For more info on the subject of this asinine tirade:

A buzz of activity yesterday helped Martin Provencher keep his mind not on what might have happened, but on finding his 9-year-old daughter, Cdrika, who disappeared without a trace eight days ago.

…

Cdrika Provencher is 5 feet tall and weighs 70 pounds. She is white and has curly red hair and brown eyes. Anyone with information about her disappearance should call the SQ at 1-800-659-4264

     Sorry, but I think my solution there is a little more helpful than posting some Asshat’s blog URL…

     Now to focus on the Asshat…

     All day long, Steven has been posting this message to our blog, and everyone else’s blog who was listed on the Google Page Rank 50 Dollar Contest:

I have disregarded any posting on any movies today.Please if anyone has any information on this beautiful redhead little girl call your local police dept.

PLEASE READ THE POST

(Asshat’s URL deleted since he was so polite)

     Four of my friends have send me a message today about the “weird spam” and each time, I’ve told them, “Nah, he seems to be doing it to all of his regular reads…”
     But when the same comment came in the second time, and again went into moderation, I responded to him via e-mail:

To: steven
Date: August 8, 2007 2:47PM 

Steven, I know it’s a PSA, but it’s kinda … well … spamming.  We’ve all heard it all over the news.

Take care,
Mark

    I wasn’t being flippant, but he needs to know that his actions might be ticking people off, eh?

     What I got back instead of an apology, or a plea to go ahead and remove the comment from moderation, was an e-mail from an abusive little asshat with absolutely no manners whatsoever:

From: steven
Date: August 8th, 2007 2:47PM EDT

your an asshole

     I mentioned it to a friend, saying, “Okay… He’s wound a little tight today,” but didn’t bother to respond.
     A few minutes later, got another one…

From: steven
Date: August 8th, 2007 2:53PM

She lives in my province, I thought I would get help from the blogging community.It’s not a psa or spam you ass,it’s called trying to help each other out!!!.obviously you don’t have any children or else you would understand!!!!

GET LOST!!!!

     Thanks for that, Steven.

     Seriously, I couldn’t continue my day without being abused by a random Asshat from Quebec.  Apparently, the problem isn’t only that you’re a repeat-offending spammer, but also that you’re totally lacking in the social graces which tend to be bestowed to most of us who deal with other human beings on a regular basis.

     To summarize:

• You can’t spell “you’re”
• I am an asshole, and an ass (think I needed that newsflash, Mr. Brightspark?)
• Your message was not a Public Service Announcement (PSA)
• Sending the exact same message to every blog attached to a $50 contest is apparently helping us out
• Sending your base URL instead of to an individual post is apparently helping us out, as well
• I don’t have any children
• I should get lost
• Your keyboard apparently has faulty space, shift, one, comma and period keys

     You’re right, Steven… I don’t have any kids because I have a genetic predisposition which results in severe birth defects.  Thanks for reminding me, Asshat.  All those years of therapy undone because you happened to Spam every blogger I know…

     You seem to be suffering from a PEBKAC error.

     Maybe, even, a little I-D-Ten-T.

     Now, Asshat, stop screwing with us and go do something useful … like maybe playing Russian Roulette, or seceding from the Canadian Union or something…

Off a bridge, that is.

Not to sound unsympathetic to the horrible disaster which unfolded Wednesday on I-35W in Minneapolis, but it’s our government who allowed it to happen.  Maybe once enough people plumet to their death in horrific accidents, somebody who is somebody might decide to put more money where it needs to be:  HERE IN THE U.S., not every-damn-where else.

Nationwide, there are more than 70,000 that could crumble like humpty dumpty and have a great fall.  A story posted on AOL today states that Tennessee’s bridges DO NOT make it into a list of bridges likely to go down anytime soon.  So, maybe its true.  Maybe it’s not. 

I decided that this whole situation scares the crap out of me.  So, I started looking into the bridges in Tennessee that are, according to our officials at DOT, structurally deficient.

These guys tell us that of all the bridges, both “on system” and “off system” that are in structurally deficient number more than 1,000.  More than 1,000!!!  Of course, the bridges are not listed here, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too terribly hard to find out if any of these 1,000 are bridges we take for granted every single day.

I found this quote from a TDOT official from NewsChannel5 in Nashville…

TDOT said about four percent of the state’s 8,000 highway and state road bridges are what they call “structurally deficient,” which means they have some structural problems. TDOT said those problems do not compromise the safety of those bridges.

They can call it what they want.  I still think federal funds should be piped into each state for bridge and road upkeep, rather than all over the world.

Think about it…Henley Street?  Gay Street?  The big one on Pellissippi Pkwy?  I-40?  Edgemore to/from Oak Ridge?  Not to mention any number of smaller bridges. 

Good luck out there people.  Watch out for them hateful northern drivers from states that start with “I” and have falling bridges.

     Today’s Asshat comes to us from a magical place where there there was never slavery, no judgmentalism, and is completely devoid of religious and political extremism.

     Yes, of course I’m joking.

     He’s from north-central South Carolina.

     I can only assume this is some ridiculous retort to a recent statement I made, “I’m a lot more than just the sum of my experiences…”  But I wonder why he didn’t leave it in the comments, in that context, instead of giving me such impressive ammunition for an Asshat of the Day post?

     Via the Contact form, this so-called Doctor of Psychology writes:

From: Dr. H.T.B., Psy.D
Date: July 31st 2007, 9:34AM

It is wrong to think that you are more than the sum of your experiences.

It is even worse to combine it under religion.
Your deep faith commits you to slavery of a false ideal.
You are subservient to other masters.
You have righteous indignation.
The worse you feel the more you believe.
Your free will disappears.
It is an arrogant philopshopy of exclusion that breeds hatred.

You are the sum of your experiences and nothing more.
Your are flirting with disaster to think otherwise.

     I’m impressed with your amazing powers of observation, dude!  You must have been wearing your tinfoil hat to have such keen insight into all of the secret messages in the post.  *snicker*
     If you got all of that from a blog post, you’re more f$&*ed up than a football bat.  

     Where did you come up with the idea that I had “deep faith?”  Where did you come up with the idea that people who spiritual or religious are a bunch of exclusionary, hateful bastards?
     While I can agree with this viewpoint in certain cases (i.e. followers of former Asshat Award recipient, Fred Phelps), it’s certainly no reason to condemn every one of them.

     Doc, you apparently think anyone who mentions a Maker is a religious zealot, who’s a slave to false ideals and just out there to screw with people.  People like you, perhaps?  Did you have a bad experience with someone who was deeply religious?

     Seriously, I think you might need to try some of the advice you’re so quick to dole out.  Maybe you should take one of those pills…
     You know…
     The ones with a small risk of sexual side effects, but they are rare?
     Of course, both taking the pill and noticing any sexual side effects would require removing your head from your ass… You’re flirting with disaster to think otherwise.

     It’s a little disturbing that someone who claims to be a Doctor of Psychology doesn’t remember the basic tenets of his practice.  Perhaps some remedial study is in order…
     We are all the sum of our experiences, but it’s the way that we deal with them that defines who we are.  We can succumb to bad experiences and reflect them into our every day lives and be unhappy, or learn from them and move on in order to better ourselves and become well-adjusted.
     Me, I’ll take the latter.

I haven’t done an Asshat of the Day Award before but given the situation it seems warranted.

At 7:05AM EDT, a Denial of Service attack started from multiple open proxies from across the globe using a brute force password attack against a previously open service. This has been going on for weeks so it’s not a huge surprise that it eventually succeeded. At 7:21AM EDT, our “fan,” known only as “1 hAppY pUppY,” logged into a shell account and edited some critical files.

[ Edit by Mark : WTF?  Pulled out the IP.  See comments! ]

Our brainiac (and I use this term with utmost facetiousness) came from 67.187.xx.xx (Hostname: c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.wa.comcast.net, Aliases: c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.tx.comcast.net, c-67-187-xx-xx.hsd1.tn.comcast.net).

Thank you, Random, soon-to-be-ex, Comcast Employee.

To try and pass your skill off as a script (“bl0GituD3 d3fAc3R 1.0b5 bY jT”) while making numerous typos is the mark of a true Genius. And leaving the logs, backup files and history was a brilliant move in that we would expect a hacker to cover his tracks. Leaving the “i” instead of changing it to a “1” in “bl0Gitud3” was a truly brilliant, personal touch. You went far to look like a dolt that we might underestimate your “mAd sk1LLz.”

No. I can’t even say that with a straight face.

You’re an Asshat.

Not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree are you? You’ve only proven yourself to be a disingenuous coward. A brute-force script shows that you have neither skill nor finesse, and far too much time and personal anger on your hands.

Mark said it best the other day.

Some people need to get lives.They should start by getting off the Internet a few hours a day… The real world can be quite … titillating.

I think it should have read:

“Some people need to get laid.”

     I’ve talked a couple of times about our local Knoxville culture getting screwed up by a bunch of asshats moving here and trying to rebuild it in their own image … From basic skills of “being intentionally rude and uncaring” to “being a good neighbors.”
     When I say that they don’t know how to be “good neighbors,”  it’s not about the people next door who keep to themselves— it’s about having a sense of community and civic responsibility.  East Tennessee’s had that until recent years.

     In this area, people drive pretty well, whereas in my travels, I’ve often complained about the way people drive.
     Here, they’re slightly aggressive, and mostly polite.  They tend to pay attention, and allow people their space.  They don’t try and run you down when you’re coming on an interstate entrance ramp.  They don’t stop in the middle of the road for no reason.  The light is green, they go.  The light is red, they stop.  They don’t pull out in front of people for no reason.  And they pretty much obey the traffic laws.
     But people who move here?  Yeah, not so much…

     Cathy, over at Domestic Psychology, got on the same train of thought …

This week, I pulled up to the white line behind which you are expected to stop at a red light. I came to a stop and looked closely at the car beside me which crossed all four tires across the line before stopping. When the light turned green, I looked at the beyond the line driver’s plates and saw that they were Indiana plates. I was letting the information slide to the back of my mind as I pulled to another red light and another car did the exact same thing. This time I was far enough back to see that the eager driver had Illinois plates. Twice in 5 minutes on Kingston Pike, a very heavily trafficked street I saw cars doing what I consider against the law and both times they had out of town plates. So, I thought about this the rest of the way to my destination. Number one thought was that I was getting tired of catching every single red light. Number two thought was that maybe other states don’t have lines at intersections like Tennessee does. My third thought was that there must be something wrong with drivers in states that start with the letter “I”. Number four thought, which I seriously considered the longest, was that Tennessee drivers are just more considerate and law abiding drivers.

     Due to my comments about that, which Cathy chose to include on her blog entry … I will now list the “Women Can’t Drive” States:

• Indiana
• Iowa
• Both Dakotas
• Michigan
• Minnesota

     It could be because of the whole “We have farms!  Be a housewife!” thing, and many women are worried about driving after being stigmatized for years.  It could also be because of a lack of Driver’s Education in those states (which is amusing considering that Michigan actually produces quite a few automobiles).  It could also be because city-type areas are much further away from each other “up north” than they are in the East Tennessee area, and people don’t know what the Hell to do when they keep seeing red light after red light, entrance ramp after entrance ramp, car after car… By the way, if you don’t have enough knowledge about driving, you are prone to accident. Good thing, you can lean on Sacramento, CA Car Accident Lawyers for they are dedicated in solving every accident cases no matter what the situation is.      Strangely, these are also the “Driving Without a License” States…