07:56 – The EU summit turned out exactly as I predicted. They kicked the can a bit farther down the road, putting off Greece’s inevitable collapse for a few more weeks, if they’re lucky. Greece in turn agreed to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the eurocracy, abandoning its sovereignty. Ironically, it was also announced yesterday that the old drachma ceases to be legal tender as of 1 March. One would have thought they’d have kept it around a while longer. It might come in useful. Or perhaps they’re just doing a central collection of all outstanding drachma-denominated notes and coins, expecting to reissue them shortly.
I’m told that no one in Europe wants to be holding Greek-branded euros, and that those of Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy are also looked upon as of questionable value. In a real-world demonstration of Gresham’s Law, everyone is getting rid of southern-tier euros as fast as they can and attempting to replace them with German, Dutch, and Finnish euros. And who can blame them? The expectation is that when Greece leaves the euro, Greek euros will be the new drachma until Greece can afford to print real new drachmas. And the same will occur as the other southern-tier nations leave the euro. Frankly, I expect the opposite to happen; the poorer nations, including Belgium and France, will end up using increasingly worthless euros, while Germany and the other richer nations return to their own former currencies. Or, if they’re foolish, to a new shared currency, but one shared only among the richer northern-tier nations.
One thing is certain, though. The results of the latest euro summit bought them weeks if they’re lucky, and only days if they’re not.
I have a French 5 Euro note from my last trip to Europe. Think it’s worth trying to get a German one in exchange?
Rick in Portland
What say thee to the future of the dollar, sir? Continued fiat currency and printing press largesse? Another year? Three? Five?
For reasons too long to go into here, fiat currency is the only kind viable in a modern world.
The deficits will have to decline at some point, but we’re a long way from the level the PIGS have.
The dollar has decades to go before we reach the tipping point. In Bruce Sterling’s book _Distraction_, it is 2044 and the USA national debt is 45 trillion dollars.
http://www.amazon.com/Distraction-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0553576399/
“It’s the year 2044, and America has gone to hell. A disenfranchised U.S. Air Force base has turned to highway robbery in order to pay the bills. Vast chunks of the population live nomadic lives fueled by cheap transportation and even cheaper computer power. Warfare has shifted from the battlefield to the global networks, and China holds the information edge over all comers. ”
BTW, one of the precepts of the book is that the property taxes have gotten so high that tens of millions of citizens has sold their homes and moved into RVs. The RVs move every six months to keep from paying property taxes and form massive cities in the middle of nowhere.
I’m told that no one in Europe wants to be holding Greek-branded euros, and that those of Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy are also looked upon as of questionable value.
Which is a testimony to how much nonsense is in circulation. There is only one Euro.
My Internet at home is finally back on. I lost it at 8 PM Saturday during an electrical storm (that didn’t cause any electrical failures.)
I was booked for a visit tomorrow from a TransACT technician but one phoned me at work today so I went home to let him in. He insisted that the modem was at fault so he replaced it. That didn’t fix the problem. He then said that TransACT were upgrading to new modems that would be 5x faster so he asked if I’d like to be upgraded (no extra charge). Of course I said yes so he went to the junction box up the street, twiddled something there, and replaced the modem. Still no joy…
He said the modem was connected upstream okay so he connected the computer directly to the modem, which worked. Something was therefore wrong with my router. He suggested that a power surge had toasted it – but the computer could still “see” and adjust settings on the router. Hmmm.
Eventually I just re-entered the login settings and that worked a treat. So now I’m able to get my e-mail, browse the Web and play City of Heroes/Villains again. Not having the Internet was making me sick, literally, and anorexic. Now I feel mucho better and celebrated by having a steak and chips for lunch…
Roy wrote:
“Which is a testimony to how much nonsense is in circulation. There is only one Euro.”
True, but each country has its its “own” Euro coins that have one side in common with all Euro countries and the other side specific to it. The notes are common. (Going on the Wikipedia article and travel in Europe in 2003.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro#Characteristics
Yeah, being disconnected these days is like losing power, food, water, heat, and life support all at the same time. My positively crummy AT&T service is down about once every 3 days. I can tell, because Outlook locks up when it is disconnected from the Internet during any of its every 5 minute mail checks. Was disconnected from 11pm to 5am Saturday night just past. And they just more than doubled my rates for such good service.
As I did in Berlin, I wake up to BBC World Service news, only I get it from the Internet these days, instead of the FM transmitter in Berlin. This morning I woke up to the report out of Afghanistan that personnel at a US military base disposed of Islamic literature and some Korans by burning them in the base incinerator.
Now, aside from the question of whether one should burn, pee on, or return the Koran to the iMam, HOW in the bloody hell does the US get somebody with such PROFOUND ignorance and stupidity working for it, in a socially sensitive land. I never wanted to be there in the first place, but if we are, we ought not to have TSA-like idiocy undoing every penny we spend over there!
My first broadband ISP was an outfit called WebOne, and I was perfectly happy with them. They were then taken over by a Western Australian mob called iiNet, who promptly sacked all the Canberra based support staff. (WebOne kept it’s name and e-mail addresses.) They didn’t answer the phone, didn’t answer e-mails so eventually I quit and went to my current ISP, NetSpeed, with which I’m very happy.
Just a month or two back iiNet took over TransACT, the company that provides my landline phone, Internet access (but not ISP service), basic cable TV (included in the price) and the option to connect to more extensive cable and video on demand. I immediately thought Ut Oh….
On Saturday night we had some decent sized thunderstorms here and at 8 PM my Internet went off. The Sync light on my modem was blinking: never a good sign. I called their support line three times on Sunday. No answer. On Monday I called and was on hold for over an hour. The earliest appointment for a technician visit they could offer was midday Thursday, but this morning (Wednesday) one called and said if I could be at home in an hour he’d have a look at the modem.
I’ve been getting more sleep for the last four days and doing odd jobs that need doing but was very stressed out, to the point I was eating half or less my usual amount of food. But now it’s fixed I feel much better.
I was originally in favour of the Afghanistan adventure at first but now think we should have just made life unpleasant for them from offshore, like we were doing with Saddam. No need to conquer them, set things right, or whatever. There would have come a point when they would have been willing to compromise.
I have no choice for DSL, as it uses phone lines that carry it, now belong to AT&T (again). Don’t really have a choice for cable, either, as Comcast owns that monopoly around here. The do-nothing FCC should have forced competition in both realms long ago. And they should have replaced the long, long-ago technically outdated AM radio band with something better.
There are ads for HD radio abounding in every medium here these days. Do not know who is paying for them, but broadcasters around here are making jokes about the ratings for HD being so dismal because the ratings companies cannot locate the 5 people who actually own an HD radio.
…the phone lines it uses to carry it…
If only for the editing function we once had.
Euro coins and banknotes are both specific to the country of “issuance”. You don’t want to be holding euro notes coded “Y” (Greece). You want ones coded “X” (Germany).
I don’t know. They seem quite content to live in mud huts under an oppressive regime with no access to manufactured good, medical supplies, or dietary variety. It’s a little hard to pressure a country with sanctions when that’s how they’re accustomed to living. At some point they just became numb to a miserable existence.
Afghanistan: Our lords temporal do not read history. It is beneath them. Else they might have run across the experiences of the Brits and the Soviet Russians. So we send kids over, dumb as shit, most of them, and then they piss on Korans and corpses. Surprise!
Internet: I can take it or leave it. I have gone without for days at a time, and simply read and listen to the radio. Or take a hike. Or a canoe ride. Or send out for steak and chips. I am probably on it maybe an hour or two a day as it is.
2044: I intend to have slipped off this mortal coil long since by then. Perhaps our children and grandchildren will find things interesting.
re our would-be masters and history: Maybe they read it, maybe not. History doesn’t have any worthwhile lessons because this time is different. And anyway we’re reached The End of History.
re “dumb as shit”: By and large, you’re wrong. By and large, American soldiers are fairly bright and fairly well educated. (By contemporary American public school standards, an admittedly low bar.) The days of needing to take the dregs, and the days when the dregs are able to do any job beyond scrub pots in the mess hall, are gone. Of course, there will always be stupid behavior, especially with young men in groups and more especially when they’re living under the constant stresses that they deal with. Considering the amount of bullshit the US soldiers put up with in Afghanistan, I figure that if they don’t kill and/or rape everything not in an American uniform they’re doing pretty well.
Chad wrote:
” There would have come a point when they would have been willing to compromise.
I don’t know. They seem quite content to live in mud huts under an oppressive regime with no access to manufactured good, medical supplies, or dietary variety. It’s a little hard to pressure a country with sanctions when that’s how they’re accustomed to living. At some point they just became numb to a miserable existence.”
I’m not talking about trying to kill ordinary Afghans, even if they hate us. I was just talking about the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Don’t even try to eliminate every last one, just enough to let them know we care. And I think a lot of the people at the top like their creature comforts. I also think that the containment policy used against Saddam before 2003 was working, sort of. Better than invading the place.
RBT wrote:
“Euro coins and banknotes are both specific to the country of “issuance”. You don’t want to be holding euro notes coded “Y” (Greece). You want ones coded “X” (Germany).”
I probably wouldn’t want to be holding any Euros, but they’re all the same according to this…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro#Issuing_modalities_for_banknotes
OFD wrote:
“Internet: I can take it or leave it. I have gone without for days at a time, and simply read and listen to the radio. Or take a hike. Or a canoe ride. Or send out for steak and chips. I am probably on it maybe an hour or two a day as it is.”
I can leave it too, and have done so on occasions. Once when I dossed down at my sister’s place in Adelaide one Christmas (a two week stay) I took one of my desktop PCs and continued to play City of Heroes/Villains. (My sister claimed that I used up most of her bandwidth allowance, so I didn’t bring the computer next time.) I’ve spent several “holidays” at her place with only occasional access to her computers for e-mail and a bit of browsing. But that was okay because I knew it was coming, I *hate* surprises so last Saturday’s outage was most unwelcome. I’ve sometimes contemplated just giving up the Internet completely. After all I’d never used it before 1997. My friends just laugh when I say that.
One of my pals here was a bit of a pioneer of the Internet and its forerunners. One day in 1986 I was woken at 4.20 AM one Saturday by a call from work. They had a problem they couldn’t fix with one of the mainframes and the usual guy’s phone was engaged solid. I drove over to his place, he’d just gone to bed after an all night session on whatever passed for the Internet back then. He says he was the third highest poster in the world to USENET (i.e. newsgroups.) I didn’t understand his addiction back then but I do now.
OFD wrote:
“2044: I intend to have slipped off this mortal coil long since by then.”
I’m sure your moggies will have decided that you’re surplus to requirements long before then, and eliminate you while you sleep.
SteveF, I hope I can sit corrected. I was given to understand that the recruitment standards had been relaxed again to the point where convicted felons and mental defectives were being taken. We have also seen that the lords temporal have no scruples about activating Guard and Reserve units whenever they feel like it and sending those people over for multiple tours as well. I have seen them returning from those tours, in everyday life and down at the VA complex in White River Junction up here. It is not pretty.
I am of the view that the people who have been sending these kids over to repeated wars for little or no reason or lying, specious reasons, should be stood against a wall and shot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes#Serial_number
OFD, maybe you’re right. I hope not. A quick web cruise shows contrasting “facts”, so I can’t tell.
As for executing our would-be masters by means humane or heinous, I see no way that anyone whose opinion matters could object.
I don’t think it would be at all practicable to sort Euros based on their country of issue. As the article states some countries specialise in certain denomination banknotes and distribute them to other countries. That would be like depreciating US banknotes printed in Alabama and preferring those printed in Wisconsin.
OFD wrote:
“I am of the view that the people who have been sending these kids over to repeated wars for little or no reason or lying, specious reasons, should be stood against a wall and shot.”
I think it would be better to send them “over there” and make them take the same risks as the grunts.
I used to think that, too, Greg, but no longer have the patience for it. Let us be rid of these bastards straightaway, shall we?
I am not interested in a world without Internet — or a world without computers. A close friend and I used to argue about what the capabilities of computers should be. Having been a minimalist since my teenage years when I began to travel more and wanted to travel quite light, I want a computer to do and be everything — and be as small as possible. My friend always questioned why I wanted a computer to be a stereo system. “Get a stereo, if you want to listen to music,” was his mantra. I want a computer to be able to assemble, edit, and play any audio; same with video — and at a professional level. I want to read books and other material on it. I want to keep necessary financial records on it. I want it to keep, record, and modify all the pictures and videos I take. I want it to handle all correspondence.
Moreover, it is increasingly evident that people want computers to be smaller than they currently are, and very transportable.
Yesterday, I sat for a full workday, next to someone with a tablet computer. I am not an expert on them, but I watched as she got all kinds of things done on it, from reading law books, to answering email, typing draft letters, communicating with her husband, and probably a lot more that I could not recognize. Her tablet was physically just a bit bigger than the Kindles with the keyboards, but the screen filled the unit.
And for the first time, I saw what Shuttleworth is trying to accomplish with the Unity desktop, as the way this woman navigated around the tablet was with the kinds of icons Unity employs, which slid horizontally at the bottom of her tablet (although I still don’t like those icons as a substitute for word menus).
But I am just not an advocate of going backwards in time. I like every modern convenience at my disposal — including the microwave; my programmable thermostat; cell phone that gives me contact with anybody, anywhere, all the time; computers and the Internet, which give me access to productivity unimaginable not much more than a decade ago. Yeah, if I go on vacation, I might be willing to part with them for a short time (probably not voluntarily), but as for thinking my life would be somehow better without them and by returning to the ‘50’s — no possible way! Life would be hard — and boring.
Hmm, I guess I’m a bit of an old fogie compared to Chuck. I like some of the old ways of getting things done, and I hate microwaves. I use them occasionally but not by choice. I like larger desktop computers for their screen size and large keyboards. Yeah, I’ve seen people type quickly on hand held devices, but I’m too old to learn that. I really need full sized keyboards. And I can’t play online games on a small screen, I have trouble enough reading and seeing some game actions on a 24″ LCD.
My “young” nephew (he’s 23 years old) worked out how to “back-up” DVDs and CDs to his computer and play them on his 200″ (well, it seems that large to me) Plasma screen. Knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. All his stuff is integrated, but I prefer to ave separate components – separate computer/s, separate LCD TV, separate stereo system.
The thing I miss about the old days (I have memories going back to the early Sixties) is the lack of contact with neighbors and the trend towards compact city living and in small and expensive apartments. I like my detached house on its quarter acre block. My parents used to drive over twice a year and stay for three weeks, they’d often meet my neighbors and introduce them to me. They haven’t been here for 12 years, and I only know about 1/3 of my neighbors. My fault I guess, I’m fairly shy and quiet. I prefer the old days when everyone knew everyone and apartments were things that unfortunates in NYC and Europe live in.
I could do without the Internet, I think. I only got it in 1997 and had a happy life before that, and I got a lot more sleep back then.
I’m not quite the fan of small that Chuck is, but I am something of a gadget freak. I love my Android cell phone, but the screen is just too small to be useful. Ironically, I think the thing I use it for the least is the cell phone part. If I didn’t have it, I’d probably have a utility belt like Batman’s. Cellphone, camera, MP3 player and GPS all in one box.
My favorite gadgets are the ones I’d never think of. Back when I was a single guy I wanted to come home from work and eat dinner. I didn’t really want to cook. And so I discovered the microwavable TV dinner. Somehow I stumbled on the dumbest idea. The slow cooker? Why would you want to cook slow? Because you toss everything in just before leaving for work and you come home to a real home cooked meal.
I’m probably addicted to the Internet, by some standards. By far, I spend most of my time online. This has been the case for practically all of my life that I remember. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that the trick for “multitasking” is to avoid it. Just do things sequentially, with a small number of interrupts for important, unpredictable tasks.
And microwaves are cool!
You don’t have small children, do you?
I think microwaves are okay for heating hot chocolate. Otherwise I’d rather just grill, use the oven or hotplate.
Cooking for 1 is virtually impossible, as it is almost always practically necessary to make more than one serving. I just package up extra servings for later; then pop them in the microwave on a low power setting, and in 5 to 10 minutes, I have a painless meal.
Unless I am cooking meat or baking, I purposely use the microwave as much as possible. Did not have one in Germany, and I truly missed it. Making up for lost time.
Like eristicist, I long ago gave up the “multitasking” malarkey as a bad job; usually pushed hard by female PHB manglers in your grille all the time with that and whatever the other mangler mantras were at the time. Bullshit.
I think and work in sequential, linear fashion, and as the great Dr. Johnson once (at least) said, There’s an end on it.
We have moved to cooking in larger batches here, so we can freeze some and/or supplement the diets of our son and his wife and kids, as they do not cook unless at gunpoint and their diet otherwise consists of fast and frozen “food,” one reason why his wife is 5’6″ and 275 and he himself is getting porky at 26, like his biological late dad and uncles. I rarely use the microwave but love the slow cooker. And the grill.
Well, since everyone else is chiming in, here’s my sordid tale. OK, maybe not sordid so much as inane.
I mostly cook for myself. The boys are off to school, my wife sometimes eats what I cook but prefers the Chinese her mother cooks, and my daughter eats some of what I make but so little that it falls into rounding error. However, I eat more than my daughter, wife, and mother-in-law combined, so “for myself” doesn’t give me any trouble with trying to make a single serving of anything. Lunch today was a scant two pounds of ham and roast beef and about two ounces of corn chips. That’s a typical meal size and I’ll eat three or four daily.
Microwave: only for heating leftovers. My wife defrosts meat with the microwave, but I don’t like how it comes out.
Crock pot: Love it. Use it at least a couple times a week.
Grill: I love grilled meat but don’t do a very good job myself.
Oven: Roasting or baking meat, mostly.
Bread machine: sits in the closet unless Son#2 is home. I concluded a year and a half ago that wheat is bad for humans so I no longer bake at all for myself.
In theory I like Chinese food, especially real Chinese food rather than the stuff in American Chinese take-outs. In practice I don’t eat what my mother-in-law cooks because I have severe qualms about her notions of hygiene.
I love grilled meat. I use a flat griller so that a lot, but not all of the fat ends up in the fat trap rather than on my hips. My father used to use a vertical griller, and I hated it. Every molecule of fat, taste, whatever ended up in the trap but it was like eating boot leather.
I like stir frys and used to do a lot of the cooking when I visited my mum in Adelaide, back when she had her own place. She wasn’t a good cook, she said that when she was growing up in the depression her mother couldn’t afford to let her have food to experiment with.
I defrost meat by leaving it in the fridge for however long it takes to defrost. I don’t like or trust microwaves for cooking.
I adore Chinese, Malaysian and Middle Eastern cooking. I like Indian too but would only really like it twice a week at the most.
Some very nice meals are really quite simple: I like baked beans on toast, thick soup on toast, Vegemite on toast, and peanut butter on toast. Yum.
I found long ago that attempting to defrost meat in a microwave is a bad job. And absolutely do not try to cook poultry or beef in it, but fish and seafood works great, as do veggies.
The slow cooker/crockpot is a great little invention and does a good job on most things, esp. for roast beef/pot roast w/veggies, but not so great for poultry.
Grilling is thrilling, and we got us this past summer this bugger:
http://pkgrills.com/
I eat bread and cereal fairly often, and esp. love Boston brown bread, genuine French baguettes, Italian bread as for subs, Kaiser rolls, pancakes, French toast, etc., etc. If it kills me, fuck it.
If I still ate Asian food it would be the authentic stuff and not the Americanized bastardized versions of it, but after two tours working for Uncle’s plantations over there, I had enough for a lifetime. Notions of hygiene over there were not the greatest, either, but beggars can’t be choosers, etc., and I was better off eating off the countryside than back at the plantation chow hall, believe you me.
Talking of hygiene…
A young woman who boarded at my house didn’t have the first idea. One morning she wanted to get some frozen mince beef from the freezer to have for dinner that night. She wanted to leave it on the kitchen bench to defrost. I objected that it was going to be 30C outside, and probably 40+C in the kitchen that day and that the mince wouldn’t be fit to eat that night. We argued for a bit but I insisted on defrosting in the fridge. That night the lump of mince wasn’t completely defrosted and Jenny barked at me a bit, along the lines of I TOLD YOU SO! I just put it in the wok and stir fried it on very low heat till it was defrosted.
Another time she cooked two steaks, one for me, but I’d already had dinner. So she put it on a plate in the now cold oven, left it there for two days at room temperature and then reheated it and ate it. I was incredulous. No, she didn’t get sick but I couldn’t believe it.
No, her cooking did not inspire confidence. (I’m obsessive about food hygiene.)
My elder niece and her hubbie lived and worked in Hanoi for several years, I’m not sure how but they knew the safe restaurants to eat at. There was a large supermarket where they could buy safe food too. The biggest risk to life and limb there are the drivers, who make French and Italians look sedate.
They invited me to visit but I wasn’t the least bit interested, especially as I hate high humidity.
You obviously don’t eat game, then. (Hint: you hang it until it starts to rot and then cook and eat it.)
Back in BBS days, we had a get-together with a couple dozen guys who ran BBS with their spouses/GFs/SOs. The host was Jim Wilson, who’d served in Nam with the Green Berets. The main dish was his famous road-kill chili. Nearly all of the women thought he was kidding, but I’m sure all the men knew he was dead serious. I asked him later what had been in it. IIRC, it was a rabbit, three squirrels, a possum, and one snake.
The nice thing about road kill is that it’s pre-tenderized.
Oh, and I think there might’ve been a cat in there, too.
Ah yes, the fabled spec ops snake-eater tales live on. I’d rather have a ham sandwich or a pbj sammich, thanks anyway. And the ham is the better if it is genuine and has been well-aged to the point of green and then black mold on the outside.
Breaking nooz from FT just now, and Greg should be happy:
Breaking News
Gillard beats Rudd to stay Australian PM
Julia Gillard soundly defeated Kevin Rudd in Monday’s internal leadership vote, with more than two thirds of Australia’s ruling Labor party voting for the prime minister.
Ms Gillard won 71 votes to 31 for Mr Rudd, who quit as foreign minister last week to mount a challenge against the woman who replaced him as prime minister 20 months ago.
A friend of a friend is a gun/survivalist nut and once provided me and the friend with kangaroo tail soup, make with kangaroo he’d shot himself. I didn’t particularly care for the taste but I do very much like kangaroo steaks. But since I buy them at butchers/supermarkets I assume that they’ve been processed hygienically.
Yes, I’m one of those people who don’t usually indulge in roadkill, at least not knowingly. But I’ll never forget a conference I went to in Adelaide in 1994. The main dinner featured lean kangaroo, emu and crocodile. Just wonderful.
Ahh, the lovely Julia kept her job. I wonder what the caucus members who voted for her will say after the train wreck they suffer at the next election. According to the opinion polls they’re heading for slaughter under Ms Gillard, but Kevin was seen as a winner.
The thing that bothers me the most is that the ALP is beholden to the Greens and a few independents from conservative seats. Those three independents are all heading for oblivion at the next election. Meanwhile, we’ve got a National Broadband Network being rolled out at a staggering cost, a Carbon Tax to accelerate Global Cooling ™ and various other sweeteners to entice thr Greenmailers, who would never have supported the Liberal/National Coalition anyway.
In 2010 I didn’t care who won, but now I simply can’t wait for the next election. Dave, you’d like Tony Abbot…
Tony Abbot? A quick Wikipedia search reveals you are probably correct, sir. “doorstop interviews”?
One thing though that sticks in my craw; even the people I can stomach have all kinds of skeletons in their nasty little closets; pols always have some kind of crap in their past or current lives that throws a pall over anything else they have done or are doing.
The thing I thought you’d like is that Tony is a good Catholic. Of course, he and the (good Catholic) girlfriend in the Seventies played Vatican Roulette in the sack.
I defrost meat by leaving it in the fridge for however long it takes to defrost. I don’t like or trust microwaves for cooking.
I won’t try to thaw anything in a microwave either. For fairly rapid thawing I have had great luck thawing things in water. Obviously it has to be sealed, but a plastic zip-top bag can take care of that, but get the air out. Use a good sized pan with lots of cold tap water. I find I often have to put something on top to keep it submerged. Be aware that the pan will get condensation on it, so put it where that won’t matter. It would go quicker if the water circulated but even without that it goes pretty quickly, and you have to leave it for a long time before it actually gets warmer than refrigerator temperature.
OFD wrote: “One thing though that sticks in my craw; even the people I can stomach have all kinds of skeletons in their nasty little closets; pols always have some kind of crap in their past or current lives that throws a pall over anything else they have done or are doing.”
But we all have these, don’t we? Looking for a pure and saintly knight to save us all is a fool’s errand. Affairs, collegiate drug use, drinking and driving or speeding, are all minor league “crimes”, and who here can honestly claim they have done none of these? Well, I never cheated on my wife, and I didn’t attend college…
I suspect it’s a holdover from the Puritan days…
What I’m beginning to realize is ALL of our leaders are puppets, and it doesn’t matter what party, or which persona is “in charge” because they just aren’t. The corporations are. This is real life, and there aren’t any White Knights. This is where Huxley begins to gain speed and catch up to Orwell. We even have the “right” CEO to deify now that Steve has passed on. How long until someone says “So help me, Job!” or “I swear, by Job”?
Well, there was Steve JobS and then there was Job. Which would you rather sit down and have a nice Kanadian lager with? Preferably outside a whale’s gut…
Sorry, must have had the biblical Job in mind when I was typing, for of course it is Jobs.
Fine then, since I can’t edit it, how long until someone swears by Jobs?
And I would rather share the beer with Job, quite frankly.
Job? Whale gut? Do you mean Jonah?
Oh crap, yeah, Jonah. Job was the dude with all the troubles. Old man’s brain-freeze or short-circuit or whatever. Shit, now I will be excommunicated…while Plastic-Face Pelosi stays on and keeps giving her public interpretations of what the Church is supposed to think and do. And the other two asswipes, Santorum and Gingrich, give everyone a similar false impression of the Catholic faith.
This is when I’m glad I’m an atheist, no worries about excommunication over a small error in Biblical comprehension.
You’re full of surprises. I thought you would have liked Santo, who was born the same day as me.
Santorum and Gingrich are the kinds of Catholics who give the rest of us conniptions, braying like jackasses over stuff that is low on our bucket lists, believe me. Howzabout ending the damn wars? Only guy who even brings it up is Paul, and the media won’t even report his existence. Howzabout shutting down illegal immigration? Or putting banksters and other frauds in chain gangs? Etc.
Gingrich is a convert, and the reason given is that his little concubine that he finally married, you know, one of the platinum-blonde plastic hairdo Stepford Wives that these pols seem to collect, pressured him into it. Plus he probably figures it’s some kind of great political angle for him somehow, because all he cares about is Newt, first, last and always.
Santorum is a bullshit artist carny barker type and a class-A hypocrite.
Send that Tony Abbot guy up here, maybe I can talk some sense into him. Also some of them buxom sheilas I keep hearing about…don’t be a selfish prick and keep ’em all to yerself, ya buggers…