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Help Celebrate Tacky Christmas 2008

A week or so ago, I got the idea to Blog about the tackiness of Christmas this holiday season.

Just for the record, the picture at left is my tree from some years ago. It isn’t tacky (at least I don’t think so), I just hate pictureless posts.

Want to help? Here’s how.

Just tell me about tacky or fun Christmas stuff you stumble across. “Tacky” would be stuff like my Mom found. Another great example of tacky Christmas stuff can be seen in this picture. Actually the entire post from a 2007 Blog is worth seeing. Or you can peruse the whole blog.

“Fun” (to me) is stuff like this. Okay, it’s only sort of fun.

NOTE: this really is not meant to be mean. I realize it takes all kinds to make the world go round. So let’s not identify folks, unless they clearly want to be identified.

This effort will really kick off after Thanksgiving. But feel free to start e-mailing your links and/or images to me at toadmama@gmail.com. Feel free to mention this post to all your friends, too. Let’s see just how much crazy stuff we can come up with.

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Beware Calls From Area Code 062

Today I got yet another call from “Unknown Name” (of course) at 062-261-7470. I’ve had these calls before. There was a recent one from 062-274-5877, too.

If you answer, like I did, you get a message about lowering your current credit card interest rate. There is an option to opt out from future calls, but it doesn’t work. They call again anyway.

You’re probably wondering why I answer. Well, the calls come in on my office line. Often, when some of my ex-US co-workers call, the phone number never displays properly and shows as Unknown Name.

If you are like my Hubby, at this very second you are wondering why I don’t just report “the bastards.”

I finally decided to do a bit of research. To make a long story short, any call coming from a 062 area code is a scam. (Google “calls from area code 062” if you want the boring details.) As it turns out, 062 is not a real area code. Because it is not a real area code, it can’t be blocked. Nor can you report it to the friendly “do not call” folks.

I even saw a couple of reports that said calling these people back results in hefty phone charges in the area of $6/minute. So that’s not an option either.

Anyway… during my little research tangent, I came across this video, which is titled, “How to torment telemarketers with one word.” It’s short, entertaining and, of course, family-friendly.

Notice I didn’t say it is “hilarious” or that it made me LMAO. It’s just sort of “little giggle” funny. But even a little giggle is a good thing. Right?

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Comedic Relief

I was going through my documents folder on our home network, deleting all the crap I’ve been storing for the last eight years when I came across this video.

Hubby e-mailed it to me at some point over the last couple of years, so I don’t know who gets credit for it. But it’s funny. I think so anyway. And who can’t use a bit of humor every now and then?

I hope you enjoy your Thursday!

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Make a Spherical Collage

I just discovered a really neat tool thanks to a Flickr friend of mine.

If you go to THIS WEB SITE, you can create an image similar to the one you see above just by entering a tag (keyword, like “Maine” or, as I did here, “Frog”).

The Web site pulls images from Flickr that have that tag and displays them like this. You can use your mouse scroll wheel to zoom in/out and drag your mouse across the screen to turn the globe. You can also click on an individual image to see it close-up or go to the original Flickr page.

If you do like me, and give your pictures unique tags for the sole purpose of having them pulled for the sphere, you’ll get a sphere full of your own images. For example, I tagged all my New England photos with “x13197y.” So if you CLICK HERE then enter x13197y in the little white box, then click on GO, you’ll see a glowing neon sphere. Click on the sphere and it will pull 259 images to load.

That’s all there is to it.

It’s one of those neat but not really useful things one stumbles across now and again on the Web.

Let me know if you try it and whether it works for you.

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The Candidate for a Real Change

I usually try to avoid discussing politics with people I know. I mean, I’ve got this nice, pleasant, laid-back persona to uphold, right? I’m not argumentative by nature. I’m not the jump-on-a-bandwagon type either.

Of course, there was this post, but it wasn’t about politics really. It was just a cute kid in a t-shirt.

But times are changing. That means I need to change. We all need to change. We need to be honest, smart.

You REALLY need to think about who you want in office. Democrats? Republicans? Or an independent candidate like this one? (UPDATE: this link should take you to a page where a video, which is a joke by the way, loads quickly. It currently is not working. I suspect this thing got way more traffic than expected and the server admin probably disabled it. I have a feeling it was posted on said server without the admin’s permission anyway. Sorry you missed it. It was funny! Or so I thought.)

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I Can’t Imagine How Long This Took

Today’s bit of weirdness was submitted by Hubby. I don’t know how he finds this stuff, but he does. Usually by accident.

I mean, he doesn’t spend hours combing the Internet for oddball things like this to entertain my fans. I hope. Though it is nice of him to keep us entertained.

So here’s today’s BIT OF WEIRDNESS. Courtesy of that awesome Hubby of mine.

After you click on the link, you’ll see a gray screen. Be patient. Soon, a girl will appear. Move your mouse around the screen and watch what happens.

Don’t get too excited. It really is just plain weird.