This MUST be another Dhimmicrappic GOTV ploy:
“What’s that you say, sonny?”
“I’m too old to understand this,” is an attitude I run across from time to time in, naturally enough, older people. (Here I am in my 60s talking about “older people” *sheesh*) It’s an attitude that seems to say, “I’m all finished living. I have nothing more I care to learn,” or worse, “I died a few years ago. My body just hasn’t caught up with me yet.”
If I ever get that old, just shoot me.
NYC: “Oh, noes! How will Obama get me to the polls?”
The yellow line in the pic below is about 4′ down, in the “well” where the subway trains run.
OTOH,
Meanwhile, in a New Jersey front yard…
Yep. Shark.
[audio:http://www.thirdworldcounty.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Mack-the-Knife-Bobby-Darin-clip1.mp3](OK, so the “shark in NJ” is a photoshop. So? It still gave me an excuse to post a Mack the Knife clip. *heh*)
It’s a Tough Job, But Someone Has to Do It
Had an email from someone asking for help making a decision about a particular personal service (health-related). Since my knowledge about the topic is about 40 years out of date, I did what anyone who’s not room temperature would do nowadays: I typed search terms in a search bar and pressed “Enter”.
Sent the first two links that looked as though the articles were well-researched. Got an email back: “Wow! This was helpful. Thanks.”
Now, this isn’t a post denigrating the original asker for not doing a simple search. No, I’m just noting a mindset that doesn’t think first of what a marvelous resource the Internet is, or perhaps feels overwhelmed by the amount of information available and hasn’t spent time and effort learning some filtering techniques (or just doesn’t know how to go about developing those techniques).
I admit, my mind’s a bit odd. I grew up reading a LOT of books. No, more than what you think is “a LOT”–much more. And about half of the books I read were non-fiction, often reference works (dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, etc.–yes, read for entertainment), so I developed the mindset of checking references and instinctively look for well-referenced, well-organized, well-thought-out non-fiction. (That doesn’t mean that I write that way here all the time, of course. This is a blog, after all, a place for “the voices in my head” to give a shout out to each other. *heh*)
Add to that too many years in academia, working with my Wonder Woman through a couple of her masters degrees in library/reference/media, and I find it pretty easy to filter out B.S. or even just poorly-sourced, poorly-researched articles on the web.
I wonder how many folks are like my respondent, though–either unable to do such quick web searches (for whatever reason) or who feel daunted by the task of filtering the results?
The Most Arrogant Man in the World
Comes very close to saying it all…
http://youtu.be/Aqxl9qiFonc
Tightwad Confessions
Sometimes, tightwaddery results in… alternate “expenses”.
Example: the two hours I spent getting a communications issue straightened out this afternoon/early evening.
OK, the tightwad part: since I do not very much like to talk on the phone (missing visual cues, etc.) and I have NO desire to be connected wherever I am 24×7, but I do recognize the benefit of having a phone handy when I’m out and about (especially when deep in the “piney woods” backroads of America’s Third World County), I have a cell phone, but it’s sub-basic, a pre-paid, calls-only “dumb” phone.
Suits me just fine. Ever since I ditched a more expensive phone and plan, I’ve been just hunky-dory setting it to “Off” unless I want to make a call. And at $15/month for many, many (MANY) more minutes than I use, it’s just about right. Yes, there is one cheaper option, but the company that offers it doesn’t cover America’s Third World County worth spit.
And all has gone well with this lil pre-paid “dumb” phone for five years or so until today.
Entered the code to add air time/minutes and… message said to call support to complete the transaction. “WTF?!? Never seen THAT before!” thought I. So, called. Told me the code had already been used. Over the course of almost 2 hours, I finally learned that the code had been credited to the wrong phone, one with a completely different number to mine. *huh?!?* Yup.
Four different people told me they’d corrected the problem and credited my air time and all, and four different people were wrong. Round and round it went, until I finally found a service person (apparently the only one in India) who knew how to deal with the issue.
So, I have my tightwad-qualified phone for another couple of months. It does what I want it to (again) and doesn’t do what I want it to. Simple, inexpensive: just the ticket for a tightwad. But there are times… *sigh* Fortunately, this is the first such time in the years I’ve been using this thing, so “amortized” out, a couple of hours inconvenience divided by about five years isn’t all that bad, I suppose. *heh*
*tink-tink* Where Are All the OT-Style Prophets When You Really Need ’em?
[“OT” in the post title=”Old Testament”]
So, the Left Coast came briefly under a tsunami warning this weekend as a result of a 7.7 magnitude quake off Canada’s west coast. Hurricane Sandy is about to ravage the Leftist Coast (East). We need an OT-style prophet to explain to the folks in these places just what that means… (Stay home on Election Day, urm, unless you’re going to mend your ways and vote Right? *heh*)
Twit of the Day
Found while out and about, roaming The Nether Lands of Leftardism:
[From a] Facebook post by playwright-librettist-screenwriter Doug Wright addressed to Republican friends considering a vote for Mitt Romney:
“I wish my moderate Republican friends would simply be honest. They all say they’re voting for Romney because of his economic policies (tenuous and ill-formed as they are), and that they disagree with him on gay rights. Fine. Then look me in the eye, speak with a level clear voice, and say, ‘My taxes and take-home pay mean more than your fundamental civil rights, the sanctity of your marriage, your right to visit an ailing spouse in the hospital, your dignity as a citizen of this country, your healthcare, your right to inherit, the mental welfare and emotional well-being of your youth, and your very personhood.'”
No, but my taxes and take-home pay mean more to me than YOUR phony, trumped-up civil privileges, the ridiculous depravity of your claim to homosexual “marriage” or anything whatsoever to do with your mental welfare, emotional well-being or your very personhood, since you have already debased those yourself.
Have as nice a life as you can, goodball whiner. Don’t let the door hit ya where the Lord split ya.
Useless whining twit.
A Break from Politics–One Shot
So, Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” character is coming to the big screen. Sort of. In One Shot (trailer below), Tom Cruise is inexplicably cast as Jack Reacher. WTF?!?
No, seriously: WTF?!?
The Character, as established by Child in–I think–17 novels is 6’5″, 250 pounds of phlegmatic, unstoppable force. I can think of exactly NO “negotiation” (read, “Reacher utterly destroys the bad guys in hand-to-hand, or head-to-face-butt”) scene in any of the books that a guy Tom Cruise’s size could survive, let alone wreak the havoc the Reacher character does.
And then there’s personality. The quirky, birdlike Cruise twitching from one girly-voiced dialog delivery to another is hardly the image of the laconic, phegmatic Reacher portrayed in so many successful novels to date. Absolutely nothing in the trailer, for instance, seems congruent with the Reacher character in the books.
I imagine those who have never read any of the books and have a crush on Pretty Boy Cruise will enjoy the thing, but while I applaud the fact that Lee Child is going to make some big bucks off the thing, I kind of wish he’d played the part of Reacher himself. It’d have been at least a little more believable.
The Verbal Intelligence of a Trained Parrot
While I appreciate the effort my health plan providers make to keep me informed of benefits, I do with they’d hire better-trained parrots to write the notices.
“Please note that all pharmacies may not be providing… “
Really? “[A]ll pharmacies” followed by “may not”? Nonsensical*, but if the parrot were better-trained, it might have pecked out,
“Please note that not all pharmacies may be providing… “
…although the passive voice construction in this case is an abomination. A better construction altogether would have helped clarity and, probably, have avoided mocking, but then,
“For additional information about this benefit, please see the frequently asked questions on the reverse side of this letter,” would have assured loud guffaws and raucous mocking anyway. The “reverse side of this letter” was, of course, blank.
Idiots.
*Semantics (meaning) is not as sensitive to syntax in English as in some languages, but this is one of a significant class of examples where it is.