Heart-rending tales of woe

The average cost of a wedding fell $6,000 last year as brides confronted a deepening recession.

Heart-rending tales of woe. Can no longer drop a week's salary on a purse! Realized she wasn't really a Disney Princess! Paid $900 for a dress, which was the same as a prom dress! ($900 for a prom dress?!) I've never been to a wedding where the run-of-the-mill guests weren't served sheet cake...

I suspect if the economy was good, they'd be recycling the "your wedding is bad for the planet!" theme. Out-of-town relatives emit evil carbon dioxide, honeymoon travel is selfish, fresh flowers take food out of the mouths of Third World babies, etc.

Heh.

From Iowahawk's Flickr:


(I responded to an ad today for a "competent software engineer." I'm not sure what to make of their inclusion of that qualifier...)

Metaphors

I believe it was Dogbert who said "Stupid people exist to amuse the rest of us."

That tattoo you think says "Hope"? It means "a period of time."

Yup.

Last night I finally watched Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, a film of interviews in 2001 with Traudl Junge, who lived in his bunkers, took dictation from and ate meals with Hitler, and was present during his last week in Berlin.

He never had any sense that he was a criminal destroying a nation, he thought he was pursuing lofty ideals.

And I think it's also the case that if you value and respect someone you don't really want to destroy the image of that person...you don't want to know, in fact if disaster lies beyond the facade.

Is someone dumping meth in the Capital water supply?

I applied for a job in Des Moines this morning--there's an airport in Des Moines, at least, and real pork tenderloin sammiches--and now I'm rethinking this whole "moving back to Iowa" thing. Apparently Iowans have gotten really stupid since I left.

The state senate wants to give Iowa's Electoral College votes to the "national winner"--whether or not that individual has the majority of the votes in Iowa.

It looks like a flat-out attempt to circumvent the U.S. Constitution:

"If states that represent a majority of electoral votes in the country pass this compact, we can get a national popular vote without Congress, without a constitutional amendment, without any of those folks," [Senate Majority Leader Michael Gronstal--who apparently has no party, or else the Register assumes anyone reading their paper from another part of the county automagically knows he's a Democrat] said.

Yeah, the organized fraud assures no one I vote for will ever win the state's electoral votes anyway, but at least there used to be a thin veneer of legitimacy about it. The state may not have gone to the guy the legal residents with U.S. citizenship wanted, but at least they had numbers to back it up.

Bigger than Jesus!

More "would be funny if it wasn't so damn sad."

One lady got up and told him she needed a car and a new kitchen. The Teleprompter Kid told her to talk with his staff after the show and sure enough, some rich friend of his gave her a house! I thought I was watching Oprah instead of Obama!

Heck, Jesus himself only gave out fish sandwiches.

I'm going to steal that last line.

More:

Notice how hardly anyone clapped when Obama declared that "nobody wants unemployment insurance -- they want a job."

The only thing that surprises me is that people are surprised by this.

Heh.

This cracked me up, although it shouldn't, because it's really very sad.

”Economy Crashes, Cupid Hardest Hit.”
Can you imagine the sheer horror of going to a park with your family and then facing the additional horror of having to watch a talkie with them?

As the comments note, if it's a treat that they're spending a day with the toddler, she probably has an awful life, mamma's diamond necklace from Tiffany notwithstanding.

I had time to craft fabric valentines by hand for my niece and nephews instead of buying them, is how I'm spinning it. (The cards didn't turn out like the image in my head. But kids under two won't notice, and the preschoolers like postcards of Milwaukee because it's MAIL! With THEIR NAME! so any card will be a win.)

Aha!

Got a letter today from my bank--dated the day after I called to report my stolen info--informing me that there was a "security breach" at a New Jersey company that "processes credit and debit card transactions for merchants" and my card "may be compromised."

"Fraud occurs in very few instances." My ass.

Does it matter when we're all doomed anyway? *srednop*

Political Art for Freedom of Speech

Saw this on Big Hollywood.



Alvillar's work didn't really do anything for me when I saw it in ARTNews--I remember wondering what the flags meant, I'll have to look again--but I appreciate his sentiments in this video.

...and now I wonder why conservative artists have such lousy websites.

Sweet Barack Obama's waffle...

There are children I used to babysit on Facebook.

Posting pictures of their legal drinking and illegitimate children.

Have I mentioned that I regret wasting my life reading books and going to college?

I think I need more to do.

My brother sent me an interesting article from Medford, OR about some old ladies volunteers from the American Sewing Guild making neck and helmet coolers for his National Guard unit as they get ready to deploy.

Warning: Don't read the comments. Lot of assholes in Oregon.

The coolers and the pads contain polymer beads the size of grains of rice that swell when they absorb water. The soldiers need only soak the flat strips of cloth in water to turn them into cold, round sausages or cool helmet pads.

I want some of these beads...

My brother has a friend who does custom sewing semi-professionally making him some stuff, and promised me digital camo scraps when she's done. Bwahahaha.

Uh...

“You need to realize that there’s no stigma about being unemployed,” says Sue Ross, who recently lost her job in customer relations at WageWorks.

...see, I think that's one of the things that's wrong with our culture. There should be some sort of qualifier on that--between jobs, laid off recently, caring for family (children, elderly, sick) instead of working for a wage*, etc. The fact that there's no stigma attached to being "long-term unemployed", refusing to learn new skills, using a disability to avoid seeking other types of work you can physically perform, choosing to gestate multiple fatherless babies instead of working, etc, does not improve individual lives or society at large.

I did appreciate the links to resume-writing and job goal worksheets. Now, if someone could tell me what sort of new programming language/skills I should be learning in the interim...

* Traditional women's work, back before American women were expected to work for wages. I'd prefer to be living like that, but alas, ugly women with healthy elders don't get that choice.

Portland Nature/Scenery Photos

Portland Rose Garden, Japanese Garden, and some waterfalls and vistas along the Columbia River. I'll get to the city photos later...

I'm surprised it took this long.

Dissent is no longer patriotic.

Will there even be a United States of America by the time we get a chance to vote this asshole out?

Starting to get entertaining.

Shepard Fairey arrested on outstanding warrants. Which is apparently part of his anarchist-lite schtick, and of course they don't say what the warrants are for.

I'm having a good laugh at the people who think some conspiracy of evil corporate Bushitler fans made some calls and had him taken out.

OTOH, I'm getting more and more disgusted by how many adult-age people think vandalism is awesome if you call it "street art."

Taking a break from making calls about my stolen identity

If I was working, I would totally buy the Obama Playing Cards from the PeoplesCube.



Maybe someday...

(Frightening that Saul Alinsky looks a little like Lombardi when you flatten him into two colors.)

Well, at least I'm keeping busy.

Someone obtained my debit card number, address, and e-mail address and made a bunch of charges since Tuesday. Kids, probably, since they're buying acne cream, tooth whitener, and memberships to tuition grant information websites. Fraud charges look nice on college apps, don't you think?

The bank is making me call all these companies myself, which irritates me, but they've given me some additional useful information to pass along to the police. (I was motivated to file a police report because they created an e-mail account with a username similar to mine for the purpose of signing up for this crap--trying to rip me off is one thing but violating my personal space like that something else altogether.)

*sigh* I wonder if I dropped a printout at PDX or something. I was really too sick to notice.

Get the popcorn...

Corporate MSM vs the socialist-chic cult. Kind of like a Hawkeye-Bugeaters game.

AP alleges copyright infringement of Obama image

Actually, I think I want the AP to win, because I'm very uncomfortable with the concept that it's acceptable to steal intellectual property to benefit politicians or government:

Robin Gross, an intellectual property attorney who heads IP Justice, an international civil liberties organization, believes that Fairey had the right to use the photo, saying that he intended it for a political cause, not commercial use.

"Fairey's purpose of the use for the photo was political or civic, and this will certainly count in favor of the poster being a fair use," said Gross, based in San Francisco.

Not really in a politics-blogging mood.

I'm back from Portland, I seem to have picked up some sort of viral GI thing best left undescribed, and I'm increasingly depressed that I wasted the past twenty years reading and working and traveling instead of mindlessly pumping out fatherless babies at taxpayer expense.

Here's a picture from Multnomah Falls:


Blogger really seems to be messing up image dimensions lately.

Lichen

Photo taken in the Columbia River Gorge.