I’ve noticed a trend. A new “life’s little annoyance” that I’m taking a stand against. Perhaps it only happens in Chesterbrook where I work. But quarters seem to be worth more than $0.25. Just today I went to Genardis to get Jello (which sucks btw) and i paid the total was 13.22. But Genardis uses a change dispenser. I’m merely human, but when I used to operate a cash register, this scenario would dictate I return 3 pennies and 3 quarters. 3 is a nice number. It’s the holy trinity, it’s how many balls i have. It’s nice. but instead this vile contraption returned 2 quarters 3 pennies, 2 dimes and a nickel.

Well I had enough. I demanded that the cashier exchange those dimes and a nickel for a quarter. And the woman took issue. “I can’t open the drawer again.”
I said, “I’ll wait”
she said, “It’s the right amount? right”
I said, “in numbers, yes, in number of coins no. I’m sorry, but I don’t like extra change”
she gave.

It’s not just our mechanized overlords either. I went to wendy’s last week and the woman behind the counter manually gave me this 2 dimes and nickel breakdown of the 3rd quarter.

THese aren’t new businesses they’ve been there a while. Can’t they anticipate the quarter demand?

Well, I’m not taking dimes anymore!

Red Bionicle-Man takes orange K’nex man hostage!

I recently found this site which is a seamless fusion of politics and UFO related content.

There were pages of denouncements of CIA operations from the last 60 years, right on up to ‘alternative’ theories of 9/11, and then it just drops into UFO talk, as if its the same topic.

I think the point of the site is that aliens are behind all this stuff going on. An idea that’s been discussed here before…

V

Signs of the Times

I haven’t written a short story in a very long time. Most of the time when I write one, I’ve got a real idea in my head and just have the urge to just type and type and type until the idea is exhausted. I haven’t had that idea or urge to type in a long time. I really want that urge. Writing a story isn’t something that you just do. It’s something that you do when you got inspiration. I don’t have that inspiration in many places. O&A used to be a HUGE inspiration to write stuff. They have been fired for a while now and I just got into the habit of listening to them. They’re on a station called live365. It’s all thier old shit. Kinda like reruns from way back. I’m starting to feel the creative writing bug again. I’m sure I’ll have a story written within a month I think. I don’t want to try to force a story out cuz it will suck. There will be no funny in it. I guess the funny doesn’t have to be in it but I sure do like when it is in it. no funny != suck. but there has to be a certain quality to it. And right now, when I write, I just don’t feel that quality coming out of me. So for now, you have to read this aweful drabber. Enjoy.

I thought I’d keep track of all the negative consequences of this war, besides the human and economic damage, that were predicted, as they start to come true. notice i said “start to come true.” I’ve decided to use some preemptive journalism, but i think its pretty clear that while these example’s may not fully play out, they are certainly so much more likely to thanks to our Middle East policy:

India contemplates preemption against Pakistan, cites US attack of Iraq as precedent, and claims their own case is stronger than the US case for Iraq.

Syria openly threatens Israel after US has all but put them into Iraq’s spot on the Axis of Evil list. (shouldn’t it be the Triangle of Evil anyway?) This actually shows two points: 1) we’ve set the precedent for the “Why not?” philosophy of war 2) we’ve worsened our relations with the Arab world, rather than set up a “beacon of democracy for the Arab world”

” The 30 original countries in the Coalition of the Willing, as listed on the State Department Web site, include Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan (post conflict), Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan.

The defense secretary said that the Operation Iraq Freedom coalition is “large and growing” and “not unilateral action as is being characterized in the media.”

“Indeed, the coalition in this activity is larger than the coalition that existed during the Gulf War in 1991,” Rumsfeld said.

Many countries have committed combat and combat support forces, Rumsfeld said, while others are contributing other things — “access, basing, refueling, force protection, intelligence sharing, and the use of airspace. Still others have pledged to participate in stability operations and post-Saddam reconstruction efforts.”

“I think it’s a little disingenuous to compare the number of countries willing to send soldiers into battle in 1991 with the number of countries who are willing to put their names on a list in 2003,” a retired senior military officer who served in Operation Desert Storm told Salon, declining to be named. Some 32 countries provided troops in 1991, compared with three this time around.

”

from Salon.com
1984 just 20 years later. -pi

Well, we’ve hit a lot of the moral issues surrounding a war with Iraq on this site. So I thought I would change it up and approach this thing from an individual capitalist perspective.

If you haven’t noticed, the US economy is in the crapper. Unemployment is at 20 year high (my googling couldn’t come up with a URL, but this is the number i’ve heard tossed around from foxnews to npr). There is no end in site.

My opinion is that this economy WILL NOT turn around until the looming war question is settled. Companies don’t like to invest during a period of economic uncertainty, and neither do individual investors. Now some will argue that the war will create money. This “could” be true. IF the war goes according to plan. Yey! 2 years of economic recovery for the US. But what if it doesn’t?

The longer Governor Bush focuses on war with Iraq instead of economic stimulus the longer yours truly will sucking off the taxpayer tit. along with 10% of all the other Americans. btw, true unemployment is actually higher. Because the dept. of Labor does not include those that their unemployment benefits ran out and still haven’t found a job.

So I don’t really have a lot of opinions about all this as much as i’d like others to chime in on the economic damage that this potential war is doing to the US and world economy as a whole.

quick link, no write-up cause i’m heading out.

click here, sucka

also, while i’m here… i’m getting ready to redesign the site to be more space efficient. any suggestions?