Adrian's Space

A new type of scammer (at least for me).  You might find this information useful.

E-mail address used:
jane80sonic@hotmail.com

Web site directed to:
http://janeroom.mylittlecamparty.com/

Note that both of these things might change for you.

It redirects you to:
http://slickcams.com/

The e-mail will most likely be identical to this:

hi there i saw your pics i think youre hot maybe we can meet me on msn
messenger my name there is jane80sonic@hotmail.com hope we can chat
and have some fun there, see you soon thanks! Jane :)!

They might change the e-mail address and name (Jane, jane80sonic@hotmail.com) but the rest will be identical, most likely.

As for what was said, it is the same every time.  Here is a link to someone in August 2006 who got the exact same thing:
http://www.darrenstraight.com/blog/2006/08/09/an-instant-message-chat-with-natalie-the-messenger-bot/

I can say that I got word-for-word the exact same thing 18 months later!

If you get this, then do the following:

1. DO NOT accept the file (my_new_thong_pic) - it is a virus that will infect your computer.
2. DO NOT give them your credit card details (duh).  They will keep charging you every month and you CANNOT EVER cancel it (they don't actually strip your credit card clean apparently, just do it in bits and pieces).
   

Feel free to talk to "her" and see for yourself what the bot says.  Feel free to peruse the above web pages, if they are still active. 

It all sounds quite genuine, and perhaps believable too.  None of the usual spelling errors, sounding personal, and its not a Nigerian scam.  This is a porn scammer.  As far as I know, actually there is no real porn content on there, it's all a scam.

Note: This was originally posted in early November 2007, prior to being banned for having exposed Kato's evil actions.  I had removed this briefly in the vain hope of getting Somey to undo the bans/hacking of my account.  This is no longer possible, hence I am returning this, so that Kato's deeds can be exposed properly.

Every so often we come across a person who is such a great liar and a manipulator that it doesn't matter what we do, we can't defeat them.  So we see a way to defeat them - use their same techniques against them.  We see that if we lie in a clever and manipulative fashion, we can hurt them.

It sounds great.  You go out there and you tell this well placed lie and hey presto, instant satisfaction.  They get punished.

But there is an empty feeling in your heart, because whilst they are punished to the same level that they deserved for their lies, its actually not because of their lies.  Its because of your lies.  So in a sense there are two wrongs being committed - your lies and their lies.  They get away with their lies, and they get punished unjustly for your lies.  You figure it all works out in the end, but does it really?

See of course if they had wronged you through their lies, then you wrong them through your lies then it all balances out.  But the problem is they had wronged you, then you wouldn't be able to wrong them - because they would know it, and would be able to manipulate you.  So in fact the only way to get justice is to wrong them for something that they did to someone else.  And is that justice?  What about the person who they wronged?  They get no personal satisfaction from it.  And what about you?  You have done something wrong, and got away with it.

But even in that perfect situation, where it works perfectly, and you don't do what is tempting and keep going on with the lies, there is still the problem of other people caught in the middle.  There is the problem with people who like the people who you are lying about, that get hurt too.  People who like you too.  Do you share the lie with them?  What if they end up getting manipulated too?  Are you hurting your friends?

And then the problem gets much worse if something goes wrong.

Some time ago, as I said previously, Kato, a user on Wikipedia Review, decided to tell a big lie with regards to trying to set up SlimVirgin, an administrator on Wikipedia.  He thought it was a good and honourable thing to do, and that it would help our overall cause, and of course we can understand that (and I can forgive him for that).  We all knew it was a lie, but we felt that it was justified because it would hurt SlimVirgin, who was a menace.  Except that for the lie to work, it required for all of us to lie too.  And the lies had to include posts on Wikipedia Review.  We not only had to not say anything - we had to lie about things that were already being said. 

And ultimately, who was hurt by it?:

• Private Musings (who likely belongs to Thebainer, not to SlimVirgin) - an abusive user, but nonetheless not deserving to be banned like that, and one who we could have got punished legitimately through more open means
• JzG - an abusive admin (at least according to Kato and others), but who did nothing wrong here, and suddenly there are calls that he should be desysopped, as a lot of people on Wikipedia are blaming him for it.
  
• Fred Bauder - an admin who some want to get rid of - but who did the right thing in going to Robert Black to clarify things
• Robert Black - a blogger who suddenly is in the middle of a whole huge amount of drama
  
• The general Wikipedia adminship - it hurt the whole lot of them, or at least those that got involved in the various admin noticeboard postings, and the whole situation.  But how many of those admins were actually abusive?  Or deserving of anything bad against them?  Most are good people.
• A lot of people just generally on Wikipedia - people who got involved in the various arguments
• A group of people who JzG (and others) banned for their involvement, but were actually innocent - yet Kato didn't say a thing to stop it, and they remain banned
• People generally on Wikipedia Review - who were being lied to about the whole thing, and who got upset about the whole thing and couldn't make sense of it.
• People in the Wikipedia Review trusted users forum - who had used his fake admin account CBOrgatrope and then got their own accounts banned, which hadn't done a single thing wrong
• Me - whilst most people on Wikipedia Review acknowledge the problems, they incorrectly are blaming me for them, not the person who was actually responsible, Kato
• MOASPN - this guy, whoever he is, got banned, just for being related to the whole thing - in spite of doing nothing.  Perhaps abusive, perhaps not
• Kato himself - his accounts, which other than this had done nothing wrong, got banned from Wikipedia.  He had to delete his entire blog that was linked to this.  He ended up quitting Wikipedia Review, which didn't help the situation at all, and I am not too impressed about.  And he created a big problem with one of Wikipedia Review's most prominent users, Blissyu2.  And whilst a lot of people support him right now, in time a lot of people might not.  And he feels bad about it.  And he looks bad because of it.  And that is really sad.
  

And in this really horrible example, of when everything possible goes wrong (in what was, technically at least, a brilliant set up that worked exactly right), everyone got hurt.  Everyone, whether friend or foe, intended victim or not, or even the person doing it.  And at the end, whilst people will get over their feelings of hurt, it will take a lot longer to make sense of it all, and that is where the real problems lie.

Next time, perhaps we should be looking at attacking lies with truth, not with more lies.  More lies make it worse.

Addendum: It seems that Moulton has added this to Wikipedia Review discussion forums here. One comment asked is "What about the problem with betraying confidences?"  Actually that is an interesting question.  Because the problem with lying, and telling someone else to lie for you is that they then get hurt because they can't betray your confidence.  A lot of the problems and hurt that were caused by this was because a lot of the lying was behind closed doors, as it were.  As for my blog post, as stated elsewhere, it was first posted in Kato's own blog post "The Sting", then reposted on Moulton's blog, which was read by several Wikipedia administrators and acted on.  The next day, I posted the same thing in my blog post.  Hence I did not betray anyone's confidence.  The purpose behind my reposting it is that I posted it from a different perspective, as someone who did not approve of what Kato had done.  I am in fact somewhat surprised that Kato doesn't undelete his original blog post.  Nonetheless, I think that telling the truth about this thing is very important, if we are to resolve the many problems that it caused.

Note: This was originally posted on 7 November 2007, then hidden briefly because this post was the whole reason that Somey gave for "banning me" from Wikipedia Review (meaning = he hacked my account, changing the password on both my forum account and on the login to root - I own the place so this acted effectively as a takeover).  Of course, noting that this was a takeover and not a ban puts in to a clearer perspective as to what was really going on.  This was a case of lies and smears being used to steal a site from me, as opposed to oh no I complained too much.  Of course, removing this post only served to allow them to pretend that I had never had a valid case against Kato.  Luckily I never really deleted it.  Kato has since done more awful things, which will be exposed in the future.  Wikipedia Review is seriously going downhill.  It is time for a change, to sort things out and to move forward in a more positive direction.

It all started with one innocent-looking change to an obscure article on Robert Black, a professor who specialises in studying the after affects of the Lockerbie bombing, a similar case to the Port Arthur massacre in terms of its mystery and intrigue. The article hadn't been edited for over a month, and an editor decided to make this one change:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Black_%28professor%29&diff=167507361&oldid=158276143

If its a bad change, then they will just change it back, won't they?

Well, they did. And then it was restored. And then removed again, and then there was a whole massive argument about it. Essentially about whether it was vandalism or not. Over the course of the next 3 days, this article which hadn't been edited at all for the previous month and a half was edited a total of 34 times, and in those 34 changes, there was practically no difference between the version from a month and a half ago, and the new version:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Black_%28professor%29&diff=168147337&oldid=167507361

So why did this cause all of this drama? Why did this one tiny little thing even matter?

Well, see Robert Black specialises in the Lockerbie bombing, and he has a blog where he posts new items in relation to the Lockerbie bombing. He posts about 5 or 6 new posts per day, mostly just copied from other people's research. In one of these posts, he posted something that exposed SlimVirgin's involvement in the Lockerbie bombing:

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2007/10/wikipedia-and-lockerbie.html

9 lines linking to the case written and verified by Ludwig de Braekeleer that gave so much negative publicity to Wikipedia, and so much positive publicity to Wikipedia Review, the case that exposed the menacing SlimVirgin's involvement in the Lockerbie bombing and her subsequent abuse on Wikipedia. The case that led to such a great amount of hyper-censorship on Wikipedia at the time, with links galore removed, something which it has subsequently been determined was the wrong thing to do. And here was someone doing the same thing again, to bring back those memories.

And all of this led to a number of unjust bans on innocent Wikipedia members who had done nothing wrong, all because of administrators panicking over this reversion war and the possibility of possibly censoring information or alternatively possibly exposing private information and the whole confusion about this.

In the end, the target of this, a new abusive sock puppet account called Private Musings, was banned too.

You see, on Wikipedia Review I had exposed Private Musings as an abusive sock puppet, one of a string of abusive sock puppets used by high-ranking Wikipedia administrators.

But you see I didn't know for sure who it was, and whilst it looked like SlimVirgin, I couldn't be sure, so I asked for some help. I mean surely there are other abusive people out there, not just SlimVirgin? But see a few other people who commented determined that in their opinion it was either MONGO or Essjay. So I posted this. And Kato felt that, intellectually, it was wrong of us to publish in a blog what were only suspicions of abusive sock puppets. Even though this account said that it was a sock puppet, and we could tell by their editing patterns that they were highly abusive, he felt that it was wrong to publish this.

So Kato set a plan in motion to test to see if this account was SlimVirgin, and the good thing was that even if it wasn't SlimVirgin, it would still hurt SlimVirgin.

So Kato created the account PrivacyIsAll, and then he asked Wikipedia Review user Jonny Cache to create the account Flawed and Irresponsible Research Tool. Kato of course knew that Flawed and Irresponsible Research Tool would be exposed immediately as an abusive sock puppet of Jonny Cache. So he asked Jonny Cache to use Flawed and Irresponsible Research Tool in an abusive way, so that it would be caught, and at the same time opposing PrivacyIsAll.

So it was a set up. Anyone who opposed PrivacyIsAll would be doing the right thing, but they would then be accused of supporting a banned user, which is a bad thing. It would muddy the waters significantly.

And of course out of all of this we on Wikipedia Review were asked not to expose his little scheme to anyone. Its all out in the open now, so I can do it. But at the time, I was asked to lie about it, so as to hide what was going on. So I did my bit and diligently stated that Privatemusings was SlimVirgin, even after we discovered positively that it was really Thebainer, an entirely different person. I of course couldn't say that it was Thebainer because then I would be betraying Kato.

But Kato took his little play acting a little too far, and he used it to pretend in the private trusted users forum that I was betraying him, while in public he used it to pretend that I was making things up and being an idiot. Thus Kato turned everyone on the forum against me. A brilliant set up. A great lie.

And so in the wash up, Privacyisall got caught, and an earlier account that Kato had created, that was used by multiple Wikipedia Review users, the fake Wikipedia administrator account CBOrgatrope, was also banned, as was a whole bunch of other accounts, which may or may not have had anything to do with any of this.

Ultimately, however, Wikipedia administrators figured it out. Perhaps they had seen Kato's blog post (which he then removed immediately afterwards and deleted his whole blog), or perhaps they had simply figured it out thanks to the deductive skills of William Petri. In the end it doesn't really matter. They've figured out most of it. And hence I can happily expose it all in this blog post without any fears that I am doing the wrong thing.

And in the end, this led to a Wikipedia administrator called JzG, who many Wikipedia Review users think is abusive (although personally I disagree) banning Private Musings unfairly, a ban that led JzG to get a lot of criticism, as he didn't realise that he too was being set up by Kato. Ultimately the ban was overturned, Jimbo got involved, and it became a major discussion on the Wikipedia mailing lists.

All because Kato decided to lie a little to try to goad SlimVirgin in to admitting that Private Musings was her, and to hurt her. Oh, and in the meantime to hurt me and make me look bad on Wikipedia Review.

And some people think that it is a good thing that he did this. At best it was fun. But only if you think that it is fun to hurt innocent people. If you think that SlimVirgin deserves it, then perhaps it can be justified. But what about JzG? The 6 or 7 innocent people who he got banned? What about all of the people on Wikipedia and Wikipedia Review who got manipulated over it?

And of course, what about me?

Yeah Kato, I am sorry to say it but I think that this whole thing brought Wikipedia Review in to disrepute. I think it was an awful thing to do.

Note: This was originally posted in early November 2007, but was temporarily hidden in the vain hope that I would be unbanned/unhacked from Wikipedia Review.  Now that the injustice is confirmed, this can be returned to its rightful place.

I went to log in to Wikipedia Review this afternoon and it wouldn't let me log in.  It told me to enter my username and password, and I did, and it said wrong username and password.  So I tried a few variations of my password (in case I'd used a different one) but none of them worked.  So I clicked on send me a new password, and I didn't get an e-mail.  So I clicked on create a new account, and of course I have to wait for moderator approval, which could take a week or so.  Then I went on to the blog to post about how Wikipedia had won a French defamation case, but it wouldn't let me on there either.  When I tried to enter the e-mail there, it said that it was the wrong e-mail.

So someone has changed my password and e-mail address there.

So there's 2 options - either I've been banned or else someone has hacked my account.

If I've been banned, its pretty major news, although I wonder if Somey is just giving me an enforced holiday, and all will be fine again in a week or so. 

I don't think that they've made any big posts about it though.

Kato announced that he left late last night, and made a snide comment about me being poisonous, and saying that he was going to create a new forum (well a blog series I think) that would replace Wikipedia Review, and he hoped that the better members of the forum, which he said was 98% of them, would come with him.  I responded (perhaps foolishly) to say that I welcomed the idea of a second forum, as we have for years needed a new forum.  I thought that that was a very positive thing to say.  But 2 people who I have had very positive relations with, KamrynMatika and Nathan, both said that that was a very nasty thing to say !!!!

Not only is that just utterly confusing, upside down world kind of thing (as in, he is allowed to attack me so viciously, but me saying positive things about it leads to me getting told I am a bastard) but its really just plain awful. 

I really can't handle people who I trust betraying me, or turning on me, or things like that.  Not in bulk like that.  Amongst the general awfulness that everyone feels about that kind of thing, it also has a personal reason for me - because it reminds me of the worst element of what happened with Rob.

The worst element isn't that someone was trying to kill me - thats bad, but you get over it.  The worst element wasn't even that he was going to get away with it - that's bad and it doesn't go away because there's no resolution, but that's not the worst element.  The worst element is that my entire family and all of my friends and those closest to me turned against me over it.  I don't know how many of them were aware of what was going on, or how many were simply naive and gullible, and conned about the whole thing.  But they were all against me.  That was the worst part of it.

And whilst sure people doing it to say savage things about me on Wikipedia Review forums is not in the same league as people helping to kill me, and costing many other lives in the year or so that follows, its still pretty awful and it just reminds me of the whole thing.  Its like a trigger, and it was seriously upsetting.

So I guess in some ways its a good thing to not be able to go on to Wikipedia Review for a while.

But at the same time, uh, its pretty wrong I think. 

I guess we will wait to see if I have been hacked.  If I have been hacked, they should just make me a new account.  If its an enforced break, someone should send me a message about it.  They should let me know what has happened at some point in time.

Ultimately, well, its pretty nasty to be banned from your own place, especially when its done because of a supreme jerk like Kato, but you know it doesn't matter all that much.  Its not that big a deal.  I mean ultimately I can make comments here instead.

Note: This was originally posted in November 2007, but was temporarily deleted in the vain hope of getting my ban/hacking from Wikipedia Review lifted.  I return it to its rightful place now, after the injustice has now been finalised.

A short time ago I took issue with a person on Wikipedia Review named Kato, in particular because he had decided to insist that everyone who didn't realise that the term "child grooming" is used in everyday speech to mean "a paedophile trying to groom a child so that they can later rape them" is an idiot, and had bullied a lot of people in relation to this.  When I tried to defend the people who were being harassed, which included a lot of our long term posters, I too got abused.  Then Jorge, who I had had minor disagreements with previously, decided to then quote some things that I had said about Rob, the guy who ruined my life, and insist that I was talking about myself, and that I was a real danger because I was that bad.  Oh and while all of that was going on Guy decided to bash me for the fact that Poetlister had backstabbed me, although that was a comparatively minor thing.

So here are my musings about it.

Kato was a relatively new person to Wikipedia Review, and we don't know who he is for real, or even his Wikipedia identity.  We let him in to the "Anti Cabal" group, which is kind of like our "not quite admins but are trusted enough to share secrets with" groups, who get access to one extra hidden forum.  I was fine with him getting in to that group.  But then less than a week after getting in to that group Somey decided to promote him to admin.  Now there is no actual structure for how to promote someone to admin, Somey can simply do that on his own perogative, but the reality is that this was far too quick.

So this led to Kato having far too much power far too quickly, and naturally the power went to his head.  So he decided to bash people and say "I am better than you" to the other regular people who were on the fringe of getting in to the Anti-Cabal group (The fieryangel and LamontStormstar) to try to push them down so that they weren't treated as well.  And then I suppose he went after me because in the end he has more actual power than me too.  In reality, the problem was that he was promoted too quickly and he shouldn't have been.

As for Jorge, well, while I was away for a year Selina decided to ban Jorge, who had previously been in the Anti-Cabal group.  I don't know why he was banned, but the reality was that he was banned for several months.  6 months?  I'm not sure how long.  Anyway Somey decided to let him back in, which is all fine and good, but he let him back in straight in to the trusted group.  Now I am sorry but if someone is banned they don't come straight back in as a trusted person.  He should have been let in as a regular user first.

As for Poetlister, well, she was made admin by Lir when she had about 5 posts to her name, and has barely used it since.  She doesn't really power trip, but she is hardly a respected or even regular member of the forum.  I don't really care what she says either way.  And I am quite sick of her going on about how she was not abusing sock puppets, especially when Encyclopedia Dramatica proved that she was (at least when using their forums). 

Supposedly this was all over, but then a few weeks ago I discovered a new account on Wikipedia called Privatemusings, who seemed to be somewhat suspicious.  They said that they were a sock puppet account (a second alias of a regular user) and they had created a new policy as a kind of backdoor version of "BADSITES", a policy to try to ban from Wikipedia certain web sites that they don't like (like Wikipedia Review).  So this seemed to me to be pretty darn suspicious and I wondered if it was SlimVirgin, or if not her then someone else quite powerful.

Now, my idea was initially rubbished, which was really nasty considering it had a lot of merit.  Then a lot of people supported it, and it was determined amongst members that it was probably MONGO or Essjay.  So when it came time to write a blog post summarising that and many other posts on our forums, I included that information.  Then Kato decides that I am hurting the site by producing false information on a blog post!  The fucking moron!  Well I am sorry, but I am producing what we have said on our forums.  So he makes a big song and dance about it, how its wrong, how its not proven, and so forth.  So what is the correction?  Oh wait he doesn't have one.  And the fact that I am merely repeating what others have said, with a big disclaimer, doesn't seem to dawn on him.  Instead he just decides to bash me over it.

So then I say well maybe its SlimVirgin, something that he has hinted towards.  No no I am not allowed to say that either.  Even though it was my original claim, and he had said "Its not MONGO or Essjay, its more likely SlimVirgin!" I still get bashed over it.  I get told that I am a moron, and Jorge jumps in to say "We've been telling you for ages that it couldn't possibly be SlimVirgin".  Yes, you did, and then you told me it was.  So make up your fucking mind!

The reality is that I am putting in detailed research, and they are doing nothing but yell and scream, and quite frankly destroy the whole thing.

Now, in my opinion Jorge should be kicked out of Anti-Cabal and see if he is voted in properly, given that he was banned beforehand.  And Kato should lose his moderator status, and go back to Anti-Cabal, at least until he has had some time to see if he can be stable and sensible enough.

But the sickening element of this is that not only hasn't this happened, but they are getting support to carry on like this.  People are just saying nothing.

It makes me feel like I don't want to even be there anymore. 

Power corrupts.

Now that I'm starting to figure out how to use MySpace properly, I am heading towards using that one primarily.  So if you don't already know the address for that one, it is http://myspace.com/blissyu2

Whilst MSN Spaces is easier to use, you can't embed photos easily, writing html code in it messes up, and generally a lot of things don't work properly.  MySpace is tons more powerful.  And of course everyone has MySpace.  Every celebrity, politician, musician, TV or movie star has one.  So even if you don't want to use it to be sociable, you can use it to just watch celebrity blogs.  Its got tons of neat things about it.

I think that I will keep this blog up, but primarily to communicate with people on my MSN Messenger list, and also perhaps use it to talk about Wikipedia and such (which was my original purpose to this blog).  I may even over time delete the entries in here that aren't Wikipedia-specific.  And of course, depending on what happens with the current Wikipedia Review drama, I may just use this entirely to discuss Wikipedia issues.  But of course I am expecting it to sort out soon.  I hope.

Anyway I just thought I would pass this message on.

I am still bouncy that Tarisai talked to me on MSN tonight.

On the internet we get some situations where we need a lot of security - after all, we might get hacked.  And when you pay a significant amount of money towards creating your own web domain and then hiring expensive forum software, you want to make darn sure that nobody can hack it.  So you want a fair amount of security.  But when that security prevents you from being able to use your own forum, then there is a problem.

Yesterday Selina from Wikipedia Review decided to create her own domain name to act as a mirror for a post on one of her favourite game forums - Hells Gate or some such.  In registering, she accidentally linked the domain name to Wikipedia Review . com, a forum which I own but she helped me to set up. 

This would all be fine IF I still had access to the e-mail address that I used to set up WikipediaReview.com.  The problem is that that e-mail address belongs to my old ISP, which expired in July last year - OVER A YEAR AGO.  It doesn't even exist anymore.  So they send out all of this important information to nowhere, and it just vanishes in to thin air.  See, if I still had access to that e-mail address, then it would be simple enough for me to forward it on to Selina and all is fine.

But because that e-mail address doesn't exist, they had this long and complicated set of forms that I had to wade through to try to verify that I am the person who owns it.  So I had to photograph my drivers license, and sign it, amongst other things.  I had to print out their form, then scan it in with my drivers license in the middle, and my signature, and then send it back as an attachment to them.

So I did all of that, and you would think that that was enough.  Nope!  Not enough by far!

They sent me back an e-mail just then to say that for Wikipedia Review.com I need to provide legal documents to prove the business name.  Uh, hello, its not a legal business!  They wanted tax receipts and everything.  It doesn't make money, it doesn't receive donations, nothing, zilch, not relevant.  They also didn't recognise my drivers license because they demand it is an American drivers license!  Uh, idiots, I am not frigging in America!

Then for the other one, they sent me back a thing saying that I am not the owner of that.  So now I'll need Selina to fill stuff in.

And remember, we are doing all of this because Selina messed up by filling in the optional part that said "Do you want this attached to any other domain names?" and she put in wikipediareview.com.  And secondly because it still has my old e-mail address there.

I mean seriously guys, too much security!  We have all of the numbers, all of the passwords, my full name, everything else.  Why not let us just fix this little problem?  Its just absurd really.

Anyway, just as a side note there, they at least recognised me as the current owner of wikipediareview.com . lol.  Apparently that's in dispute!

Toxicpink.net, the web site that published the results of my court case against Julie in early 2003, has been shut down, as of September 2007.  Not only that, but they have also blocked the web archive machine, so you can't see earlier versions of the pages either.  So because of this, some people can now quite happily believe lies about the case.  You see, whilst Julie's original smears were forcibly taken down, some of the mirrors were not.  And then people that might want to smear my name, can link to the mirrors of the smears, and without me having the Toxicpink page for them to refer them to, they can lie to their heart's content about me, and make a fresh smear campaign.  And if you think that getting a smear campaign to end is hard the first time around, try getting a copy of a smear campaign taken down!  Virtually impossible.

Luckily, for the moment at least, the google cache is still active, but only for the site.  Here are some relevant pages:

• Google site search (if this isn't working, its gone for good)
• The Julie Wilkinson story (the girl who defamed me and spread vicious lies about me being a paedophile etc)
• Thank Yous (with my real name on there)
• An e-mail from Julie to me
• A second e-mail from Julie to me
• A comment from Julie to me

Of course, it doesn't have a copy of the smear page itself that Julie wrote, and for what should be fairly obvious reasons I don't want it to.  There may be a copy of it somewhere on the web, and you may be able to find it if you are really interested.  It is hard to completely delete something, even with a court order.  But you can at least devalue it enough that people don't take it so seriously.

Toxicpink.net being shut down is a real problem for me.  I will aim to have copies of those pages published elsewhere.

Stuff it, Tarisai has spoiled me for all other music.  This was one of her best ones, which I didn't get to see live, because I hate Australian Idol and wasn't watching it at that stage as I didn't know she was on.  Enjoy:

  

She sang that song in response to the allegations by TV show Today Tonight that she, and other members of Hillsong Church, were rigging Australian Idol.  She was the favourite to win the competition at this stage, before that first smear campaign was released.  This was her video response, to prove that she was actually the best on merit.  Pity that the later smears stuck a bit more. 

MSN spaces won't let me embed YouTube videos (at least not as easily as MySpace), so you can just click on my MySpace blog to see my first ever video diary entry (not me in the video).  And whilst MSN spaces is ridiculously difficult to embed videos, I did find a guide which is moderately helpful, and enabled me to do it for one Tarisai video, for your pleasure:
 
 

I went to the movie marathon tonight (11.45pm-5.15am - 3 movies for the price of 1 1/2), which is always an experience.  After a lot of debate, we went to see the set that had 3 movies which neither of us had seen before.  Of the other 2 sets, 1 had 1 movie that we'd both seen, while the other had 1 movie that my sister had seen and a different movie which I had seen.  Whilst those two were probably better sets to see, we didn't want to pay good money to see something we'd already seen.

For the record, these were the sets:

Set 1: The Simpsons Movie (we'd both seen), Die Hard 4 (neither of us had seen 1,2 or 3), The Seeker (we had no idea about it)
Set 2: Resident Evil, Superbad, Good Luck Chuck (we hadn't seen or heard much about any of them)
Set 3: Evan Almighty (I wanted to see, my sister had already seen), Bourne Ultimatum (we'd both considered seeing it before, but hadn't), Chuck and Larry (I'd seen, and my sister wanted to see).

In the end we decided on Set 2.  We had previously decided to see Set 3, but the whole "but I've already seen it" part was too much to let go.  Besides which, we weren't sure that Bourne Ultimatum was going to be any good either.

I am not going to bother with a full review, just one paragraph on each.  I'll even start with a one liner:

Resident Evil: Pointless nudity, Pointless graphic violence, and very little plot.  Looked like a computer game.  No beginning or end, looked like part of a series of movies.  Didn't stand alone very well.
Superbad: Way too much swearing and sexual inneundo, particularly early.  Two kids who looked really unattractive and wrong.  Seemed to be teaching kids all of the wrong things.  Basically a teen flick.  Not the kind of movie you want to see with your sister. 
Good Luck Chuck: An older version of Superbad, basically.  Teen movie for grown ups?  Actually a fair bit better than the other two, and worth watching.  Lots of gratuitous nudity and sexual innuendo, but with a point.  Jessica Alba baby!  Lots of hot girls in it too, and naked, and sexy.  Was kind of like 50 first dates but with gratuitous nudity and skimmed over sex scenes (dozens and dozens of brief skimmed over sex scenes).

I was going to do a longer review, but heck its a movie marathon, and nobody really reads the long reviews that I make anyway.  I'm no movie critic, and I won't become one just by writing here.  People like brevity, and I suck at brevity, so I should try to work on it.

Really, in retrospect, we should have seen Set 3, even if it meant my sister sitting through Evan Almighty for a second time, me sitting through Chuck and Larry a second time, and seeing Bourne Ultimatum when we hadn't seen the first 2 Bourne movies (Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy I think they were called).

But hey its an experience.

I must say that I felt uncomfortable given that about 1/2 of the audience (in an MA15+ only set of movies) were aged 13-16 (quite a lot of underage people there), and I don't think there was anyone there much over 18 - besides me of course.  Also most people were there in couples.  While they don't really sound like it, they were movies that you take your girlfriend to.  And I was there with my sister.  Ah well.  Better than going alone, hey.

My mother is a pretty funny person.  Just then she did something worthy of a comedy routine.  I even said to her what the comedy routine would be like, and it ended up kind of Jerry Seinfeld style.  So I just have to write this down, and share it with the world.  Think of Jerry Seinfeld and how he does standup when you read this:

Its lucky that I wrote that one down when I did.  I almost forgot it already!

Do you think its funny?  The funny thing is that she actually does it.  We were at the movie marathon and my sister wrote her a message asking to be picked up, and all that she got in response was "j".  My mum does this kind of thing all of the time.  She uses the predictive text thing on mobile phones, and it often guesses the wrong words.  My mum is too lazy to fix it up, so she just leaves it in a messed up state.  Half of her messages are gobbledy gook.  But today was a real classic, getting "j". Back.

My sister: "The movie marathon has finished now.  We are waiting outside the cinema.  Can you pick us up?"
My mum: "j"

Actually, come to think of it I could probably write a comedy routine just based on her laziness with mobile phones.

I could probably have a whole act just based on my mum, and the thing is that she probably wouldn't mind too much either.  Of course, I'd ask her first to make sure she was okay with it.  She makes fun of herself sometimes.

Here's another one:

Anyway, I can go on for ages about my mother, both funny stuff, not so funny stuff, and I guess some things that I really shouldn't be writing here, and I won't because she might read it.  This blog is public, and even though nobody much reads it, they might read it, so I have to be mindful of that.

Anyway, I thought that people might like that joke, if they stumble upon this blog.  I've been writing too much negative stuff lately, so I've decided to put some nicer things in there.

Now I am not for a moment suggesting that there was any truth to the Today Tonight story that suggested that the Hillsong Church had rigged Australian Idol by mass-voting for members of their church and affiliated churches, but I wanted to do my own research to determine if there is any truth to it at all.

I discovered that Tarisai Vuche was a member of ShireLive, who Today Tonight insist are affiliated with the Hillsong Church.  Indeed, Matt Corby is also a member of ShireLive.  So I did a google search for ShireLive.

Here is the ShireLive Church web site.

You will notice a few important things about the web site:

1. For a Church web site, they sure do focus an awful lot on music.  Where is the Christianity push?  It almost seems like it is a jam session with a side course of faith.
2. They have 2 YouTube videos on the site itself, and links to a PodCast.  I know that we are in the modern age now, but that's just crazy.
3. There is a picture of a black girl in the corner who looks African and may well have something to do with Tarisai.  I wished that it was Tarisai, but it doesn't look like her.  Perhaps they actually should have a picture of Tarisai there.
4. They link to "Hillsong Live" - the Hillsong Church that Today Tonight insisted was affiliated.  Indeed, they are affiliated, and are mentioned on the main page, with a link.
5. They link off to their own music sub section, which you can click on.

Off to the music sub section:

http://www.shirelive.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=524&tabindex=6

Here you can listen to music.  And whilst Tarisai may well be singing in that section, to date there are no songs by Tarisai.

So I am thinking - wow maybe Today Tonight were on to something!

I mean this "church" seems to be a record company in disguise.  They obviously have very good singers in there, outstanding singers (I am sorry, but Tarisai is by far the best singer that has ever been on Australian Idol, and Matt Corby is pretty good too), and these singers are volunteering at the church and for the most part not being paid (although you can buy the music, and perhaps they get something out of the sales, although most likely it just goes back to the church).  So why not get these singers on to a competition, and then support them, and help them to get in to an actual career?

One rather famous gospel singer who went mainstream was Celine Dion, who as of right now is statistically either the most popular singer of all time, or in the top 3 (depending on which version of the statistics you agree with), shared with Mariah Carey and someone else whose name I forget right now.  Amy Grant and others also went mainstream too.

So is this the conspiracy?  That a church, who focuses heavily on music, has decided to get some of their best singers to try out for Australian Idol, and then asked their congregation to vote for them? 

If you don't believe that they are getting people to pray for them, I found at least one blog post by a member of Shire Live church who was writing to ask people to pray for Tarisai Vuche and Matt Corby:

Pray For Matt Corby and Tarisai Vuche from Australian Idol

And why should this guy be asking people to pray for them?  Because they are Christians?  That is in itself asking to rig the votes.

But again this all gets back to the fact that people will always be representative of a demographic.

Tarisai Vuche isn't just Tarisai Vuche, an anonymous singer.  She is Tarisai Vuche, the Zimbabwean, the non-Australian in Australian Idol, the black person, the female, the 20 year old, the university student, the psychology student, the ex-receptionist, the person who works in her mother's store, the Christian, and the member of Shire Live church, who is affiliated with Hillsong Church and was smeared by Today Tonight.  Of course, more recently we can add Tarisai Vuche who a radio caller to 2DayFM said was fake, and this led to irresponsible comments by judges Mark Holden and Ian Dicko Dickson.  And now she is Tarisai who blew up at judges for being called fake.

So given all of that, is it a bad thing for the churches to try to ask people to vote for people who go there?  Only some people will do it. 

And all of this leads me to believe that in fact Today Tonight, while not entirely wrong, were misleading the public about what was going on.  Where they were insisting that the whole thing was rigged, in reality it was just that a few really good singers were coming out and being supported by people who knew them and knew the quality of their singing.  And now Australian Idol, its CEO, and their judges, have gone to lengths to try to get rid of any hint of controversy.

But this also has a silver lining.

See Shire Live obviously acts as a Recording Company in itself.  They produce records.  What is to stop them from producing an album sang entirely by Tarisai Vuche?  She could launch her recording career from there, even if nobody else would do it.  They could have it on their web site, and people would buy it.  If Matt Corby gets voted off in a similar way, they could do it with him too.  So she has a chance.

I wrote to Shire Live's web masters and suggested it.  I think that they can start her off doing that.  Because right now she needs to get something out there, to prove that she can really do it.

I would love to see her release a single just before the Australian Idol finale, one which slams the judges and perhaps the whole competition, a revenge song.  It'd be a number 1 hit if it was done right.  Have that booming voice of her combined with nasty yet accurate attacks, and it becomes a masterpiece.

Singing like Whitney Houston's "I will always love you" she could say how bad they were, how they criticised her for being fake, yet allowed the ultra fake Natalie to get away with murder, how she was kind and considerate and then was goaded in to an attack, and then they say that she's fake AND reacted too much - yet she was supposedly fake for not reacting enough!

It'd be perfect.  Do it with gospel harmonies, by a poignant message.  Have something about how the Hillsong Church isn't rigging anything, about Today Tonight being terrible, and so forth.

But do it in a way that its not slander, of course.

And make it sound good.

Its a masterpiece just waiting to be written.