After 30 years, something on which I can agree with Margaret Thatcher.

She won’t meet with Caribou Barbie on her upcoming trip to England because, in the words of a Thatcher spokesperson, “she’s nuts.”

My dear baroness, I couldn’t agree more.

Where’s my resignation from the human species form?

So some bigoted fuckwad decided to “commemorate” yesterday by breaking into a local Arab market and spray-painting “9-11″ on what windows he didn’t bother to smash, just when I thought we’d dodged a bullet from that lunatic in Gainesville and his Koran-burning plans — or not, since there were dozens of equally lunatic cretins nationwide doing their copycat acts of mental masturbation.

Is this what 9/11 is going to be from now on, an excuse for an annual anti-Arab Kristallnacht?

If it is, then congratulations, America. The terrorists won, they reduced you to their level.

By the way, and relative to both this and another “news” item getting play this last month, it’s not a “mosque on Ground Zero”. It’s two blocks away and not even visible from the Ground Zero site. It’s also not a mosque. It’s a community center, with a prayer room, just like many Christian community centers have. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Park51 (the real name of the place).

Even if it were a mosque and actually at the site, what is wrong with that? All Muslims are terrorists? Are all Catholics child molesters? Are all Evangelicals clinic bombers and doctor killers? Hey, then let’s make sure no one ever opens a Christian church near a school or a medical center. You know how they all really are…

Oh, wait, suddenly that doesn’t sound reasonable?

Good. It shouldn’t. It’s not reasonable.

All Catholics are not child molesters, only a vanishingly small number. All Evangelicals are not bombers and snipers, only a vanishingly small number. And all Muslims are not terrorists, only a vanishingly small number.

If you found yourself nodding at the first two and shaking your head at the last, congratulations. You are both a hypocrite and a bigot.

Reclaiming the title from my brother

I may have reclaimed my ‘weirdest thing in the family’ title from my brother.

So I was spending a couple days with my Evil Twin et famille and we were thinking about Calvin and Hobbes snowmen.

Then we did more than just think about it.

Irony, or chutzpah?

Among the things done by the Obama administration that I really support was legislation requiring banks to get approval before blithely approving every debit card use that hit their system.

I mean, let’s be blunt, it was a legalized racket. My bank, if they had several debits to process, didn’t do them chronologically. They did them from the largest to the smallest. And it did all debits before all deposits.

So let’s say you had twenty bucks in the bank, deposited twenty, then debited three things at five bucks each, and then one at $19. Any normal, rational human being would say that you have four bucks left over.

This is not the way my bank does math. First they’d do the $19 debit, then the three $5 debits, so you’re in the hole for $35 each for those, and only then deposit your $20. Instead of being at +$4, you’re at -$99. Even though the $20 deposit was chronologically first.

So faced with being forced to cease this practice, I get a letter from them trying to sell the idea of overdraft fees as a benefit and asking permission to keep doing them! It’ll be an interesting call tomorrow when I tell them that this is something they should’ve done years ago. It’s something I’ve asked them to do before — not approve overdrafts. And it’s something they’ve refused to do.

I am reminded of the squeals from the check-cashing/payday advance places, before we voted an amendment forcing them to quit applying extortionate rates of interest. I don’t see that any of them went out of business. The one on the corner up the street from me hasn’t closed. Nor has the one further down High Street.

Oh, and my bank just gave their CEO a $17m bonus.

The answer is really simple. If your business model is built on screwing people, you need to re-think your business model.

Season’s Green Things!

Greyhound to Toledo in about six hours.

Feelin’ the holiday mood like Ebenezer Scrooge before the spooks came. That oughta change once I see my nieces.

So, this little piece of seasonal nonsense. I wrote the first verse and posted it to Steve Macdonald’s journal partly as a reply to his terrific “Cold Butcher” … and mostly because it was stuck in my head and had to go somewhere to relieve the pressure. He wrote the rest.

The melody is, of course, obvious. :D

Oh, the creature outside is frightful
And he thinks you’ll taste delightful
There’s a monster out in the snow
Wendigo, wendigo, wendigo!

Oh he doesn’t show signs of stopping
‘Cuz your joints are good for popping
You hunker there way down low
Wendigo, wendigo, wendigo.

I don’t wanna kiss you goodnight
Cuz I’d hate to go out in the storm
If we nail the door shut real tight
Maybe we’ll last ’til the morn

The fire is slowly dying
And, my dear, he’s still there spying
And we’ll hold these shotguns just so…
Wendigo, wendigo, wendigo!

Well, I’ve decided.

I’m leaving LJ. The latest asshattery, forcing ads on Basic accounts to non-logged-in users, was the proverbial straw. I have a minor presence on WordPress, and am moving whole-cloth to InsaneJournal, who are so far running like LJ used to.

If you are on IJ and/or WordPress, please friend me there.

It’s been a fun 4+ years; hopefully I will see many of you at one place or the other.

I leave you (and hope to see you all in my other places) with some words from the Grateful Dead:

o/` Fare thee well, fare thee well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
to rock my soul o/`

WTF is this NOW?

I happened to see my LJ page without being logged in, and there’s this huge-ass ADVERTISEMENT running down the whole right side of the page!

I did NOT agree to having ads run on my LJ!

I’m giving it until I get a response from the LJ team, or a week, whichever comes first. If there is no answer, or the answer is not satisfactory, I’m outta here.

Just when I thought LJ couldn’t do anything dumber than they’ve already done…

Russell Davies is so damn lucky he’s leaving Doctor Who…

Finally finished watching the last of Season 30 (Season 4 to all of you with no sense of history).

Don’t let the coffin door hit you on the ass on your way out.

Jesse Helms, known as “Senator No”, is dead.

Bye bye, bigot. I won’t miss you. We’re going to be another generation cleaning up the toxic swill you left behind in the body politic.

I’m not the one who effing well broke it!

I’m being demoted.

Not because of performance problems or inability to do my work.

Because some beancounter three or four levels over my boss’ boss’ head thinks the profit margin isn’t big enough.

I don’t hear *him* volunteering for a pay cut.

Fuck this. I had a killer interview Wednesday morning, I’m taking the first offer that comes along that runs at least six months.

This is absolute bullshit. We’re already grossly underpaid, but apparently we’re not underpaid enough.