Always makes me think of this: https://the-toast.net/2015/07/15/the-pitch-meeting-for-wishbone/

I had no idea who this was so I went and looked on IMDB and she was in a show called "Designing Women" and one of the top rated episodes has this description:

Suzanne [Burke] attends her high school reunion, where people shun her because she weighs more than she did in high school.

Irony.

I mean.....

When you lose your PP

I can’t believe this is so old that the ‘not too distant dystopian future’ was 6 years ago. I remember when this was new and now I feel old.

According to google 214-748 is the start of real phone numbers in Dallas TX. Unfortunately when you call 214-748-3392 is says it's been disconnected. This is probably for the best, because I didn't really think through explaining to a person why I called them from 1000 miles away because their phone number was the number of turns someone was stuck in paralysis in a video game I've never played that I saw a screenshot of on the internet.

This has been bothering me for like 10 years and it has to come out now even though it’s only kind of relevant to the topic.

Spoilers for Face/Off if you haven’t seen it go watch it it’s amazing.

Okay, so Face/Off has the craziest ending to a movie ever. And you’re thinking to yourself “What that the good guy wins in the end and everyone is happy? That’s not unexpected.” But you have to look at the finer details.

After Sean Archer is back in John Travolta’s body at the end and he’s like “I don’t need this bullet scar anymore, it’s cool, I’ve healed.” He goes back to see his family. He walks in the door and his wife and daughter are like “Yay you’re our dad and not some crazy person again yay!”. The following things that happen need to be broken down individually for it to fully be understood how insane it is what happens:

• What is with the weird run your hand down the face thing they do? It’s so bizarre and it’s never explained. His daughter is like “Sorry I shot you…” and he just runs his hand down her face like a weirdo. Why.

• Archer goes “There’s something I have to ask both of you…” and the just brings in some random kid they’ve never seen and is like “he needs a place to live” WHAT?!?! This kid was in a shoot out in a drug den like a week ago. He was raised in a terrible environment. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to be placed in a normal family or anything, but the kid needs like all the therapy. He’s going to have emotional problems. Are you really ready to deal with all that Archer? Really? Your family just went through a crazy thing and you’re like “Here is a huge responsibility we need to take on now.”

• The daughter says “My name is Jamie” and the DOES THE WEIRD FACE HAND THING! Why do they do that? It’s so weird. Is she like assimilating him into their collective. And he, completely unphased by the hand thing in a show of immense self control, is just says “My name is Adam.”

• Then Archer says “Show Adam to his new room.” And the daughter and Adam run off and then the most insane thing I’ve ever seen in a move happens. Archer looks at his wife and is like “….Okay?” and she goes “nod nod….okay…” and they kiss. End of movie.

To that last point…WHAT?!?!!?!? Am I taking crazy pills or something? This dude just decides that they’re raising a kid WITHOUT ASKING HIS WIFE FIRST!?!?! If I brought home a dog without discussing it with my wife first, she would be pretty pissed but a WHOLE DAMN KID?!?! A kid, who as mentioned, is going to need intense therapy and extra support? A kid who, it would seem, is there only to replace your other kid who died which is whole ‘nother kind of fucked up (see the life of Salvidor Dali).

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

Except it's more like I'm on my hiking forum describing an issue and the fishing people come in and be like "You wouldn't have that problem if you just fished instead of hiked. Why do people even hike? It's stupid. Fishing is the best."

Also there is a bear in a tutu in this analogy and it's posts a bunch of star trek memes and since it's a bear you just leave it alone but since it's in a tutu it's funny.

Yeah it was kinda fun. I figured ever minute I had them on the phone was a minute they weren't scamming old people with dementia out of their money, so at the very least I was doing something mildly good too.

Four hour guy I had a lot of clerical work to do at work that day and didn't need to talk on the phone at all so I just kept him going. Would go off on long made up stories related to what he was saying. Told him about my kids and their kids and my deceased wife. They guy told me that my card was used to purchase (among other expensive things) "$3,000 worth of Bitcoin" and I kept being like "what's a bite coin?" and he COULD. NOT. GET. PAST. me calling it bite coin instead of Bitcoin. He would correct me every time. Then I asked what that was and he told me it was a digital currency and I told him about my coin collection for like 8 minutes before he steered me back on topic. I only told him I was wasting his time because I was done with work.

I will say, one guy asked if I lived alone and I told him I do now because my wife of 47 years died two months ago and he said "Ahhh...that's sad..." and hung up on me. So at least that guy wasn't completely evil.

This is a tactic that worked for me, but your mileage may vary. I used to get dozens of spam calls a day on both my work and personal numbers. I did all the things that you're supposed to do and they just kept coming. I also needed to answer unknown numbers on my work phone so I couldn't just block them.

So after a while, I started answering the calls and calling them back when I got silence. I made sure I could talk to a person/scammer as often as possible. In the beginning I would just ask them if they felt good about themselves trying to scam people out of their money. They would generally just hang up but one guy gave this long speech about how if you were that dumb you didn't deserve that much money and how he was living the American dream (although I did ask him if he was in American at which point he hung up on me). After that, I would just start trying to keep them on the phone as long as possible. My job is such that I can work and talk on the phone at the same time, so I made a word document that had a fake name, birth day, social security number, address, a fake person basically. Then I would put on my "old man" voice and just act stupid to keep them on the phone. I kept one guy on the phone for four hours as I pretended to be too inept to turn on my laptop to give him my IP address. He was quite upset when I told him I knew he was scamming me.

Anyway, I haven't gotten a scam call in like 6 months. I think scammers put me on their do not call list. Maybe worth a shot?