Essa Alroc's Blog, page 15

Things You Can Stop Posting on Facebook Now…

In an effort to get defriended regularly, I like to post helpful tips to piss off my Facebook friends. Today’s posting will be more of the same, as I am starting to get detached retinas from how much eye rolling I am forced to do whenever I open my page. So, here is my list of demands. You will all get your pets and/or children back, when I stop seeing the following coming from your timeline.

TV show spoilers….

Seriously, people, that’s just a dick move. Some of us internet stream our television, meaning we don’t get to see our favorites until a day (or sometimes month, fuck you Showtime) after they air. After the finale of Breaking Bad came out, I had to avoid Facebook for two weeks, just so some a-hole wouldn’t ruin the ending for me.

You know how I found out ***SPOILER ALERT***(<

Yes, I’m fucking talking to you Josh.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, you can all stop acting like morons setting up groups demanding Seth MacFarlane brings Brian back. This is a publicity stunt. According to the TV show wiki, Brian appears in episodes after his alleged death. Oh, and there’s the little fact that he was hit by what appears to be his own car. I’m guessing some kind of time travel paradox show is coming in the near future.

The Family Guy new dog is the new Coke marketing scheme. When old Coke started to lose steam, they introduced a flavor that everyone hated. Then they rereleased Coke as ‘Coke Classic’ and sales exploded. My guess would be that the show started to lose steam because the writing has been seriously sub-par lately. So they want to make it suck for a few episodes, then bring back classic Family Guy and get their viewers back.

From what I can tell, it’s already working. Well played Seth MacFarlane. Well played.

What you ate for lunch, what you’re making for dinner, etc., etc.

Seriously, unless you’re bashing in a monkey’s head and eating its brain ‘Faces of Death’ style, no one give a fuck what you’re eating or cooking. Just stop.

Fun fact – this scene, much like the majority of the ‘Faces of Death’ scenes, was 100% FAKED

How much you love your kids, mother, sister, overly handsy uncle, etc

Talking about how much you love someone doesn’t make you a good person. Your actions make you a good person. Stop trying to gain good karma points with sappy posts about your deep love for your kids, parents, family, etc. Anyone can claim to love their parents.

“I loved my mother. She’s a good girl.” – Charles Manson

If you want to show someone you love them, go DO something for them. Words are only as strong as the actions that back them. (

Posts about your sobriety, AA, etc.

I’ve mentioned this before and I’ve actually defriended people because of it. AA is alcoholics anonymous. That ‘anonymous’ is not just for you. It is also for the people who attend those meetings with you. When you use it as a ploy to gain attention, you aren’t just putting your own ‘anonymous’ status at risk. You are putting the status of those who actually want to remain anonymous at risk. In short, shut the fuck up and take that shit to a private chat room.  I know it’s not the same, because you won’t get attention, but AA isn’t about attention. It’s about recovery.

Selfies…

Yup, the epidemic of idiots taking 400 pictures of themselves a day is so widespread that there is actually a name for it now. If you are friends with me, I already know what you look like. I don’t need a blurred focus picture of you pouting your lips to remind me. To me, ‘selfie’ doesn’t stand for ‘self portrait’. It stands for ‘I have low self esteem…so I need to post 100,000 pictures a day of myself so people will see how pretty I am. ”

Hey, people who validate themselves based on looks, ready to get a hard dose of reality? Some day you will be ugly. You will get old. You will get fat. You will get wrinkles and you will no longer be able to validate your entire existence based on your looks. Someday, you will realize that you probably should have focused on developing yourself as a human being, instead of wasting you time pursing your lips and trying to look sexy for the camera.

And also, here’s a selfie for you.

People, please stop wasting valuable internet space on stupidity. No one cares what you ate for dinner. No one cares that you love your children. Trust me, you aren’t the first person to eat dinner and have children. No matter how many times they say it, your friends don’t think you look pretty in that selfie. They think you look like an attention whore. The only difference between them and me is I’m the only one with the balls to say so.

Maybe I should post a selfie of those gigantic things. Seriously, it’s a miracle I can walk.

Writing Blog Posts About How People Should Enjoy Nature Defeats the Purpose

Today I read a long, poetically written blog post by a man urging us all to ‘disconnect’ from our wireless, computer driven lifestyle and get out to enjoy nature. The post was approximately 2000 words long and filled with pictures taken by a digital camera.

Dude had somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 likes and 25 comments agreeing with him. All I could do was roll my eyes.

Oh, the hypocrisy…

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Marijuana Myths Debunked

Everyone in the world knows that the classic film “Reefer Madness” was nothing more than a government propaganda campaign, filled with misinformation, designed to instill mass panic as an excuse to increase the fines on marijuana possession.

If you don’t know that, you are far too stupid to be working my page. Please leave.

My last post included some of my own pro-weed propaganda. Usually, people who disagree with me on my stance on decriminalizing marijuana just ignore me. However, I did receive an anonymous email filled with supposed facts and information disagreeing with me.

It was one of those really obnoxious emails, where all the words were in fucking caps lock and it was twelve paragraphs long. The a-hole even had the audacity to excuse his excessive caps lock with the statement ‘sorry, my caps lock key is stuck.’

For future reference Anonymous, your computer problems are not my problem. Before you expect me to read a fucking email, drop the $20 on a new keyboard. Caps lock is an assault to the eyes. Also, next time, you can change everything to lowercase just by highlighting it all, holding down shift and pressing F3.

You’re welcome.

Even better anonymous, that helpful little computer tidbit is not all you’re going to learn from me tonight! I’m going to pump you full of forced knowledge by debunking every single one of your ‘facts’ (or FACTS, as you like to scream it).

Marijuana is a gateway drug.

Correlation does not equal cause. While I will agree that marijuana users are about 100 times more likely to try harder drugs, that does not mean marijuana is a gateway drug. Generally, people who have access to marijuana also have access to stronger drugs. This does not make marijuana a ‘gateway’. It just means that they have more access to drugs than people who have never tried them.

If you don’t believe me, check out this quote;

There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.

Nope, that wasn’t written by the “High Times”. That was written in a congressional report related to scientific evidence that marijuana is not a gateway drug. The study was conducted by some of our nation’s top scientific researchers…i.e. people who actually know how to turn their fucking caps lock off.

For those who like metaphors, saying that marijuana is a gateway to other illicit substances is like saying living near a Taco Bell is a gateway to obesity.

Marijuana causes brain damage

Actually, Anonymous told me that ‘marijuana causes Brian damage’. Poor Brian. Had I known I was hurting the talking dog in “Family Guy”, I would have just switched to meth.

Seriously though, there has been no conclusive evidence of any long term brain damage related to marijuana use, even habitual marijuana use. The only true evidence is related to short term memory loss that occurs while the person is using. So, if you get high before “Two and a Half Men”, you probably won’t remember the episode the next day.

I actually consider that a plus.

Marijuana is a drug

Yup, it sure is. But based on the loosest definition of drug, i.e.;

a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body.

everything is a drug. When you eat food, you stop feeling hungry. That’s a physiological effect. When you breathe air, you stop feeling dizzy from lack of oxygen. That’s a physiological effect.

The fact is, there are far more harmful drugs out there that are considered perfectly legal. Hydrocodone and Oxycodone are highly addictive and widely available with a prescription. Both of those are opium derivatives. You know what else is an opium derivative? Heroin.

Just another day on the heroin farm…

So you can get heroin with a prescription, but medicinal weed isn’t recognized as an appropriate medical choice, even though it hasn’t been proven to be physically addictive? I’m calling bullshit.

‘Drug’ doesn’t immediately equal ‘bad’. In fact, many ‘drugs’ help people. Ever heard of penicillin, Anonymous?

Marijuana causes car accidents

I concur. Here’s the problem. When someone gets into a car wreck, they might be tested for alcohol use via a breathalyzer. However, they are rarely tested for marijuana or other drugs, unless the accident causes a fatality.

Even in cases where the user is tested following an accident, there is really no way to know if they smoked immediately before the accident, or a week before. Check out my how to pass a drug test article for more info on that.

There’s no way to know, because there are no laws on the books that list a ‘legal’ threshold. For example, to get charged with drunk driving, the BAC has to be at 0.08 or above in most states. There is a clear cut law that allows officers to charge people with a crime. The law is clear cut because it’s perfectly legal to drink, but it’s not legal to drive drunk.

There is no clear cut threshold for marijuana because marijuana is illegal period. If marijuana were legalized, a clear cut threshold would be set and we would see far more convictions for marijuana related driving offenses. That’s not because more people would smoke marijuana. It’s because the state would actually be able to fucking regulate the use of marijuana while driving.

Marijuana turns people into zombies

I disagree. Marijuana affects the pleasure receptors in a person’s brain, making them more likely to derive pleasure out of simple tasks.

For people like me, who actually have difficulty feeling emotions period, marijuana makes us much more interested in life and willing to participate in new experiences. When I’m using marijuana, I’m far more likely to leave the house, go to the gym, or eat because things are actually interesting again. My pleasure receptors are open, making me want to take part in activities.

Also, if you think that argument is bullshit, I’ll go ahead and announce my case study; Mr. Michael Phelps. Mr. Phelps is the most decorated Olympian of all time…and he’s also a pot smoker.

Go ahead Mr. Phelps, you earned it.

He was busted in 2009 partaking in the ganja. While he apologized, he also proved to the world that people who participate in recreational marijuana still have the ability excel. Also, here’s a list of noted celebrity marijuana users, along with their net worth, just for posterity.

Jon Stewart, $80 million
Bill Maher, $23 million
Bill Gates, $72 billion
Lebron James, $110 million
George Clooney, $180 million
Lady Gaga, $190 million
Ted Turner, $2 billion
Jennifer Aniston, $130 million
Morgan Freeman, $150 million
Martha Stewart, $300 million
Seth McFarland, $150 million
Maya Angelou, $28 million
Madonna, $650 million
High Hefner, $43 million
Rihanna, $90 million

Who says potheads are lazy?

Marijuana causes cancer

Marijuana is less of a cancer risk than cigarette smoking. In addition, no conclusive studies have been found to date that show any significant increase in lung or other respiratory related cancers. The majority of cancer cases found in marijuana smokers were incidental findings due to the fact that the marijuana smokers also smoked cigarettes.

Also, alcohol and cigarettes both cause cancer, along with a whole host of other diseases, and they are perfectly legal. Invalid point.

In the future Anonymous, know who the fuck you’re dealing with when you send poorly informed emails about the risks of marijuana use. I’m not a lazy pothead in denial. I work 12 hours a day. I’m simultaneously writing 3 new novels and I’m working on a television pilot as we speak.

And I still manage to find the time to be politically involved with the legislation designed to decriminalize marijuana use.

Meanwhile you, Mr. anti-pot smoker, probably work 40 hours a week stocking shelves at a grocery store. When you get home, you spend your time sending people smarter than you all-caps emails filled with misinformation. You might want to ask yourself who’s doing more for the world here.

At this point, I think smoking a joint or two could only help you.

Your Law Enforcement Related Questions Answered…And I Rant

As you all know, I enjoy doing interviews with my fellow bloggers. I particularly like it when I get the opportunity to talk to someone who can help raise the collective IQ of the masses.

Another thing that you might know, that is a little weird, is that I actually like cops. Yes, I am a liberal, drug using, hard partying, law breaking bitch who likes cops. Honestly, I’ve always thought that hating cops is ignorant and childish. These are people who provide our country with a service and protect us from the real assholes out there. They do it for less money than your standard receptionist makes and people hate them for it.

Whenever there is a news story about a cop,  9 times out of 10, it will be bad. It will focus on the 1% of police officers out there who fuck up, while ignoring the 99% who are just trying to do their jobs.

Whenever there is a major crime that makes the news, guaranteed you can scroll down to the comments and see how ‘the cops fucked up’, when they would have had to be psychic to solve the crime in the first place.

When I organize ‘legalize it’ smoke ins, or civil disobedience protests, I don’t get pissed at the cops that put me in cuffs. I get pissed at the politicians who make the rules. The cops and I might not agree on the laws themselves, but it’s not them who make the laws. It’s the politicians. I fight the power, not the enforcers. They don’t hold it against me that I’m a marijuana activist. I don’t hold it against them that they are cops. We are both trying to do our poor paying jobs. Only mine comes with significantly more fringe benefits (free weed).

Granted, some of the guys who have arrested me have been complete douche bags, but that’s not because they’re bad cops. It’s because they’re assholes and they have been assholes since birth. I am capable of separating a personality from a profession.

Recently, I got the opportunity to ask some questions to a cop. Some of these are questions that have already been answered on my site, but they were answered by a liberal lawyer. Now, they’re getting answered by a conservative cop.

I present the interview of Jaden from The Book of Jaden

Question 1 – Answer this one once and for all; Do cops really have speeding ticket quotas?”

*Laughs* It’s funny, I literally get your email about 2 hours after I answer that question with an article I wrote on my blog.  But I will summarize the answer here and I would encourage you and anyone else reading to go check out my article about it for more details at Are Traffic Ticket Quotas a Reality?

The best way I can answer that, is there are no WRITTEN quotas.  The very sad fact is, like the rest of the government, everything is numbers driven…even police departments.  Some are worse than others, and sometimes it’s not really the departments, it may be just one particular supervisor pushing his officers to write a lot of tickets so that he looks good.  Some states have actual laws to prevent quotas.  Virginia has laws keeping police departments benefiting from any money made by those tickets by placing that money in the State Literary Fund.  So if anyone benefits from the money made, it’s the school system.

Another reason why numbers are sometimes pushed, is because as police officers we are given a lot of freedom out on the road.  The state, county, town, etc, doesn’t want to be paying officers that are hanging out at the local gas station sucking down coffee half their shift and chatting it up with the locals.  They are paid to do a job so they need something to show for it.  However, there is a fine line between showing that you’re doing your job and just wanting to bust out numbers for personal gain.

Question 2 – Do you give hot chicks an easier time during stops than non-hot chicks or dudes?

Nope!  Everyone has an equal chance of getting a ticket or a warning.  My department (and all departments that I know of are against it too) is against biased-based policing.  In fact, there was a time where a woman (a very attractive woman at that) showed me her breasts to get out of a ticket.  I remember cracking up on the spot and turning my head away saying, “Ma’am, put your shirt back on… you are not getting out of this ticket.”  And even she laughed too…  I did wish she came to court though, it would have been nice to see her pretty face again while I try to explain to the judge what happened.  *laughs*

Question 3 – People like to toss around the word ‘entrapment’ a lot. What is it from a law enforcement POV?

I feel it all comes down to people not wanting to accept blame for their wrong doings.  Let’s face it, even the best of us hate accepting blame to some degree, we always want to blame the reason for our actions on someone or some thing even if it’s not all the time.  When it all comes down to it, we make the final choice in the end.  Yes, I agree there may be people or circumstances that may ‘push’ us toward doing something, but in the end we make the final choice.  So the people that get caught breaking the law, sometimes they want to throw out that ‘entrapment’ word way too easily.

When it comes to enforcement, I know that in many jurisdictions where I work if we are looking for a drunk driver, we cannot sit right across an establishment like a bar or some place known to sell alcohol, at least for the purposes of finding a drunk driver.  Many defense attorneys will argue that is entrapment.  There are case laws that address it as well.  But nothing says we cannot just pass by from time and time again.

Say you take a scenario where a man wants to plan a murder and asks his buddy to help him find a hit-man.  His buddy calls the police instead and tells them the story, the police send an undercover agent posing as a hit-man.  The agent would never encourage this murderous behavior, but simply ask something like, “what do you want done?”  If the man decides he wants to proceed with the plans to murder someone, then no one is trapping him or making him want to murder anyone, he’s making these decisions on his own and law enforcement is doing their job by stopping him.  But maybe he has a change of heart at the last minute…. Then law enforcement can’t do a thing, and they aren’t going to ‘trick’ or ‘make’ the guy go through with the plan… because then they are committing a crime as well.

Question 4 – Your opinion on enforcing laws related to marijuana offenses. Simply stated, worth it or wasted?

I’ve heard both sides of the argument on this one in the past.  Although marijuana is definitely one of the minor drugs if you compare it to cocaine, heroin, etc, it can still get people killed indirectly.  I have arrested several people in the past for DUID (Driving Under the Influence of Drugs), and they were usually on marijuana.  Someone really doped up on marijuana and behind a wheel can cost many people their lives including the driver.  My wife and I even discussed the idea of Virginia legalizing marijuana.  The advantage of it would be less criminal activity related to marijuana because the value of it would drop dramatically.  Think about it… if it’s perfectly legal and anyone can get it, then it will hold no real value anymore.  We all know that if something is banned or rare, it becomes very valuable and people will pay whatever price it may be to get it.  But as a disadvantage, you will have more people driving after having smoked some and impairing their abilities to drive, hence getting themselves or others killed.  Out of the last 5 years of me being on the job, I’ve only arrested 3 people for DUID, but have arrested 50 or more for DUI.  I feel if marijuana was legalized, we would see a rapid increase of DUID related incidents.  So I feel it’s definitely worth enforcing laws against possession, distribution, and any laws relating to it.

Question 5 – The biggest mistake people make when dealing with cops?

I’ll give you two:  Not being honest with them, and giving them attitudes.  People need to realize that we are working to protect the society we all live in as Americans.  Yes we got some corrupt cops here and there, yes we got some idiots who don’t deserve to be wearing a badge of ANY sorts, but a majority of us do our very best to keep our society safe.  And don’t give us the ‘My taxes pay for your salary’ speech… Because I ALSO pay taxes which means I also pay MY OWN salary.

Question 6 – Your biggest frustration in how the public views law enforcement

That we can solve and take care of ANYthing…  My wife works as a dispatcher, and you would be surprised what kind of calls she gets and has to dispatch some of us to.  Calls like…. parents wanting to know what they can do about their screaming 10 year old who won’t listen to them and keeps jumping on the bed and throwing stuff around.  Some people need to learn how to think for themselves dammit…

Question 7 – Your craziest cop story.

Amongst the many… I do have one that comes to mind.

It was a Thursday night, myself and another officer had teamed up to pull over cars in a town that was known to harvest suspended drivers, drug dealers, and others that were usually up to no good.  After stopping about 6 cars for small violations (which we gave them all warnings on), I ended up stopping this white pickup truck with a broken tag-light.  There were two occupants, a female driver and a male passenger.  Once I pulled them over into a store parking lot, I began talking to the driver and asking her for her license and registration.  She told me she didn’t have her license on her and that she left it at the house.  So I did the usual thing and got her social security number, her full name, and address.  I went back to my car, ran the information, and it came back to a deceased male…. Mind you, this is a little elderly lady in her late 60s that I’m dealing with.  So I go back to the truck, start asking her to be sure her social was written down correctly.  I had her repeat it several times, even made sure her name was right, etc.  I go back to the car, run it again and make sure I’m not screwing up either.  But still….same person, a deceased male.  All the lady could tell me was ‘That’s my social and my name as I told you!’  So then the light bulb in my head went off…. I called my dispatch by phone and told her what I had.  I asked her to check the address that was given to me and see if any 911 calls were made from that residence in the past, and what kind of police activity (if any) had occurred there.  I was looking for anything that would show on the system for that address, including warrants (if any) for the owner of that residence.  The driver did state earlier that she was the only person that stayed at the address she gave me.

Oh and…while I was doing this, her drunk passenger called 911 on me and complained that officers were harassing his girlfriend… So we had some town officers stop by to make sure we were ok *laughs*

The end result was a warrant for Failure to Appear in Court issued to the lady I had stopped (who, by the way, turns out she only gave me half her name to begin with), and the social security number she gave me was only ONE DIGIT OFF from her real social.  Turns out not only was she suspended, but she didn’t want me finding out she was wanted.

So as you can imagine, my time to shine had come…  I got out of my car, asked her to step out of hers, and then proceeded to tell her, “Ma’am… I got good news and bad news.  Good news is… you’re not dead.  Bad news is, you’re wanted for failure to appear in court.  Put your hands on the car, you’re under arrest.”

Question 8 – If your state government would give you more money, what would you want your department to spend it on?

Better equipment.  I can’t say we are doing bad on equipment, but there are some things we could use more of or better of… like more cameras in the cars and better engines in some of these new interceptors we have been getting.  And of course, continuing to fund more academy classes to get new officers out there on the road and fill vacancies.

Question 9 – If you refuse to answer a cops questions, but you specifically are not suspected of committing a crime, is that obstruction of justice?

It really all depends on the situation.  Because in reality, even if you aren’t the prime suspect of the crime, you can be an accessory to the crime and you CAN get charged one way or another if the officer can articulate the reason behind the charge to establish probable cause.  But if you are a witness to a crime and you refuse to answer an officer’s questions, I don’t see how you can get charged with obstruction of justice unless some state codes are written differently.  Virginia’s code 18.2 – 460 focuses on a person physically hindering an officer (judge, magistrate, etc, as well) from performing their duties.  But the last subsection describes someone giving false information in regards to an officer’s investigation that can be considered obstruction of justice and a class 1 misdemeanor.  So in VA, unless the witness flat out lies to the officer about what they saw, I don’t see how they can be charged with anything unless the officer can prove they were in some way an accessory to that crime.

Question 10 – Why did you decide to get into law enforcement?

I just really want to help people.  Whether it’s stopping somebody to make them realize they need to pay more attention on the road, pulling over to check on someone with a flat tire on a dark country road to make them feel safer, getting that drunk from behind the wheel so he doesn’t kill himself or someone else, taking to jail that abusive asshole who decided after having one too many drinks wanted to beat his wife that night, or simply walking down school halls so that kids feel safe knowing we are there for them.  Just little things here and there I feel can make a difference in this world we live in, and it’s what keeps me going with this profession that I chose.

If you are interested in checking out Jaden’s site, you can find it here. His posts range from random law enforcement info, to smoking hot sex with his wife. It’s like law enforcement porn. God, what it must be like to marry a man who owns his own set of handcuffs. *sigh*

On the flip side, if you are interest in joining the fight to reform marijuana laws, feel free to contact me on the comments page. I’m currently working on a spontaneous smoke in for the central Florida area (it’s like a flash mob, only instead of dancing, we all start smoking pot at the same time. I’ll bring the funions and orange soda).

You can also check the status of Marijuana reform laws at NORML, one of the few organizations out there that won’t judge you based on your recreational choices. Let’s work together to make the sunshine state a little sunnier.

The Rorschach Guess

Today is Hermann Rorschach’s 129th birthday. Yeah, I think it’s stupid to keep celebrating birthdays after someone is dead too, but it makes good blog fodder.

Anyway, in honor of this momentous occasion, I’ve decided to psychoanalyze myself using some of Rorschach’s common patterns.

In this pattern, I see that slave girl Oola from Star Wars – Return of the Jedi, starring in an orgy porno with a disembodied ejaculating penis with arms, while the spaceship from space invaders looks on.

Analysis – My brain is filthy…and stuck in 1987

This is clearly Bigfoot getting a pap smear.

Analysis – Weirdly, I always thought Bigfoot was a boy. Guess I’m sexist.

Cockroach dance party between two penis towers.

Analysis – Anyone else think it’s weird that I’ve seen genitals in every single picture?  This Rorschach guy was a fucking perv! Seriously, he was worse than those dudes at Disney.

This isn’t a Rorschach test. This is what happens whenever I photocopy my ass.

Analysis – I have a demon living in my anus.

Based on my own analysis, I have this to say. Psychoanalysis in 1921 was apparently nothing but guesswork in a lab coat. Simply stated, I don’t have a lot of faith in a doctor who can’t even diagnose his own appendix rupture.

Happy birthday anyway, Hermann Rorschach. Thanks for the entertainment.

A Love Letter to My Internet Stalker

When you ask someone what they think of as the most romantic movie scene, you can generally expect a pretty cookie cutter response. They might mention the prow scene on ‘Titanic’. They might mention Harry’s speech in “When Harry Met Sally.” They might mention Noah scaling the Ferris wheel in “The Notebook.”

For me, the most romantic movie scene I can think of occurs at the end of ‘Hannibal’.

Clarice finally thinks she has Hannibal cornered. The cops are on their way. With sirens screaming in the background, she handcuffs Hannibal Lector’s wrist to hers. But Lector has one last trick up his sleeve. He pulls out a meat cleaver. It raises high in the air…fade to black over the sound of one distinct chop.

In the next scene, we learn that Hannibal did escape. We assume that it is because he cleaved off Clarisse’s hand in an attempt to free himself. Then we see him on a train, sharing a boxed lunch with a small boy. The camera pans down and we see his left hand is missing.

Hannibal cut off his own hand, rather than hurt Clarice. Now that is fucking love.

In case you can’t tell, my opinion on love can be pretty extreme. Chasing me down at an airport, singing a stupid song to me, or sending me flowers isn’t going to win me over. If you want me to swoon, you need to be willing to sacrifice a body part.

I always assumed that my extreme nature would result in my dying alone. Then I met you, internet stalker.

We met about a year ago. I’d just posted an article that included three pictures of me. You sent me a long rambling message. You said you were a fan. You told me I was pretty. I thanked you.

The emails kept coming, and they kept getting weirder. One spanned paragraphs and paragraphs. It was long, rambling and incoherent. I have to admit I didn’t understand much of it, but I got the general gist. You loved me…and you wanted to wear my face as a mask.

It was the nicest thing that anyone had ever said to me.

Most women are freaked out by stalkers, but I’m not most women. I spend a lot of time alone. I have nightmares about dying in complete obscurity. I have dreams that I disappear and no one ever notices. Those nightmares go away when you send an email.

Because as long as you’re around, I know there is one person out there who is obsessed enough with me to want me dead…and who fears my death like the apocalypse at the same time.

To me, that is just fucking beautiful.

As long as you exist, I will never cease to matter. For one person out there, I am their whole world. I am the love of their life and a ‘soul sucking, bitch, whore cunt’ all at the same time.  I am the girl sending you coded messages in all my posts. My eyes really are looking right at you in my gravitar picture…even though it’s a profile shot and I’m actually looking somewhere off to the left.

I heard somewhere that stalking isn’t about love. It’s about power. I don’t believe that, internet stalker. The balance of power in our relationship is purely one sided. I am the sun by which your universe revolves. You are the guy that sends me weird obsessed messages that actually improve my self esteem. I ignore the threats and I accept the compliments.

Internet stalker, our dysfunctional relationship might be the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had. Know that in my own way, I love you. I don’t love you like a lover, or like a brother. I think I love you in the same way Jodie Foster loves John Hinckley Jr. Through his obsession, he made an average looking girl with subpar acting skills a household name.

He made her Clarice…not the one in Hannibal, but you get my drift.

So thank you internet stalker. Most people would tell me not to engage with you, but half the reason you love me is because I never listen to people. You make me feel good. You make me feel relevant. For that, you deserve to be recognized.

And if you ever hit the Orlando, Florida area, there is an empty apartment right across the breezeway where you can see right into my bedroom.

Leaving the blinds open for you,

Love Essa

The Internet Most of You Will Never See – Surfing the Deep Web

Since I was a kid, I’ve always loved hidden passages.  I grew up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. When I was little, there was nothing I liked more than finding those hidden mountain trails and places people set up in the woods.

My fascination with the hidden continued as I grew up. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I never wanted to go to the party everyone was talking about. I wanted to go to the hidden parties. My weekends were spent whispering passwords to convenience store cashiers, so I could get complicated directions to some party in a run down warehouse.

The destination was never what excited me. Most of those parties were just drinking and dancing in a run down place (with significantly more X). Those places in the woods I found were usually just hidden playgrounds and swimming holes. It wasn’t the destination that was fun. It was the way I got there.

When the internet came out, and I found my first hidden webpage (it was an LSD recipe I tried with limited success),  I realized that the search for the hidden, and the sometimes forbidden, never had to end.

I knew about Silk Road before it was a household name. I’d browsed their listings of arms dealers, assassins, drug dealers, hackers for hire and more, just for a chuckle. There was literally nothing that you couldn’t find on Silk Road.

Silk Road is gone now, but that doesn’t mean the deep web is dead. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

When you go to Google and you type in a phrase, do you realize you are only searching 3% of the web? It’s hard to get a solid number, but the deep web is estimated to be almost 500 times bigger than the searchable web.

 

It was hard to get my head around the deep web at first. See, in my job, my goal is to make my clients’ pages more visible. It’s to get them to the first page of the Google search results.

Deep web users have the exact opposite goal in mind. The last thing that they want to see is their page anywhere near Google. Half the reason Silk Road got busted was because they got too fucking big. Silk Road and deep web became synonymous. Silk Road was the number 1 ranking site among sites that didn’t want to be ranked. They were the kings of the invisible internet.

But just because the king is dead doesn’t mean the land is gone. The invisible web is still there, it is still flourishing, and you can still find it.

You can’t just go to Google and type in ‘deep web’ or something ridiculous like that. Any sites that do come up are not deep web sites. They’re scam sites. Deep web sites don’t allow bots to search their pages, so deep web sites won’t show up on Google. You might find a listing of links, but I can promise you that when you click on one, you’ll get an error page instead. The deep web can’t be accessed through standard search engines.

The main passage to the deep web is through something called The Onion Router, otherwise known as Tor.

Onions? What the hell do onions have to do with anything, you might be asking.

You probably are all very familiar with .com, .org, .edu and other extensions like that. In the deep web, most things are found through .onion extensions.

You can only get to these extensions though the Tor browser (or other deep web browsers that sometimes suck). Some people say it’s a bitch to configure, but I didn’t find it that difficult. It might have changed since I set it up though. Also, I’m pretty good as this stuff.

Most pages you find on Tor will be listed though another pages links, because again, these pages are not trying to be search engine friendly. Helpful deep net users will compile pages of links for users to browse. The Hidden Wiki is also a decent place to search, though many pages listed on the Hidden Wiki are actually scam websites. When it doubt, try to get to it through a standard Firefox browser. If you can get there on an unencrypted server, it’s not deep web.

Some pages are commercial, for buying illicit black market items. Everything from fake passports to escorts and high powered weapons will be found on the commercial sites. Payment is through something called ‘Bitcoin’, which is possibly the most anonymous way to spend money on the internet.

There are also groups simply for people who don’t want their internet usage monitored by anyone. I think we can all agree that I’m not just being a crazy Libertarian when I say that the government watches most of us a bit more than we’d like to think they do. Political groups, including groups that embrace civil disobedience and anarchy, can be found in the deep web.

Personally, I prefer Tor because I value my privacy. When I’m not using Tor, I’m using a VPN. What I do on my internet is my fucking business, US Government. If you’re going to spy on me, you’re going to have to put in the effort.

Also, I find that the technical people I need to reach to do research spend more time in Tor forums than they do in standard forums. Why? Because you have to be smart to get to those forums. Trolls, sexbots and idiots need not apply.

A few words of warning before you go checking out the deep web

Understand the acronyms and terms. Do not go clicking wildly, or you are going to wind up with an eyeful of something you can’t unsee. Here are some things to avoid.

CP and Chan – Both acronyms for child pornography. Yes, Chan is usually anime, but this is the deep web we’re dealing with. On the deep web, chan is child pornography…generally extremely young child pornography. Sick fucking bastards.  
GM – Genital mutilation. Yes, there are some people that get off on this shit.
Adult – Rarely are you going to find any kind of normal ‘vanilla’ porn when searching the deep web. Most porn sites want to be on Google. So, when you find a porn site that is actually trying to hide itself, what do you think is on it? If your answer is ‘nothing I want to see’, you are right. Keep your adult searches to the regular web unless you’re interested in getting scarred for life.
Pedo – Seriously, guess…This is a sick, sad fucking world we live in.
Hard Core – The deep web’s ‘hard core’ is a whole assload of different from the regular web’s ‘hard core’. Generally, ‘hard core’ means ‘snuff’ when you’re surfing the onion.
Mechanic – The ‘mechanics’ on the deep web don’t deal with cars, unless you’re looking to have someone’s brake lines cut. Some of these dudes are scammers, some are the real McCoy. Either way, they’re all fucking nuts. Best avoided.

Exercise extreme caution. Tor is filled with hackers. Disable your webcam and microphone. Do not download anything from anyone and do not give out your personal email address. Even something as innocuous as a logo can hold a tracking cookie. The deep web is where you find the most advanced hackers out there. These are not the guys and girls that send you chain mail. These are the people that can find one tiny hole in your system and exploit it. Think of it this way. The regular internet is like walking through a park on a sunny Sunday morning in Greenwich, Connecticut. The deep web is like wandering down a darkened alleyway in Detroit at 2 am on New Years. Vigilance and suspicion are your friends.

Nothing is ever absolutely private. Once you have Tor rolling, you need to disable cookies, java, flash and cache. If you have no idea how to do this, you do not belong on the deep web in the first place.  Understand that no matter what you do, if someone wants to find you bad enough, they will find you. Just ask Ross William Ulbricht.  

Tor is slow and tedious to use. This is because it is the best place to search the 97% of the internet you all can’t see every day. It provides constant encryption as well, and bounces off a series of volunteered computers, which slows it down more. As a result, you might get booted occasionally.  Simply stated, be cool. If you don’t need to be on Tor, don’t use it. Use a VPN instead.  My personal favorite is ‘Go Trusted’, but ‘Hide My Ass’ is good too. .

If you’re smart, Tor can be a fun place to explore. Not every site on Tor is nefarious. In fact, many sites are just for people who want to avoid the idiots in the world. If you can believe it, the forums with drug users and hired assassins are actually quite a bit more civil than any book forum you’d find on Amazon.

Also, it’s not illegal to use Tor. It’s not illegal to browse the sites you find on Tor…with the exception of CP and Chan sites. If you’re on those pages, I hope you get busted. I hope you get busted hard and get a 400 pound cell mate, with anger issues, a PCP problem and a 10 inch penis.

Yeah, I personally put drug dealers and assassins on a more acceptable scale than kiddie porn searchers. Fucking sue me.

I would encourage most people to check out the deep web at least once. Not doing so is like going to a fancy hotel in Tijuana and never leaving your hotel room. It’s there. Enjoy it. Experience it.

But stay the hell off the kiddie porn sites. That’s just gross.

 

 

Must Have a Sense of Humor…

I think sometimes, people don’t really understand how special a real sense of humor is…

I see this phrase get thrown around a lot. I see it in internet dating ads. “Looking for a sense of humor.” I see it in employment ads. “Must have a sense of humor.” I even see it when I’m looking for new ghostwriting projects. “Need a writer with a sense of humor.”

Do you all realize what a generic requirement that is? Everyone has a sense of humor. There is no person out there that has lived past the age of 3 and not laughed one time. Honestly, senses of humor are like assholes. Everyone has one.

And every one is different.

To me, a ‘good’ sense of humor is the ability to laugh at something, even though it might offend someone or even you personally. Let me tell you a story about one of the finest senses of humor I’ve ever seen.

It’s summer in Sierra Vista, Arizona. Me and my friend Tina are on gate guard duty at the back gate of Fort Huachuca. It’s a boring duty, but we make the time pass by making fun of the tourists that pull up, after mistakenly pulling off the highway too soon on their way to Tucson.

A blue Sedan with Nebraska plates pull up. Inside is a middle aged white couple. They make immediate eye contact with me and avoid Tina entirely.

Let me explain why. I’m white as the day is long, not very big, and extremely non-threatening. I’m soft, squishy and harmless looking. Tina is a midnight black, daughter of Africa, 150 pounds and 5’8” of pure muscle type. When it comes to nervous white people, there’s non threatening black, like Will Smith, and there is threatening black, like Tupac. Tina is Tupac black with extra neck tattoos. Tourists tend to avoid her, especially the white ones.

The Nebraska couple cracks their window a quarter of an inch and screams to me for directions. Here’s the deal, I blow at directions. At this gate, I’m bad cop. I’m in charge of telling tourists to turn around. I’m not the nice one who gives them directions.

Tina is.

She walks up to the car and I literally see the woman in the passenger seat flinch away from her as she leans over the cracked window. She gives them directions and they drive away. She walks back to where I’m standing, shaking her head.

“They good?”

Tina nods. “Yeah, but I can’t wait for the letter the commander is going to get.”

“Letter?”

“Yeah,” Tina looks ready to piss herself laughing. “The one that says what a nice, eloquent, colored girl I am.”

That, my friends, is a sense of humor.

When you advertise for a ‘sense of humor’ you might as well advertise for some who ‘knows how to paint.’ Everyone can work a paint brush, but there is only one Picasso.

When you’re a dude looking for a girl on an internet dating site, who has a sense of humor, what I read is ‘I’m not that funny, but I’m not that attractive either. I need someone to tell me I’m special by laughing at my dumb jokes.”

When you’re an employer who tells me you’re looking for a good sense of humor, what I’m seeing is “my last secretary wouldn’t screw me. So I made a bunch of mean jokes at her expense. Then she sued me. I’m really looking for a bitch that will just take it and not fight back.”

A good sense of humor is a special thing. It’s like having a special palette, where you can taste all the flavors of something, even when some are weird. It’s like having the eye for detail that allows you to create a special dress design, which is both flattering to a woman’s body and aesthetically interesting.

A good sense of humor is rare. Stop advertising for it like you’re looking for typing skills. Generally, those of us with a true ‘good sense of humor’ would rather die than work in a cubicle anyway.

Does that mean never getting offended over anything? Hell no. My friend Tina was probably extremely offended the day those people treated her like she was about to car jack them. But she found a way to laugh about it.

Does that mean being intentionally offensive? Absolutely not. I’ve never found Andrew Dice Clay funny. It’s not because I’m an uptight bitch. It’s because his act wasn’t funny. Nothing he said was actually humorous. He was just being offensive for the point of being offensive. That’s not humor. That’s just being a dick.

As far as I’m concerned, George Carlin was the only human being with a sense of humor sophisticated enough to pull off a rape joke.

When you are a truly funny person, offending people is a side effect of your act. It isn’t the goal. You make your jokes and you hope they land. But you accept the fact that eventually, somewhere, someone will get offended. When they do, you brush it off.

Because you know not everyone has a good sense of humor.

Look, I’m never been one of those ass sniffing artists who talks about my ‘art’. I don’t write angst filled poetry or paint pictures of my anger at my father, or some other such bullshit. I’m never going to be literary. I’m never going to win a Pulitzer. I’m cool with that. But I am a god damn artist. I have a true good sense of humor, and it’s a bit rarer than you all think. If you question how important a good sense of humor is, I strongly recommend you check out “A Modest Proposal.” Never underestimate the power of funny.

A good sense of humor isn’t a given…it’s a god damn gift. Stop advertising for that shit when you don’t really mean it. Generally, you can get any idiot to laugh at anything.  But only the truly gifted can laugh at something that upsets them.

And only the artists can make a good joke about it in the first place.

 

Book Writing Issues…Mainly Hygiene Related

I currently have the exact opposite of writers block. I’m working on Gio’s Gift and the story is flowing so well, I’m starting to get it a little confused with reality. I can’t really say how long I’ve been at it, because I’m not entirely sure what day it is.

But I just noticed a few things that I would like to point out. First and foremost;

I have been wearing these clothes for as long as I can remember.

A special shout out to Mark Sackler of the Millennium Conjectures on this one. One of the items I have been wearing is the Blahs T-Shirt I won a while back. It used to be white. Now it is more of a yellowish color and it has a large amount of mystery stains. For the life of me, I can’t remember what day I put it on. The only thing I know for sure is that it wasn’t today…or yesterday…or the day before.

I’m breaking out like a kid going through puberty.

Normally, I have a pretty good complexion. But today, I’ve noticed that I have begun to sprout acne like a poorly kept lawn spouts weeds. This is probably a direct result of not remembering the last time I took a shower. On the upside, my hair looks fantastic! Apparently, the best way to get bleached blonde, waist length hair shiny is to never wash it…ever.

I have the alcohol tolerance of a bull elephant

Did I really drink 16 beers yesterday? I counted the cans twice, and unless I had mystery guest I don’t remember, the only answer is ‘yes’.  Here’s the thing. Usually, that many beers would have anyone on their ass. But all I did yesterday was write. I didn’t buy a bunch of shit I didn’t need on Amazon. I didn’t get into any online fights. I didn’t drunk-and-dial any of my friends. I just wrote. Also, unlike other times when I drank and wrote, my text is actually decipherable. While there is still a high error rate, I actually understood what I was saying when I wrote it…and it was pretty fucking good.

I’m a bit more violent than usual.

I’d really like to punch someone in the face. Right now, I’m working on a few more action packed scenes and they always make me a bit more action packed myself. The thing is, I don’t want to punch just anyone in the face. I want to punch someone who really deserves it. Just my luck, everyone I’ve dealt with today has been perfectly nice and completely undeserving of a punch in the face. Assholes.

I’m thinking in omniscient 3 person narration.

I just drove to the store for more beer. Sounds simple enough, right? That’s until you delve into what was going on in my head.

“Essa drives to the store, with her standard reckless disregard for human life. She pulls in front of a 97 Saab she determines to be going far too slow, despite the 35 mile an hour speed limit. She parks in front of Gas Station, and leaves the engine running. If she doesn’t, there is a very good chance her car won’t start again. Essa knows her way around cars, but the last thing she wants to do is to be forced to shove her hand under the engine block on this hot Florida day.

Florida doesn’t know that summer is over. It never knows that summer is over. Due to that, this day that should be a brisk October day, measures no less than a balmy 85.

“What ever happened to your son?” Essa asks, as she slides a six pack onto the counter. This six pack won’t be her last of the night.

The cashier shifts his eyes away nervously, and Essa knows he is about to think of a lie. “He is at college.”

“Good for him.” Essa takes her beer and knows the truth. The reason that her favorite cashier is no longer behind the till has nothing to do with college. Essa knows that he was falsely accused of stealing, but the second oldest son, who wants Gas Station all to himself, spread a rumor that his father mistakenly believed. She knows for a fact that first son never stole anything. She knows, because on a sweaty August night, several weeks before, first son got completely lost when he was handed a pile of cash. Being the day cashier, he almost never dealt with cash. He dealt with debit and credit transactions. When he did get cash, he would call his uncle over to manage the register.

That uncle is sweeping the floor as Essa leaves…and he is incredibly quick to avoid eye contact.

Yeah people, I’ve reached the point where I have decided there is a mystery EVERYWHERE! I’m not thinking like a normal person anymore. I’m thinking like Angela Fucking Lansbury.

I’m getting fat.

I stepped on the scale this morning to learn that I was about 20 pounds heavier that usual. That’s right; I completely missed the fact that I gained 20 pounds. That’s weird to me, because I never eat anymore. I drink and I chain smoke, but I don’t eat. Eating requires two free hands. I don’t have two free hands.

The real thing I’m worried about here is that I will become oddly shaped. About 5 years ago, I had a tummy tuck. As a result, the fat cells that most people have around their waistline do not exist on me. When I gain weight, it goes to my boobs, my ass and my thighs. My bras don’t fit me anymore; my pants are awful tight across the ass.

I stand a strong change of becoming an hourglass with way too much sand in it.

A week from now, I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine. However, right now, I’m not. The story is good. It’s soooo fucking good, but it’s costing me. That was one thing I never considered when I became a writer. The trade off. By letting myself get sucked into fantasy, I have completely let go of reality.

And the sick part is, I don’t even care.

 

 

Update on Gio’s Gift

This update is strictly for people who follow the Strangely Sober series. I rarely do book updates on here, because I think writing about my writing is fucking boring, but I had a few questions from people following the series that I wanted to answer.

Gio’s Gift will be the final book in the Sal series. This is for a number of reasons. First, the characters in my books live in real time. I’m not going to pull a Janet Evanovich and have characters that I write about for ten years, that never age. Also, I’m not going to stick to the same character for years and years. I love Sal, I really do. But once Gio’s Gift is finished, I will be retiring the character for good.

There will not be a prequel. People are curious about Sal’s origins, and I get that. Strangely Sober starts off several years after she got her schizophrenia diagnosis. It doesn’t delve into how she went from being a run of the mill crazy with a Gary Busey hallucination, to a full blown criminal mastermind. However, there won’t be a prequel explaining this because it is being covered in Gio’s Gift.

Gio’s Gift jumps back and forth. It tells the story of Sal at age 29 and it tells the story of Sal at age 39. It is going to be the longest book in the series. All questions will be answered and all mysteries will be revealed.  While it is always sad to see a series end, I promise fans they will be satisfied with the way the series ends.

I’m estimating that Gio’s Gift will be available in December 2013 or January 2014. However, I reserve the right to pull a George R.R. Martin and take as long as I take to get the book right. If I’m going to end Sal, I’m going to do it right.

For those who loved Sal, because they were looking for a strong female protagonist who manages to rescue herself, rest assured, my history of writing strong female protagonists will continue. I myself am a strong female protagonist, so that’s all I know how to write.  I currently have several novels in the pipeline that will be finished once Gio’s Gift is finished.

The first is about an aging trophy wife, who is so much more than just an aging trophy wife. Think “Anna Nicole Smith” meets “Indiana Jones”.

The next is about an Israeli computer hacker who scams Nigerian scam artists for a living. For people who love my over the top, pop culture characters, her best friend is a Bronie…otherwise known as a man obsessed with the series “My Little Pony”.

Right now, I’m really sucked into writing Gio’s Gift, so I don’t have a lot of time to answer people individually. However, I hope this update will suffice.

Also, if you want to see my writing style before you get involved in my novels, I recommend you check out The Apology. It is currently available for free on Nook, iTunes and Smashwords. I’m trying to get Kindle to make it free too, but those fuckers just aren’t participating. I just can’t justify charging people for an 85 page novella. However, if you’re stuck with Kindle, it’s still available there for 99 cents. But please let them know that it is free elsewhere.