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I really have a problem with this evil entity we call the internet. I try with much difficulty to surf the web, hoping upon hope to find something in the vast abyss of online junk that is worth spending more than 2 seconds looking at. That doesn't often happen but on the off chance that I come across something mildly interesting, I first have to battle through a barrage of adverstisements that hit me like so many bugs on a windshield. These pop-ups, as they're so cutely referred to are the devil's work. If I wanted to buy a particular product, I am pretty sure I would go to the respective website to investigate the product further. You see, I am pretty sure that if I wasn't looking for on-line casino action when I first logged on, a silly animated ad isn't going to mesmerize me into giving my credit card number to a website to play a game of virtual cards that can easily be maniuplated by computer programmers so I never win. I can do that at the local Indian reservation and have a lot more fun doing it. I am also pretty sure I don't need a tiny wireless camera to spy on my neighbor. The ad touts it as a wireless camera that is used for surveillence, but then shows a scantily clad girl lying on a bed. What kind of horrible act could this girl possibly be committing that she would need to be secretly watched? And another thing: I don't have a neighbor that looks like that. Why, then would this camera interest me. Sure, if I lived in Beverly Hills then maybe it would be worth getting but, as it stands, I live in South Florida and I don't care how much make-up or designer clothing you put on Edna, she's still going to be Edna. I also am not interested in meeting singles in my area, although these Pop-Up's assume they know what's best for me. Do I have some sort of hi-tech lonely deperate guy tracer attatched to my email signature that enables some master dating computer to shoot off pop-ups every ten seconds? When I clicked out of the pop-up the first 300 times, wasn't it obvious that it wasn't an offer I cared for. Or is there some mathematic equation that suggests that on the 301st pop-up I will suddenly realize what I have been missing all this time.

This leads me to another interesting observation. Some pop-ups are tricky. They are constructed under the guise of being a desktop window, complete with tool bar across the top. You think that clicking the "x" at the top right corner will cancel the window like it is SUPPOSED TO DO. What happens, however is this: That little rascal is not an "x" but rather part of the click activated ad. So now you are launched into some website hawking porcelian cherubs in the likeness of Regis Philbin.

Now I don't have a problem with Reege, it's just I never needed a porcelian likeness of him complete with a diaper and wings and I am pretty sure I don't suddenly need one when the pop-up says I do. Here's the best one though. I went to a website only to be smacked in the face by a pop-up that visually screamed at me the following "You are the 92,345,567th visitor to this website. Click for a special offer. Then, at the same time, another pop-up explained that I was the 6,345,234th visitor to the same website and should click for a special offer. Now , I'm no quantum physicist but how could I first have been the 92 millionth visitor and THEN be the 6 millionth? That's pretty cool! I am actually depleting the number of visitors to this website. Now that's a power I never knew I had. If only I could sell it. Perhaps I should engage in a pop-up campaign.

Champagne Room Wishes and Lights Out Lake Worth

In true Florida fashion, there are a couple of interesting local newsworthy situations that are perfect fodder for BrunoMoorefan. It's the stufff that couldn't be better if it was made up. Let's start, shall we, with Edward Law, quadriplegic and connoisseur of fine adult establishments. Law, apparently feels he is entitled to the same access to nude skanks that other people with all their appendages are afforded. No beef with that, but do we really have to sue the landing Strip and Wild Side to have our pie and see it dance? Law also says the clubs don't provide adequate handicapped parking or access to restrooms, to which I reply, "Why would you want to use the restroom in a place like that? I, for one, would rather have fire ants poured down my throat than use a urinal in an Adult entertainment club. And as far as the parking goes, I have all my arms and legs and still can't find a place to park in certain places. Get over it and stop your crying. Besides, if you win the law suit, do you know the type of people you're going to have to collect money from for damages? You're already missing all your extremities, there's not much left to do to you. Careful, crybaby, what you wish for.

Now, onto the problem with the Lake Worth Utilities Department. Because of a lightning strike, their main transformer has been burned up. Now they're forced to use some jury-rigged 20 year-old back-up system that would make MacGyver cry. The results are rolling black-outs, malfunctioning traffic lights and just an overall sense of anarchy. It's been a great week so far. Many Lake Worth residents are apparently asking why Lake Worth Utilities "sucks like a stripper in the Chamagne room" (See above story).No one really seems to know what the problem is. Why not just replace the damaged transformer? Easy remedy, difficult to realize. Especially since Lake Worth Utilities has their heads where the light doesn't shine. FPL, where are you?

Florida Fashion is a Freak Show

If you've never been to South Florida, be it West Palm Beach or Miami, there are things that a discerning tourist needs to know. Unfortunately, if you have even one iota of fashion sense about you, it is not going to do you one iota of good in South Florida. Where West Palm Beach and Miami would like to think of themselves as fashion capitals or trend-setting communities, the plain truth is much more sobering. South Florida is a strip of coastline where the fickle think themselves fashionable, and trends come and go like the tides of the crystal blue waters.

One week, in comes the wave of too-thin model types looking waifish and hollow faced. The look was called "heroin sheik". How disturbing. For a while the "BayWatch" look was all the rage, women much bouncier than God ever intended, stuffed full of silicone and collagen, lips and curves bursting at the seams. Every now and then the straggling beach bum look catches on, hair gnarled into dread lock tangles, feet sandalled and faces incessantly burnt by too much sun and salt.

South Florida has not always been like this, however. There was a time when "Palm Beachers" looked and acted like obscenely rich people were supposed to. Think "The Great Gatsby" without the Hamptons. That's when men wore ascots and seer-sucker, and women dressed sharply and smartly, very Jackie O, very Kennedy. The homes along the water in South Florida envoke that fashion sense gone-by. Excessive mansions of every size bordered by emerald lawns and dotted with towers and service entrances were the norm. Men and ladies enjoyed Polo, Croquet and golf. This was the heyday of South Florida, when it was fashionable to be fashionable.

Where has that gone now? There is no more blue-blooded Ivy League exclusivity in South Florida . The ones who enjoyed Palm Beach and Miami in its heyday are rotting away now, the effects of age and too much money hacking away at their former selves. What is left is the culture that inherited the "Old Money" and spent it frivously on things like tattoos and belly-button rings. You can't have the glamour and the glitz wearing a belly-button ring. A tattoo isn't going to invoke that image of Camelot, framed in misty mystery, revered for its majesty, symbol of a time long since past. What place do silicone implants and collagen treatments have among the enormously rich and famous. The South Florida lifestyle was one enjoyed by captains of industry. Henry Flagler built his fortune in oil, built his railroad to the keys and built a palace of a mansion called "Whitehall" in Palm Beach. He was a conservative man, enjoyed the best money could buy and had not one tattoo or piercing upon him. James Deering, Long-since-dead VP of International Harvester built a faux Renaissance Italian Villa on Biscayne Bay in Miami called Vizcaya. The warm breezes and salt water was supposed to help him with a chronic illness. He was a dapper man, often sitting quietly looking out onto the bay, dressed immaculately in tie and top-coat at almost all times. He never even uttered the word silicone.

My how things have changed. Stroll down Ocean Drive in South Beach and behold the stupid things people will do with their money. Where even in the excess of the "Old" Palm Beach, fashion accessories were limited to a walking stick for gentlemen or fine purse for the ladies, South Beach accessorizes like a head-hunter on the prowl. Any item that can be construed as fashionable becomes fare game, from thousand dollar belts with a 50 cent production cost to slithering slimy "exotic" animals like snakes and lizards.

In an effort to appear more European, South Beach has won the insanity award, hands down. The latest, greatest fashion statement: A scratched and dented Vespa brand motor scooter, just like they ride in Italy. With that in mind, silicone implants seem so "Last Season".

South Florida adds another feather to it's cap of conundrums

Here we go again. Let's take inventory, shall we, of what's happened in the past 2 years across the great Sunshine state. We started with the pivotal Elian Gonzalez saga, with all the melodrama and crocodile tears of an award winning telenovella. Marisleysis Gonzalez, the martyred mother figure, who could cry on cue, embraced her cousin Elian, gave him a normal American life of trips to Disney World and international noteriety. (The things that all well-rounded American children go through)That she had never before seen him in her life made no difference. And the immediate reaction across the Cuban community was that the boy should be allowed to stay in America. Is that what the boy wanted ? Not necessarily but that IS what the family, the community, the "America what have you done to this boy" spouting housecleaner/fisherman wanted. Elian is gone, back with a very loving father and now the Cuban community in Miami holds a candlelight vigil at the anniversary of his reunion with his father. They have a martyr and a new holiday. They can finally have their flan and eat it too. Let them be.
Fast forward to December 2000. Again, South Florida is the epicenter of National news, this time because it held up the Democratic process because of a still unknown number of errant voter ballots. After 14 days of appellate court deliberations, news helicopters escorting ballot trucks to the State Capitol and heated debate, a president was chosen (We think). Hit the FF>> button and we arrive a week after the September 11th attacks. Federal sleuths discover that a dozen or so of the suicide hijackers lived right here in Delray Beach, learned to fly at near-by airports and practiced martial arts in nearby studios. How reassuring, grasshopper. Then there was the anthrax attacks on the American Media building (Purveyors of such fine journalistic publications as the National Enquirer and The Weekly World News) and now that we are getting past that, Menorah Gardens, a private cemetary facility located in West Palm Beach, is accused of dumping human remains behind its property to open up grave space for new arrivals. Also among the charges, multiple burials in the same grave site, mix-matching body parts and placing the wrong bodies in certain graves. What a public relations campaign! Here are some slogans I've come up with so far:

"West Palm Beach--buried in the sand--then dug up and buried somewhere else, then dug up and dumped in the woods"

"South Florida--Where a man hiding a little boy in a closet can claim mental anguish and claim to be a fisherman when going out on a boat for the first time"

"South Florida--Anthrax, terrorism, missing bodies and votes that count twice"

Could batboy be to blame?

Computers. If you can't fix them, kick them till you break your foot.

What follows are some observations that I , as an astute citizen of this country, notice and can't stand not saying anything about. Now while this preceding sentence may not make any sense, I am sure you will agree that the content here does.
I'd like to wax philosophical for a moment on the current state of the computer and technical age. I am sorry but I feel like a bit of a louse when it comes to anything other than closing out of a program or exiting out of Windows and signing off. You see folks, it's this simple. Computers are stupidly complicated and the people who design the processes you must go thorugh in order to even trouble shoot a computer problem are on a mental plane that exists only in places like role playing games and on-line science fiction forums. Here is a typical situation when it comes to computer problems. My computer flashes some stupid error message. And the message doesn't describe the problem. It has to say "Error message 4204--this computer has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Please consult NASA for further instructions" Can't it just tell me that I hit the wrong button, the modem isnt working right or theres something wrong. Then cant it tell me exactly how to fix it. It must be possible to fix it with the mouse and keyboard because I rarely see any tech-head tearing down a computer like you would a big-block Chevy. Of course someone will be reading this saying "That's not a legitimate error message. Windows would never tell you to consult NASA." These people also have a very strange sense of humor. You see, dear technically inclined reader, the preceding sentence referring to the error message is what we on Earth call sarcasm, intentionally ludicrous exaggerations meant to make a point. Of course the obvious,(like designing a computer that is user-friendly) is lost in the translation. Computer designers are masters of the painfully unclear. Humor, to them, involves a riddle or mulit-layered punch line, just like those damn error messages. Take a hint from car manufacturers. When there is no oil in the car, the check oil light comes on. When the gas tank is low, the fuel light comes on. When there is a computer problem, however, it takes an MIT graduate to get things straightened out. And it costs an arm and a leg to do so. You see, unbeknownst to the holier-than -thou tech heads all across the world, there is an epidemic of malfunctioning computers due to the fact that we don't want to spend 5 thousand dollars to fix an 8 hundred dollar machine. We just want the damn thing to work.

Check back every week. These articles are updated weekly so there is something for everyone.

Florida And The Stupidity Factor

It almost sounds like a setup for a joke. The most humorous part however is that it's all true and has the esteemed designation of being one of those events that could only happen here in South Florida. The region that has gained it's fifteen minutes of fame recently with voter recounts, federal agents storming Little-Havana homes in search of pint-sized refugees, terrorists learning to fly and die and Anthrax laced fan mail . Now, even though it might not make national news (and good thing too, considering the embarassment this would bring to an already blushing state) one man has superceded all previous definitions of stupidity personified.
Here in Florida, with the high water table and whatnot, we experience problems that other states do not. Sinkholes, for one, are created when underground water current erodes the top soil, causing it to cave in (along with homes, roads, sidewalks and swimming pools if they happen to be built in that location.) Other theories include a ticked-off God punishing idiotic people for building houses that all look the same and have no property but have been purchased for hundreds of thousands of dollars but there's not a lot of research to back that theory up.
The bottom line is that these aren't like roadside potholes. Sinkholes can swallow up whole neighborhoods, have depths that reach the Earth's core and unleash demons and goblins of every imaginable nightmareish breed (Okay, maybe they're not that bad but they're still dangerous)
Another thing you need to understand about Florida (especially if you're not a resident)--We're a bunch of arrogant SOB's. We think highly of ourselves and don't take too kindly to being told what to do or what not to do. We like our beaches sandy, our condominiums tall, our clothing gaudy and our food early bird. We like our houses identical, our yards tiny and our plastic yard decorations in the shape of pink flamingoes. Florida is really a breeding ground for idiocy and brainless maladjustment. The following story is testimony as to why:
Recently a sinkhole had swallowed much of an intersection in Boca Raton. this one was due to a water main break. Water was everywhere, residents were evacuated and those who weren't were forced to boil their water. good time was had by all. but it was about to get better because puttering down the road in his workvan, a pair of trusty dogs at his side was Henk Shiffer. Obviously mistaking the "Detour" signs for "Hey Henk, please drive thru" signs, and further scoffing at fire rescue personell for trying to dissuade him from driving with a rather vague "You can't go through there it's too dangerous" statement, Shiffer bounded past the roadblocks, fire-rescue and police to try his hand at the GMC Van float-a-thon.
Shiffer, who friends call, affectionately "One stupid moron" drove his white van, dogs and all, into the sinkhole and discovered quite abruptly--GMC vans make great artificial reefs--
The splashdown was quick as well as the panic that set in. As water rushed into the windows of the Van Shiffer rushed to frantically rescue his two best friends who were, themselves, trying to figure out what the hell their human was thinking when he drove his perfectly good Van into a flooded hole.
The crux of the story is this. Apparently Shiffer's insurance policy doesn't cover "Obvious stupidity behind the wheel".