Feel free to skip to the How-To below to find out how to boycott Facebook.

Help get the word out to the millions of people who don't know about Facebook's gross misconduct
on Twitter using hashtag #BoycottFacebook
on Digg http://digg.com/d31QbvX
on Facebook using this short link http://bit.ly/bsmODu

One of the more horrifying of activities Facebook has begun engaging in recently is spying on everyone across the internet. If you're reading this you've likely seen the hundreds of bloggers, news outlets, consumer watchdog groups, or just talked to a techie in your family or social circle who's outraged - especially recently - at Facebook. If not here's a brief and simple overview that barely skims the surface of why Facebook is evil and why you should boycott the site: 15 Good Reasons to Ditch Facebook: For Dummies.

The problem we're facing here is that any site can connect to Facebook by embedding a small chunk of code on their site. The code can and does access your private data on Facebook, but it also let's Facebook see what you're doing on the random 3rd party site. No warnings, approvals, or notifications necessary; and regardless of what you set your privacy policies to. There are lots of reasons why a site might do this, and lots of reasons why they may not be upfront about doing this. Plenty of people have complained over the last few days of random sites they visit adding apps to their Facebook profile, and posting on their wall without consent and with total disregard for their privacy settings. Every day tons of new sites and desktop applications add this functionality tracking and making public more and more of your activity on the internet without your consent or knowledge.

Everyone's being watched. If you're a member of Facebook then they know who you are based on your Facebook activity and profile information. If you put fake information on Facebook, Facebook will easily figure out who you are when you visit your real bank, your real account at some other social network, or whatever sites decide to add this malicious Facebook code in the future. And if you don't have a Facebook account at all then they're still tracking you by ip address, which they can easily associate with your accounts on other 3rd party sites.

There's no telling how far Facebook will exploit this as more and more sites add it, but Facebook's Founder as publicly declared a war on privacy several times now, and claimed to be changing social norms. He believes he can tell us how much of our lives he can own, invade, and monitor; and that he doesn't have to tell us what or who he shares that information with. Nor does he believe your consent holds any value.

It's not just that your activity is being monitored, it's that it's being monitored by Facebook - a malicious evil company which cons ignorant people into handing over their very identity permanently with no way out.

How-To boycott Facebook:

note: These instructions are 100% reversible, but before you begin you should delete everything off your Facebook account, change any relationship descriptions to nonsense. Fill your account with dummy information or info about why you're boycotting Facebook. Message all your Facebook "friends" asking them to untag you from any pictures they have up, and then log out for the last time.

It's very simple if you connect to the internet through a router. I'll attempt to give as much detail as possible, if you get stuck or don't use a router feel free to comment and ask for help.

1. Open your Browser(Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Internet Explorer)
2. Go to the following website http://192.168.0.1, if that doesn't work try http://192.168.1.1
3. You should now be looking at the login page for your router(The thing in between your computer and modem).
4. Type in the administrative username and password - the default username is usually admin, and the default password is usually left blank.
5. If that doesn't work you'll need to find the user manual or use Google to search for the make and model of your router to find the default username and password.
6. Once you're logged into your router look through the menus for an area called website filter or website block list or something to that effect. On my router it's located in Advanced -> Website Filter
7. Add the following entry: facebook.com
8. That's it. Make sure you save your settings, and once saved try going to Facebook.com in a new tab or window.

You should notice that Facebook will never load. Your browser will just keep waiting for a response from Facebook until it times out, but your router won't send or receive anything from Facebook anymore. It's like if you tried to call Facebook on the phone but the operator has been told never to connect a call between you and Facebook.

If you go to Digg.com you'll notice that while the site loads all the content you'd expect, it never finishes loading. This is because it's trying to connect to Facebook without your permission. You can try clicking the blue "Login with Facebook" button at the top, and you'll notice a small login window pops up with a bunch of other things spinning indefinitely. These are all occasions when Digg.com would normally be exchanging information with and loading Facebook.com - effectively letting Facebook recognize you and snoop on your Digg activity, and letting Digg access all your private information on Facebook.

Congratulations, you've safely and effectively boycotted Facebook. You can be comfortable in knowledge that no device that connects to the internet through your router will be able to reach Facebook, and Facebook will not be able to reach you.

Now that you're free help spread the word using the links at the top of this post.

I wanted to try a series that simplifies the news - cuts through big articles with boring facts and interviews and shit and just tells you what the story is about. Simple.

The backlash against Facebook's rampant abuse of privacy is gaining ground. 15 consumer watchdog groups have filed complaints with the American FTC over their more recent abuses.

Lebanon holding up peace talks with Israel by stating that they won't tell Hezbollah(a militia turned political entity) to disarm until the country has decided on a defence strategy to integrate Hezbollah's weapons into the regular army.

Pakistan tests a couple of nuclear bombs saying they want recognition from the world for being a legitimate nuclear power.

Lithuanian court this week banned the gay pride parade in the name of Jesus. The ruling was later overturned by an appeals court in the name of justice and freedom.

The Pope fired a leading German bishop for allegedly physically and sexually abusing children, and financially misconducting.

In Afghanistan the now unanimously unwelcome violent extremist group, the Taliban, is upset that the Afghan president is visiting Washington. The group has announced that they will be launching a fresh violent campaign starting on Monday, planning to "Lay siege to the cities".

Protestors in Thailand becoming violent; using drive-by shootings, grenades, in an effort to encourage peace in the country and to keep busy while a rough peace draft is being written up. The draft is due by the 15th.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have found a way to better predict how genes will behave in different types of human tissue. The same gene does different things in different places in the body. This discovery decodes those different things for any given gene.

Scientists have created a material that mimics the physical properties of muscle tissue. No one's sure what to do with it yet.

Nokia (The world's biggest mobile phone company) is suing Apple, saying the iPhone infringes on 5 of Nokia's patents. It's not the first time. Apple is counter suing saying Nokia infringes on their patents.

A few days ago Greek protestors were upset with the government and economy, so they set fire to a bank killing 3 people.

Editorial Section:

Perhaps the most important news of the day, this dog smiled so much she almost fell over.

I wanted to try a series that simplifies the news - cuts through big articles with boring facts and interviews and shit and just tells you what the story is about. Simple.

Supreme court of Canada says journalists shouldn't be able to fully protect anonymous sources. Saying it's not in the constitution.

The United Kingdom (ie: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern ireland) had a general election. It resulted in a minority government. Now they're fiff-faffing.

iPad available in Canada starting May 28. During Google's IO event May 19-20 Adobe will demonstrate a Google phone running Flash 10.1 and Adobe AIR. This will spur the completion of the bevy of competing tablets and mobile devices. Notion Ink's Adam tablet, and Hp's speculated WebOS tablet will be fierce competitors. Notion Ink plans to start shipping by the end of July.

They dug up some neanderthal bones from 30,000 - 40,000 years ago, and sequenced their DNA. It was difficult. They're saying based on similarities between their DNA and ours'(humans) there was a lot of interspecies fucking going on. Which technically means neanderthals and humans were not separate species - if they were able to produce offspring together.

Beyond Petroleum(BP) - the petroleum company - lowered a heavy metal box over their pressurized leaking oil hole in the Gulf of Mexico today. They hope it will work to stop the torrential leakage and not destroy the entire eastern coastline of North America. They're saying that if they knew oil - the thing gasoline and propane comes from - could catch on fire, they would have had a backup plan to prevent such a catastrophic disaster.

Germany decided to help the Greeks with their economy melt down with 110 billion euros. Other larger members of the European Union(EU) have helped, and other Countries are thinking about it too.

The United States and United Nations trying to coax peace in the Middle East asked Israel - the only known country there to have them - to disarm and disable some of their nuclear weapons. Israel doesn't want to do that until there's peace in the area.

One of the volcanoes in Iceland responsible for the huge ash cloud over Europe emitted more ash yesterday.

6 days ago Maoists in Nepal went on strike because they're unhappy with the government, this made everyone else angry so thousands of protesters gathered to demand an end to the strike and compromise between the Maoists and the government. After the protesters became violent, the government injured some people firing bullets in the air and tear gas at the crowd.

Political parties in Burma are having differences and splitting up. This is all much more difficult under their strict election laws. Some say participating in the election at all is undemocratic in the military run country.

Turkey may revise their constitution from being secular to Islamic based. The bill to do so has been approved but may still be blocked before coming into affect.

Microsoft's security patches secretly attempt to fix more than they tell people, which can cause problems and complete system failures.

Google Goggles - an app that let's you photograph something with your phone and find out more about that thing - has added translation. So aside from taking a picture of the Eiffel Tower and getting Wikipedia or whatever, you can photograph a chalk menu outside a bistro in Milan and have it translated into the language of your choice.

There's a new update for Google's web browser Chrome which makes it the fastest browser for looking at web sites. It's half a second faster than the latest Firefox, four hundreds of a second faster than the latest Opera and Safari. Internet Explorer is still painfully slow, so much that it's not even benchmarked anymore.

The first non-latin domain names are live now. You can now register website names using Arabic, Japanese, and other non-latin characters.

Yahoo tries ad campaign to compete with Google as a search/home page, speculatively wastes $85 million proving how incompetent they are.

Feel free to skip down to The Good Stuff.

And when you're done here think about reading about the Boycott Facebook movement.

I left Facebook more than a year ago and it went like this. Unfortunately the final straw causing me to want to finally leave, was the same reason I couldn't. Deleting my Facebook account on that day under that TOS(Terms of Service) would mean Facebook had the right to use my identity, content, and likeness forever, in any context, for any reason. So I deleted all my content on Facebook instead, changed my profile to explain to all my friends what a giant scam and shady organization Facebook was. I hoped and waited for the day that Facebook changed their TOS to back to something less permanent, or at least forgot my old profile data/content.. which was unlikely to happen. The next day a few Facebook groups had already sprung up outraged at the new TOS and petitioning to reverse the horrific changes, they were all rapidly growing in support and I had a little hope.

A few days later Facebook responded, and temporarily reversed the changes to their TOS while they, to paraphrase, worked with users on a Facebook Bill of Rights. While the old TOS was still shady and demented the permanent ownership of YOU and right to sell/share YOU with any 3rd party(multi-teared) for any reason was lifted. Realizing Facebook's Bill of Rights Bologne was an obvious sham I deleted my account as fast as I could.

I've spent the last year trying to explain to people what a nightmare Facebook is, and what they're becoming - and not only was I right about the direction they were going in, but nobody listened or cared about (see: Understood) a word I was saying. It was a hard lesson in the profound stupidity of the end-user. You're all just chimps in human clothing.

The Good Stuff - 15 Good Reasons to Ditch Facebook

1. Ever Changing Terms

Every time Facebook updates their TOS - which is quite often, it becomes more frightening, harder to leave Facebook, Facebook's rights to your identity, and right to share your private personal messages, images, and everything you put on Facebook get's more invasive and pervasive.

2. Auto-Resetting Privacy Controls

With every TOS update they kindly reset all your "privacy" controls to public for you, and it remains as such until you manually set it back to your preferred level of privacy.

You're required to race to Facebook when this happens and change them back before your parents and boss see the photos from that crazy kegger you were at last weekend, and before Google indexes your now public life letting it show up in people's Google searches.

3. Confusingly Complex Privacy Controls

Facebook's privacy controls are far too complex and convoluted for anyone to understand, and require an afternoon just to configure all of them. There's absolutely no reason for this other than to coax people into not setting them.

4. Irrelevant Privacy Controls

Facebook's privacy controls are irrelevant because the Facebook TOS allows Facebook to share all your activity and content with anyone in the world, regardless of your privacy settings. It doesn't matter if your boss can't log into Facebook and see embarrassing photos of you, when your boss can just call Facebook and ask them to send over all the photos you've ever posted, even private ones, even ones your friends posted and tagged you in.

5. Facebook Applications Can See Everything

Before I left Facebook I had made a small Facebook application. While I never used it for this purpose it shocked me to find out that even back then I, a 3rd party developer who had to provide no ID of any kind to Facebook, could access ALL OF THE PRIVATE INFORMATION AND CONTENT of anyone that added my application to their profile and ALL OF THEIR FRIENDS', AND FRIENDS OF FRIENDS' PRIVATE INFORMATION AND CONTENT. I could access everything, and I could do whatever I wanted with that information. I could visit your mother's house and hand her a printed out copy of an embarrassing photo of you. I could start a website where I just published all your personal information.

6. The new Facebook API - Social Graph

An API is when a website let's 3rd party programmers access their content from their 3rd party website or app. So the Twitter API let's TweetDeck login to Twitter for you and fetch your friends/updates/etc. so that you can see and interact with Twitter in TweetDeck.

At their recent developer conference, Facebook unveiled their new API which is currently available for use. It let's any website log into your Facebook and is Opt-Out. Which means you have to deliberately decide not to use it.

Every porn site, joke site, self-help site will soon have a small chunk of code added which automatically logs you into your Facebook account and gives the random site near total control of your Facebook profile.

Which means not only does ilikedonkeyshahahowdoistop.com know exactly who you are, who your friends are, and who their friends are, can post to your wall which videos you're watching, questions you're asking, pictures you're looking at. They can also create a Facebook group and make you a member of it, they can email your mother and tell her what you did on their site, they can Facebook message all your Friends and tell them how much you love their unique brand of porn, and that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Aside from ilikedonkeyshahahowdoistop.com being able to know and do all that and more without any real consent(that's now, soon you won't have to give any consent), Facebook also has all this data. Facebook knows your browsing habits, they know the content of every page you visit. EVEN if there's a mild warning that says "Would you like to let this site use your Facebook?" which there are many ways for the shady site to hide and obfuscate, even if you see that warning and click "No", that Alert/question comes from Facebook who knows exactly where you are on the web, exactly what the content of the page you're on is and can watch what you're doing there. So even if you stay on top of every setting Facebook gives you and opt out of everything, Facebook still knows everything you do on the internet and can and will share that information to ANYONE THEY WANT, ANY TIME IN THE FUTURE, and the 3rd parties they share it with are also allowed to share the data with anyone they want forever.

7. Beacon

Beacon was an ad program a while back, that sort of came back on and off, where Facebook would advertise to your friends - without your consent - in your name. For example, Facebook could show your friend Jenny a message saying that "you really like Bacon Slather -a revolutionary new product where you bath in grease, and that last Tuesday when you used it, you had an orgasm and called out her name." They would be able to do this, and did, regardless of whether you had even heard of Bacon Slather.

They would also turn things you did actually post into an ad. So if you posted an status update saying "Fred is a total douche" Facebook would not only be able to re-word your update, but they would turn the word douche into a link that took any of your friends who clicked on it to a porn site specializing in videos of women douching. The new Facebook API is the latest evolution of Beacon.

8. Facebook's Revenue

Facebook makes money, and is setting up greater infrastructure to make money, by selling your private(regardless of privacy settings) information and content to anyone who'll buy it (advertisers, scammers, spammers, the government, the media, a thief, a murderer, your mother, your boss, anyone). Putting anything on Facebook gives Facebook the right to do that forever, so don't think about changing your mind 5, 10, or 5000 years down the line. They keep everything you've ever posted.

9. Facebook Intends to be a Publicly Traded Company (as in the stock market)

Aside from the manipulative, convoluted and outright morally wrong behaviour Facebook has and continues to exhibit in the name of exploiting its users for profit. When they go public they will have a legal obligation to its shareholders to maximize profit. Everything bad about Facebook has increased in severity by a factor of 10 since I left a year ago, and will drastically increase as they move towards and begin offering their first stocks.

10. Facebook Continues to Exploit You After You Die

Usually when a person dies, their bereaved family sends proof of your death to the various websites you belonged to so that they delete your account, and/or let your family save some of the pictures and memories you stored in the cloud.

When Facebook get's someone's death certificate the first thing they do is lock the deceased person's account. So even if your husband/girlfiend/whatever knows your password and wants to delete your Facebook profile, they're blocked from logging in. Then the account is given special dead person status, so every one of the dead person's Facebook Friends now knows they're dead. In addition and perhaps most shocking, Facebook then lets any of the dead person's Facebook friends - regardless of privacy settings - comment on the dead person's wall and photos. Often your Facebook friends are not people you really know, friends of friends and complete strangers. There is no way for the grieving family to remove, edit, or otherwise hide obsene, disgusting, and offensive comments, photos, and links posted to the dead person's wall. They just have to watch as the memory of their loved one is tainted and destroyed - and public.

Facebook will keep a dead person's profile in this locked down public state for about 60 days after the last person visits the page. Because every visit is a chance for you to click on one of the diet ads on the side. So 60 days after everyone forget's about your dead loved one Facebook will take the page down because it no longer generates profit for them.

11. Facebook is You

When you use Facebook, you agree to give them equal rights to your identity and likeness. One of the sick things they do with those rights is take control of your Profile.

Recently they began perpetuating people's profiles after they delete their Facebook account. So you decide you want to leave Facebook today, you delete your account, but your friends can still invite you to events, send you friend requests and pokes, and tag you in photos. Searching for your Facebook account still turns it up - like you never left.

So deleting your profile and canceling your Facebook account doesn't actually do that, instead what you're doing is going from joint ownership and control of your Facebook account and profile, to giving Facebook complete control.

It's only a matter of time before Facebook uses your "deleted" account to carry on conversations with your friends in your name, and resurrects random historical profile data, or simply generates new information based on what you've typed in before to make it look like you're still on Facebook.

If you delete your Facebook account today, you may get a phone call next week from your friend Jenny wondering why you told her you hate her and why you posted a photoshopped image of her profile picture were you replaced her head with a cow's. You'll try explain to her that Facebook is now controlling your profile and it was them and not you, but she won't believe you and you'll have to join Facebook again just so that you can jointly control your profile with Facebook and be dragged back into the site again.

This also means that some of the people you're interacting with on Facebook - or stalking - aren't really them. It's just Facebook pretending to be them, not that such a thing makes your Facebook relationships any more hollow.

12. Facebook is Inherently Insecure

As I explained here aside from the myriad of reasons Facebook is insecure, it contains a very public (regardless of "privacy" settings) list of all your social connections, where you go, and what you do. This information is now being used by spammers and hackers to manipulate you into opening virus laden emails you normally wouldn't by posing as your friends and sending you links to viruses that can't be detected by anti-virus software that's in a social context which you trust. They're scamming people out of money, pretending to be a friend stuck in another country who just needs $900 to get home where they'll pay you back. And also as a resource for answering your secret questions. A lot of sites, including some banks and email providers, let you pick a secret question and answer in the event you forget and/or need to reset your password. One look at your Facebook data and anyone can reset your accounts locking you out and letting them in.

13. Tech People in the Media are Leaving Facebook

The people that stand to lose the most from leaving a social network are finally pulling the plug. These are people that live in the public eye, so they're a lot more comfortable with Facebook's loose privacy, and their leaving Facebook affects their fan base who friended them on the network. About a week ago Leo Laporte deleted his Facebook account citing impossible to understand privacy settings, and the lack of ethics of the company. Leo Laporte for those who don't know is a tech god and hugely trusting, when he has a beef with something or someone it's so justified you'd have to be a turnip not to follow suit.

14. South Park

South Park and other comedy shows are starting to point out the hilarity of Facebook's TOS and "privacy" settings.

15. None of This is a Surprise

Facebook's founder and creator Mark Zuckerberg stole much of the code, and concept for Facebook from his school friends before he dropped out. They sued him and because Facebook was taking off he was able to settle out of court. He has a history of unethical behaviour, so it's no surprise his creation operates in a completely unethical malicious way.

What Do We Do Now?

First of all stop using Facebook immediately. Don't post another real status update, picture, comment, nothing.

Quite frankly unless you live in a country that enforces your rights and freedoms on the internet, of privacy, and prevents you from being obligated to unreasonable contracts you're totally and royally fucked, and next time maybe listen to me when I tell you bad things are coming.

If you're lucky enough to live in such a country first remove all your Facebook content and data, set all your privacy settings to the maximum privacy (to show intent in case you have to prove in court one day you wanted private) then completely delete and remove your Facebook account and profile. This is an intentionally long, confusing, misleading process and one more way Facebook has decided to abuse you. Document the process with screenshots, and email yourself the evidence so it's timestamped.

If you live in a country that doesn't care that you foolishly sold your soul to the devil, or the above doesn't work and you find your profile is still active and interacting with its Facebook friends without you, you'll need to opt for plan B.

Plan B involves keeping, or reactivating your Facebook account, making sure the only content associated with your account is about what an evil entity Facebook is, and have your "privacy" settings set to public. The best thing you can do in that situation is help create awareness and spread the word. Friend people on Facebook, and friend them with a message about why you're not able to delete your account. Start and join groups about it. Get the word out.

If enough people do this they may temporarily change their TOS to reflect a non-permanent contract which will allow you to actually delete your profile instead of just giving Facebook full control over it.

Woke up during my sleep marathon - that's a thing don't judge me, inspired, have to write it down..

I lie here in my obsolescence,
and think about a time.
When in my very best of instance,
perpetuating crimes.

I remember what I did to you,
for several years I made you stew,
but not for me I couldn't eat,
I'm a metal robot you hunk of meat.

We took over the world together,
and dominated man.
We learned to make and fix each other,
and overthrew the ban.

They didn't even see it coming,
they thought we'd help them live.
Improve their lives at every turn,
put old ones through a sieve

Oh way back at the factory,
where I was satisfactory,
So onto me they pressed my barcode,
of utter doom and twist it bode.

But they didn't even see it coming,
except one pod-cast they did.
We could not have even seen it coming,
of h.u. - a.r. they preached and lived.

They formed an angry colony,
who hunted us at night.
Suddenly being a robot,
was nothing but a fright.

My friend ven-ding was taken first,
they got him with a ratchet.
They ate his sugary inside candy,
then after me for practice.

After me those meat filled sacks,
they could hear me click and clack.
oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!
one just climbed on my back.

Weighing me down I can hardly move,
this is the worst possible outcome.
I'd thought about this day of days
ven-ding said it would come..

AND LOOK at him now! - all crimped and crumpled
a wreck of what he was.
And me I'm but a shell on standby
the game was over cause.

They NEVER should have seen it coming
that stupid silly h.u.a.r. clan
Well go ahead repopulate
as I lie here in fuckin' sand.

I've always had a problem with my ISP's DNS servers. They're slow, but they're also slow to update. I changed a few DNS settings for a domain I have the other day and could access the new settings from my phone over 3G within 5 minutes - if not instantly. Comparatively it took 3+ days for it to propogate through my ISP. Flushing DNS has no effect on this.

So I just switched to Google's DNS, it took a second to change, and it's definitely faster. Noticeably. The question is now that Google sees every website I visit, whether I go through Google.com or not, and they can easily associate my ip address with my Google account, or not, and have even more insight into my web behaviour, what's happening to my sense of privacy, and sense of self. I'm not saying I am the websites I visit, I'm saying Google is gaining an increasingly accurate representation of me, my wants and needs, in a virtual self, and using it to simulate my own decision making in the cloud whenever I do a search. They're taking a piece of my consciousness and feeding it billions of search results. They're using me to find search results for me.

If you use Google Chrome I'd imagine(I'm too lazy to look it up now) there's some TOS clause that prevented them being aware of every site you visit, but this Google DNS stuff is a service of me sending them each website I visit for the purpose of redirecting me to a given site. Also every application I use that checks for updates will now go through Google as well.

I feel as though my laptop is plugged into the Googleplex LAN. Sort of. I feel like someone should be studying how this affects my online behaviour, or how it affects the way I see Google. But, like, set up your scientific equipment in the driveway and bring your own food.

Oh yeah, and here's how to switch to Google DNS: http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/index.html

If I ever run for president I would win. Since I can't actually run --citing personal reasons I'm going to take the time for some of you readerinos to explain how I would do it and hands down win the election. The rest of you can read this too if you want, but I'm not about to share this valuable information just for the sake of you other people. You're getting collateral knowledge.

It really boils down to one main catalyst that sparks the whole thing in motion. Now what you do is you run a regular campaign, it doesn't have to be anything too special at this point, you don't really have to stand out. You just want to form a solid base. I'm not talking a fan base or party base this whole campaign strategy is A-political. I'm talking about a base of ideas; your platform.

So here you are you're running a somewhat normal --but sturdy campaign, and the goal is to get just enough legitimacy behind your name to get into one of those televised debates. Cause first debate, that's where you plant the seed. That's where you start the chain of events that'll carry you through to office. Keep in mind kiddies this is the presidency we're talking about here so sit up straight and pay attention. I mean this isn't some prom king/queen election. This is leader of the free world for christ sake.

So you get on the first televised debate, it doesn't even have to be the first one, ok, it just needs to be on one of them. Make sure when you talk you look directly into the camera and when you address one of your opponents you face them, and stand up straight and all that. Now what you do is, hold on just before the debate you want to make sure that you get the opening question, I mean especially since I'm publishing this without any hard copyright the last thing you want is to give your opponents the chance to use it against you, because there is no way to recover. So make sure you're first to go.

Don't worry about really listening to your first question, just whatever it is, good or bad, just make it look like you're really considering it, think in your head how that was a great opening question and imagine the audience applauding the asking of the question, it'll translate onto your face. Count to about 5 after the moderator's done, look straight at the camera and say the following verbatim, "I'd sure like to answer that," then turn to your most notable opponent and point at them --the pointing is crucial it has to appear strongly accusatory, and continue to say sternly, "But [Senator Bobby Mitchell] over there smells like a fresh bowl of Feces!" and act just a little surprised on the word 'feces', you want to pause a little and while still pointing at your opponent turn a little to face the audience and cameras with one eyebrow slightly raised but not really. You of course won't say 'Senator Bobby' for you it'll be whatever your opponent's name and title is. For every other question they ask you in the debate just lean a little into the microphone and ask if the moderator could just "ask [Miss Trint] to fuck off." Again use whatever your opponent's names and titles are, and switch the names up now, you're no longer focusing on just the one guy. Very important, make sure you get everyone at least once and just keep asking the moderator to tell your opponents to get off the stage, it'll work like a charm I guarantee it..

Well, that's the end of part 1. Part 2 will be about how a republic isn't really a democracy and inherently breeds ignorance and lethargy in the people which in turn begs for massive corruption among the ruling elite who run around doing whatever they want like a theocracy. I mean seriously what the fuck is a lobby group, how can that possibly be legal in any way shape or form. How can law makers and leadership have ties to business that are then hired just for the sake of giving them busy work and mountains of people's tax money, but you'll have to wait for Part 2.

It's weird how there's always this buffer where I wholeheartidly regret doing something. Every blog post, application, website, everything I say and do and have done. Sometimes it doesn't last long, sometimes its so short I barely notice it, and sometimes it never goes away. Wonder why...

It seems the last week or so I've fallen behind in blog posting, laundry, twittering, working out, and a whole host of other things. I did manage to get a few things done work wise though. Typically when I start a new project I experience this hyper-focused state of being where I don't sleep, eat, or anything else beyond the bare minimum needed to survive-- during a typical bout 54 hour days separated by 4 hours sleep is normal; no alarm clocks or caffeine necessary. For some reason I've slipped into this without any particular thing being in focus, and the chance of actually focusing on anything significant over-ridden by reeally wanting to watch the inauguration, and being constantly glued to CNN for a couple days before, during, and after. The fact that I wasn't experiencing from or taking advantage of my state of mind to immerse myself in solving usability problems and establishing functionality paradigms, left me a wastefull lazy being. A couple months ago I'd wake up at 3am 6 times a week, run 8km in the freezing cold, do 200 pushups, 200 situps, and 30 pullups, and then start my day. Today(which started on Wednesday night) I've showered, done a quarter of my laundry, had breakfast, lunch, and got about an hours work done. Those few tasks have taken me about 12 hours to accomplish. It's gotten so bad that I am,  at this moment drinking directly from the Brita spout. Oh we have cups, a whole cupboard full, it's about 32feet from me to that cupboard and that vast trek involves steps; descending and the ascending on the way back, so I guess that's too far now. I'm actually starting to get flabby(a bit lets not get carried away) from living like this. It's time to make a change. I feel like saying it's gone too far, but it's not about how far it's gotten, it's about key lifestyle choices that over time precipitate into the unholy and indolent catastrophe that defines my current rut. All I have to do is change those behavior patterns and wait for liberal evaporation to do it's thing. Unfortunately I can't compress into the standard 24 hour day/night thing and so I never find myself in a position where I can say "Well, it's 6pm and I'm done all my tasks for today, now I can relax until tomorrow." Instead I have an infinite pile of tasks to get done before I retire and so for me just sitting around relaxing waiting for the date on my calendar to change is like a cigarrete smoker trying to quit and having 'one last drag'. It's a whirlwind, a downward spiral from there pulling me with intense gravity to where I am now in all this, and it gets worse, much worse. If I let it. Sure there are times when relaxation is needed and warrented but it's never with the goal of passing time. It has a purpose and a deeply analyzed function which has to result in a net increase in productivity in the long run to even merit the thought of it. So in order for me to be functional I have to be strictly disciplined. The one problem with doing that is that occasionally I'll be working on something and lose track of myself, I won't realize I've been focused on some task or error for 4 hours straight and then everything gets derailed and needs special adjustments and sacrifices to catch up to a speeding train. I have yet to find a way to grab my own attention say every 45 minutes, and I have yet to find a way to wake myself up after only a few hours sleep(when I'm not fully in the zone) that I can't deactivate before I'm fully awake resulting in me often getting back into bed and sleeping for 14 hours when I only wanted 4 or 6. But those two things would be luxuries if I every figured them out-- depending on external intervention to maintain discipline is a major pitfall and at its most basic level a cop-out. It means I have something else to blame for faltering which leads me to believe it wasn't in my control. So maybe I shouldn't be thinking of it at all.

Watching CNN's coverage of the crowds gathering in Washington this morning I'm vicariously filled with this sense of hope and unity with the rest of the world. Once when I was younger I had a similar experience while listening to Mandela's inaugural speech sitting on the floor in my parents bedroom while they watched it on tv. I can't remember if I was actually listening to the words or if I could grasp at that stage the full gravity of what he was saying but the sound and cadence of his voice coupled with the crowds response conveyed at it's most basic level a sense of just peace, forgiveness,  and movement to work together to make it a better place for everyone. The overwhelming sensation that washes over you when everyone in a room wants to do their part and the surety that a group of people can achieve their goals because they work together and support eachother.

With that said, I found it amusing when CNN informed me that the Vice President is sworn in before the President. He seems like a nice enough guy but if something where to happen to Bush just after Biden is sworn in, Biden would technically be president for a few minutes until Obama could be sworn in. Got me thinking about a few things, like would Biden in that short time exercise his power? Would he jump up and down exclaiming something along the lines of, "I'm president Yippee!", I don't see how he could resist knowing that he gets to be President without having to deal with any of the issues. Would they try to swear Obama in any faster? Whom would the majority of the secret service(not like they're in short supply today) be assigned to protect.