Sometimes, you have to bend the rules.

I suppose it never occurred that chugging a large quantity of beer from a plastic baseball bat might’ve been a bad idea.

     Yesterday, three quarters of Microsoft’s MSN & Live services were up and down for around twelve hours.  There was no news about the incident.

     Tonight, Twitter has had intermittent connectivity, also with no news.

     The Truth Laid Bear, a well-past-its-expiry-date blog ranking site, has had numerous issues for some time with no apparent plans to fix anything:

Access denied for user 'nzbear_ttlb'@'63.247.140.96'
to database 'nzbear_repdb'

     The outage that seems to be causing the most blatant angst for users, however, has occurred on MySpace, where their Applications platform, MySpace Apps, has been down for two days.  While MySpace has left over two hundred million users unable to use the Applications platform with little explanation as to why, users have taken to posting bulletins with everything from conspiracy theories to all out rage against the ad-driven site.  

     The vast majority of MySpace applications are immensely simple, session-based games, most of which are based off of a much more simplified model of the archaic Solar Realms Elite-style BBS games of the early 1980’s.  However, the outrage at being denied the privilege to play these games is very real.  Some users have reported that a Lawsuit against MySpace has closed the applications.  Others have conjectured that it is due to rampant cheating on a points-for-cash system which doesn’t exist.  Some have found more sinister motives, claiming that MySpace’s creator, Tom Anderson, is pulling a coup d’etat against its media mogul owner, Rupert Murdoch.

     Still others blame the spirit of a deceased Tom Anderson as he posts bulletins from the grave, lame-duck President George W. Bush, Lucky the Dog, and an illegal alien named Urinous Hatte, who claims to be from an extra-solar planet in the vicinity of Beta Orionis.

     I would like to address these particular MySpace users directly:

     While MySpace upgrades their OpenSocial platform to v0.8, this leaves many of you with a great deal of free time.  However, this outage has a silver lining.  This is time that could better spent dealing with emotional trauma, finding girl/boyfriends, educating yourselves, raising your children correctly, or any number of other worthwhile objectives which may actually prove that you can do something for your own, or the greater, good.

     In other words:

     Please remove your heads from your asses and get out from in front of the damn computer.

     Thank you, drive through…

     I’m sure everyone’s heard about the Rachel Ray drinking game, where you take a drink every time she said “EVOO.”  Friggin’ annoying, that.  Emeril only says “BAM!” once per show, WTF can’t she just say her damn trademark word once, too?
     Well, because those of us who’ve played the game wouldn’t get very lit, now would we?  And we have to be lit to put up with how many times she says it during the show…

     But today, I’ve come with a better one, therefore I propose a new drinking game…

     The Barack Obama drinking game.

     Step one, drink a few beers to get it going, because you’re going to drink some nasty swill.

     Step two, grab your favorite bottle of liquor under $15.

     Step three, find any given broadcast or video of Barack Obama on television, radio, YouTube or whatever.

     The rules are simple: every time Obama says, “Umm,” take a drink.

     The last man standing wins.

     Of course, at the rate he says “Umm,” it should be a short game…

     Here’s a short clip to get you started!

     Abd ify ou passeed out, I win!!!! Im’ the kign ofteh woirld!

     Here’s a fun little link-sharing Meme, courtesy of Fracas, that could devolve rather quickly into something a little less than wholesome:

Remember when we were kids and at every opportunity, some adult would have us play that silly Telephone game? You know… the one where the lead person comes up with a sentence or statement, whispers it into the ear of the next person in line, and the sentence is passed from person to person until it reaches the end of the line. The last person then repeats the sentence out loud, the first person announces what it actually was, and everyone gets to laugh about how goofy it got by being passed from ear to ear and being altered because of mispronunciations and hearing ability.

Of course I realize that the game was simply a means for adults to keep us in line while we were waiting for something or killing time. Haven’t we even now as adults, tried to use it on our own kids?

Being the silly kind of fracas that I am, I’ve decided to create an internet version of the game, and use it as an opportunity for link-getting. Everyone wants links, and yet lots of people I know, prefer to get their links in a non-obvious kind of way. We’ve all done the “copy this list and create a post and you’ll get links” type of tag… at least once, but most of us don’t want to fill our blogs with those posts. It may get links, but eventually will chase readers away.

This is a fun way to give your readers something entertaining to read and get a few links too.

Instructions:

If you’ve been tagged, check the last entry on the list.  Copy this entire post, add your name and link to the end of the list, copy the sentence in the previous person’s entry and change ONE word in it to try and change the meaning of the sentence for your entry. Name and link only ONE person to tag and then post the whole thing as a new entry in your own blog.  Please make sure to transfer all the links to your post otherwise you aren’t providing fair linkage to the people before you.  Although this will take longer to get around, by tagging only one person you will avoid making mass enemies by having to tag many people, and it will also guarantee only one true version of the game is circulating out there. Fracas, the creator, will attempt to keep tabs on the game and periodically report on it.

Please try not to tag someone you see is already on the list. If you’re on the list, have been tagged again by someone who didn’t pay attention to the instructions and you don’t want to do another turn, please leave a comment at this post over at Fracas, and Fracas will take your turn for you in order to keep the list going.

1. Fracas – http://fracas.wordpress.com writes: 
     Never continue dating anyone who is rude to the waiter.

2. Mark @ Blogitude – https://blogitude.com/ writes:
     Never continue dating anyone who is nude to the waiter.

Mark Tags …. Wiggy @ Matters of Little Consequence