Books, GoodReads, Sexuality

I won another Goodreads Giveaway!

Ooooh, how exciting! I won another Goodreads giveaway! This time it’s Om: A Tantric Sex Cult Odyssey by Jeff Nichols. From the Amazon description, it is filed under Humor & Satire / General Humor, and is:

a “novella (loosely based on a true story) is about a man in his forties who, by his own admission, is a poor lover, and, like most of us, insecure. He joins a tantric sex organization – which may or may not be a cult – in an attempt to learn how to satisfy women in general, and one in particular. Two friends of his join up with him. Their goal is to immerse themselves in this controversial program and emerge as ‘master strokers,’ experts at getting women not just to climax but to have massive orgasms—by using only their fingertip!”

I’ve read a bit about tantric sex, and of course I’ve seen those frightening HBO Real Sex episodes where cameras intrude on group tantrix sex escapades, which I could never reall tell were real or staged. This sounds like a fun spin on the topic. I’m looking forward to it.

With my first Goodreads giveaway win being the book about UFOs, and my second about tantric sex, I’m starting to wonder what logic is being applied by Goodreads in choosing the winners of the giveaways. And since I just today sent out five copies of my own book to giveaway winners, it gives me a little bit of hope that the five winners might actually find something interesting about a collection of 20+ year old zines.

[amazon asin=B00OFEE5NU&template=iframe image]

Spam

Personal Spam Trends

Over the past couple of weeks, my spam levels have increased ferociously, and nearly all of it can be attributed to obscure (new?) TLDs. First it was .click and .work, then I got a whole bunch from .us, and for the last few days it has been .ninja.

After eight and a half years at an ISP/hosting company, and seven more doing more advanced security work, I still have to struggle to believe that spammers make any money at all. When I get badly-worded and atrociously-spelled missives about the latest diabetes treatment or my credit score or a new security system (that’s right, it’s not just penis pills anymore — I guess the spammers finally realized I don’t need enlargement or “volume increases”), all I can wonder is WHO BUYS THIS CRAP and HOW DO THESE FUCKERS STAY IN BUSINESS?

I’m almost to the point — not quite there yet, but almost — where I’m ready to migrate from the MURDER SPAMMERS ethos to the JUST KILL ALL THE STUPID PEOPLE SO THE SPAMMERS WILL STOP MAKING MONEY ethos.

Amanda Palmer, Musicology, Neil Gaiman

An Evening with Amanda Fucking Palmer

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Love her.  Love her husband. Love imagining the combination baking inside her.

Love the fact that she’s playing with Morrissey for one date this summer.  Kinda wish I could go. Love that she did a cover of his (Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want).

Love the fact that she did a highly relevant Kimya Dawson cover (All I Could Do).

Love the fact that pretty much the first words she said to us were calling us godless for coming out to see her on Easter. Then rambled about a King Missile song about Jesus that she sorta knows (Jesus Was Way Cool – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSfa56tjBQo), then used that to segue into Missed Me, saying, “this is not about Jesus. At All. But what if it was?”

Love that she did old Dresden Dolls stuff. Love that she took requests. Love that she brought highly enthusiastic young helpers from the audience onstage to hold an iphone with lyrics for one she didn’t remember exactly (Dirty Business I think). Loved that one of them kinda got lost dancing to it and had to be reminded to come back and hold the phone.

Love that she did Have to Drive and told the story behind it, how it evolved from the guilt of seeing a dead dog in the road. Personal synchronicity significance there.

Love that she did Runs in the Family and closed with the Ukulele Anthem.

Mostly I loved how much Sophie got into it. You know how teenagers are, it’s so hard to turn them on to anything new, even quality interesting shit, because they’re so into doing their own thing. By the end of the second song, she leaned over to me with a big grin. “I LOVE HER!”

Thanks Amanda, for a wonderful night in Richmond.

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General Musings

Card stolen for a reason?

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Synchronicity strikes again. In going through my wallet after the debit card fiasco (signed up for identity theft protection — free for two years after the Anthem debacle earlier in the year), I re-discovered a Home Depot gift card that had been languishing in there, and used it order pulleys and rope to complete a project I have been planning for months.

So all the fraud has been reported to all possible parties, and I win.

pulleys rope

General Musings

Why is the US so far behind in credit card security?

So Friday night, while we were sleeping, apparently my debit card info was released into the wild. Nearly $1000 was charged in a matter of minutes. I know it has happened to a number of friends on my feed, and I feel your pain. We just went through this with Eve’s card over Christmas break.

We’ve shut down the card and it should all be resolved by Wednesday or so, but it irks me that we still lag behind Europe and China for credit card security.

It also irks me that even if we were forward-thinking with card security and implemented Chip and Pin technology, which would at least prevent our sensitive data from being stored in plaintext on the magnetic strip on the back of the card, there don’t seem to be any useful approaches to protecting against online fraudulent use of cards, which all of mine appeared to be. It takes precious little data to initiate a fraudulent charge against a card, especially for a digital purchase.

Maybe we’ll end up in a scenario where everyone gets automatically issued a new card every three months, to circumvent bad storage of card data.

OR MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, WE CAN HOLD THE CORPORATIONS RESPONSIBLE WHO MISHANDLE OUR DATA, AND MAKE THEM RESPONSIBLE FOR REPAYING ALL LOST/STOLEN MONEY, OVERDRAFT FEES AND AN ADDITIONAL PUNITIVE AWARD, PAYABLE TO EACH CARDHOLDER AFFECTED. If laws have teeth, they are more likely to be obeyed.

It also irks me that vendors are able to store enough info to initiate transactions. This was the reason CVV was invented — to confirm that you have the card in hand — and the reason the CVV code is not supposed to be stored by vendors.

It also irks me that my bank (a credit union) has no Sunday support to which to complain about the way they’re handling the situation.

It also irks me that some jackasses used my info to pay for completely useless stuff. like Riot Games League of Legends, Facebook Virtual payments, and possibly a gas bill in Missouri, and these jackasses will likely face no consequences whatsoever.

It also irks me that I don’t know the weak point in the system. Was it leaked because it was badly stored by a chain store like Target or Walmart? Was it skimmed by the waitress in Richmond a month or so ago?

It also irks me that we returned home from cleaning up boats yesterday to find a Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlet folded into our door. They actually came to our door and we didn’t get a chance to dismiss them personally.

Sunday morning rant over.

putting more of myself out there