Kids asleep, wife at work. Bread needs to rise and I need to fall.
Sourdough LoungeKids asleep, wife at work. Bread needs to rise and I need to fall. 557 comments to Sourdough LoungeLeave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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I have a bruise on my heel. Ouch.
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Ouch! I bruised my heel 17 years ago and can still feel the scar tissue in there!
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Oh for fuck sake, I didn’t want to hear that.
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It was a really bad bruise, and I don’t know how I got it because I was drunk.
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Mine isn’t even that bad, its just that I have to walk on it.
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I’ve played through it for about three months, kept getting better and worse. Three months might not be what you wanted to hear initially, but compared to oblique, I’m sure it sounds better
I just saw the tagline: “Hooooooly crap I don’t even what is this but the division and winning and what” ~ whiteshoes40? whiteshoes40
I hadn’t seen that before. I love it!
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one of my favorites
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From the last day of the 2012 season, right?
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yup
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One of the best, for sure.
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What happened to her?
There’s water in the basement, and the pilot light is out.
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Please, come over to my basement.
So Kasdan is mentoring on the Episode 7 script and handling one of their standalone concepts (his rumored to be a Han Solo story). Not sure I like any of this, but at least he’s the right person for the job.
don’t you hate it when you think about what you will make your lounge title all day and then when its time to make one your forget it?
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Yes. It’s like thinking about masturbating all day and when you get home you’re too tired to get the job done.
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that’s when you enlist help
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:D
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If I HAD help I wouldn’t be thinking about masturbating now would I?
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this.
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Most likely not.
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Why wait till you get home?
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You spent the whole day thinking about what to name your lounge? That’s the most adorable thing ever!
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yes. Most of the time it is how to work Lounge into song lyrics.
Today it was AC/DC lyrics. I didn’t find a good fit
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Song lyrics are good. I also like to try with famous quotes.
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Well, hell’s bells.
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Also, sorry. I didn’t know you were making a lounge.
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I think about this most days. Most days I don’t make the lounge. Don’t worry about it.
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I feel like this isn’t the first time this has happened.
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Who creates the lounge isn’t a big deal.
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The only thing that really matters when it comes to creating a lounge is making sure your pants are off.
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I actually put pants on before I Lounged tonight.
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Whose pants?
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I don’t know. My neighbors throw things out on the sidewalk all the time. There was a loaf of French bread and some cheese a few weeks ago. Today there are onions. They are very generous people.
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Tell you what. If you think of it I’ll change the name of this one.
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He forgot the title.
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I know. If he remembers it again we can change the name of the lounge.
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I wouldn’t change a thing
I had a puppy once.
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On sourdough?
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Mmm… hush baby, hush…
Hi, sweetheart! The TC was all about salmon and sourdough in Alaska. I would have made a salmon and crab cioppino with toasted sourdough butter and parmigiano.
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i understood some of those words.
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They might have been better if they where spelled right.
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Salmon is the most over rated fish to eat.
TRUFAX!!
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That depends on which salmon you get to eat.
Live king salmon is best, of course.
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Im down with Coho, king, and loch duart, but its just so meh.
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I’m also down with smoked chum. Yum!
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im not really into smoked.
lox is better
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false.
COOKED is the most over rated fish to eat.
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naw. if you do it en papilote its great
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I understood some of those words
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its fish in a parchment paper bag with fennel carrots potatoes celery butter and wine.
Essentially the wine and butter steams the fish and creates a great jus
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It’s fish in a bag. Perfectly grilled, rubbed with salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder is better.
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Served with roasted red potatoes, with rosemary and garlic in olive oil and steamed broccoli with butter and salt.
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garlic powder is something i would not cook with.
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It’s great for smoking.
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not my style.
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FISH is the most over rated fish to eat.
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Should I be embarrassed that I still remember the bit from Desperately Seeking Susan where the cabbie is talking about getting some leftover sushi, and is asked how it was and responded “Not bad, I fried it up, tasted like fish”?
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Snerk.
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Agreed
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Lox and salmon sushi are both delicious things.
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I make my own lox. they are amazing. I think you might have had them.
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I feel like I might have actually. Have you brought them to a tailgate?
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the Holoween party
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Ah there it is.
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I made enchiladas, which was a first for me. Onions, peppers, fake chicken, and black beans (cooked with cumin, chili powder, oregano, and a bay leaf). I was mostly winging it on the recipe, so the one spot where I got a little weird was adding balsamic vinegar to the enchilada sauce (I love balsamic vinegar in tomato soup). They were delicious!
I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t dropped the suitcase.
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Well the eggs wouldn’t have cracked for sure.
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And the yolk wouldn’t have gotten on Miss Cooper’s shoes.
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Truf.
I am so happy that baseball is back.
I know an old lady who swallowed a horse…She died of course.
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She was British and thought it was a cow.
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she shouldn’t have been eating ready made meals
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Did you miss the part where she’s British?
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The British have some great chefs that I really enjoy and some impressive ethnic cuisine. No excuse
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At least she went out with a bang.
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Her last words were, “I’m raring to go.”
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Unless we’re including that horse-like neighing laugh she gave.
So, you’re trying to get this yeastless dough to rise in the fridge? That doesn’t sound likely to work ever.
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Not in the fridge. Its following the idea put out in this book which involves and initial rise, then time in the fridge, then another rise before baking. Only I’m trying to leaven it with sourdough without adding any extra yeast.
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Sounds challenging. Good luck to you.
I have to say, when the concept of the Lounge came over from **, I didn’t understand and I didn’t really like it. Now I love the lounge.
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Pretty much agree with that, and when I visited over there today there was a front-page post about people who met on ** and then formed significant IRL relationships. Not completely sure since I don’t drill down into the site but I thought it was ironic because as I understand it the atmosphere that allowed that to happen doesn’t exist anymore.
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spot on critique.
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I saw that cause either Gigs or Chickie linked it.
Then I saw 14 paragraphs about baseballgirl and like 3 sentences about Gigs and Chickie.
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BBG came to the last tailgate last year. It was hard to be civil.
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Did you put her to shame for ruining **?
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Really? I don’t agree. She was one of the main proponents for keeping AN as it was.
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She had a chance to step up and stop that bullshit and instead she backed ****. She deserves to wear that.
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Yup.
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I thought there was a real chance the guard would change at the end. It didn’t, and I haven’t been back.
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Agreed.
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She was in charge of banning me so she can go fk herself with a rusty rake.
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I don’t think it was that what she wanted you guys. In fact, I know it wasn’t. It’s time to let it go.
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If you think its the time to let shit go lynn maybe you should stop talking about it.
BBG is a horrible human being who let people attack me personally for years and then banned me when they acknowledged that I violated no rules.
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Oh dear. Okay. But BBG is not a horrible human being.
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No she is, along with being a sycophant and a coward.
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Nope. I disagree. I think she cared about all you all. I don’t really care about whether you agree with that or not. I know it to be true.
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If she cared about us and did nothing she is a coward.
If she didn’t care she is a bad person.
Which choice you prefer matters not in the assement of her.
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God, you are so black and white. And you are such a drama queen. Grow up!
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Its really simple lynn
If she cared about me as a person she would have stopped the repeated personal attacks against me.
She didn’t.
If she was a quality person she would have stopped the repeated personal attacks against me.
She didn’t.
If she cared about the site, she would have stood up to Napoleon during the exudes.
She didn’t.
She is a part of a regime that exploits peoples labor for profit.
That makes you a bad person.
Actions speak louder than your unfounded accusations against my character.
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Okay. Got it.
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You know, it’s remarkably easy to tell someone to grow up, but it’s never helpful. What went down over there, something that we all had a hand in creating got torn apart by a sycophant asshole and key people (including her)continued to support him. DFA (and several others of us) are still stung by that and we have every right to be. You want to stand up for a friend and I can respect that, but that friend also has to be accountable for their actions and not everyone here is going to particularly care whether she’s a bad person or not. And while she’s not, in the end that doesn’t change what she did and did not do when it matters.
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In retrospect, tho, we were all kinda naive to think we weren’t going to get hosed in the long run. It was just a matter of how many cuts it would take until the patient bled to death.
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Absolutely. All the signs were there. And many of us hit our limit before the true end, but yeah.
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And the way you are taking it is very immature. She disagreed with you. So what? Deal with it. Life is full of disagreements. How you deal with them shows how you deal with life shows how you are as a person. AN was a little thing. How you deal with the people of AN is way more important.
I prefer to show love to you and everyone
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In what way is it immature? We’re not whining or crying or trolling them. They’re doing they’re thing and we’re doing ours. You’re being very opinionated about something that I don’t think you’re really paying more attention to and being very judgmental about it. There’s really no reason for you to voice an opinion over any of this and yet you continue to tell people to grow up or that they’re being immature. And it’s all over something that doesn’t concern you whatsoever.
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Youre sure doing a great job of showing us love lynn
smh
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Don’t do that. I have always cared about you, and I have always showed my love for you. We can disagree about certain things, and still love each other. If that is not in your deal anymore, let me know.
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no. I was a bigger person. I hate being a bigger person.
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Haha! Please, DFA. You were never the bigger person…ever! I love you, but that is not true.
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I didn’t say a word to her when she intruded on our krautgate
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Yeah, that’s total crap, Lynn.
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appreciated dmoas
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No, it’s not. What’s total crap is the way that you all can’t seem to let anything go. It’s a blog! It’s about sports! Get over it!
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What’s important is how we all connected. We should could keep doing that.
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And she caused a fracture in that that almost irreparably damaged the relationships that made the whole thing worth it.
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We still are. They broke that connection, and they did it willfully.
That’s the entire reason FK exists, doll: to maintain the connection we all have.
They have their site now on AN, and it’s the way Blez envisioned his super duper sports blog empire. That’s cool, but it’s no longer the community that it used to be, because we are the ones that made it. We are 2 different places now, and that’s fine, but there were catalysts in the change and that need to be recognized as well.
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To say that this is about sports is incredibly naive.
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To say this is about anything but sports is totally naive. And this is where y’all have a problem.
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Bullshit Lynn. Look at the lounge. Or the DLDs. Those were rarely about sports. Most of the tailgates, the group events, the conversations. They may have been connected by sports, but to say they were only about sports is complete and utter bullshit.
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Really? You think I went to Fanfest and tailgated but didn’t go inside because of sports and not because I wanted to see you people?
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this
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I used to LOATHE the social element of **, and got quite upset when ** Day turned from Q&A sessions with top brass into parking lot tailgates. Back then, for me, it was ALL ABOUT SPORTS.
But then I started giving a shit about people on the site… First it was Bloomie, then you and BerryJo, and then a slew of others. I understood then that it was about more than sports. It was about surrogate family and friends and activity partners and mixing with people whom you may not have all that much in common other than one very big important thing, and that very big important thing is enough to glue everybody together.
If professional sports were banned today, never to return, many of the friendships and relationships forged amongst this group of people would endure, and that alone shows it’s about more than sports.
I’m a distant cousin who visits once or twice a year saying this, so it’s gotta be more true for the people who are there in the parking lot 60-80 times a year.
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You can’t discuss all the shit that we discuss(ed) and say it’s just about sports, Lynn. And it IS total fking crap to say he’s never been the bigger man when DFA just got through saying he didn’t give her any crap for what she did. THAT is being the bigger man. And yet in yours observations you give DFA no credit whatsoever while attacking the rest of us for giving a shit about a place where we all fking met and was a very big part of our lives! If not for that place, NONE of us would be sitting here conversing right now and to say that doesn’t matter is complete and utter bullshit. How many people that we care about aren’t here talking to us because they weren’t willing to move on to a new blog after all that BS over there? That still continues to affect us.
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Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m reading an emotional subtone in her argument saying that from the perspective of having seen some fucked up shit go down in her life, this little blog schism is like two hookers fighting over a john, and we should let it go like the nothing it is.
From a male perspective, I reply that there is always a constant testing of hornlocks amongst the rams to determine real-life pecking order, and this process never lets anyone slide, and nothing is ever nothing.
Maybe it’s late and this is all a bunch of gibberish and I should go to bed.
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I have no problem with her feeling the former since there’s truth in it. But if that’s the view, skip the conversation altogether and move on. There’s a reason others choose to discuss it whether the later is true or not and they (we) have every right to do so without unnecessary recriminations.
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Wow Kay. Not gibberish at all.
I have been going back and forth on saying anything here, but you hit too close to home for me not to. I’m having trouble on the homefront. And your second paragraph nails one small part of the issue. For a guy, once there is another person to be labeled “the bad guy” it doesnt matter how many times you try to say he isnt, he will be and you will consider him the enemy until it is over.
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In general it’s easier to handle a bad situation when there’s an entity (face) to focus it on. Otherwise it can really make you feel helpless.
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UGH.
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Yup. Gone. Gone and no longer allowed.
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But you allow Jenny. It’s the same thing.
The only thing that matters is how we began. Grow up.
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Huh? I allow what in the what now? ** is gone. Whatever is they’re celebrating is a load of BS because it no longer exists. That has nothing to do with me whatsoever.
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This is a bunch of bullshit. Go gloss over that a handful of people ruined something we all enjoyed somewhere else.
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I believe he was talking about lounge type posts and interactions, which is now frowned upon and/or disallowed over there — not about specific people.
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We allow everything. I think there was a failure to communicate here.
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The post is about BBG and OaktownPower, and gigs and Chickie.
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I know that; was chuckling at the subhead which leads with “So, did you know that ** doubles as a dating site?”
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Now, of course, given the new order there, it’s more of a divorce site.
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Only if you consider “dating” getting [censored][censored] in the back of an El Camino, then having to watch an advertisement for Yahoo! Sports afterwards.
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…go on
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Then some turd hammer dressed up in a goat costume comes out from behind a dumpster and slaps your mother.
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Tagline!
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Done.
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It really is a good one. I feel your tagline-a-meter has been syncing well with mine lately.
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other than a couple of ones that didn’t pass my inner “Would Kyli want to slap me for taglining this?” test.
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LMAO.
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But those guys met before, way before, and in spite of. The important thing is that they met because of their love for the A’s. Nothing else matters.
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And of course, Napoleon decides to put in this winner. What an asshole.
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When you fuck goats you need STD testing and electroshock therapy
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You forgot the lobotomy.
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I had ignored the headline (other than to notice the irony of sanctioned front page meta), but based on this I just went and read it.
Two LTRs in, what, 9 years? is nothing to be proud of. My running group boasts at least six in four years, that I know of (including my own).
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yeah, for the “largest A’s blog on the internet” its pretty sad.
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Why must I always have trollish thoughts? Havent read it yet, and most likely wont, but shouldnt someone pipe up and ask why in the heck is all of this non-Baseball stuff doing on the site? It will scare away fresh eyes…
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I’ve been very tempted…
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LOL, awesome idea
I’ll be back in a minute, the lemurs have gotten into the parachutes again.
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LEMURCONKERS
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LEMURCHUTERS!
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OMG. One night, I got so drunk on LEMURSHOOTERS I crapped my neighbor’s pants.
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That would be more impressive if you weren’t wearing those pants at the time and it wasn’t about 5 minutes ago.
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Damn. It.
What do people think about contributing to the presidential campaign fund on their taxes.
Im for public funding but I think the current system is shitacular
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I think hell no.
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I think, it’s this or more bombs. So usually I say yes. But sometimes shitacular wins, especially in a year right after all the shitacularness happens.
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Well lets be honest its a choice of my pocket or public funding for elections because its a donation. Sooooooo…. i decided to do it again like every year, but it was harder this year.
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No, that is not correct. That’s why it says right there “checking this box will not increase your taxes.” Soaker has it right; spending $3 in the fed campaign fund is $3 the feds don’t get to use for something else.
I’m surprised this is even a question for you. Public funding is the only possible antidote to the scourge of corporatocracy that our campaigns are otherwise.
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The current funding system hurts candidates that choose it. It makes things worse.
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This. I think there are better public uses of my money, because this use is fucking shitty.
The solution is to make public funding work better. Not throw money at the shitty version (or give up on public funding)
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I don’t agree with this. A message candidate like Dennis Kucinich, for instance, would never get the chance to raise issues on the national campaign stage without the federal matching dollars.
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No.
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I don’t because it’s such a farce of a system.
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Really? Absent public financing what’s left is Citizens United. I prefer to plug even one hole in the dike, regardless of how quixotic it may be.
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All the $3 diversions in the world won’t convince candidates who matter to use the system.
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Well, you seem to define “who matter” as “likely to at least win a nomination.” I’m not on board with that.
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Well we disagree about that. Until we switch to some sort of ranked choice voting system, I don’t think never-gonna-win candidates do anyone any good.
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ionno the never going to win candidates basically derailed the republican party in 12. thats a hell of a lot of good.
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That’s a poor-primary-strategy issue, not public funding.
The better example is Nader in 2000.
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I check yes, but I don’t think it makes any difference.
You’re welcome, Lounge.
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Dude. Did you just fart?
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No, you’d know when that happened.
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That’s what I thought at first too, but it turns out it was just North Korea detonating a nuke.
Hallo my large Loungelings!! What is everyone up to? Except DFA, because I know what he’s up to — making young ladies self-lubricate at the mere thought of him, even with his clothes on :P
I think I am falling in love. Where were all these smoking hot 20-something guys when I was that age? Not that I am complaining, Universe.
Did everyone who wanted to get the shit-hot Talking Heads Amsterdam 1980 concert I put up in the Grammys thread? It’s one of the ten best bootlegs I’ve ever heard and I have heard a few, with 14TB or so of music laying around here. Matrixes are the shit, where you integrate 2 different sources of the same show (here it’s a mono soundboard in the center and a front-of-house reel-to-reel stereo audience tape left and right) to make a monster jam of it, almost like a real live record in terms of depth and clarity. Plus the music is cooking with a polyrhythmic funk so deep you may have to change your undergarments after hearing it. I have done a few matrix projects and this one is so tight you can almost hear the mass quantities of cocaine disappearing up David Byrne’s nostrils :O
New link:
Heads up!
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I was listening to his new album with St. Vincent today. There is only so long you can listen to it before you will go mad. That being said its pretty good while you can stand it.
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The album has continued to grow on me the more I listen. Their show last year was the best of the three post-Heads shows I’ve seen with Mr. Byrne. The show, like the album, was a lot more conceptual, a la Stop Making Sense, although not nearly at the same level of insanity. The only issue was that certain songs (mostly St. Vincent’s songs) got totally swallowed up in a concert hall and simply became noise. But that’s an issue with the venue, not the music.
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Its interesting no doubt. The question is whether or not it is good.
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You must decide that for yourself.
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im on the fence.
as an artist. being interesting is probably better than being good. As a first time listener I would say the same thing. As a repeat listener I would say the opposite.
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I prefer St. Vincent or David Byrne to St. Vincent and David Byrne. That said, their live version of Burning Down the House was awesome.
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Agreed on the last point.
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Youth is wasted on the young.
OK, I’m back. Turns out the lemurs were only messing with the parachutes because someone had forgotten to disarm the electric fence.
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Please tell me no one pissed on it.
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None of the lemurs did, and thank goodness for that.
I don’t always hang out in the lounge, but when I do, I .. pretty much lurk because I don’t have anything terribly interesting to say. All the same, I hope everyone’s having a great evening!
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You need to speak up more. The whole point of the lounge is not having anything terribly interesting to say, but saying it anyway.
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Hmm. OK, I think I can get the hang of that.
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I second aardvark
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Aye, this.
Back when these were just coming into vogue, I was of a similar persuasion. But then I witnessed bloomie, bed and ozz do the thing they (used to) do night after night and that was that. Also, the no-pants rule helps with that.
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If there’s anyone in the world who doesn’t shut up when he runs out of things to say, it’s me.
I’ve embarked on a new diet, wherein I avoid the following: wheat/gluten, soy, dairy, eggs, pinto/kidney/navy/green beans, spelt, most nuts, and, tragically, lamb.
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why lamb?
also wouldn’t it be easier to list what you can eat?
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why?
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Feeling crappy for years, I went to a naturopath and they did a bunch of tests. This was the verdict for “foods I don’t tolerate well.”
The “can eat” list isn’t bad, though – fish/poultry, almost all fruits/veggies, oats/corn/rice are all in. Beer and whiskey are out, but wine is in (red, for sure – white apparently may contain egg whites, which surprised me, but I like red more anyway), as is tequila. Not ideal, but doable.
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For me, giving up food I love would make me feel crappy.
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You should appreciate that you’re healthy and can eat those foods you love. While there are many things I love about my life, having my gut feel like shit all the time is not one of them.
My hope is that after some time observing this diet, when my system calms down, some (most?) of these foods will make it back onto the “okay” list.
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Sorry that might have come across as being insensitive.
I more meant that I would have to feel really shitty to give up things like lamb and beer because they give me such pleasure. Im sorry your system is haywire and I hope it returns to normal.
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No, it didn’t come across that way – I took for granted being able to eat anything I wanted, for a long time, and I hope to again, that’s all; I should’ve said it that way. Thanks for the wishes; I hope so too!
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I fear that I may be headed to the same place that you are. My gut just isn’t happy and I worry its the early stages of Chron’s disease or something.
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Oh man, I hope not. You might want to think about cutting out wheat & gluten immediately, since those are the most common and obvious culprits. I did that back in 2003-2006, and while it didn’t solve the problem, I did feel slightly better.
Also, at least when I’m controlling my diet I feel like I’m doing something about it, rather than being controlled by my health. This counts for quite a bit.
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My best friend has Crohn’s, and what aggravates it varies from person to person and can even change over time. He can drink beer, but not hard liquor. Pot used to help, but now it irritates it. He can handle spicy foods, but not raw vegetables. It’s really strange.
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Raw vegetables is interesting; I’ve had a very hard time with raw veggies – especially leafy greens – in recent years. Crohn’s sounds absolutely awful. I don’t think that’s what I have; mine is a lot milder, and I’ve been tested for Crohn’s.
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Every couple of years, he goes through a bout where he ends up in the ER every few weeks for a couple of months, until he figures out some new thing that irritates his Crohn’s. It’s a nightmare, especially with 2 little kids who freak out because Daddy’s in the hospital. As I understand it, it’s basically an issue with scar tissue in his intestines. That portion of intestine can be removed and the problem solved, but insurance won’t pay for the surgery. They’ll pay all the other medical bills, though. It’s ridiculous.
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We’re not going to actually fix your problem but we’ll pay for dealing with the effects of your problem every couple of years. Boy, there’s some genius at work right there.
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I know. Insurance companies never cease to amaze me.
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Surprises me that there isn’t some recourse on that decision.
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There may be, I haven’t pressed him for details on how he’s handled it.
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Isn’t there ongoing costs post surgery after the problem is “fixed” through removal?
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There may be, I don’t know.
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Yeah, in some cases losing parts of your intestine can basically be the end of ever eating solid food again.
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It wouldn’t surprise me if it costed out to be more expensive for the on-going post surgery results than a day or two in the hospital treating it once year. Sucks ass either way and it really should be the patient’s call.
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That last sentence. If he and his doctor discuss it and decide it’s what he wants, and it means higher premiums for the rest of his life, he should be able to choose that.
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Just wow.
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Here’s hoping it works out like that.
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Ditto what DFA said; for me that would be a grievous loss.
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I feel your pain. In my case, I have much less to miss. So I at least have that.
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Less to miss because some things have always been off limits, or just less is on the off-limits list now?
Pardon my curiosity, but the input helps.
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Mostly the former. But I’m not in any way a foodie and I don’t like the texture of a lot of foods so I’m not really missing a lot of items I’d otherwise be missing if I could have eaten them in the first place.
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This is where I am with everything that was once alive. Turns out, if you don’t know what you’re missing, you don’t miss it.
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Keep an eye on the oats, corn, and rice. You may need to eliminate those, as well.
I don’t see what the problem would be with the nuts or beans, tho…
Keep us posted.
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If it makes you feel any better I have over the last few years developed an allergy to non-organic bananas, watermelons, cantaloupes, and avocados. I’m guessing it’s the pesticides. Not that I mind buying organic, but it can be a pain in the ass finding these foods in their organic editions around here.
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Pro Tip: Move.
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I’m working on it.
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Yikes. I agree with dmoas.
I’m in the middle of slowly reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and while I knew that the corn economy, pesticides and antibiotics were evil, I had no idea how interconnected they all were.
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I should probably read that.
Anyone ever watch porn and think, “Holy shit, you should have a doctor look at that”? That just happened.
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No need if they just had a nurse look at it.
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I did. And I recommend they see a doctor.
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You can’t say stuff like that without providing a link.
The San Diego chicken once bit my head. No joke.
I got offered a job watching porn. That’s nice.
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Is it a work from home gig?
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How’s the pay
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It comes and goes…?
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:O
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You got offered a job that involved watching porn, or you got offered a job while watching porn?
Just did my taxes! Im getting 1900 buck back.
Im trying to decide what to do with it. They offer you Type I bonds that you can buy with your refund. Im trying to decide if that was a good deal or not. I also have some debt I could buy down. I also want to do some actual investing. Thoughts?
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Debt, unless somehow your investments or bonds are going to grow at a higher rate than the debt.
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This is what I was thinking. Also paying off my car rather than the lower rate college loans because theyre tax deductible.
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I mean it may not be the best financial decision but I try to pay off all my CC debt as fast as possible.
Course, then I blow out a tire a week after I pay off 1800 bucks and have zero balance on my card, and have to put another 650 bucks worth of tires onto it. LOL.
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I’ve never had a credit card.
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I don’t own a credit card. And don’t believe in consumer debt. A mortgage or student loans yeah. CC debt? nope.
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That’s pretty much where I stand too. I did (and would) take on a car loan. And I did take student loans. And I do have a mortgage. But i have never had any interest in a credit card. If I can’t pay it outright, I can’t afford it.
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I have a car loan. I have student debt.
I do want to get a cc so that I can improve my credit tho. I closed accounts that i wasn’t paying off on time in college. Apparently while that is the responsible thing to do in real life its terrible for your credit.
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Yeah, my mortgage credit is enough for me. If my credit doesn’t look as pretty as it could be, meh. It’s not like I’m seeking to use credit anyway.
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I would eventually like to move in with a gorgeous girl who lets me cook for her
That requires credit.
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Well sure, you don’t have the house yet, so credit kind of does matter for you much more than me.
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How do you improve your credit by having a credit card?
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By keeping your outstanding balance very low relative to the amount of available credit; i.e. if the credit limit is $5K don’t let the balance get to more than $1K.
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So that is better than not needing a credit card at all?
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Yes. Establishing a record of responsible use of credit is better for prospective lenders to see than having no record of ever using credit at all.
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OK, that actually makes some sense
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A lot better. And as you successfully take on and discharge debt it snowballs. After I got my first car loan and had about a year of payments under my belt institutions wanted to lend me all kinds of money.
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The system itself is incredibly stupid.
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Well, I would never actually carry a balance from month to month and pay interest, and in fact I get $0.0166 worth of Southwest Airlines points in rebate for every dollar I charge (more than that for certain purchases). But yes, somebody like you who pays cash for everything pays higher prices to support the processing fees.
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I wouldn’t condemn it quite that completely…you trust people with loans who’ve proven they can handle debt responsibly. Before I went to college my dad told me to go to Sears to buy something I needed…a jacket, as I recall…and to take out a store credit card for the purchase, then pay it off when the first bill came. That was my entry into the world of good credit.
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My first bit of advice on building credit was to get a card and use it for something that you always purchased — say, gas — and pay it off every month.
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To me there’s two ways you should be able to show you’re a good bet. 1) You’ve taken on debts and effectively paid them off. 2) You’ve avoided extending yourself beyond your means so that you didn’t require debt and by doing so proven you’re capable of effectively managed your money. #2 basically has zero bearing in the system which is stupid. #1 puts too much weight on commercial debt and not enough on long term debts like car loans or mortgages. I get credit for the latter, but I shouldn’t be knocked for not having a credit card if I’m showing I’m capable of managing my finances so that I can both pay off a large loan and not put myself into more debt while doing it. Someone who pays off the credit card month-to-month is more risky (in my opinion) since they could accumulated debt and THEN be suddenly unable to pay it off whereas someone who has no credit cards could suddenly need one temporarily but has no current debt to compete with. I’m not saying you shouldn’t get credit for maintaining credit, but I am saying the system is broken if I don’t get credit for not having debt.
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Someone making their living exclusively off cash from poached recyclables also lives a debt-free life. The avoidance of debt doesn’t unto itself say anything about a person’s credit worthiness.
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And that’s way they ask for pay stubs. Having continued debt just for the sake of debt doesn’t tell much either in grand scheme of things. Great, you can collect debt all month and then pay it off. Doesn’t mean you could do the same for bigger things.
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No but collecting debt and then paying it off on time proves you actually CAN do it.
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I never denied that. Nor did I say that that shouldn’t be counted either. But take me for example. I have a mortgage, pay it off on time. So I’ve A) proved I can handle debt and B) proved that I can pay it off. But my score would be better if I took out a credit card and accumulated even more debt for the sake of debt. That to me is just stupid. I’ve had a student loan, a car loan, and a medical loan all paid off as well, all before taking on the bigger house loan, but because I don’t take on a credit card, my score is lower than it could be yet I’ve already proven I can handle the debt I’ve taken on and done so without over extending myself and putting the credit company at risk.
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I think that would fall under the amount of available credit you have, wouldn’t it?
I may be wrong in the way its looked at, but loans are different than credit cards to me. One is a fixed payment for a fixed amount of time, the other can vary.
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Not sure. I do know I’ve been told that as good as my score would be, it would be even better if I maintained a credit card which to me is BS. To me, there should be two separate scoring mechanisms. One based on short term loans and no based on long term. If that were the case, I should be very high on the latter and very low on the former and I’d entirely okay with that. But if you’re going to merge them together, it shouldn’t balance out like that.
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Disagree that #2 isn’t in there. When I graduated from law school with $###,### in debt, my credit scores were low because of it.
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That’s more to being over extended in debt than it is having no credit. There’s correlation, sure, but it’s not quite the same thing as being credited with not having debt. It’s not much better than saying #2 is there because I failed to pay my debts and have low scores from that.
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But I didn’t fail to pay any debts. The system was (fairly) judging that I was pretty overextended, and would not be a good credit risk for additional loans.
I understood that to be your point.
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No, I’m fine with that part. The amount of debt you currently have should absolutely factor in. My problem is the debt you’re not taking in via not having credit cards factoring in when you have other debts, but aren’t over extended going against you.
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Above, DFA alluded to one of the stupidest parts of the credit rating system — cancelling a credit card, even if you haven’t been using it and don’t owe any money, has a large negative impact on your credit rating.
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Which is why I have 4 credit cards with a total credit limit of something like $40K. I went for the best deal at the time, then something better came along. I never even reach 10% of that credit limit. I’ll use the 3rd and 4th cards a couple times a year at the gas station just to keep the accounts from being completely dead.
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Yeah, I have an old credit card that is up to like a >10k limit, but I only use it to autopay my netflix bill.
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It was funny watching American Express keep giving me higher and higher limits. I think at one point they had moved the limit up to something stupid like 25K. I think it’s down to like 7 or something now.
I think the most I’ve ever had on it at one time was like 6K. We got hella Costco money back that year. LOL.
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Wow, I think I have 4K or something on mine. I don’t think I ever went above a thousand, though
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That said, AMEX sends those 0% interest for 12-18 months (but a 4% fee upfront) deals, which are far and away the best short term financing you can get.
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Because it changes the ratio of available credit you have, right?
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Yes, that’s exactly it. If I have two credit cards, each with $10K limit, and my balance is $5K on one and zero on the other, I’m using 25% of my available credit. If I just close out the zero-balance account, now I’m using 50% of my available credit.
One good reason to close an empty account would be if you had a no annual fee card and then the bank tells you they are going to start charging you $60 a year for the card (which is exactly what Citi did a while back).
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length of accounts is one of the biggest factors. This is because if you are applying for new credit, they want to make sure that it isn’t because you are about to do something stupid, like open 8 accounts to live off of, or because your financial situation has changed. If you have had one account a million years it is likely you haven’t abused it.
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I don’t think that really matters that much actually
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It does help to have one account for a million years with no delinquent payments showing, but closed accounts stay on your credit report for at least 7 years after you close them and you’ll be building up a record of on-time payments in your other accounts over that time. The flip side is that if you have an account with a number of delinquent payments, but you finally straighten things out and pay it off and then close that account, the delinquencies will still be a ding against your record for the next 7 years.
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this is what happened to me. stupid 19 yo dfa
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I get confused with all of this. For example, I still have my first credit card from college, but when they wouldn’t raise my limit (despite the massive jump in income that came with actually getting a job), I opened a new one with a different company. At this point, I haven’t touched that first credit card in almost two years, but I haven’t cancelled it either. I’m never going to use it again, but I don’t know if it’s better to keep it open anyway or to cancel it. It seems like if I’m not going to use it I should cancel it, but I also hear that cancelling is not a good move, so I’ve just let it sit.
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It’s better to keep it open and not use it, or do something like set your 8 dollar netflix autopayment up to use it and then set up auto bill pay to just pay that 8 bucks off every month.
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I’ve heard the credit card company will eventually cancel it themselves if you don’t use it, so if they haven’t done it yet, perhaps I should do something like that Netflix idea. Bah, I’d rather not bother with this card at all, but there’s no fee with the card and it was my first, so I’ll do it if it’s better for my credit.
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If the credit limit on the unused card is low it probably doesn’t make much difference. Say the average balance on your bill on your new card is $2K, your limit on that card is $10K, and the limit on the college card is $2K. Closing the old one only changes your usage ratio from 16.66% to 20%. If you have a good record with the new company you might even ask them to raise your limit from $10K to $12K and then you would have no change at all.
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Basically this shit should be run by the government and the rules should be super clear.
There should be a calculator that says if i do x my credit will be affected by y
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government
credit
LOLZ.
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Credit scores.
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And credit reports. If I want to prevent anybody from looking at my report, which is an effective way to prevent people using a stolen identity from opening accounts in my name, I have to pay 3 companies $10 each to establish a credit freeze. Then, if I need to lift that freeze, say if I am moving and need to allow a landlord and utility companies to view my report, that’s another $10 to each of the 3 for lifting it.
How nice of those companies to allow me to request the information they have on me for free once a year. Of course they wouldn’t do that until about 10 years ago when Congress forced them to.
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what about them
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Not sure the government should be, but an independent entity certainly would be nice.
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I totally agree with DFA on this one. Knee jerk reactions about “government bureaucratic inefficiency” aside, is there anything good about the current rating system from the consumers side? There are 2-3 different companies that track credit ratings, creating confusion about who to even ask if you want to check on your own credit (or, heaven forbid, correct something). It’s opaque, which leads to discussions, like this very one, between people who trade credit tips based on hearsay. And these companies have incentives only to please the creditors.
On a related note, every year at tax time I get irritated that the IRS doesn’t have one, and only one, official website for e-filing taxes. Instead, you are pointed to a page with various freefile and e-file (what’s the difference?) options that may or may not be free, depending on your income. I always end up just printing the paper forms and filling them out by hand. For comparison, I do my Massachusetts state taxes through a nice website set up by the MA dept of revenue and it works great.
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That’s because tax preparers are a powerful lobby. The IRS could easily send pre-filled-out forms that would be correct for most Americans.
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The next time I see my dad, I’ll give him a hug, then give him a kick in the shins for making taxes so FKing complex.
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The nuts. Kick him in the nuts. He’s not going to need to have children anymore.
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No, no children, but he’s dating a woman that sells oriental rugs. I’d like to encourage that relationship to continue if there’s a possibility of getting rugs at a discount.
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Our society has too many tax preparers, too many prison guards, and not enough Arena Gladiators.
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Your first paragraph talks about knee jerk reactions to government inefficiency, then your second one talks about how inefficient the IRS is.
I mean… cmon.
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That’s not what I was trying to say. I think the IRS could easily make an efficient solution but they don’t because ZOMG gov’t trampling on the private sector. I think that nevermoor’s description of the situation is correct.
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Compared to private sector inefficiency Ill choose the government.
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For all the crap the government gets, private businesses really can be significantly worse.
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The government is excellent at things which would only be perverted by a profit motive (like insurance, statistical analysis, etc.)
It is terrible at doing things which require vision/creativity, because there isn’t the profit upside that you get if you’re (say) Steve Jobs.
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This is what annoys me — I want to get rid of one of my cards and switch to another with useful points, but it’s not worth the hit to my rating by cancelling the card.
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So just switch and don’t cancel the old one?
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This is what I did. Not as satisfying, but it works.
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I already have 3 credit cards. I feel like that’s my emotional limit.
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I have one credit card. It’s good for emergencies, and it’s also my Coscto card and I get rebates.
I considered getting a Discover card, because you get 5% cash back on all purchases.
I try not to ever carry a balance though.
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yeah this makes sense. have a card don’t carry a balance.
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I agree with this, but my wife is not so meticulous about it.
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I agree with this as well.
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That’s how I operate. It’s good for your credit rating and you can earn some points or whatnot. I’m happy to get a free flight for spending the money I’d be spending anyway.
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My family has a personal vendetta against Discover, so I won’t consider them. That said, I use a CC for essentially everything because the discount beats using other plastic or (worse) cash.
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Almost certainly a great decision. CC interest rates are scary
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I only ever had CC that allow you to repay the months payments in full, not in rates. Some actually don’t allow it here
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American Express used to be like that.
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Not a lot of difference between that and a debit card (which is just a draw on your bank account).
The revolving credit mechanism is a really really good thing, which is why if you get a liberal in the right mood, they might be willing to give on the national ID thing if the ID came with a very low amount of revolving credit.
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Credit cards have better consumer protection than debit cards, in the US at least.
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Which is funny because if you use your debit card as a credit card you still (as far I’m aware) are protected by that whereas if you use the debit side you aren’t despite it drawing from the same account.
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This is true. That’s part of the reason I started using credit cards in the first place. Someone did nab my debit card info a while back (and signed up for about $450 worth of World of Warcraft accounts). I was able to get it refunded and dealt with, but being potentially on the hook for all that was not pleasant.
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lol thats a lot of wow
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In some ways I’m glad they did that rather than just like one or two accounts. It was easier to show identity theft going from pretty much using my debit card for ATM withdrawals and occasional small purchases to like 15 WoW accounts or whatever all at once. I like to be able to use “I mean, come on” when presenting my arguments.
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Thank you, Miss Warren.
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The difference is that CC are sometimes only accepted form of payment (that is basically also the only time I use them)
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The advantage of universal accessibility is quite pronounced in shady neighborhoods like mine. Not a great idea to walk around with more than a few bucks in cash.
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Now seems like a shitty time to buy bonds because there’s no return. If you want to invest, do an automatic index fund instead of a managed fund or (worse) individual stocks.
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what are the advantage of an automatic index fund.
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dramatically lower fees, very similar (or better) fee-adjusted returns, maximum diversification.
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Mike is completely right. There is nothing you can invest in right now that would provide better return than paying down existing loans.
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HOLY SHIT I SHOULD BE ONE OF THOSE FINANCIAL GURU GUYS. I COULD MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS.
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Can I have $500?
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what kind of juice are you willing to pay?
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Orange?
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I’ll probably get more than triple that.
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rad
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It’s nice until all of it goes into medical costs within a month like the last two years.
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sorry dude.
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Bosnian proverb: I hope you win the lottery and spend it all on doctors
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That sounds like something… well pretty much anyone would say to me. I must be part Bosnian.
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Last year I had to pay. It sucked.
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Last year I ended up having to write big fat checks to both the Feds and the State, for the first time ever except for the year I totally cheated and had nothing at all withheld and got caught. So this year I’m not even bothering to start my taxes until April, since I’m sure I’ll be writing big fat checks again.
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what happened?
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Clearly he fought the law. And the law won.
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Nearly the same. I think I am going to be well past writing a check and may be at the point of asking how Uncle Same would like to give it to me monthly for the next year or so. I will probably do my taxes at the end of this month to figure out the damage but they will be sent in on 4/15 at 11:50 pm.
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how did that end up? I mean if you use the regular allowances and don’t free lance it shouldn’t happen no?
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Wasnt expecting a hit on some debt cancellation. Knew it was possible, but didn’t think it would actually occur. I am not happy to wear it because of what it represents, but it is totlly legit and I still prefer it to the problems I had.
Typically we get a few k back, so I figure it will eat up thaaat this year, and at the worst case I will make a few payments nd be back to normal by next year.
Good news is with Mrs. Aces business officially off the ground we have more than normal to deduct. I may be able to put that Acct degree that has been gathering dust to good use.
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Im still not sure what that means really, but good luck.
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Thank you. And yeah-I’m vague because I hate making terrible choices, and I have done more than my share of that.
Long story short-keep doing what you’re doing, listen to what everyone else has said here, and dont take any advice on $ from me (or anything else really) for a few years…
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I had to pay a pretty big chunk one year because of being on a fellowship that didn’t do automatic deductions. That was my own fault.
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I had to pay once because my boss didn’t properly deduct.
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My fiancee is getting $2900 back from the feds and hasn’t done state taxes yet. It’s the silver lining that you get for quitting your job partway through the year while simultaneously spending $20k on school.
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To answer DFA’s original question about I-bonds: those are U.S. savings bonds whose interest rate is the CPI for the trailing 6 months. You can’t cash them in for 12 months after purchase, and if you cash them in before 5 years after purchase you lose the last 3 months of interest. The interest is added to the bond’s principal and tax on that interest is deferred until the time you cash in the savings bond, at which time all of the interest is taxed.
The present interest rate is 1.76%, which will be adjusted, quite possibly downward, after 6 months. Your total return, whenever you cash them in, would be the inflation rate since date of purchase minus the tax you pay on that interest.
If you were thinking of taking the refund and putting it in a bank CD of at least 12 months, the interest on the I-bond would probably be a little bit better than what you could get on a CD. But that’s about the only situation where the I-bond option would be the right one. As stated by several above anyone with debt outstanding should almost certainly use a tax refund to pay down the debt.
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thanks
Please let there be someone that loves The Walking Dead here.
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Lots of us, but careful with spoilers, I haven’t seen to new episode yet.
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It makes me wish I still had cable, doll. :-(
I’m over a season behind on it.
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If you catch back up, the second season might (will) drag a bit, but it’ll be worth it for season 3.
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I saw S2. Missed all of S3, and didn’t S4 just start?
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Second half of S3 started.
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I do, but I’m worried about this new season.
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How so?
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I think they’re going to really emphasize some of the shittiest actors, and make a lot of stupid-but-plot-advancing decisions. But we’ll see. Last season was great.
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One would hope they continue following the course set by the graphic novel. If they end the prison sequence anything like it, it would be nearly an entirely new cast so I guess that’s doubtful. But anything’s possible.
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We’ll see. I also really have never liked Merle, who I understand is not in the comic books (and neither is Darryl, who is A+)
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Merle is there to be hated. Thankfully Darryl kind of takes the place of what Andrea should have been. She was may favorite character in the comic and least favorite in the show.
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I understand he’s a bad guy, but he’s a shitty bad guy.
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He’s a henchman who gets way too much screen time. Hopefully Glenn will get to take him out later and all will be well.
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I don’t watch it. I haven’t watched a series on telly for about 15 years. I finally gave in recently and watched Newsroom, Veep and House of Cards
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Veep was fun, I’m looking forward to the new season sometime this year.
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Veep is amazing.
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what is this veep
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Comedy (on HBO) starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the vice president. I’ve only seen a couple of episodes, but I thought it was funny. I think it’s the same people who did In the Loop, which was a similar styled take on British politics and was very good.
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Recommended.
WOW I fall asleep and the thread goes wild with recriminations and accusations! And here I thought the Freedom Riders documentary I was watching on PBS was focused on the past!
Truth be told, I feel so much better off in life without ** and those people, and have all the fun I need here where we are viewed as adults and can say what we want.
Please let there be someone that loves The Bronson Pinchot Project here.
(snerk)
Seriously tho, I love that show.
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Is that anything like Perfect Strangers?
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Yes, but it’s a home improvement show… and dude is insane.
He collects salvaged pieces of old 1800′s farmhouses and uses them to renovate other 1800′s houses in rural Pennsylvania. He seems to have an aversion to painted surfaces and likes to leave the wood as weathered as possible, even in interior spaces. He hates anything that looks modern and goes to great lengths to hide appliances behind facades and cabinetry. Plus, he’s fabulously gay, but not at all flaming, and so are most of his workmen. He comes off like Bill Murray most of the time. Great show.
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Huh. That actually sounds kind of fun.
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DIY network. 2 seasons of 6 episodes each, so far, but they repeat them a lot.
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Turning my father-in-law onto that program could be a fun test of his limits. He’d certainly like the home improvement part, and while he is likely pro-gay rights in theory, I think watching gay men doing home improvement could make him squirm a little bit, particularly if there’s anything slightly risque in their dialogue. I’d like to see what wins out.
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If he’s used to Bronson Pinchot’s schtick from Lethal Weapon or Perfect Strangers, it doesn’t necessarily come off as gay. If your dad can watch Match Game reruns, he can watch this.
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Then probably he can (and maybe does) watch it. And lest I come off as a cruel ass, my father-in-law is great, but he’s the best definition I know of a “fuddy-duddy.” Any public mention of bodily function, whether sexual or related to human waste, makes him insanely uncomfortable. Whereas I grew up in a household where excrement was a common dinner table topic, as my mom was a bacteriologist in a hospital. And sex, while not discussed regularly, was never taboo.
Mrs. PDX is much better than her family, but still occasionally apologizes when she has to talk about menstruation or other such things. I still have to remind her that it doesn’t bother me in the least bit and I prefer that she not keep things secret.
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And that appology was enough to prevent you from burning her at the stake for being a unclean witch?
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I was trying to come up with a snappy comeback about Jews not burning witches at the stake, but then I found this. Ugh. I’m glad my religion has evolved.
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Im pretty sure every religion has burned witches at some point.
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Not mine!!
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I would say that witches have never burned other witches, but then I get wind of the infighting in my pagan friends’ covens and I’m not so sure.
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We didn’t burn them, we stoned them (to death). Proceed with your joke!
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Also im not sure a religion that bans bacon, cheeseburgers, and crab can be called “evolved”
:-P
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Before I respond to your allegation, I’m gonna gargle so that you don’t smell the bean, bacon and onion chowder on my breath.
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Does that mean that you want to make out?
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Everyone wants you to make out.
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Its a difficult predicament to be sure.
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I don’t make out with unclean witches. (Goes outside to search for stones).
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I think your wife is going to find those comments offensive.
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I’m pretty sure my wife thinks that this whole freekraut business is silly and doesn’t care, or at least she thought so until I told her about ptbnl’s tickets.
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I was joking and missed the tonal intent by a mile.
:-(
I have a one funny thing a week allowance. It was already used up.
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No offense taken in the least bit. If you work really hard, though, and ask, we might up your funny allowance to two a week. (This, and the fact that Spawn1 is approaching age 6, is making me recall my first 25 cent a week allowance and how nervous I was when I requested an increase to 50 cents a year or so later), which of course was granted. 50 cents was such a big deal at the time.
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Dude. Im going to sign the Spawns up for representation so I can negotiate their allowances on their behalf. I can just hear the picket line now.
Daddy Daddy youre no fair,
treat your children like you care
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Leo, Leo, you want fair?
Pick up your damn underwear!
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Mommy, Mommy it’s no fair.
Daddy’s wearing you’re good underwear!
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Boras, Boras, why do you ignore us?
We wanna add your voice to the chorus!
DFA hasn’t got us more pay,
and no one will touch us at CAA
I don’t wanna ride the Honey Boo Boo bore bus!
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Wow. Great work, Kay!
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That hurts kay
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Child Protective Services don’t you see? what my daddy did to me. I use to be a human being, but now Im only a machine. Hey Hey Hey Hey. Ho Ho Ho Ho.
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This is gold
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*Beverly Hills Cop. No, I’m Serious! I sell it myself!
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I believe you. Those movies all run together for me.
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I LOVE IT! I started watching it over Christmas break. Now I’m back at my apartment and don’t have TV.
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It’s one of the few shows I would miss if I didn’t have cable. Auction Hunters got ruined with the pawn shop, and Auction Kings is teetering with those stupid brothers being inserted into every other episode.
Lost Girl is awesome, because it’s basically lipstick lesbian/pansexual softcore porn. I’m not really into watching it, but sociopolitically, I’m very glad it exists.
Mrs. N and I just finished watching Freaks and Geeks. Not as good as I was wanting.
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Really? I liked it.
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I thought it was great.
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Have you watched it recently? I doesn’t hold up as well as I would have thought.
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This is all I’m saying.
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Its enjoyable. But its kinda like Sportsnight where it feels kinda dated.
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Sportsnight was kind of annoying when it aired. Innovative, but annoying.
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its a little too smug.
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Yeah. It’s good in a “wow, this is where WW came from” way, not a “wow, this is great on its own” way
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Maybe I don’t understand this comment, but the show is supposed to be dated. It’s very specifically set in the early 80′s.
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Yeah, but it still hasn’t held up well over time.
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the pizaz isn’t there because its no longer unique. its like watching the effects from the old star wars/trek. they just arent special anymore.
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It was probably 4-5 years ago.
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That’s about when I watched it too. I definitely enjoyed it then.
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I haven’t watched it since it aired, but part of the pleasure back then was in the fact that it was so much better and realer than anything else on TV at the time. That wouldn’t be as true today.
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I endorse this statement
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I also had the hots for Linda Cardellini. Still do, really.
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word
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she is super hot.
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It’s important to put one’s contextual glasses on when revisiting edgy art of the past.
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I was going to say that this is relevant to the Talking Heads discussion above, except that the Talking Heads slay by the standards of any era.
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eh im not giving up my hipster glasses thankyouverymuch
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Fair
Dear Nurse Jennifer, I hurt my toe, please advise. :(
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Cut it off. I can do it for you if you’d like, let me just grab some scissors.
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I can get you a toe by 3 o’clock this afternoon. With nail polish.
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Find a hot guy with a toe-sucking fetish. Saliva has antibiotic qualities.
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I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
However, there is a corollary. A female dominance fetish would work just as well as a foot fetish in this instance, because the toes would be just as sucked, even though the motivation is different.
FSU,
hey, no time to stick around or do a proper search in case it’s already being talked about here… i’ll come back later to see what you say. big question, and i’m wondering if you have any insight, and if you want to share it with us.
couple of weeks ago oakland OK’d paying an additional 250K of city money for a year of police consultation that will surely come back with the following recommendations: 1) hire more cops (probably from out of town, so that they can properly do their job of cost-effective savage-keeping in the city jungle without personal feelings or the sticky ethics of being on a first-name-basis with your target getting in the way, but that’s only my personal bent on it and you can ignore it for the sake of this question) and 2) hire us again to consult on hiring more cops, < --- does city hall / *how* does city hall reconcile that with ----> the $644K of federal money for job training that they have to give back due to non-use? especially when, lemme check again, oh yes, policing is a job and people have to be trained to do it, yes, especially when they *could* use that money to recruit and train oakland-local police officers, even hire a few, maybe engaging in an era of community-responsible policing, where the guy or gal walkin’ the beat is also your neighbor and will talk to you as such and you will talk to them as such. does the city NOT see this as two sides of the same issue? really, totally puzzled as to the thinking. and i realize there are hoops to jump through with “free” money, so that, no, probably you can’t just channel a few hundred extra K straight into community building, but if it’s emergency money and this is an emergency… WTF?
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A recommendation to “hire me to do even more work” is included in the report back from roughly 93% of all consultants hired by anyone, for anything. Doesn’t necessarily make the rest of their recommendations worthless. Bratton was hired to develop an immediate-term crime reduction strategy, more about the deployment patterns and practices and priorities of the beat cops. I’m sure he’ll say Oakland needs more cops, but that’s the overwhelmingly popular common wisdom in Oakland these days. Whether he has tactical suggestions which can meaningfully help reduce crime is the big question. Because the crime is really bad, at a time when most cities are doing much better.
The job training grant was to hire people just out of prison; re-entry employment is by far the most important factor in reducing recidivism rates. That grant couldn’t have been used to hire cops, obviously.
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well first of all, thanks, that’s just what i needed. the calm voice of someone who sees this daily to unhype me a little (i do declare these days, this early era of political facebooking, the instashallow indignation age ((sigh, jazz age was so much catchier…)), and i’m right there with the guiltier parties.). it lets me get rid of some baggage, the bad examples, the garden paths in the discourse.
like, for example, i probably came off like i didn’t think the city needs the consulting company bratton works for. i think it does need advice, from police pros on tactics (among other recommendations from other groups that i hope don’t just exist in my imagination, such as some kind of cultural/statistical think tank holding proof that cops being nice is better than not.). and i think we do need more cops too, i wasn’t saying we didn’t by alluding to the recommendation coming back like that. i’m just saying it’s most obvs they’re going to say that. like the hire-me-back, which is obvious too and doesn’t invalidate the other recs.
and i know that i’m spouting off unsupported sentiments about how to do policing, not ever having seen any numbers or evidence that a neighbor cop would be less, um, coppish (?) than one from over the hill. but i only bring those up because i’m scared of the immediate-term tactics you say they’re addressing, these other recs. and sure, i totally get that there’s an immediate need, but i really hope the recommended tactics aren’t bogus (since this company is on its second term with the city, are they the ones who came up with the 100 block thing?) and especially, i hope they don’t pick immediate-term solutions that don’t jibe with long-term ones (not to say these consultants are necessarily nearly the same, and i’m not saying they’re not, but i kinda suspect the riders also thought they were addressing an immediate need…).
but the funny part is that if i was spouting off some unlikely stuff about using earmarked money for something else that would cure crime in some unsupported rosy colored dream of neighbor lambs and lions laying together, the real purpose of the free money they apparently passed on for bureaucratic reasons seems even more directly connected to the problem they’re trying to solve by spending the city’s own money on the other end. so while i’m more less-baggage about it, i’m even less more-understandy about how they can do that!
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The employment grant was botched to be sure.
The problem with cop consultants is that you actually have to implement their plans. That’s the part OPD hasn’t been so good about in the past. Bratton has a strong rep, though (nothing to do with 100 blocks), so there’s a decent chance his recs will have some legs.
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oh, i bet they implement some of the cooler recs. like, i’d bet 50 bucks there was a rec last year about buying the biggest SUV they could find in black with tinted windows.
thanks, FS.
but also:
http://www.baseballcardvandals.com
So tonight Im going with my grandma to go see Al Gore after going to see Jeb Bush.
I wonder when Gary Hart is coming to town.
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Depends on when Donna Rice is in town.
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FK that, y’all need to see Deukmejian.
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I would need to be able to spell that in order to make that joke
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Not gonna lie, I had to Google it.
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You and Gary Hart could totally got out looking for chicks together.
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now that would be fun
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Until Clinton showed up.
OBLIGATORY
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That twitter photo of him looks like a beardy Chris Pratt. I approve.
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Your mother was a snowblower!
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If you didn’t say it, I would have.
Al Gore in a nutshell: We are controlled by short term thinking and shitty power structures and are on the brink of destruction, but the internet and reason will save us.
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Obviously, since the Internet was his invention.
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He wrote the legislation that allowed for the modern internet to exist so yes he did create it.
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I know, but at the same time, since I’m closely related to one who did a lot of work on the internet in its early days, I always like making fun of Gore, even though he didn’t actually claim to have invented it.
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How about saying that he played a significant role in accelerating the development of internet, instead of saying that he “created” it?
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It would not surprise me to learn that Al Gore actually believes we’re beyond saving.
I can’t believe I’m the only one on here watching the Westminster Kennel Club finals. Is it a replay and all y’all dog lovers have already seen it?
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I love dogs. I also wouldn’t watch that show if my life depended on it.
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I’m 1 for 2 on that front.
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Me too!
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I feel the same way about kids and dogs. I have a lot of love and respect for those who care for and treat their dogs/kids well, but a lot of people that have dogs and/or kids should have neither.
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Truf.
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agreed
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Let’s you and me reincarnate two or three lifetimes down the road as a midwestern pioneer couple in the 1840′s. We can do lots of roleplay in the bedroom while we breed our eight or so kids, and write erotic journals that will be discovered by distant descendants and published in the 2040′s, reading much like the contemporary fantasy romance of the day. We’ll get mad retroactive historical props, like Guided By Voices or Magnus Hirschfeld.
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I mean that sounds pretty good but Im pretty sure I would die of dysentery on the way out there.
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You’d have to be kind of a dirty kid to build up the proper immunities, but it would pay off in the prime of your life. You do realize we’d be bathing quarterly, right?
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If it makes you feel any better, I’d die of dysentery, a gun shot wound, the plague, and tripping over my two feet while we were buying the gear.
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Thank you for getting it.
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I think most of us got it.
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If you did, your joke would have been about fording the river.
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My joke was putting the cripple boy dying before you even select the what you’re going to buy from the start Fort.
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That shit is gross tbh. Kennels and super breeding is not something i support
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This. The first dog I had came from the Humane Society, and the second one from a lab rescue organization.
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first was out of the back of a pick up, the second was a breeder accident
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Oh hell, I love the mutts, but it is pretty fascinating to see the variety of dogs, all fine specimens. And the announcers, while not quite at the Fred Willard level of Best In Show, do make some pretty funny snarky comments.
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Agreed there–dogs are amazing creatures. I love the variety!
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It is a replay of earlier this evening, so don’t look at the front page of SFGate if you don’t want to know…
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I’m pissed off at Westminster for dumping Pedigree as their sponsor because Pedigree’s advertisements (where they advocate for adopting shelter dogs) are “too depressing.” Shame on them.
He shall, from Time to Time…
I tried to celebrate Mardi Gras. I bought beads and I got drunk. Not one boob was shown. That’s 10 bucks I’ll never see again.
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Sometimes you have to shoulder the load yourself.
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I almost showed my boobs to a girl with green hair who disputed my assertion that the carpet couldn’t possibly match the drapes.
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Shouldn’t she be the one showing you her boobs to prove that?
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If she had green hair on her boobs would you want to see it?
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To be honest. Kind of. I mean… it’s boobs. And it’s… green hair. You don’t see that every day.
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Where do you think the carpet is? Also, I figured tit for that.
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I know where the carpet is. I’m just hoping to see her boobs.
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^^ gets it
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Boobs are my first choice, but I’m happy to look at bush as well.
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Well, sure. I’d think that goes without saying.
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lightweight
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I really am. Which is great. Getting drunk is ridiculously cheap. Also, when people find out you don’t really drink, they line up to buy you drinks.
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Oh, and the 10 bucks I referred to was for the beads. I only spend 8 bucks on drinks, not counting tax and tip.
So, it being the time of year to take a break from the Sierra winter, which actually hasn’t been very wintry for the last few weeks, I’m on the way to South Florida to
sit on the beach and drink beer and check out beautiful womenwatch it rain for the next couple of days. The first rainout plan is to drive down through the keys and check out Key West for an afternoon. I’ll have a beer for you, nobody.up
Sounds like a nice plan, hope it doesn’t rain the whole time. Are you going to catch any grapefruit league action, or will you be coming back before it really gets going?
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I’ll be returning home a couple of days before the Grapefruit League starts. After about a week at home I’ll then head back out to Phoenix, whose airport I happen to be sitting in right now. South Florida weather does look dry after Friday night but it’s not quite what I had in mind for the start of a beach vacation.
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I’m sure you’ll be able to enjoy Key West rain or shine.
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Happy trails!
As part of their newsletter Berkeley PD just sent out this gem:

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I’m glad the Berkeley PD is giving out helpful hints to keep taggers out of the system and on the streets writing on stuff where they belong.
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It also doubles as a birthday/holiday gift guide. Very thoughtful, really.
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Please. That’s not even close to accurate. The pants are WAY too high. And that hoodie looks like it actually fits.
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I had three of those things in high school and never once tagged any public zone.
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I satisfy somewhere between 3 and 5 of those criteria today (and yesterday, and the day before that) and I’m 32 years old.
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Do all the taggers refer to you as “old man?”
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hood — check
gloves — check
extra large Sharpie — check
backpack — it’s a messenger bag, but no graffiti on it
black book — I have a small black sketchpad that I use to keep to-do lists. I also have a larger lab notebook, but it’s not black.
I don’t have any stencils.
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Yeah, the vast majority of those things would be in any house. Off the top of my head we have at home hood, gloves, bandana, art supplies galore, non-graffiti’d backpack (only because Spawn2 hasn’t had her way with it yet), extra large Sharpie, stencils, hat. We have plenty of sketchbooks of various sorts, but not a black one. Does a Hello Kitty or Angry Birds sketchbook count?
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Yup,
I pretty much fit the bill because I install art for a living and I havent been able to drop the backpack and notebook combo since I finished college.
Hoodies are pretty much the best clothing invention of the last 50 years.
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Meet the Harka
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For some reason ‘Matrix casual’ keeps jumping out at me!
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Or when you have the irresistible need to dress up like a Jawa.
Also…Vagisoft?
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Heh, for some reason chips and salsa is the LAST thing I want to eat in bed, Mmm nothing like having small sharp crumbs under the covers.
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You can just wipe it off with your hand… or so I’ve heard.
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My best friend designed them. If I had the money and/or they didn’t keep selling out of my size I would totally buy one. They are amazing.
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Hood by itself doesn’t apply. You need the bandana and hat too.
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I was rocking the hood + beanie earlier this week, but it’s not as cold today.
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Also, I’m listening to Minor Threat, so that pretty much makes me BPD’s worst nightmare.
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X
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(on hand, not the band)
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That’s what the extra large sharpie is for!
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Its kind of funny how the biggest ‘smash the state’ vegan SE folks I knew growing up frequently post about bacon, ribs, fancy scotch/ craft beer, and bitch about their tech jobs on FB nowadays.
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It takes away for people to realize that the man isn’t corrupt. He’s just incompetent.
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Heh, so true.
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Which is the DFA you cant make out with me signal
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The “not for test taking” is hilarious.
Also, stencils???
I think I finally understand what DFA was talking about when he said that it’s an ego boost when beautiful/cool people choose to go out with you. Someone who rejected my kind advances months ago has changed her mind. I am apparently in for a challenge, ‘cuz she’s super bright and creative and inquisitive and takes no bullshit from anybody. I think my wife will like her too, and that’s important. Kitty’s super non-jealous, so if she doesn’t like somebody, it’s usually because she can see some deep character flaws in them and throws up a red flag. I’ve proceeded (with her permission) in the face of these flags before, and wished I hadn’t, so I don’t anymore.
I think if were ranking my all-time favorite Arkansans, it would go:
1. Bed
2. WJC
3. Leonard
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Looks like there might be spoilers there. Day 2 hasn’t aired here because of SOTU yesterday.
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Didn’t know that. Sorry!
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No problem, I’m going to pretend I didn’t see anything.
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It’s too bad he’s not on real jeopardy and kept winning. Watch the fro go.
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I’d have to bump everyone else down and put The Reverend Billy Lard up there with Bed.
Port-a-potty Meth Lav? Port-a-potty meth lav.
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This is old and probably has been posted before, but since it relates… http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/12/walmart-meth-lab-boaz-alabama_n_1421049.html