Steal These Passwords!

            I am about to do you another favor.  Remember the last time?  I gave you the amazing, can’t-miss idea of shooting seeds from a gun.  See that one here:

 http://jonihilton.blogspot.com/2013/08/ready-aim-plant.html

and before that, the million-dollar idea of putting Beano in dog food, which you can see here:  http://bit.ly/12zTJzm.

            Today I’m going to save you from identity theft.  What you need is a password that will foil the hackers once and for all.  My ingenious idea is to use words that almost nobody spells correctly.  Your hacker is a techno/math person, probably not a spelling bee champion, thus he will never be able to figure out whether Mediterranean has two Ts, two Rs, or both.  If you use two or three of these words strung together, you should be safe into the next century.

            Herewith my list of words most people struggle to spell. You will love it.  See if you can make a short phrase with them, add a few numbers and dollar signs, and you’re home free:

Misspell

Diarrhea

Gandhi

Memento  (How about Gandhi misspelled diarrhea, but left a memento?)

Indispensable

Judgment

Liaison

Caribbean (How about the liaison’s judgment was indispensable in the Caribbean?)

Chauffeur

Assassinate

Restaurateur

Consensus (How about the consensus was that the chauffeur assassinated the restaurateur?  Although that would have to be a pretty famous restaurateur.)

Cemetery

Graffiti

Embarrass

Acknowledge (I acknowledge that graffiti in a cemetery can be rather embarrassing.)

Here are some more that you can play with:  deductible, accommodate, harass, occurrence, committee, Fahrenheit, prerogative, mozzarella, irresistible, apparently, publicly, Medieval, existence, calendar, privilege, acknowledgment, noticeable, camaraderie, permissible, inadvertent, achieve, foreseeable, mischievous, independent, separate, commitment, and acceptable.

            Then again, just in case your hacker can spell, you can take these words and mangle them into spelling oblivion, and use variations he will never think of, like Fairunheight, Mid-evil, comroddery, or calennndar with three Ns.  And if you speak another language, oh my, you can make it kaksi kertaa niin vaikeaa.  That’s Finnish for twice as difficult.  No, I don’t really speak Finnish, but I’ll betcha the hackers don’t, either.

            Thankfully, humor works in any language, and you can enjoy these amazing observations on a regular basis, just by subscribing!  Type your email address into the little box on the right.  I promise not to steal your identity.  Then watch my 60-second videos on youtube, in the box above that.  Heck, I can keep you busy all day!

Poetic-- or Pathetic-- License?

            Nobody likes their driver’s license photo; I get that.  But still we are asked to show these IDs at banks, stores, and airports, and we do it without much angst because we’re all in the same boat.

 

            Until now.  I have jumped overboard, my friends.  Over into the sea of INSANELY HIDEOUS PHOTOGRAPHY.   For the first time ever, I am considering paying the extra fee for a new picture, or getting a separate ID entirely.  I guarantee you cannot beat this story.

            Normally the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) mails me my new license every year three years, for being an exemplary driver.  What do they know?  But they do it.  Years go by.  Finally I have exceeded not the speed limit, but the time limit, and they write to say I must re-take the vision test.

            No biggie.  My hair is up in a messy bun after a morning of housework, and I’m not  wearing any makeup except for some lip gloss.  I’ve thrown on an old T-shirt and some jeans, but since it’s only a vision test and thumb print, I’m not worried. I grab my daughter, Nicole, and we zip over to the local DMV.

Wisely, I have made an appointment.  This saves the local news from having to cover a mass homicide.  CRAZED MOTHER OF FOUR TAKES OUT 42 CITIZENS AT LOCAL DMV.  I am not good at waiting two hours in government offices.

Sure enough, I’m called right up to Window 15 for my vision test. I pass with flying colors.  And then, in a horrible twist of fate, the gruff woman behind the counter tells me I have to get a new picture!

“No, no,” I explain.  “The letter just said vision and fingerprinting.”

“It also said a photograph,” she argues, and even though she has not read the same letter I have received, I do recall a bit of fine print at the bottom that I skimmed, so I decide not to wage a war over this.  

I take my hair out of the bun and shake it loose.  It looks worse. I also have an immediate hot flash that leaves my skin as shiny as if I had smeared it with Vaseline.  (Why can’t there be cold flashes?)  Nicole frowns; she is better than any mirror.  The woman snaps my picture and I step away for the next impatient person to have their turn at a mug shot.  Nicole says, “You have a piece of chocolate on your lips.”

What?  I reach up to pull it off and it isn’t chocolate at all, but a BIG BLACK GNAT that has flown into my lip gloss, choked on it and died. 

 Now I realize that my new photo is  going to look like a drenched, squinty mole who has just gorged on a wad of greasy cheese, with hair looking like I’ve got my toes in a light socket and am being electrocuted, and with a BUG stuck to my lips! 

 “I am shredding that thing the second it arrives,” I say to St. Bob after I get home.  “I’ll have to call and reschedule another picture or something.” And here’s where he tells me it’ll cost big bucks and they’ll still probably use the same photo.

            Sure enough, the license arrives in the mail and looks even worse than I had imagined.  Picture the same electrocuted mole wearing the fright wig, shiny face filling the frame, and a big black smudge on its lips, like a mug shot of a drunk who chews tobacco and can’t keep from drooling.

            Naturally my family is no help.  They call me “Bugsy,” they suggest other creatures that could get mired in my lipstick, they compliment my “gnatty” attire.  Finally they email me the poster of Jodie Foster with a butterfly on her lips from the movie, The Silence of the Lambs, and wonder why I didn’t choose that insect instead.  

And no, I am not going to post my photo here, you’ll just have to imagine it.  And be grateful, at last, that your photo is infinitely better.

This true story worked its way into my book, “Funeral Potatoes, The Novel,” which you can buy here: http://amzn.to/15OZcgq

Counter Intelligence

            You may remember that a couple of weeks ago St. Bob bought a misspelled car.  I wrote about it here:  https:/www.bit.ly/14ijHmf. And when he called each of our kids to ask them why Mom was refusing to ride in it, every one of them guessed it was because of the misspelling.  They were right.

            So Bob, in another move that proves he has earned Saint status, decided to peel off the offending “Cruze” sign with a hair dryer and dental floss (no small task, because then you have to dissolve the glue residue and buff it smooth), and replace it with a new name.

            He toyed with ideas and finally decided Bugatti would be the most hilarious, since Bugatti makes the most expensive cars in the world, at two and half million dollars a pop.  They also go from zero to 60 in 2.4 seconds.

            He found a company that sells stick-on car lettering and ordered B-U-G-A-T-T-I.  Simple enough, right?  But what came in the mail was B-U-G-A-H-I.  Well, it’s easy to see what happened.  Somebody wrote the two Ts close together and somebody else read it as an H.  You would think people in the car industry would realize that Bugahi is not the name of an actual car, but no.  This is what I call Counter Intelligence.

            So we shuffled around the letters, to see if there was a way to use this odd assortment.  Ubi Hag was one idea.  Sort of sounds like Uber Hag, a superlative bag lady of sorts.

Another idea was Hui Bag. My mother used to describe nonsense as “a lot of hooey” and this could be a whole bagful. Gai Hub was an idea, if this car had been a gathering spot for gay people. But, again, misspelled.

Ahi Bug is a thought, if you like Hawaiian Ahi Tuna and can picture this car as a bug on its skin.

And then Bug Ai could be another misspelled label for Bug Eye.  We could actually go on all day with this. 

Finally Bob decided to call and tell them to send two Ts so we could do it right.  But as long as he was on the phone with them, he figured he’d add another word, just to acknowledge the discrepancy in our car and his dream car.  Here’s the final result:

I’m just glad he didn’t rearrange the new ones to say Gabby Butt.

Now you can be a saint, too!  Subscribe to my new youtube video channel and learn life skills in under 60 seconds— I’m Your YouTube Mom.  Just click on the photo at the top right to check them out, and tell your friends!

Irony, Defined

            I recently had a Facebook conversation with my adorable English cousin, Peter.  It was about irony and I had given him some rather lame examples of it.  It’s not because there’s a time difference and I was tired; I simply couldn’t think of better ones than a giant named Tiny, or a fire chief’s house burning down.

            But irony is all around us, and one need only to check emails or turn on the TV for a plethora—that’s right, a plethora—of examples.

We’ve all received the emails of Walmartians in ghastly attire (or the lack thereof) with the heading, “You’ll never again worry about how you look.” 

 And sure enough, one’s jaw drops as photo after photo reveals a hideous getup worn in public. These aren't even the worst ones; those were too inappropriate even to blog about:

 

They make Halloween costumes look like inauguration attire.  Surely they have mirrors, right?  And friends who feign a coughing fit when they show up, so as not to gasp and say, “What on earth are you wearing?”

And it hits me that this is another beautiful example of irony:  People who should have all the confidence in the world second guess themselves and self-criticize, always worried about their appearance.  And then people whose mothers clearly dropped the ball and who should dash home and change clothes, instead go forth into the world without a shred of doubt, fully believing they look fabulous.  Like the dreadful singers on American Idol, they are shocked that anyone finds them other than amazing. 

How does one gain such unbridled confidence in the face of such mistaken evaluation?  Every ultra-talented person I know has moments of insecurity about their abilities.  Every gorgeous or handsome person I know thinks they have all kinds of flaws.  Some of them change outfits four times before they’re content to go anywhere.  Yet hordes of people with every reason to pause before prancing out before their fellowmen do so with absolute abandon, not a worry in their heads. 

 How did their parents instill such unwavering self-assurance? 

 And why do those who should grace us with their vast talents and abilities hang back in the shadows—did their parents encourage them any less?  I can’t imagine that.  It’s simply one of life’s mysteries, undoubtedly as old as humankind.  And that, my dear cousin, is my definition of irony.