Archive
Stuff Beth Might Have Missed in the Midst of Her Most Enjoyable Home Remodeling
First up, occasional commenter N_B (who appears in our comments as nedbeaumontjr) showed off the perfect hat for the zombie aficionado:
Knitted to keep your neurons toasty!
On what’s almost the eve of our upcoming High Holy Day of Peeps, our friend the Big Bad Bald Bastard (locally known as B^4) speculates on the type of Peep Show which would be more in keeping with today’s Disneyfied Times Square.
Kiwi and Smut both thankfully survived last week’s Christchurch earthquake and have posted some first-hand accounts from friends who live in the area.
And our Monsieur M Bouffant (the “M” stands for “Malignant”), through a shout-out at Lawyers, Guns & Money for this post, contributed to the happy accident of my learning that issues of the dearly departed Spy magazine are now available online, something I had missed despite listening to NPR daily. Kudos to M Bouffant not only for his role in this happy accident, but also for penning a piece about Mickey Kaus in which goats do not play a major or even supporting role – quite the accomplishment, even for a short blurb invoking the Kaus.
See what you’re missing when you don’t go to the links on the blogroll?
In any case, we hope the remodel is proceeding apace and you’ll soon be luxuriating in the fabulosity of your new, just-a-few-shades-darker-than-Smurfs blue, remodeled kitchen.
I AM BORED
And a good thing it is, too.
Sometimes events conspire to put you into an involuntary time-out that you couldn’t afford time or money-wise, but one you really needed for the sake of both mental and physical health. I needed to be out making sales calls since early January, but the combination of stress shell-shock, back injury and bad weather all pretty much put the kibosh to that. The stress stuff was pretty much healed up by mid-January, the back injury is still not back to 100% but not a big problem; now it’s just the weather. The first storm shut things down for 3 – 4 days; we had another storm about a week later that sent everyone home early in the day. Then we had another snow day yesterday which kept me from 2 appointments and we’re predicted to have another big storm on Tues/Wed next week, which will probably shut things down for 2 or 3 days. So I guess the good news there is that instead of missing 24 days of sales calls, thanks to the weather I only missed 18. It feels like I haven’t done anything, but over the past 3 weeks I’ve wrapped up the old business and started the new, set up our new warehousing/packing arrangement, taken care of moving the inventory and furniture and everything else out of our old office/warehouse, revised our product selection and catalog, pulled together 3 new programs we can offer our customers, and landed 2 new vendors. My best salesperson (better than me, certainly) is back from an ordeal he went through at the end of last year & last month and starts again on Monday (weather permitting) so all the wheels are turning now. Reading through it makes it sound like a lot has been accomplished, but it feels like things have been sooooo s-l-o-w, though maybe that’s partly due to the unchanging daily scenery now that I am working from home again.
In any case, the onset of boredom is a good thing. The slow pace of the past 5 weeks has given me the time and space to mentally work through a lot of stressful issues one at a time to where things are now manageable. I don’t know how other people respond to extreme stress, but with me it just kind of shuts me down – I have to practice extreme avoidance to dealing with things until I can process them one at a time. It’s the totality of issues which swamps me. I have to avoid all of it for a little bit to heal up, then pick away at it one mental block at a time.
On the other hand, you wouldn’t believe the reading list I’ve torn through over the past 5 weeks.
When it’s all said and done, the whole dissolution of the old business and all the stress that went with it has had some really positive effects, the biggest of which is that I’m no longer in business with a crazy person. Through the shutdown I managed to take care of all our customers and our vendors, in spite of the aforementioned crazy person’s numerous attempts to make it impossible to do either. Thanks to breaking up the business, I found a more efficient and inexpensive way to handle our warehousing and packing; then of course there’s the money saved from not paying the crazy person to not work, the money saved from not having a crazy person making bad business decisions and commitments, and so on. Even though we lost some ground going through all that, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble making it up now that we aren’t dragging around the dead weight, and we’ll finally have a chance to really make the business work. With all we went through, we came very close to covering all expenses for the last 5 months of the old business when we had just started running with our new catalog and full-blown operations with an office and warehouse. So there’s plenty of room there for doing much better than break even.
And in the Schadenfreude department, the crazy person who shall remain nameless and who made my life a living hell for almost 2 months through pointless legal harassment has since the first of the year been evicted from her place (they tend to do this when you don’t pay the rent) and has had another vehicle repossessed. Apparently sitting on your ass for two months waiting for a “settlement” to which you’re not entitled and will never receive because you’ve already pissed away any profit it would have come out of is not the best financial strategy. Then there’s the whole downside of hiring an expensive shark for an attorney and lying to him about the value of the business you’ve been pushed out of – when there’s no money coming your way, the shark turns his attention to YOU. I don’t know how many years he will put into following her around with wage garnishments to cover his bill, but it couldn’t happen to anyone more deserving. As for my legal bills…well, they’re no more than what I was willing to give the crazy person to just go away in the first place, had she had the sense to even listen to an offer, so I figure it’s a wash.
Sometimes things really do work out for the best. Even though I would have gladly traded in the stress of the whole situation, there’s something deeply karmic and satisfying about watching someone who’s trying to crap on you succeed only in shitting down their own leg.
This Post is Not Safe for Work
I’ve been saving some of these for awhile, and this is as good a time to post them as ever:
A little something for our friend zombie rotten mcdonald
Somewhere out there, a deranged Hello Kitty fan has an image of the famous feline posing as Hannibal Lecter indelibly inked on their person.
I can't wait for "The Hills Have Hello Kitty Eyes"
NowareallyreallyreallyreallyreallylongstringofwordswithoutspacesbetweenbecauseWordpressis TEH SUXXOR and is shit for formatting….ahhh, that’s better. All of the above are courtesy of Hello Kitty Hell, which chronicles one brave man’s struggle against worldwide domination by the menacing mouthless feline.
And now for our main event (drumroll please)…the winner of the Homer Simpson Look-Alike Contest:
- DOH!
Your retinas will never be the same but…striking resemblance, don’t you think?
JennOfArk
lytanorman
3 weird sisters 
Weekend Roundup
Your sweep-the-floor special…a collection of random bits and thoughts I’ve not gotten around to really expanding upon.
First up, the debate over whether Elena Kagan is liberal enough…opinions range from Sully who believes Kagan is a lesbian and is constructing rationales about how it’s wrong, wrong, WRONG for her to not just come out come out…this despite the fact that Sully has no proof she’s gay. Then we’ve got the eternally stoopid David Brooks complaining that Kagan has been too “cautious” in revealing how she feels about anything, thereby depriving Brooks the opportunity of criticizing whatever position she may have on issues. The liberal blogs are all atwitter with charges of Obama being a milquetoast sellout colliding with the more moderate claims that Obama never said he was Lefty McLiberal in the first place, so whaddya expect?
Me, I’m just waiting for the confirmation hearings, to find out how Kagan would have ruled in the important cases of Smelt It v. Dealt It* and Rubber v. Glue. Not to mention No, YOU Are v. So’s Yo Mama. So everyone just chill the fuck out…until Kagan tells us her stance on these weighty matters, none of us are really in a position to judge the would-be judge.
As noted elsewhere, the confirmation hearings will likely also deliver unto us answers to the important questions, “do you drive a Suburu?” and “those shoes you’re wearing…would you describe them as ‘comfortable’?” It’s Andy Warhol’s world now; we just live in it. While ironically, Andy himself does not.
Next up, I’ve been collecting a series of blog comments from various places around the ‘tubes that deserve to be enjoyed by a wider audience…kind of a “texts from last night” of the liberal blog world. I’m calling it “comments out of context” because really, they’re funnier when they have none. So here’s our first installment:
See? SEE? Pure comedy gold, and deserving of far greater exposure. Sorry not everything above is linked, but nothing’s stopping you from cutting and pasting the urls, you lazy bastards. Now, get to work and think up some more funny stuff for blog comments for me to cut and paste to the blog here.
Next, a picture of Pedobear, because not everyone knows about him:
Pedobear
I had never heard of Pedobear myself until very recently, but because I wander around some very weird places on the internets, it was only a matter of time. Apparently, there have been a series of weird sites over the years, many populated by the same cast of characters, from whence many memes have been born. Pedobear originated in the 4chan community as a short-hand notation for any comment with a pedophile vibe – someone responding to the questionable comment would just post this picture of Pedobear. Recently, Pedobear appeared in stencil form, as vandals on the island of Malta added him to signs welcoming the Pope for his visit. I have to admit, I thought that was hysterical, but that’s because I’m the type who still maintains a healthy appreciation for all manner of deliquency, so long as the brick’s not getting tossed through my window.
Anyhoo, the 4chan community where Pedobear originated eventually spawned the Something Awful forums (and if you’ve ever seen the picture of the hirsute man in the speedo with the kitten head over at The Poorman Institute, you know what repulsive things can be found there), and later Encyclopedia Dramatica, which features some truly revolting filth, as well as a lot of very funny content.
Last but not least, just wanted to give everyone a heads up that Helen has a new post up over at the Margaret and Helen blog, and also to point out to everyone one of my favorite little blogs, detroitblog. Actually, I don’t know how “little” it is. I just love it, probably because of my disposition for dystopian visions, but it truly is a little gem, chronicling as it does the changing realities of a city in decline, told from the perspective of individuals who are living and coping with those changing realities. If blogging had been around after the Vandals sacked Rome, this is what it would have looked like. Can’t recommend it highly enough.
* The legal ramifications of Smelt It v. Dealt It were first explored by Gavin M. of Sadly, No! and over the intervening years the case has been analyzed with such care and detail as is usually only found in wingnut welfare publications, though in Gavin’s case it was done purely in the spirit of the public interest, no Soros dollars involved.