I wrote something meaningless yesterday about how I downloaded the Yahoo Toolbar and it messed up my Gmail. I wrote to Google asking for a solution and posted the request on here (you know, hoping for free help from suckers…).
Well I got a response. But it wasn’t from Google (they’ve ignored me, their loyal “customer.”). It was from a Yahoo Rep. Totally unsolicited and completely helpful (not to mention polite). To be honest, this makes me want to switch to Yahoo and tell Google to shove it. Here’s his response (in case ANYONE gives a damn):
The Yahoo toolbar has nothing to do with Google or Gmail. Offhand it sounds like you have an extension conflict.
First things first, make sure everything’s up to date. In FF, go to Help->Check for updates and make sure you have the latest Firefox. Then Tools-> Addons and click “Find Updates” and make sure all your extensions are current.
Are you sure you deleted the Firefox Yahoo Toolbar? To remove the FF version, start Firefox and go to Tools -> Addons. Select the Yahoo Toolbar, click uninstall, and restart Firefox. If you are still seeing the problem after that, or if the toolbar isn’t in that list, you’ll have to disable all your extensions, restart FF, then go through the cycle of “enable one, restart, check” for each extension in that list until you find the one that’s causing the problem and remove that extension.
If they’re all disabled and you’re still seeing the problem, your Firefox profile is corrupt and you need to create a new one. Check the Firefox help for details on how to do that.
Good luck!
Jon Granrose
Product Manager, Y! Toolbar for Firefox
Check that out. Timely. Helpful. Non-judgmental. Jon Granrose rocks.
I got suckered into downloading the Yahoo toolbar and, ever since, Firefox acts weird when I go to Google. By “acts weird” I mean that it opens up a new tab with Gmail in it. Normally this wouldn’t be too bad but it happens everytime I go back to Google. After an hour or so I have ten tabs open, five being Gmail. Lame.
I wrote Google asking for their advice and assistance. I wanted to give it a little “flava” so added a few “extra details.” I can’t wait to see their response:
Google Help Desk:
Every time I go to Google it automatically starts a new tab and opens gmail in that tab. This can happen multiple times. If I were to go back to Google five times I would have six tabs open — five with my gmail account. It doesn’t happen in IE, just Firefox. It also doesn’t happen with my “Yahoo” email address. I don’t like IE and I don’t like Yahoo and, thus, I have come to you for help.
As background, this problem began after I was induced to download Yahoo messenger by undue means. Those undue means being a deceptively attractive woman who wanted to chat with me via Yahoo Messenger. She said it was a good program that was easy to use. I bought it.
As you might expect it turned out the woman was unattractive and, even worse, dumb. (Okay, that’s not technically worse but it didn’t help). After a few minutes I ended the discussion. Unfortunately, like an STD, the ramifications of my poor decision linger. Even though I deleted the Yahoo toolbar, the problem didn’t stop. It burns, my friends, and I feel used.
I can only assume this is yet another insidious act by the Yahoo/Microsoft cabal hoping to coerce me into abandoning Google by screwing with some difficult to find setting. Alternatively, I am a moron who downloaded a virus and the Yahoo Toolbar had nothing to do with it.
Frankly, at this point, I feel like I’m the Yahoo toolbar.
They say every story needs a protagonist. But that’s only half the story. A great story requires something more…
A bastard.
I’m not talking about a villain or an anti-hero you nerds, I’m talking about the memorable son-of-a-bitch who always gets the best lines and scenes. The dude you remember. The guy you wish you could be. Thus I present to you…
Hollywood’s Ten Greatest Bastards
10. Chet (Weird Science)
It takes a highly-functioning SOB to pistol-whip a girl, extort from his brother, yet still find time to lay moves like this down on a lady:
Chet: Lady, I wanna get to the bottom of this. ASAFP. Lisa: Oh, so do I. Chet: But first I’d like to… butter your muffin. Lisa: Why do you have to be such a wanker? Chet: Because I get off on it!
Gary was a wimp and Wyatt was a horrible actor.
9. Steve Buscemi (Wedding Singer)
Buscemi’s role is so limited he doesn’t even merit a credit. But how you gonna deny the “Best Guitar Player in the World” his due?
Answer: You’re not.
8. Spicoli (Fast Times at Ridgemont High)
Growing up, everybody loved this movie. Not me, I thought it sucked.
But I did love Spicoli. In between smoking weed and ordering food in class, Spicoli found time to impart words so wise they’d make Buddha choke a kitten. Watch the clip and know for yourself fools.
7. Lawrence (Office Space)
This was a close one. Peter’s lack of work ethic and embezzlement scheme is certainly bastard-like but, in the end, he was too goddamn nice. Lawrence, on the other hand, was a motherfucker from the get-go. He listened in on his neighbor, callously called out his girl, and mocked Peter’s aspirations. But, like the mullet-headed zen master that he was, Lawrence spoke truth to foolishness when he revealed his dream of doing “two chicks at the same time.” Fuckin’ A.
6. Willy Wonka (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)
Wonka is the ultimate contradiction.
On the one hand he’s a benevolent genius who single-handedly creates a candy empire, wrestles the controls of freedom away from the gobstopper monopolizers, and gives his kingdom away to a kindly lad.
On the other hand, he’s also clearly some degree of sexual predator. His name is “Willy.” He keeps counsel with oddly attired midgets. He implores grown men to taste his “chocolate river.” He favors felt and ruffles, you get the idea.
But it is upon the third hand that he is best remembered; a grade-A choice bastard. Don’t believe me? Check the record. If I had a flying elevator and that sweet, sweet Wonka-cash I’d be out fucking sheilas or bints or kappa-wappas or totties or whatever lame slang the English use for the term “skank.” Wonka? He prefers to torture kids and scream at old men.
Face it, the guy is the Michael Vick of candyland. A bastard.
5. The Devil (The Devil’s Advocate)
Forget about the Godfather, old man. This was Pacino’s greatest role. The Devil (”John Milton”) comes back to Earth as an attorney. His plan? Something about building a cadre of uber-lawyers whose goal is to obtain a shit-load of criminal acquittals thus, apparently, pissing God off and making the world super crappy.
(Look the plan sucked, the point is that he was a bastard).
Anyway, in between fucking his daughter, raping his son’s wife, mugging for the camera, and, apparently, winning a whole bunch of acquittals, the Devil managed to squeeze in some great lessons for your kids. Including, perhaps, the greatest lesson of all time:
(Not enough proof for you? How about the fact that he fucks his own daughter?)
4. Thornton Mellon, Back to School
I used to love Back to School. But it was on recently and I realized something. Every single scene that doesn’t have Rodney in it is horrible. Let me list the ways:
Rodney’s kid - Jason Mellon - is insufferable. He had a weird lisp. He was ugly. He was very clearly hot for Billy Zabka’s “Chaz.” Thornton could not have spawned this wimp.
Don’t call yourself a “Fat and Tall” magnate then settle for Oingo Boingo. Jesus, even the idiots in PCU managed to wrastle Georgle Clinton and the Parliament funkadelic.
I really, truly, honestly, don’t think Thornton could have pulled off that dive.
So what saved the day? This man, Thornton Mellon:
He cheated. He lied. He drank and smoked. He stole another man’s woman. He mocked the portly.
He was a bastard.
3. Zabka (Multiple Movies)
For a short period of time it was actually illegal to cast a teen villain unless his last name was “Zabka.” Look maybe that law wasn’t the best idea Reagan ever had but damn if you can’t blame him. Zabka was genius. His vision and portrayals of the asshole teenage flat out revolutionized the genre. Zabka’s legend has never been touched.
(Of course since I have NO knowledge of movie or cinema history, I can’t back that fact up with data or any sort of cogent argument. But — for those looking to quibble — why don’t you watch this little clip first. Then you’ll know I’m right, you’re wrong, and Zabka is pimp.)
2. Douglas Coughlin, Cocktail
“Coughlin’s Law: Never show surprise, never lose your cool.”
“All things end badly, or else they wouldn’t end.”
“Coughlin’s Law; Anything else is always something better.”
“Coughlin’s Law; Bury the dead, they stink up the place.”
Frankly, Coughlin probably would have been number one if he wasn’t always prefacing his stupid lines with that “Coughlin’s Law bit.” All in all though, pretty good run considering he was only in about two-thirds of the movie and had to play second fiddle to Tom Cruise.
“Coughlin’s Law: My shirt is off.”
1. Coach Bobby Finstock, Teen Wolf
He did no coaching. He let “the Wolf” ball hog the entire game. He let his star player end up with “Boof” rather than the slutty hot chick. Inexplicably, he somehow became a College wrestling coach by the time of the sequel. But no man has had greater quotes:
“There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body.”
“It doesn’t matter how you play the game, it’s whether you win or lose. And even that doesn’t make all that much difference.”
And, of course, this immortal sequence…
Like Carly Simon once said: “Nobody brung it better.”Makes me feel sad for the rest.
_______________________
The superdelegate system is anti-Democratic. Period. The beer swillers in Boston didn’t dump tea in the Harbor just to replace one caste system with another, they did it to oust the elitist power that dictated terms without providing a voice. And yet — 200 years later — that’s what we got. A system of Democracy controlled by party leaders possessed of “grown-up wisdom” designed to “keep the party from going off the rails.” And how do they do that? By wrestling control from the voters by the guise of what’s best for the party.
“Good job working the line Timmy, now here’s your ballot, choose whichever hand-picked candidate you like! Then get back to work.”
“God bless you sir! If it wouldn’t be too troubling, mightn’t I enjoy a bite of spotted dick before I resume my endeavors?”
“I suppose…but come by my office when you’re done. I need my champagne collection dusted post-haste!”
Fuck that.
The justification that there’s a risk of the common folk messing up the pick isn’t sufficient. The question is not whether the Superdelegates’ role is necessary, it’s whether it’s right. The idea of a pinky-held-aloft, tea-sipping party patrician holding equal sway to a room packed with beer-guzzling commoners is utterly anti-Democratic. Follow that logic to its inexorable tee and all of the delegates should be “super.”
And let’s not pretend that the “Superdelegates” (TM) are somehow better equipped than the common man. I read a story yesterday about how Chelsea went out to lunch with a 21 year old University student who has, somehow, been given Superdelegate status (”it’ll make a great human interest story Walter!”). They chatted it up then he flitted off to class. Ah, yes. Sometime later he’ll vote for one of the two. He hasn’t decided yet. He’ll keep us posted. Meanwhile you and a thousand of your concerned neighbors spend your Saturday afternoon jammed into a dank elementary school cafeteria and, after enduring umpteen speakers drone on about how Hilary is the best candidate because she’s gained fortitude through her many travails and don’t be concerned about the crying as it is merely the natural reaction of a carrying woman I mean don’t we all harvest the contradictions of our hard yet loving hearts, finally get the chance to cast your vote: Barack Obama.
What do you know, he wins. It’s a consensus. He sweeps the State. Uh-oh…
Fortunately for us we have the Superdelegates. The standard-bearers ready to defy the rising tide, the unprecedented caucus turn-out, the massive groundswell. The Superdelegates feel no compulsion to side with their constituents, they are going to make up their own minds. They will analyze the data, select the person most electable, and stand up for what’s right. They will do what’s best for the party. Period.
What, you can’t get behind values based leadership? Hey asshole, this is why the party came up with this system, to rebut the tyranny of the majority. And what values are our Democrat-intelligensia basing their decision on?
“It’s a loyalty thing”
Washington State Representative Norm Dicks
Oh, those values. Favor and Influence. Got it.
If this doesn’t embody the precise reason people are voting for Obama I don’t know what does. It’s about change motherfuckers and Hilary ain’t bringing it.
Atomic Punk
