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About This Author
I am SoCalScribe. This is my InkSpot.
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SoCalScribe's Scandalous Scribbles
Here you'll find a collection of my writings in connection with "Invalid Item"  by A Guest Visitor . Please enjoy!
September 13, 2012 at 6:48pm September 13, 2012 at 6:48pm
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PROMPT:It is summer and you are sitting on your porch/patio sipping a cold glass of your favorite beverage. Describe the beverage you are drinking, how it makes you feel on a hot summer day, and memories it holds for you.
My favorite cold beverage is iced tea. Despite the fact that a certain other Scribbler who I won't mention by name says it tastes like feet, when made properly, I love the complex flavors of a really good iced tea. Black or some kind of fruity combination is just fine with me, poured into a glass filled with so much ice that it's only a matter of minutes before beads of condensation start sweating from the side of the glass.
I haven't always been a fan of tea, but since I don't drink coffee or alcohol, I find that tea fills that adult need in me for a complex, nuanced drink. Depending on what kind of tea leaves you use, how long you steep them, how much sweetener you add, you can literally spend your entire life not ever having the exact same glass of iced tea. Soda, milk, water, lemonade, etc. feel very one-note to me. There are times when they sound great and refreshing, and other times where they feel plain and boring. I could always drink a glass of iced tea.
And the best part... if it's winter and freezing cold outside, I can always nix the ice and still enjoy my tea! 
(To clarify, I'm not talking about premade teas like Nestea or Lipton. I'm talking about good teas, the kind you get from quality blends that you steep in hot water and then pour over ice. In fact, I think I'm going to go make myself some right now...  )
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PROMPT: You are alone in a tower like Rapunzel. What and what not would you do?
I don't think I could sit around waiting for someone to rescue me as I grow my hair out, that's for sure. Mostly because (1) I'm too impatient to wait around for someone to come rescue me, and (2) because I just don't look very good with long hair. I would, however, probably spend almost every waking moment trying to figure out a way to get out of that damned tower. I've given this a lot of thought, and I figure my best options for escape boil down to one of the following:
1. Take up animal navigation as a hobby and befriend pigeons, butterflies, and any other avian creatures that could carry a message to the outside world and bring someone back to save me.
2. Become adept at rock climbing. There are some crazy good rock climber who can scale sheer rock faces by finding the little grooves and spaces in between. Assuming I had a brick and mortar tower, perhaps I could teach myself to climb down. Perhaps.
3. Smoke signal. This might be a somewhat ill-advised plan (and therefore probably a last resort), but if I could figure out a way to actually set my tower on fire - maybe just the roof, if possible, nearby people might see the smoke and come investigate. Ideally before I've burned to death.
I suppose, since the first of these three options is a little far-fetched (and the other two involve considerable risk to life and limb), I should probably have some kind of a backup plan. And I suppose that means I should grow out my hair, just in case. But if that must be done, the first place I'm going after I get out of that infernal tower is a good barbershop.
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PROMPT: Write about first impressions. Have you ever thought something about someone when you first met them and it was proved wrong?
I have, depending on how you look at it, the good fortune or misfortune of being an eternal optimist. I always like to believe in the best in people and - as a result - often find that my first impressions and initial opinions of people are wrong just as often as they're right. While I'm hard pressed to think of anyone in my life that I disliked and then later realized was a better person, I do have a very long list of people I liked and then realized were not people I wanted to associate with, let alone were anything like I originally thought them to be. Some of these people include:
 A former boss with whom I got along with perfectly well until I found out she actively prevented me from getting a better job I interviewed for and - when I actually did leave the company - called my future boss and tried to convince them to rescind my job offer.
Two former roommates, one who resorted to nasty pranks (of the "clogged drain hairball on the toothbrush" variety) and effectively ended a decade-long friendship so he could move me out and his girlfriend into the apartment we shared (he could have just asked me to move out), and another who was more than happy to eat all the food I paid for (and assuming my stored leftovers were freely available), then bragged constantly about how much money she was saving by not wasting money on food.
Another former employer who encouraged my writing career by letting me spend weeks on pulling together a pitch to rewrite one of our screenplay projects myself... only to take all of that work, turn around, and give it to a more established screenwriter as "the company's" notes for what we wanted him to write on the project.
I don't necessarily harbor the same animosity toward these people that I once did... and some of them I even still talk to from time to time. But I started each of these relationships thinking the people involved were very different than these actions proved them to be. Even though I can be cordial toward all of them at this point, the way I view them is considerably different than my first impression led me to believe.
In his excellent book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, author Malcolm Gladwell makes a compelling case for first impressions and how we can discern a remarkable amount of accurate information about a person within only a few moments of meeting them. And I've certainly experienced that too, where I've met someone and received an initial impression that has yet to change in a meaningful way. But there are also times, as illustrated above, where I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they're basically good and decent people who wouldn't intentionally screw me over or hurt me... and I've been proven wrong.
As far as people for whom I've developed an unfavorable first impression and later changed my mind... I'm still thinking about that one. Perhaps part of the difficulty is that it's harder to win over someone you don't like than it is to lose respect for someone that you do. All it really takes is one really bad experience (see above) to turn a relationship sour, but it can take considerably longer and much more effort to win over someone who doesn't like you all that much.
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PROMPT: What's in your SPAM folder?
I actually don't have anything in my spam folder at the moment. I empty it out on a daily basis, partly to check and make sure that nothing important got sent there by mistake, and partly because I hate seeing a number of unread messages anywhere in my email. I probably get about 20-30 spam emails during the course of the day, and just delete them first thing in the morning and throughout the day whenever a few of them pop up.
Out of curiosity about this topic, I did a little casual research (i.e. Wikipedia). According to Wikipedia, pharmaceutical spam accounts for 81% of all spam messages out there. I knew there were a lot of spam emails about herbal supplements and vitamins and prescription drugs, but I didn't realize that eight in ten spam emails were on the topic. Next most popular is replica products spam at 5.4%, then enhancers at 2.9%, phishing at 2.3%, degree programs at 1.3%, casinos at 1%, weight loss at 0.4%, and all others at 6.30%.
Spam accounts for nearly 78% of all email sent, with approximately seven trillion spam messages sent in the 2011 calendar year. 
In 2011, Cisco published a report that listed the spam volume by country. India was at the top of the list with 13.9%, followed by Russia's 9%, Vietnam's 7.9%, South Korea's 6.0%, Indonesia's 6.0%, China's 4.7%, Brazil's 4.5%, and the United States' 3.2% The United States' numbers are down considerably after the closure of McColo in 2008. McColo was a San Jose-based web hosting service provider run by a Russian hacker that - at the time of its takedown - was estimated to be responsible for nearly two-thirds of all spam in the world. Statistical data by SpamCop shows that before McColo was terminated, the worldwide average for spam being sent was routinely between 20 and 40 emails per second.
I was hoping for a really cool ending to this blog post by being able to say, "And in the time it took me to write this blog post, I received X new spam messages!" But sadly (or happily, depending on how you look at it), that number is still zero. 
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© Copyright 2012 Jeff (UN: jeff at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Jeff has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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Why? It's coffee - it's supposed to be hot! Get with the program people! 
