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Cake day: March 16th, 2024

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  • *Easy answers *Lack of self-reflection (“are we the badies?”) *reflexive reactionary impulse (“I say throw the bums out!”) when external pressures make life tough

    I’ve got many people in my life who would fit one or more of these generalizations. I’m sure it’s a vast tapestry.

    My mom got hissing mad when one of her friends told her that WalMart wasn’t a good place to be shopping. That was 20 years ago.




  • That would make sense. Unfortunately, I’ve known enough contrarian weirdos to see how that type of logic might make more sense (to them).

    “Why are you stressing about this? Can’t you just take those old clothes to Goodwill or throw them away?”

    “Well, first I need to buy 30 cases of Coke and then - to make room in the car - I need to visit the park back in Indiana to scatter our dog’s ashes.”

    Knowing that it’s probably just illogical all the way down, I could believe either scenario.


  • I agree, but I think that they all share the something of the same clown quality.

    I actually liked Rogan on News Radio (90s sitcom) where he played an idiot-savant repairman who could fix anything electronic, but everyone acknowledged that it would burn the place down in 48 hours if left as is. For reference, Andy Dick was also on that show. He looked competent next to Andy Dick, but not nearly as funny.

    I thought Rogan really found his calling on Fear Factor, where he just urged people to eat maggot infested cheese. If that show had gone on, how different would our world look like today??

    We also watched the Apprentice, but I remember it as a comedy with Trump as the butt of the joke. Did no one else get that joke?

    Musk - crap on a cracker. I’ve heard a lot of comments on how his “pedo guy” comment changed peoples’ perception of him, but holy crap. It should have come even a little bit before that. There were about a dozen children trapped in a cave in SE Asia with “hours to days” to survive, if they had even made it that long. This cave had something like a14 inch vertical choke point and muddy conditions throughout.* What does this lackwit do? This absolute knob releases footage of a prototype submarine in a swimming pool in California, being guided along by human divers and says “EMERGENCY RESPONDERS STOP WORK. I’M YOUR ONLY HOPE.”

    Point being: This moron does not understand what a cave is. Probably coupled with “and no one is going to tell him that.”



  • For chemistry? No.

    The most common job track for someone with a BS in chemistry is something on the analytical side. Think: contract lab that processes environmental or pharmaceutical samples. All you really need to know how to do is press some buttons and follow detailed instructions. So - the work is both exacting and boring. And to find this unfun job - you will be in direct competition with every biology major in your region. And there are hoards of them. And the hiring manager will be one of them. If you can score a job, be prepared for the low pay that goes along with a plentiful labor pool, along with the frustrations of working with people that don’t have the ideal frame of reference for talking through problems.

    Other options?

    In my area, microbiologists are in higher demand, so I think someone might get by with a BS. Standard bio majors seem to have had an idea of becoming naturalists or park rangers after graduation, so many didn’t specialize. They can count birds or frogs and are still acting weird about having to memorize the Krebs Cycle, but aren’t really up to speed on aseptic technique or all that other micro stuff.

    Physics? I can’t even imagine.

    Engineering is interesting. 30 years ago some people came to my highschool to talk to the “indoor kids.” They were pitching the idea that “the engineers of today are 30-40 something baby boomers who have high paying jobs that they absolutely love! In the next 5-10 years we will be facing a crisis as they all retire early, and GenX could easily be called the Baby Crunch.* There’s no one to replace these engineers who are living the dream! You’re looking at a great opportunity if you study engineering.” A good portion of my class took that advice. Bwah-hah-hah-haa! No one retired early. Great pay + great job = early retirement? No.

    No engineering grads that I knew got a decent job because there were no openings and a high number of qualified applicants. Companies did find some cheap engineers, though. The ones I know now (GenX and Millennial) found other careers and swallowed the bitterness.

    I’ve heard that something similar happened in the 2010s with law degrees. In the 2000s it seemed like every 30-yo with a crappy job was studying nursing. Point being - if someone is saying that there is a desperate need for workers with Skill X and that they make a great living, it means that companies don’t want to pay current market rate for Skill X. They want you to take out loans to train yourselves for the skill they want at the price they want.

    *Demographics. In the US the birthrate fell dramatically in the '60s and '70s. Before Doug Coopland came up with a marketable name for it, GenX was being called a Baby Crunch. Reasons? Birth control. Oil crisis. Vietnam War. Boomers waiting a bit longer to start their families. Reasons.


  • I’ve always preferred skirts to pants, precisely because they’re less restrictive to movement. I’m not sure why, but the comment was always, “I’m not sure you’d be able to do this while wearing a skirt.” It seems like people who haven’t worn them habitually don’t know how they work.

    Worst case: I fall down and you can see my knickers. Well that’s why I wear the knickers. And in nearly a half-century, I can think of maybe 2 times that’s happened. Both times I was sprinting madly to catch a bus and both times were due to my shoes and/or bad decisions.

    Field hockey and lacrosse are both traditionally played in kilts.

    Some other objections:

    Need to don some Tyvek coveralls for work? It’s really no problem with a basic skirt. You just hike it up a bit. Those suits are baggy and everything fits. You also avoid the discomfort of two layers of leg fabric.

    Cold weather? Tights are great, as are thigh high socks. And boots. All of these also look cute.

    Oh, and packing for vacation? I can pack 3-4 skirts for every pair of jeans. It’s just a simple cloth tube which folds down to nothing.


  • Wasn’t that 10 years ago? If I remember correctly, one of those companies was partially owned by then Speaker of the House John Boehner. Yeah, that was some bullshit.

    I voted against that measure simply due to the blatantly self-serving aspect. It was a fun time when reactionaries and progressives aligned to reject a terrible proposal. Everyone else was just mad that they still needed to drive to Michigan to buy weed.

    But last year’s less shitty ballot initiative means that the first recreational dispensaries in Ohio opened up a few months ago. There was some discussion in the statehouse about blocking that referendum, but even the dullest knives came around eventually.

    Growing for personal use is also now legal. Of course that won’t stop county sheriffs from raiding your home with an assist by DEA helicopters. It’s “an education.”

    https://www.wdtn.com/as-seen-on-2-news/greene-county-sheriff-responds-after-raid-over-alleged-illegal-marijuana-plants/









  • I’d be !00% on board with including women in the draft. Fair is fair.

    Personally - like I told the recruiter from Annapolis 30 years ago, “trust me when I say that you don’t want me anywhere near your military.” If I were drafted I think I could fail out of basic on my own lack of merit.

    If there were other service options, I could happily do other work. For example: Math, science, or language tutoring for teens. I could have helped out a kid who actually wanted to get into Annapolis but didn’t have strong enough academics.