Shanti’s Dispatches

Dave Chappelle: ‘Learn to play basketball, tell jokes or sell crack. That’s the only way I’ve seen people get out.’

read more here

I just noticed in my Gmail account that I have been given 6 invitations to dole out.

Does anyone out there want/need an invite?

If so, post a comment to this entry or email me at: shantibraford (at) gmail.com

Sprint PCS has been bombarding the airwaves with their new “Fair & Flexible plans” deal where you automatically get moved to the best plan each month instead of being charged for going over your alloted minutes.

The catch, which they don’t mention anywhere in the commercial (of course), is that you have to agree to a 2-year extension of your plan to become eligible.

I don’t condone what our soldiers did to some of the Iraqi personers at Abu Graib, but some perspective is in order.

Video of Iraqi tortue victims (under Saddam’s regime) at Abu Graib

For the last 30 years, Iraqis inside Iraq had little knowledge of the full extent of Saddam Hussein’s oppressive tactics. Many Iraqis who have documented his regime’s history argue that Coalition authorities have not done enough to make this history known to the Iraqi people, and proponents of more stringent de-Baathification argue that until this education is completed, Saddam-era officials cannot be trusted with the rule of the new state.

Seven of these victims were Baghdadi merchants whose right hands were amputated and presented to Saddam as proof of their punishment. They have recently received medical attention in the United States, and now have the use of modern prosthetic hands. Four of these victims will speak of their experiences before returning to Iraq. In addition to their presentations, an unedited video documenting acts of torture during Saddam’s reign will be shown, and our Iraqi guests will identify persons conducting the torture who hold office in Iraq today.

The iraqis our guys “tortured” may be humiliated, but at least they have their life & limbs intact, something that likely would not be true under Saddam if he were in power today.

I recently obtained a coveted invite to Google’s new 1 GB email service, Gmail. Yahoo! mail also upped their free account storage limit to 100mb, but the @gmail address is just so trendy.

Yahoo! mail flagged my Gmail invite as Bulk / SPAM. Something tells me that this was not just a fluke due to a high number of Gmail invites being sent out. This has got to be Yahoo trying to prevent Google from muscling in on there turf… You’ve been warned!

Silent Lucidity

Look mom, I’m a model! No wait, make that walking advertisement.

This thing was pretty nasty. First off, let me just say do NOT install Download Accelerator Plus, which is what kicked off the malware frency on my computer.

STEP ONE

Do all this in regular windows mode, connected to the Internet.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

1. Spybot - Search & Destroy
Download and install. Get the latest updates. Scan for any of the critters and let Spybot attempt to remove them.

2. HijackThis
Download this and save to your desktop for easy access. It’s just one file, HijackThis.exe.

Go ahead and run HijackThis.exe and do a Scan. If you have what I had, you’ll find a few entries that shouldn’t be there:
R3 - Default URLSearchHook is missing
and
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [TV Media] C:\Program Files\TV Media\Tvm.exe

You might have two of the O4 ones right next to each other. Check the box next to them and hit “Fix Checked”. Then do another scan. If they reappear after this scan, you probably have the same bug I had. Go to step two.

STEP TWO

For this step, you’ll have to restart your PC in Safe Mode. To do this, just restart your computer as you normally would, but during the boot up process hit the “F8″ key. You may have to hit it twice until you see the Safe Mode option. Select that and boot up.

Now run HijackThis and perform the Scan like you did above. Remove the entries like you did before, but this time they should stay gone.

Now you’re going to delete the “TV Media” files and directory. You can do this in Explorer, My Computer, or a DOS prompt.

You need to delete the following folder and its contents:
C:\Program Files\TV Media

Good luck!

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Her hair is Harlow gold
Her lips a sweet surprise
Her hands are never cold
She’s got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll turn the music on you
You won’t have to think twice
She’s pure as New York snow
She got Bette Davis eyes
And she’ll tease you
She’ll unease you
All the better just to please you
She’s precocious and she knows
Just what it takes to make a pro blush
She got Greta Garbo stand off sighs
She’s got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll let you take her home
It whets her appetite
She’ll lay you on her throne
She got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll take a tumble on you
Roll you like you were dice
Until you come up blue
She’s got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll expose you
When she snooze you
Off your feet with the crumbs she trows you
She’s ferocious and she knows
Just what it takes to make a pro blush
All the boys think she’s a spy
She’s got Bette Davis eyes
And she’ll tease you
She’ll unease you
All the better just to please you
She’s precocious and she knows
Just what it takes to make a pro blush
All the boys think she’s a spy
She’s got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll tease you
She’ll unease you
Just to please you
She’s got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll expose you
When she snooze you
She knows you
She’s got Bette Davis eyes

Ludo will be returning to St. Louis, here are the details:

Sunday, June 6th, 2004
@ The Enigma Lounge
www.enigmalounge.com
w/ The Dog and Everything
$5, $8 for minors
ALL AGES

Ludo…Rock ‘n Roll

Petting a Pooch Can Lift Your Mood

“The study also tested the effects of petting a robotic dog and showed interacting with an electronic dog actually caused serotonin levels to drop.”