Blacklisted

I'm blacklisted.  Email blacklisted.  Don't know how or why or when this dubious honor was bestowed upon me.  So, I'm doing this post to see if anyone has had a similar experience.  Maybe we can help each other out of this shit hole and avoid future holes.  If you've been blacklisted I'd like to hear about your experience.  Here's my story.

For the past year or so, every email sent to my brother bounced back with a 'failed' notice.  I thought my bro had accidentally listed me as an unsafe sender in his email files.  I visited brother recently, got on his computer and discovered that that wasn't the case.  Then, I noticed that there was a notepad attachment (details.txt (404 B)) on the failed notice from the email postmaster.  I opened the attachment, found a bunch of meaningless numbers and computer acryonyms and the words 'blacklisted by user'.  What the hell?

Did some google research and determined that my internet protocol (IP) address was somehow associated with spamming and phishing and similar nefarious actions - none of which were initiated by me.  Some SOB or SOBs unknown used my computer (or my computer's IP address) to pursue their nasty objectives, thereby placing me in said shit hole. 

There are numerous blacklisting websites/services.  Their mission is to watchdog, list and block spammers and phishers and other assorted SOBs.  If, like me, you get on one of those lists, you have to beg them to let you off.  You send an email to them and explain that you're a dummy, don't know how this happened, wouldn't even think of doing those nasty things, blah, blah, blah.  The blacklister provides you with a 'ticket' number, runs some kind of test, and, hopefully, sends an email saying you've been delisted.

I've been delisted on one incident that was detected by one blacklister.  Trouble is, the blacklister has a long list of these incidents, about 30 of them in various categories (phish, spam, indecent exposure, reckless walking and attempted crawl, whatever).  I asked Mr Blacklister to clean up the whole mess in one fell swoop but doubt that's gonna happen: one incident, one ticket, no exceptions, piss off, go suck an egg.  To be continued.

Flicks

We like flicks.  We get 'em in the mail, we get 'em from Redbox, we stream 'em, we see 'em at the cinema.  We abhor commercials and advertising of any kind but especially the radio and TV kind.  Thus, we have satellite radio in our cars and watch maybe 8 hours of TV a year: academy and CMA awards and the Superbowl.

Recently, we've re watched some old favorites.  Relatively old.  We're talking Lee Marvin & Clint Eastwood-old, not Tom Mix and Hopalong Cassidy-old.  Westerns: Paint Your Wagon, Cat Ballou were recent oldy-goodies; Waterhole Number 3 coming soon.  Billy Bobs: Pushing Tin and Bandits; both of these are hoots and Trish hadn't seen them before.  Our last trek to the cinema was to see The Avengers, loved the droll humor and special effects.

Although TV is out, TV series are not; we get them via streaming or DVD.  The Closer and Mad Men are both high on our list and we were sad to see Doc Martin come to an end.  There have been numerous others that didn't make the cut.  I'd guess the go/no go ratio is about 1:5.  Currently, it's The Defenders, Burn Notice and Dollhouse - okay but not fantastic.

Okay, readers, your turn.  What great flicks might we be missing?  And what TV series that have run more than one season?  Broaden our horizons, if you please.  Don't bother with horror, supernatural, vampires and so on.  Never did get into that crap.

PS: After posting this and going back to do the spell check I forgot, I noticed the proximity of this post to the previous one about wabbits.  That brought to mind an excellent flick set in 1931 Australia, called Rabbit Proof Fence.  Seen it?