The Gimcrack Miscellany

Yes, that’s a $5,000 bill, which did actually exist at one time (as did the $10k and $100k bills). But that was before VISA-vis hell, Discovered in debt, Bastard Card, and American Express train to bankruptcy took away our need for large denominations.

That didn’t make sense. Vis-a-vis. Ergo. Concurrently. Hitherthenceforththeless.

What I’m getting at is, I just finished listening to Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover, which promises to get you out of debt and back on track financially in a few years’ time. I had a few problems with some of Ramsey’s points, especially when he goes heavily into the myth/fact section, but generally it was a very good audio book. It was very inspirational and motivating for people swimming in a deep sea of debt, as well as people who are on the right track but need confirmation that their efforts will be rewarded.

This guy was a millionaire by the time he was 26, lost it all a few years later, and spent 15 years building back his wealth. Now he has a radio show, has written a few books, and councils thousands of financially secure and insecure people. Best of all, he didn’t stumble upon any magic formulas or get rich quick schemes; rather, he details 7 “baby steps” (a What About Bob reference) for becoming totally debt free and getting yourself to the point that you can use money for the three real reasons it exists:

1. Having fun
2. Investing
3. Giving

He is a Christian and believes firmly in the principles of giving, avoiding becoming a slave to money and putting up false idols, and that the love of money is the root of all evil. Here here. Now if I could only anchor these principles to my every day life.

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I grow weary of people speaking of the recently departed as flawless, sinless individuals despite the life the person actually lived. There’s this fear of speaking ill of the dead that stays around for months and even years after the burial. Why is this? By “ill”, I’m not talking about slander and falsity. Usually, an honest recollection of the not-so-great things the person did is considered ill-speak as well.

I realize that God forgives and doesn’t focus on our sins after we’ve repented of them. We don’t know what’s going on outside of time and space with the departed, thus it’s possible that they’ve repented all their sins, and we surely know that God is prepared to forgive them ahead of time no matter what the atrocity.

If a human being purposefully lives life in a certain fashion, and, while alive, is known to behave a certain way and have a certain lifestyle, why do all our memories change simply because the person dies? They still lived the life they lived and acted the way they acted. Sure, it feels natural to suddenly change our opinions of the person simply because they’ve passed on, but do you ever stop and think why? Is it because we feel sorry for them because they’re dead or something?

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This has to be the most overused image of Lewis. That’s because it’s awesome. Look at the expression on his face as he stokes up the ol’ Longbottom Leaf. It’s like I just told him the punchline of a joke right as he struck his match, and then he looked up at me and began to puff his pipe with fervor for my joke, as if to say “I’ll laugh in a ripe jiffy, just gotta get this bloody thing working first, cheerio chap. Blimey.”

I can’t wait for tonight. There will be turkey and beer and pie and excerpts from C.S. Lewis. It is our annual men’s group Thanksgiving feast and Lewis tribute night. As I was thumbing through the Intarwebs, I came across some quote archives and hand selected some of my favorite Lewis quotes. Since I probably will only read one or two of them tonight in between mouth fulls of Stroh’s-glazed Turducken, I thought I’d post them here so I can remember them for eternity or until my web host goes out of business.

I could write an individual post about each of these, but why spoil a good thing? C.S. Lewis is an amazing person and has an extraordinary gift for putting the most complicated philosophical issues into layman’s terms. I fear I would only ruin his points by expounding upon them. Have I not already ruined this whole thing with what I’ve already written? Yep, I have. Forget it.

Ok ok, here they are. I know the last one’s long, but read it because it’s my favorite.

“Without sin, the universe is a Solemn Game: and there is no good game without rules.”

–A Preface to Paradise Lost

“Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done…”

–from a letter “To Mrs. L.” (50)

“If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don’t feel at home there?”

–Encounter with Light

“Now that I am a Christian I do not have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.”

–Mere Christianity

“No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that ‘In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth’.”

–Miracles

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

–not sure, a little help? Art would probably know since I stole this quote idea from him.

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

–I’m guessing Mere Christianity, anyone know?

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too–for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist–in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless–I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality–namely my idea of justice–was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”

–Mere Christianity

I hope none of my men’s group reads this until tomorrow, because otherwise they’ll know the quotes I picked before I read them tonight. You know what would be funny? Someone should print this out and take it to group tonight and read it like these are their favorite quotes and pretend they spent all day looking for them and then I would spit out my mouth full of Turducken and say “you FRAUD!”

I may get myself in trouble with this one. I’m just gonna put it out there, if you don’t like it feel free to send it right back my way via the comments.

These are my current all-time least favorite movies, thus they have been etched into the annals of The Blacklist. And let me tell you, it’s a very dark place down there. It’s darker’n a black steer’s tookus on a moonless prairie night.

I’ve seen terrible movies without plots, acting, or any sort of direction. I’ve watched wretched films that annoy the living h e double pixie sticks out of me. I’ve feasted my eyes upon utterly offensive flicks that were designed to do just that: offend. But we’re talking lower than that.

Imagine the worst movie you’ve ever seen, and then take that movie and replace the dialog with Chinese, the soundtrack with the constant squeak of a rusty shopping cart wheel, the lead actress with Angelina Jolie, and the director with Satan.

Even that film would blow the following list of pure garish bilge out of the water.

Keep in mind, these are the worst five movies A) that I’ve seen, B) that I remember, and C) that I actually suffered through until the credits rolled, or until my DVD player mutilated the disc and regurgitated it directly into a local garbage incinerator for me. Gooood DVD player. Wanna go outside? Come on boy!

Now you see the world I’ve created and hopelessly trapped myself in. Prepare yourself for my Top Five Most Horrible Blacklisted Films:

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Hey, retired AOL using grandmas of the world. If you get this email, delete it immediately:

Now that we’ve established the true point of this post, let’s delve into the grand gorge of gimcrack and discuss it for a bit.

Clicking the link at the bottom of the email will take you to this website (click the image for a larger view):

I hate to break it to you, but here’s the real IRS website:

Yeah, they’re almost identical. Almost. Someone out there is an amazing web designer as they were able to clone the IRS website design, color scheme, menu behavior, content, white space - everything that makes up the site. Aside from realizing this website was a fake just by reading the initial email, which is truly the best way to avoid phishing, I’ll show you a few ways to spot the fake once you’ve fallen for teh haxorz tricks and clicked on the link of doom.

The Address Bar

You wouldn’t step inside a house on 429 East 38th Street if you were trying to get to 1305 South Hiatt Street, just as you wouldn’t give your credit card info to wwwwww.bestestbuy.cornmaze if you were trying to shop online at Best Buy. The address bar is there for a reason: to give you the address of the website you are visiting. Do you really think the IRS resides at http://211.192.139.107:8080/www.ir$.g0v/Get_tax_refunding.html? I’d wager it was something more along the lines of http://www.irs.gov.

The fake:

The real one:

The Navigation

Click a few links once you get to the website in question. Usually it’s just a facade with nothing under the surface, which you’ll uncover very quickly if you dig a little deeper. Haxorz don’t want to spend a lot of time matching up content, they just want to create one good page that looks completely authentic and BADABOOM - grandma got ran over by a thieving reindeer. Upon clicking just one link in the navigation of the fake IRS website, I realized that there were no other pages in the site. All the links just took me to ‘Not Found’ error pages. LOL n00bs.

The Favicon

This one isn’t as obvious, but I did notice it when comparing the real and fake IRS sites. The favicon was slightly different. You can see that the fake is a little darker and less clear, like they saved it in the wrong format or something. The real site is the one on the right.

My point is, look for the subtleties. It’s not always going to be the favicon. It could be a mispelling, a little less padding underneath a box, or a link hover color that doesn’t match the original.

Go To The Real Website

The easiest and most important tactic is to search for the site using Google, which will never give you phishing websites in its results. From there, you can get to any page within that website and be sure that it is authentic. If the email was trying to get you to update your contact information, just browse to that area of the real site and do it. If the email told you your account was about to expire, go to the real site and see if they give you that same message. Use common sense.

In conclusion, well done hax0rz. Your site was spot on identical in almost every way. But, all your tricks are belong to us.

Anyone have any funny phishing/identity theft stories? Lay them on me.