Don't eff with 72 year-old farts or you'll get more of the same, ya yobs:
Stupid punk even had a pointy knife. I thought those had been outlawed in Britain. Dude, some wrinkly old Italian guy totally owns you!
Reminded me of this:
There is likely nothing so filthy as money. After 12 days of handling money and obsessive hand washing, I'll just say that my least favorite moment at my new job has to be when the hard-working girls who have just rolled out of their rack show up around 2:00 p.m. to buy the day's libations. I am handed a stack of one dollar bills that are. . . um, slightly, uh, damp. Just . . . eewww!
Worse than that? When a guy hands me a stack of clammy samolians . . .
The Crabby Old Fart set me off this morning talking about guns and how young people have no idea how to settle scores with their fists instead of bullets. He did an absolutely masterful job at saying much more truth, interspersed with his inimitable humor, than many politicians and speech writers of our day can muster. A brilliant must-read.
But the comments got me started on a rant there that I need to finish here:
Guns, like good cigars and expensive whiskey, are for grown-ups. They are perfectly safe within a populace of stable, God-fearing communities that respect life and understand that you don’t live forever. Folks who have lived long enough to know a few things. Folks who have not saturated and dulled their sensibilities with thousands of hours of bloody violence in movies, and who understand the sacred nature of life’s blood, and who are chary to spill it.
Now, with our so-called more modern countries standing on the cusp of implementing euthanasia for crabby old farts with the temerity to grow older and weaker, it might do some young people well to ask themselves why life is considered so cheap, why abortion is so widespread, or why we should care that some young girl was gunned down in Iran for “disrespectin’” the government.
The conscience isn't seared in a moment for most of us. No terrifying war experience or monstrous abuse to the senses has led us to our apathy. We have suffered a Chinese Water Torture-- a slow drip of insistence. And then a soothing sense of entitlement. And then more insistence by Others who simply must prove they are right.
No amount of twittering will save us. The Truth is too tedious, Ideals are too cumbersome, and the insistent and undercutting murmur of, "There is no transcendent Meaning to your monkey life," is giving wide permissions to the psyche, devaluing Life in the process. So it's okay to view people as impediments to your glorious sense of Self in your golden Today. It is how monsters are created and why some of us have no need to invent them.
I'll be yet more vile: abortion, as a broad policy, is wrong, and if that statement offends you, you've been subjected to more insistence than real thinking. Still, you know it and everyone else knows it, in their heart. But the constant barrage of straw arguments, paper-thin statistics, heart-rending exceptions, hypotheticals and the illusion of "progressive thought" and political expediencies has worn you down to milquetoast protestations at best. Abortion is a horrid, nasty, gory Business and woe to those who push down the urgent Something that nags the conscience, that warns the soul to consider meaning beyond the selfish mewling of Today.
Eugenics now comes to take a turn at your forehead, with dripping insistence that, since we can do something, we ought. Dear God, but people will nod in assent as such seemingly reasonable nonsense. Your own mom would smirk at such a childish notion from a ten year-old, but it's frightening to hear it come from a President.
Next up is the insistence that our own damn home would be better off without us. A suicidal and ridiculous agenda being pushed by the "Hugo First" members of the elite. Seriously, people, you simply must read C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength to be chilled thoroughly by that old idea coming around again. You think it's new? Lewis foresaw it 60 years ago, the elites and wannabes rushing to cut off their own heads to make room for the Macrobes.
The Left's hypocrisy is at a loss to assimilate the vision of Iranian youth begging us to export our values to their society. They're watching a government use force against its own people and considering how that will play out when 48 percent of their neighbors reject the oppressive New World Order their own Leader wants to impose. They are livid at the news of Honduran heroes who have had done with words and torturous insistence, and have decided to conserve something good. How unprogressive!
And what shall the Left do with NorKons, starving their own people and preparing to kill us just out of a sense of relief?
Dangerous powers are moving. Powerful weapons are in immature, unstable hands, and life is cheap.
You know, with all the Brave New World ideas aimed at your heart and mind, it's a wonder you are still alive.
But honestly, if you're being given a big discount coupon in the paper, would it be too much to ask you to cut it out? I have to bring scissors to work just to cut out coupons for every snotty Country Club member too good to have a pair. Take that how you will.
I know it's like the Disney World of Alcohol, but contain yourself enough to notice all of the signs screaming "Under 30? Please Show I.D." Don't act surprised, offended or peeved if I call you out on it. Just have the damn thing ready.
Don't bring your underage child, say, a young man of 17, into the store with you and then get all huffy if we ask for his I.D. We don't read minds, and can't assume that you're related. We really, really don't want to go to jail or lose our job. Or both.
And, get used to it, ya old farts. Just because your card looks like a credit card we still will ask, "debit or credit?" because get this: new cards can be very vague and versatile. The world has changed, pops, so don't lecture me with, "that's a credit card, young lady."
Speaking of old farts: the white haired white guys with the baggy basketball shorts and jersey and cap on backwards? Not.good. I'll card your saggy ass just to be consistent with your mental age.
Meanwhile, I'm having fun, even if I'm exhausted after a long shift. I been finding out which co-workers care way too much and what pushes their buttons. I forsee a bit of fun mischief in their future! Mwuahhahahaha!
Oh, and, I got muh first paycheck. Yippee!
The Crabby Old Fart is working up a head o' steam. Go. Share his apoplexy, and have someone check on his BP meds, stat.
Holly Walsh in a righteous rant. As a Florida girl, I totally sympathize with her fate-- having only the gray and unlovely experience of England's southern coast-- and hope that some day she'll learn to love a proper beach, with sugary sand and glorious sun, but I doubt it will ever make her like Eastbourne. It's a great little video story, told in that inimitable British style and thoroughly funny. Especially the jellyfish sting comment. . . enjoy!
It was a phrase that jumped out at me from the comments at Scipio's latest post, Have a Bad Day. (It goes without saying that you shouldn't go there if you're trying to have a good day.)
The commenter wonders if it's just him, or are others feeling the "holding pattern," refraining from the news-junkie mode:
Its seems to me (and to others I talk to) that the jury is out as to what is going to happen next and everybody seems to be in a holding pattern waiting for ‘it’ to happen. The usual conversations I have had with others are a bit dull and inconsequential like we’re in some vast waiting room for ‘history’ to happen.
Well, five days of selling booze on long shifts and I think I can credibly say that it's not as bad as you'd think. Most folks are pleasant; one customer calls us the Disney World of Alcohol. I totally snagged that for my own uses. The customer banter is convivial and benign and, regardless of what else folks may have going on, their debit and credit cards are rarely declined.
People have priorities, after all.
Not since the Ghost Tours have I worked the late nights and long hours and I'd forgotten how zombie-like it can feel to get home and be unable to sleep, only to have to wake up and go another long round. After so many months without full time work, it's taking a bit of getting used to, plus the work is so physical. Today I don't hurt anywhere vital, so I think I'm getting inured to the traces and demands of totin' that barge.
But I hate the disconnected feeling of drifting through the mornings half-alive. Today I'm making a good old Father's Day dinner of a braised chuck roast and garlic potatoes. Mean 'n taters sort of day. The cooking reconnects me to life, makes me slow down a bit, wake up a little, actually feel something. Not a single cell in my body wanted to get up and go to the store and fix dinner today, but it's all right now. I'm not really the walking dead, I'm living in the moment of aromatic sensations of the most primordial instinct, while still in the middle of a complex arrangement of life circumstance and difficulties. And it's all right. Cooking does for the soul what any art should: it nourishes, revives and connects one with their living world around them. It's a comfort.
I mean, have you ever seen a zombie go to the trouble to cook a meal?
No. They're lazy and unconcerned to the point of barbarism. Raw brains indeed; like that's something to brag about. Wanna scare a civilized population? Just return to the kitchen from the bathroom without washing your hands first.
Happy Father's Day, guys. Hope someone is making you some home-cooked love and tenderness today!
It's been almost a year since I've had full-time employment, and about 6 months that I've been seeking full-time employment. In the interim I was sick, then worked in an art store part time, then had surgery, then worked in real estate support part time, then September happened. No worries, though, I had a sweet job lined up with a former employer, due to start in January of this year.
That fell through when, during the interview process, I supplied them with a solution to their dilemma that pretty much negated their need for me. I'm too nice for my own good.
So, a few more paltry part-time gigs and a dry, scorched job landscape led me to pursue other ideas. I bought a motor home and had planned to travel/work my way west for the summer, as the J.R. was supposed to be working with a traveling automobile rodeo and it was all good.
And then the J.R. needed surgery. And then he got laid off from his local gig two days before surgery.
Needless to say, the timing both sucked and was perfect, since neither of us had a job, I could tend to the wounded grizzly bear while he was doped up out of his mind.
Me? I had to buy my own prescriptions from Captain Morgan at the local wine superstore. On the way out, I saw a sign, "Now Hiring". I stopped by the manager's desk on the way out, asked for an application, and the overwhelmed assistant manager couldn't find one and asked me to go online and apply. I balked and proceeded to politely whine that I was tired of online applications, that they reduce people to a keyword search and how it was too bad that no one would be able to meet me and look me in the eye, shake my hand, and know how wonderful I was.
"Tell me your name!" he demanded.
"Joan Varga."
"Joan, I can look through this stack of 350 applications or I can go online for the few who bother. Which do you think I'd rather?"
"I'll fill out the online app," I submitted.
"Tell me your name, again," he asked. "I'll look for your application this weekend."
True to his word, I got a call-back two weeks ago while I was in the store next door to his, so I went over and hit the line. I think he was just so relieved to have a grown up applying that he placed me into a low-level management position to start and promised me 40-45 hours a week. Decent starting salary. Benefits after 90 days: medical, and 401k and corporate matching, etc. Which is some nice et cetera!
Alcohol. It's not like it's going away no matter how much Obama taxes it. And I'm glad to not be stuck behind a desk all day long. Nice folks buying wine and beer and vodka for parties and fun. I started today.
Needless to say, my plans to work west and write and travel must need take a back seat to a REAL EFFIN' JOB!
It's a miracle in this town.
You really need to step outside your own echo chambers from time to time and see what the other half is up to. The Left has been desperately pre-arranging a victory for Ah'madinnerjacket's rival in Iran, only to be confounded by . . . the mullahs. How the mullahs must smile!
Seriously. On NPR on Friday morning it was all about how Obama's brilliant Cairo speech was triangulating the ruling class in Iran. Except the ruling class is not Ahmadinejad. It's the mullahs, and much like our own president, they pretty much are telling Iran to STFU, "we won."
So, I searched around to see if the State-run media had a meme going, and sure enough! The Party Line (as likely a new name for a new media) was being toed by one and all this past week:
The SFGATE: Iranian Elections Scrutinzed for the Obama Effect.Yes, my lovelies, The Media Borg's narrative continues undisturbed by you or me, but a country still living in the 12th century has bested them all. I await their spin with amused anticipation and foregone disappointment.
The Philidelphia Enquirer: Obama's Cairo Speech Already Having an Effect.
Christian Science Monitor: Wildcard in Iran: Obama
The AP has pronounced Obama's words as pivotal in Lebanon's vote.
And MSNBC, 'natch: The Cairo Effect
WSJ: Smart Power Arrives in Cairo
Saturday, June 4, 2005
In the past several weeks, Iran has seen civil unrest in several major cities, ranging from peaceful student demonstrations to riots to apparent politically motivated assassinations. Tensions have been especially high in the past several days.
And in this case, paradoxically, it seems that from Israel's point of view the victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is actually preferable. Not only because "better the devil you know," but because the victory of the pro-reform candidate will paste an attractive mask on the face of Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Western experts now agree that even during the tenure of moderate president Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), the nuclear program continued to advance. And in any case, the person who really decides on the nuclear issue is not the president but the spiritual leader. One of the president's advisers even made it clear recently, in an interview with Reuters, that the spiritual leader will continue to shape his country's nuclear policy, regardless of the election results.
As a Florida girl I'm almost ashamed to admit that I suffered an anxious bout of heat prostration today. I was working outside, hard physical work of polishing compounds and wax on the motor home, currently parked at a storage facility. I was wearing a hat, had loose comfy clothes on, but the high temps and exertion were adding up.
Fast.
It happened in an instant: loss of breath, nausea, light-headed anxiety and I knew I was in trouble. I quickly went inside the motor home and started shucking clothes while I turned the full power of the roof unit into the "air shower" mode. Still too shaky, out of breath. I calmed myself and realized I had no potable water with me at the storage facility where the RV is parked and I needed water double-quick. I re-dressed, shut down the lovely, cool AC, killed the generator and grabbed my keys, heading for the car.
Mercifully, I had left the windows open in the car, so it wasn't a raging oven, but still. My hands were shaking so much it was difficult to hit the keyhole, but I got it cranked. I still had to stop at the gate and make my mind focus on the lengthy code. Once outside, I knew I was only 5 minutes from home if the lights were in a good synch. But a Hardee's was right next door, so I drove up with the thought of a large drink. I was the only car in the lane. They hollered out twice from the speaker that they were just too busy at the moment, please wait.
So I gunned it for home instead. Got in the door, went straight to the freezer for the gelpack and slapped it on the nape, with my hands resting on the back of the gelpack to help cool the blood quickly. 20 ozs of room temp bottled water and 30 minutes of being still and my breathing finally slowed and the nausea subsided.
You know you're hot when after all that, you get into a cold shower, the cold water hits your head, and by the time it's running down your back it's warm from the sheer heat still cooking your brain-pan.
Out of the shower and loosely covered, I lay down for another 30 minutes, dozed lightly and awoke a bit chilled. I've been pretty useless the rest of the day.
Ya'll be careful out there.
Is Truth a Right or a Responsibility?
What care you if Obama be brilliant or incompetent? Rave on. He is neither. However-- is he lying to you? I'm not talking about a leader's expedient glossings out of security considerations, or the dutiful brave face in the midst of disastrous calamity; the former for which it suffices to say that Obama has never met a secret he thought worthy of keeping, and the latter something which he should pray he never need employ except he have the stones of GWB.
But. . . do you have the right to expect Truth from your leader, be he ever so awesome or loathesome? Truth from the Press? Good Lord, we took it for granted for far too long. Or do we have a responsibility to seek and verify Truth for ourselves?
As long as we're assigning Rights for every imagined slight, how 'bout it? Discuss the merits of such a Right, and the just punishments for violation of same. We already have slander and libel laws. Should they be expanded or merely more deftly deployed?
Update: "Life is pain, princess. Anyone who tells you different is selling something."
ShrinkWrapped is having a very good discussion about the details. I, of course, get locked up on the bigger picture of anything that gets labeled a privilege. A license to drive is actually a privilege, not a right. Privileges are regulated and revoked with amazing alacrity, far faster than the attendant obligations of said privileges are enacted. (Do you want gun ownership, with its implicated operative of self-defense, to be privilege or a right?)
Rights should be seemingly innate, if not transcendent. But, assigning every aspect of life to a right denies us the strength-building resistant forces that sustain us when the System goes belly-up.
A privilege is something conferred by a political office. It can be revoked by same.
Our rights, as politically understood, are a passive consideration that is not conferred by a political entity, but recognized as an intrinsic value. Or, if you will, endowed by a transcendent entity, superior to any political one.
I'm not sure health care is in a secure position in the first instance. The very word "privilege" turns the head and assuages the ego. It is a term of political art. I'm skittish of privileges granted.
In the second instance of health care as a right, I consider the Good Samaritan scenario: the onus is on the care-giver to be compassionate. That is a state-mandated compassion that in effect, implies a Right. But which came first? The mandate was born from an innate and recognizable level of human social responsibility to another, not as an individual right to be demanded of another. That's likely just quibbling on my part in an effort to sort through the moral fog.
Unfortunately, state-mandated compassion operates further removed than the local innkeeper employed by the Samaritan. If someone could name one compulsive and mandated state entity that has successfully replaced the intimacy and accountability of one's immediate community, I'd entertain the idea of Health Care as a political right of some sort.But then I'd have to weigh the burden of it against the hardships and penury that will come of paying for it.
As if you needed any further evidence that They derive all pleasure in life from the simple need to be perceived as good. No other power on Earth is so terrifying. Not even *gasp!* capitalism:
What's funny is that in Third World countries you'd have the garbage pickers' union (yes, for real) levy a fine against you for sorting your own trash.
h/t Cobb.
Just in case you were starting to doze off and fall under the spell of the "moderate Right."
Maybe even Self-hate Couture. Who does she surround herself with that they would tell her this is something the wife of a Head-of-State would wear? She either has crappy advisers, or more likely, has good advisers that she doesn't heed:
As a post-posting thought: If What Not to Wear had any fashion integrity, Stacy would drop the Palin jokes and have a heart-t0-heart with Michelle O.
Update the second: QP, in the comments, provides this link. "Stacked like a wedding cake" LOL!
More cartoons at Last of the Few.
Want more fun? Jimbo's got a supply sergeant's pilfered trunk-full. The man's a genius.
Oh, and the incomparable Neanderpundit is posting again. One of the best ass-whuppin' stories evah. Just be glad you didn't grow up in his neighborhood!
Life is good if you can still laugh.
The dirty little secret is that the EU has always known that their Socialism was only possible because of our Capitalism. Now that Obama seems determined to emulate the poseur Socialists, the EU populace has to face the fact that somebody in the West has to be productive and make money.
Good luck with that, guys.
I love the acrid, bracing sting to the brain that focuses it first thing on a Monday morning. It sets the proper mood for a new work week, and keeps one from just offing the resident cheerleaders and suckups who arrive all perky and refreshed from their weekend. That's because they spent it doing things they Ought. You and I however, spent it doing things we shouldn't. So, for today's moment of terrifying lucidity I give you Vonnegut:
Stolen from haha.nu
There was an accident on the side of the road, attended by many shiny lights and official cars and uniformed men.
I drove by without so much as turning my head or slowing down.
Top that, rubberneckers!
Years and years and blah blah blah ago, I worked as a customer service drone for certain products' 800 phone lines; to include coffee that was Good to the Last Drop, the Champagne of Bottle Beers, and Sure-Gel pectins.
You should have seen me talk and type and race through AS400 screens faster than a politician denying paternity. I was freshly returned from five years in Mexico City and employed as the only bi-lingual member of the team. (Side note: that meant that ANYone with an accent was transferred to my extension, no matter if they were from Uzbekistan or Uruguay.) But we learned much about coffee, beer, jams and jellies.
Anyhoo, when we weren't uncovering blue-hair-coupon-scammer rings in the 212 area code *ahem* we were fielding calls from prisoners threatening lawsuits about caffeine and college kids wondering why, if beer has no fat, then why were they gaining weight. Not too long after taking that job, Bill Clinton was running for office. My fresh perspective from living out of country and then being tossed into the mainstream of U.S. consumer idiots with nothing better to do than call and complain about their coffee gave me sagacious political insights: "OMG. This man will be elected." And then, after his first SOTU speech: "OMG. This man will be re-elected."
But I digress.
BTW, there is NOT a mouse in your beer. It's just yeasty slough from the filling nozzles. Do you see whiskers? No. Do you see its eyes? No. But we're sorry about the dismay it caused you and here ya go, you get a free case of beer! Still wanna press your point? We got a whole suite of lawyers who've been there and done that. Bring it.
Oh, I digressed again.
So then. A good cup of coffee or a good urn of coffee depends on following the recipe and measuring accurately. Yes, Virginia, coffee has a recipe. The "official" recommendation for most drip makers is, get this, ONE LEVEL TABLESPOON of grounds for each 6 oz. of water. You keep thinking, cup=8 oz.
Now here's the problem: Your coffee mug is more than 6 ounces and is usually 8 or more. You're making weak coffee and that's why it tastes like canal water. If you're making four MUGS of coffee with four tablespoons of grounds, you're disappointing yourself and your guests by diluting the coffee by 25%. It goes back to tea cups being only 6 ounces before everyone needed mugs, don't blame your coffee maker.
Measure out the water in your coffee maker carafe and see if it is marking off teacups or mugs and adjust accordingly. Thank me in the morning.
Making a huge urn of coffee for the luncheon? You know it's gonna taste like sour dish water from the Waffle House if you don't do it right and most of you don't. A whole freaking vac-pac of coffee for the large urns is usually what you'll need. Did you know that the urn usually has a fill line in the basket for grounds? Use it in concert with the water line in the urn. It actually works best that way, just be sure to get a perc grind blend and you're good to go. Your guests will thank you.
Meanwhile, beer has no fat. If it did, it would be cloudy and yucky. It makes you fat because you drink too much of it and sit around scratching your keister while watching Al Bundy.
You're welcome.
Thank you for calling.
Because I'm a giver, girlfriend.
And I'm always a sucker for a Browncoat. Good looks and brains.
I posted something back in March '08, re-posted it in January of this year, and still I find it on my sitemeter from time to time as an entry page for someone looking for whatever. But I found myself perusing the original comments from 03/08 and my dear detractor's comment jumped out at me, and now, grasshopper that I am, I understand something I didn't back then:
Looks like to kick the place into shape, we're going to need a hell of a recession/depression. A lot of pain.
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