“I want a president… ” by Zoe Leonard. Source
For the ones who didn’t notice, when you use Paypal as a payment method in your Skype account, Skype automatically add itself to the “preapproved payments” in your Paypal account. That way, Skype can charge your suscription until you cancel it and users can buy more credit or get suscriptions with a single click – without doing all the hassle of login in Paypal and so on. Thing is, your Paypal information is stored in Skype and is easily accessible with a single click.
For me that’s a security risk, because my Paypal is stored in Skype and available for use for those with my password. Few people notice that if their account get compromised – mine was last week, incredible how it may sound – the person who gets in their account can use your Paypal to get subscriptions, credits, and so.
To protect customers from fraud, Skype set monthly purchase limits, and if your account got compromised you can always cancel the purchase in Paypal (your account gets blocked and you have to contact Skype Customer Service to unlock it again), but for the sake of my mental peace I prefer to login everytime I want to buy something in Paypal rather than letting an online service to store my information.
At the moment I didn’t find a single link in Skype that let users know that they add themselves to preapproved payments in Paypal. It would be honest that they do it.
So, for those who want to know how to unlink Paypal from Skype, and delete your Paypal information:
- Login in Paypal
- Go to Profile > My Money
- My preapproved payments > Update
- Disable Skype
It’s a good chance to see all the other services that can automatically charge your Paypal account, in case you didn’t know.
If you want to buy a subscription in Skype again using your Paypal account as a payment method, you can choose Paypal and add your login information, keeping in mind that Skype will be automatically added to the preapproved payments in Paypal again, but now you know how to unlink it.
Hope this helps.
Driving around Monterrey, Mexico. Taxi driver looking at me through the mirror couple of times until I look at him while he’s doing it. He does it couple of more times, getting slightly embarrased when I catch him.
taxi driver: I mean, it’s not that I want to be rude or anything.. I don’t usually watch like this to people. but when you stepped into the car I really thought you were a guy…
(silence)
me: and now?
taxi driver: I don’t think that anymore. but you know? no offense.
me: “it’s not an offense”
(silence for couple of minutes)
me: what makes you think I am not a guy?
taxi driver: your voice… your lips. you don’t have facial hair..
me: I have hormonal problems.
taxi driver: Oh.. you know.. I didn’t want to offend you.
me: why do you think it’s so important to know whether someone is a man or a woman?
taxi driver: It’s different treatment. with a woman you are always more gentle.
me: what for?
taxi driver: well.. she’s a lady.
me: not all of them. some men are ladies too (I laugh)
he laughes too.
taxi driver: of course, but I don’t want to sleep with them.
me: So do you treat women as ladies because you want to sleep with them? (I laugh)
taxi driver: I mean.. not always. but with women you have to be a gentleman.
me: well, you “have to” be a gentleman, women “have to” be nice and friendly. and they smile at you when you talk
taxi driver: not always.. (smiles)
me: women cannot open their legs when they are seated, they cannot fart in public, if they scream out loud they are crazy bitches, they don’t make noise, they wear sexy clothes and they always shave and have nice smells.
taxi driver: this is what makes them very feminine, this is why we are crazy about them.
me: who told you that shit?
taxi driver: you don’t like feminine women? (looking outside the window)
me: I love women, but I think that feminine thing is very much invented. like the gentleman.. like the macho! (I make a gesture with my muscled arm)
(he is thinking something to say)
me: you check whether I am a man or woman to know if you need to treat me nice or normal, in order to see how many chances you have to pick me up.
(he laughs)
me: I think that’s all very much invented.
(he looks at me in the mirror again)
me: I know what you are thinking, you think I’m gay.
taxi driver: I cannot think something else, man.. sorry (he makes a gesture of irony)
me: I am gay. I love women.
(he laughs)
me: look, when you think in a really beautiful woman. let’s say you are masturbating and imagining the hottest woman.. what do you see? somebody like Pamela Anderson?
taxi driver: Megan Fox
me: Megan Fox.. ok. Dark hair, beautiful white skin, blue eyes, tall, big smile, well torned body, good abs, shaved legs, red lips.. do you think that women are like this in ‘natural’ state?
taxi driver: hell no, check my wife!
(we both laugh, I have to laugh. seriously)
me: there is no woman like that in natural state. so what are you fantasying with? this thing that you imagine, it doesn’t exist!
taxi driver: of course it exists.
me: in the movies! but she was not like that all the time. she became that.. like all the other “beautiful” (making sign with fingers) women that we see in the ads. it’s all an invention.
taxi driver: we are in the matrix and nothing is what it seems..
me: exactly.
taxi driver: Ya, I saw this coming..
me: when you looked at me you said you thought I was a guy, and then you thought I was not. What made you think I was a guy?
taxi driver: …the clothes, the hair
me: Yes. and if I was wearing a dress you wouldn’t think I was a guy
taxi driver: it depends. certainly not if you are hairy with beard
me: but what if I am a woman, and I am still dressing like I am?
(silence)
me: what if I am a guy and I am wearing a dress?
what if I am a woman and if I am having a beard?
taxi driver: it would be obvious.
me: yes, easily recognizable.. like you thought I was a guy :)
taxi driver: yes, I see you are gay.. but from the other type.
me: haha, that’s the best thing I heard in the week! (I laugh). but do you see my point?
taxi driver: I see what you are trying to do. you are trying to convince me that femininity it’s invented.
me: no, no, no.. I’m not trying to do anything. but femininity IS invented: you want to know if I am a guy or a woman to treat me like a lady or not, possibly for picking me up.. (he laughs loudly). the radar needs to check, whether someone is man or woman, and immediately starts to behave. gentlemen pick up ladies.. ladies gets picked up by gentlemen. gentlemen don’t pick up guys, Megan Fox doesn’t exist: femininity it’s so much invented as heterosexuality it is!
taxi driver: haha, that is also the best thing I heard in the week
Hanging from a rafter with the stool kicked to the floor beneath you? From an overdose of sleeping pills, like an actress or a fed up housewife? Opening your arteries with a razor, in a hot bath so you won’t shake so much when the warmth leaves your body?
All at once, in a spatter of brains and bone on the concrete at the foot of the high-rise where you work? Or in increments, installment by installment with cigarettes and saturated fat and air pollution, high blood pressure, radiation, toxins in the water, carcinogenic sugar substitutes and cell phones?
Do you want certainty, a gun to your temple? Or do you play the lottery-driving on the freeway, having unprotected sex, pay ing taxes to a government that might send you to war or the police to your door with guns in their hands?
Perhaps you’re getting paid for it-how much are you worth per hour? Do you wash dishes for minimum wage, give and receive orders for a manager’s salary, fight your way to the top to get a fair price for your life?
Or are you buying it? Do you purchase it in single servings, buy ing yourself a taste wheneveryou can with alcohol, cocaine, heroine, prostitutes, action movies, video games, television, whatever it takes to go blank for an instant? Do you sometimes long to cut right to the inevitable, flinging yourself into the abyss of some addiction, religion, absolute negation of everything you’ve ever wanted, everything that has disappointed you?
Do you savor every drop, stretching it out as far as you can? A moderate dose every day for the rest of your life, with health insur ance to make sure you don’t miss out on a single hour? Or are you ready to get it all over with, consummate the affair with one defi ant gesture, flaunting your disdain for the absurd tragedies of this world as you go down in a hail of bullets?
Or maybe it’s not death you’re after, after all.
What else is there?
Rats. this is what these two are. or maybe slightly different: he’s a rat and she’s a snake, that entangles her own body to lick herself with her tongue. the rat lives in the hole, digging his own shit, looking himself at the mirror and asking the others for a little bit of pity or mercy, it’s the same. the third one is an harpy, they probably make a good team. Poor the others. to be honest that place only deserves to be bombed. such a pity. to have the pieces of ego atomized into invisibility: that would be useful. use your crap to fertilize plants at least, give some use to your life. Oh I have spiders walking all around me, rubbing their legs on me. I want to get out from here. These people don’t deserve what I have given. You know what I do with looters of this kind? I smash them with a hammer.
Head up high. Now go to Chiapas.
NL, Mexico
This is a great piece of conscious music that speaks about reality in Cuba.
Click in ‘read more’ to read accurately the whole thing.
CONTRAREVOLUCIONARIO Counterrevolutionary Read more »
Ese es el nombre que me han dado Thats the name they gave me
por ver oir pensar To see, to listen, to think
y no quedarme callado and not to be silent
quien mira por encima del hombro Who looks over the shoulder
y solo ve su grado and only see his grade
los que mandan Those who order
pero no comen de los mandados but don’t eat errands
Walk down the street. Look around. The skin cream advertise ments proposing an unreachable ideal for people’s beauty, urging them to ransom their self-confidence by pouring their income into corporate coffers: violence. The fruits and vegetables for sale in the grocery store, which will be thrown in locked dumpsters to rot before they are shared with the hungry a block away: violence. The taxes on the sales of those vegetables, which pay for prisons to hold people who will slave there as their ancestors did in chain gangs and slave plantations, not to mention bombs to be sent as foreign aid to governments who oppress and kill their own: violence. The employees who work at the stores, so they can afford a disproportionately small portion of the goods and services made by others like them: violence. The hospitals, insurance companies, psychiatrists, manufacturers of prescription drugs, waiting like so many circling vultures for the bodies and minds of these people to weaken and betray them, poised to plunder their bank accounts and drive them and their children back to work: violence. The hush in the air, the absence of friends rejoicing together, of the shouts of children at play, for the children are all at home with video games and television and no one wants to be here, everyone wishes they were somewhere far, far away, farther even than the palm-tree spotted scenes on the billboards advertising vacation resorts and malt liquor … violence, violence. You may not see one altercation, one bruise; but the feeling in the air is the feeling of war.