn’t sound like a bad little system to me, and it seems that Google thought the same thing since they bought the company. The Google people aren’t stupid, they know a good concept and a good revenue stream when they see one.

But back to my point, that being why I can bitch about what I’m getting for free. When you visit most websites all you’re doing is reading things that other people wrote. don’t get me wrong, you’re an important part of the site because without people to read things that people write, there would be no site, thusly it follows that there would be no need to write things especially if you’re looking to get some money out of it. But Blogger is a different story. They might have built the system, but I’m the content provider. So the way I see it, it’s an even trade if you exclude the fact that they’re getting rich not only off of their hard work, but also off of mine while all I’m getting is a free way to make other people money. Ok, so maybe that’s not entirely fair. This free site does allow me to have my voice heard as well as a chance to promote other things that I’m involved in. But still, I’m doing a lot of the leg work here to make sure that this company survives so as a volunteer worker here I think that I have a right to complain about an organization that isn’t treating it’s employees the way that it should.

The bottom line is that I’m not going to stop posting on the site, but I’m not going to stop complaining and trying to make things right either. So all of you will just have to put up with some technical problems and a little bit of cursing along with your fun. But come on, what do you want for free?

That Helps, Thanks

I’m sure that by now those of you who have been trying to access the Salty Ham website either through our link or on your own have noticed that the site is down and that it has been for quite a long time. But I’d be willing to put money on the fact that not as many of you have taken the time to read the nice friendly error page that greets you when you get there. Hell, I work for them and until about 5 minutes ago I hadn’t read it either. But now that I have, I’d like to point something out.

This is a direct quote from the the page cannot be found message that you get when you try to access the home page. Note the use of the words home page in what I just wrote, otherwise you probably won’t get what I’m driving at here.

“Contact website: You may want to contact the website administrator to make sure the Web page still exists. You can do this by using the e-mail address or phone number listed on the website home page.”

As I read that again I can’t help but wonder how many people are currently caught in an infinite loop trying to figure out why they can’t get that phone number. Come on, you know they’re out there.

I Think Those Weird Link Problems Are Finally Fixed

This is a test post to see if the settings I changed were the right ones. If they were, you should be able to go and check out Boing Boing, which is a really cool constantly updated blog run by some very interesting people that covers everything under the sun.

The coolest part of all of this is that you’ll be able to check it out by simply clickinghere,rather than by clicking on some long ugly link that might not work.

If some of you could let me know if everything looks ok and if the link works it would be much appreciated.

Tough Call

I want you all to do something for me. I want you to read the situation that I’m about to lay out and then tell me where you stand on it and what you would do if you were ever faced with such a choice.

But before I start, I should say that while what I’m about to describe is somewhat based on my life, it is no way a reflection of anything that is actually going on, it’s only something I’ve been thinking about because of the combination of a discussion in the Salty Ham forums and something that somebody asked me today.

Also, even though the people I’m writing about are of a certain gender, I want to get both male and female perspectives so feel free to switch things around as required. Ok, I think that’s everything, let’s do this.

You are a girl who is best friends with another girl. You do everything together and tell each other pretty much everything. Naturally this means that you will not only keep this person’s secrets, but you will do anything you can to help her out when she’s in a pinch or just when she needs a friend. Remember the in a pinch part, it becomes important.

Through this girl you meet a guy. He’s a nice guy, funny, smart, good to talk to. He’s also very close to the girl, possibly even closer to her than you are but to the best of your knowledge, he’s only in that lovely place known as the friend zone and is content to stay there, as is she with him.

As time passes you become pretty close with the guy as well, eventually coming to think of him as another best friend, one on a comparable level to that of the girl. You talk about everything and you develop a pretty deep trust to the point that things which before you would only either tell the girl or keep to yourself, you’re now telling the guy.

More time passes and something changes. The guy and the girl start dating. So much for the friend zone, I guess there is a way out after all. For a long time, things are great. The guy and the girl are happy, the 3 of you are all very good friends, and even though you kind of have a bit of a thing for the guy, you’re happy for them too because 2 of your best friends have found something special.

So things are happy, things are fun, life as you know it has never been better. But then one day something happens. A new guy comes into the picture. At first it seems that the girl and new guy are just friends and nothing more. That’s fine, new guy seems pretty cool and there’s no harm in a friendship. Besides, as cool as new guy is, the girl loves the guy she’s already with too much to ever even think about starting anything with new guy, or so you think until one day you either witness something that you weren’t meant to see or are told about it by the guilty girl who knows that she’s got a bit of a situation on her hands given your relationship with the guy. Whatever the case, you know that the girl is cheating on the guy with new guy. No matter how you come to find this out, the point is that you know.

The question now becomes what do you do with this information? Do you say nothing about this to the guy or the girl and pretend that you know nothing because you don’t want to become caught in the middle? Do you, out of some sort of best friendish need to protect the girl keep your mouth shut about this and say nothing to the guy, hoping that either he finds out on his own or that she comes clean and confesses all the while knowing that your failure to act might screw things up with the guy? Or do you tell the guy what’s going on because of a best friendish need to protect him or do what you think is right, all the while knowing that what you do could screw things up with the girl?

This is where all of you come in. If this was you, how would you handle it?

Advertising Pisses Me Off

No, this isn’t another rant about how marketers have gone too far, although it could easily be one. The problem is that this concept is too funny to get me all that angry.

A company called Wizmark has developed an interactive urinal cake that can not only be used to keep a urinal fresh, but also to promote products and services through sounds and immages when motion is detected nearby.

CMT [Country Music Television] is using them across the United States to promote their programming, and other companies and organizations have caught on to the idea as well, using them to broadcast public service announcements.

All you could ever hope to know about this groundbreaking technology can be found here.