Random thoughts and questions

EBAY THAT SHIT

Grapefruits are a hybrid between the pomelo and the orange. The mind boggles because oranges are lovely and pomelos have a nice crisp flavour with a touch of bitterness, whereas grapefruits are the citrus equivalent of itunes.

White graprefruit are my favorite fruit (pink grapefruit suck). I'm putting you on notice.

I see someone has never had a good Texas Ruby Red Grapefruit.

REPORTED

The girl that sits next to me just asked me what the movie Abraham Lincoln was about. I said, "Abraham Lincoln" and she said, "Oh...."

True yes but if you actually spent any time with this person, you would realize that my answer was still a bit of a surprise to her...sitting in the same area with this person is an amazing experience. Unfortunately not in a good way.

So, my boss decided to "forget" my Christmas bonus, which he promised me last week, and the guy from which I get my freelance work says that his big client, the one that was supposed to pay me in August, and then in September, and then in October (etc) will now be paying me in January.

This means we're heading off to our paid vacation tomorrow with little to no pocket change (so, practically no money for gas, tips, emergencies, etc). I got a cash advance from the bank (10% interest on 500.00 paid back on the 30th), and now I head off to the Payday loan place. I hate these motherfuckers with the heat of a thousand suns, but I've got to go there with my hat in hand.

It's grey and dark and WET. At 1:30 in the afternoon.

Nah, these are just conversations. My boss and consistent Christmas Bonuses is a non-intersecting Venn Diagram.

Boris Strugatsky, the remaining brother of the famous Russian science fiction writers duo has died. Their works are among my all time favorites (my nick was inspired by their book Snail on the Slope rather than Voltaire) so I'm bummed.

Aw man, that's a bummer. I remember reading an interview after his brother's death where he said that writing without him was "like cutting wood with a two-man saw - but alone".

I knew when I clicked on your profile that your location would be Pacific Northwest.

I call this time of year (the next six months) The Rains.

Jesus, dude. I hope you charge interest on non-payment, because if that happened to me, I'd be looking at legal violence, pun intended.

People who post in the wrong thread.

Oh wait.

I demand that you like his post

It is crazy dark today in Seattle, not to mention apparentlyl record amounts of rain. Earlier my roommate and I went down to Frys and stopped for lunch at one of the places nearby. We were sitting there at 130pm and it was pouring rain and ridiculously dark, like twilight. And we're still a month away from the actual shortest day of the year.

Payday Loans: 702% Effective APR. Seven. Hundred. Two.

I smile, sign the papers, and then have to be physically restrained from going full Tourette Syndrome on that place.

Isn't it a prequel to The Lincoln Lawyer?

EDIT: NVM, google's my friend.

Aren't there regulatory laws against loan sharking which set a maximum on effective annual interest rates?

The wonders of the free, unregulated market, my friend.

It varies by state. I've used them here in Washington before and they are now very regulated. The effective annual interest rate is still pretty high, but nothing like 702%. In the fifties, IIRC. At any rate they also limit you to six loans in a twelve month period and things like that now.

There used to be laws in Wisconsin that limited them, but those laws were repealed by our friendly neighborhood Assho...Governor.

Yeah... yeah...

If it helps you feel better, I voted against him... but yeah. Sorry to hear you're having to go through all this shit, Mystery. :( That was a sympathy like, BTW.

I still like to listen to the radio, though its mostly sports talk anymore (Seattle has four sports radio stations and another coming soon). So a few years ago I spent the money on a very well reviewed portable radio from Kaito. For $90 I got AM, FM, Weatherband, and most of the shortwave stuff, a digital tuner, and it could recharge its own batteries. It was probably the best radio I've ever owned, but its small size meant it was always getting knocked over and off of stuff by a cat. As a result it began to develop various issues.

So I recently bought a new radio. This time i bought a $70 Sangean radio. It's a bigger tabletop model and doesn't have rechargeable capabilities. It also doesn't have shortwave (not that I ever used that on the other one.) But it sounds great and like the Kaito picks up stations very well.

One thing is does have is an auxillary input. I tried that out tonight. I'm not saying it has the best speakers I've ever had, but for something this small it sounds very very good.

The older I get the more examples of "sometimes it is worth spending the extra money" I see.

While driving out-of-town last weekend, on a whim, I turned the radio to something other than NPR or my own music. "Never Gonna Give You Up" was playing. Rickrolled by my own car.

Just has a massive blast from the bast! Worra tune/cartoon.

I have created the first recursive superhero team:

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can.
Spider-Man-Man, Spider-Man-Man, does whatever Spider-Man can.
Spider-Man-Man-Man, Spider-Man-Man-Man, does whatever Spider-Man-Man can.
Etc, etc.

I've had the last two days off and tomorrow I start a 7 day stretch of retail/black Friday work days. I don't think I have enough beer to survive it.

If I could convince myself there was a God, I would be on my knees begging the son of a bitch to let me have a normal sleep schedule. Or maybe there is a god, and he hates me. A lot.

Apparently Christmas music season has begun along shittiest R&B ever season, because I was subjected to this shit show (please don't actually listen to it) when I ran out to the grocery store last night. Christ, what an ordeal. This marks the last time in the next month and a half that I leave the house without my headphones.

Gearing up for the morning-before-Thanksgiving drive to take Aaron from San Jose to SFO, at six a.m., in the rain. Pretty sure I love that sucker, because otherwise I'd be thinking long and hard about this...

Dog scratching the inside of his ear until it bleeds. Again.
Smelled it, smells like it might be an infection. Which is awful, since I can't afford to take him to the vet for them to clean his ear out again. Tried doing it at home after following online instructions, that did nothing.

At this point, I'm just keeping him from scratching until the bleeding stops and I'll keep an eye on him more. Ugh, floppy-eared dogs.

Ok, I can't stand it.

If you cannot afford to take care of your dog, you should take it to the humane society and give it up. It is unnecessarily cruel to leave a pet with an illness.

Something as "minor" as an ear infection can complicate into sarcomas if left untreated, as well as causing nerve damage that can extend into the face. It can also develop into permanent ear damage, leading to deafness. If it is bacterial in origin, it can lead to meningitis and death, as well as give the potential to pass that meningitis to you or anyone else that comes into contact with the animal.

Do the responsible thing and give the animal into the care of someone who can afford to do so. Anything else is incredibly irresponsible and cruel.

Operation "Get on a plane without ID": Successful! Now, time to fall asleep.