Archive for the ‘Kill Me, I’m Begging You’ Category
Have you ever had your credit card information stolen by someone? I have.
For the second time in a year my bank sent me a notice that I’m being issued a new credit card because mine may have been compromised. No explanations as to how or when or why, just shut up and do it. I hate pushy people, pushy governments, pushy companies, and now this pushy bank. Ordering me to change cards without giving me the specifics seems to be a tad arrogant. If it’s just a preventative measure then tell me that. I don’t appreciate being treated like a moron child, being ordered around by a know-it-all parent. That may have worked when I was five but trust me, I’m no longer five.
I allow these people the privilege of using my money to make money for themselves but this Big Brother attitude pisses me off. It seems to be the way of things these days especially with the government and Big Business. They see us as a pack of slobbering idiots who need their hands held to make any sort of decision.
Now I get to spend a couple of hours today on the Net changing my credit card numbers on a myriad of websites. I suppose I shouldn’t complain since they are allegedly protecting my money and accounts but talking down to me is unacceptable.
Over the last five years I’ve had my information stolen twice when unauthorized purchases were made in Canada and Europe. Throw in two changes of debit cards (because of hacked companies) and three new credit cards (for unexplained reasons) and OMFG what the hell is going on. If you’re doing something to benefit me all that’s required is a simple explanation. I guess it’s too much to hope for in these days of big government and big business arrogance. They’re too busy to deal with the feelings of the “great unwashed”.
I sometimes wonder whether it would be worth it to remove myself from the grid entirely and go back to writing checks and mailing payments. Is simple convenience worth all of this grief and aggravation? I don’t want to get too crazy but maybe it’s time for some common sense to enter into my approach to the Net, my use of credit and debit cards, and banking in general. I need to think on it for a while longer and try to come up with some good solid solutions to this nightmare.
I’d ask the bank for help but they’d just replace all of my cards once again and send me that condescending form letter as well.
THE BIGGER THE ORGANIZATION, THE LESS THEY CARE.
Today is what will probably turn into a do-nothing, boring, day of reading, and not much else. We’re still caught in between seasons here in Maine which means the weather is all screwed up and annoying. The snowfall from our recent storm is 90% gone but it’s still awfully cold at night. It’s just cold enough to require heavy clothing that makes you begin to sweat as soon as you put it on. Then you remove it to cool down, get cold, and put the clothing back on and sweat some more. It’s no wonder everyone seems to be suffering either from colds or any one of many flu viruses that seem to be going around.
I’ve spent the last few days at home and only leaving the house for wine or food emergencies. All that means is if I’m short on wine and my favorite foods I will brave the cold and crappy weather regardless. Minor errands or stupid shopping forays are not what I consider an emergency no matter what my better-half tells me.
While I’m thinking about that here are a few dirty jokes to brighten your day. We’ll start with a bar joke. Everyone loves a good and dirty bar joke.
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A guy walks into a pub and sees a sign hanging over the bar that reads: CHEESEBURGER: $1.50 CHICKEN SANDWICH: $2.50 HAND JOB: $10.00 He walks up to the bar and beckons one of the three exceptionally attractive blondes serving drinks. "Can I help you?" she asks. "I was wondering," whispers the man. "Are you the one who gives the hand jobs?" "Yes," she purrs. "I am." The man replies, "Well, wash your hands. I want a cheeseburger."
Having worked for a few retail companies over the years I thought a little retail humor was warranted. I looked for years trying to find a salesman like this.
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A young guy from Nebraska moves to Florida and goes to a big "everything under one roof" department store looking for a job. The Manager says, "Do you have any sales experience?" The kid says, "Yeah. I was a salesman back in Omaha." Well, the boss liked the kid and gave him the job. "You start tomorrow." I’ll come down after we close and see how you did." His first day on the job was rough, but he got through it. After the store was locked up, the boss came down. "How many customers bought something from you today? The kid says, "One". The boss says, "Just one? Our sales people average 20 to 30 customers a day. How much was the sale for?" The kid says, "$101,237.65 ". The boss says, "$101,237.65? What the heck did you sell?" The kid says, "First, I sold him a small fish hook. Then I sold him a medium fishhook. Then I sold him a larger fishhook. Then I sold him a new fishing rod. Then I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat, so we went down to the boat department and I sold him a twin engine Boston Whaler. Then he said he didn’t think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4×4 Expedition." The boss said, "A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a BOAT and a TRUCK?" The kid said, "No, the guy came in here to buy Tampons for his wife, and I said, ‘Dude, your weekend’s shot, you should go fishing.’"
This joke goes a long way to explain how long term marriages seem to work.
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Husband always insisted on making love in the dark. After 20 years wife turns on the light, finds him holding a vibrator. She goes ballistic, "You impotent bastard! How could you lie to me all these years?" Husband looks her straight in the eyes & calmly says, "I’ll explain the toy, you explain the kids….."
You Think A Gallon Of Gas Is Expensive? This little list makes one think, and may put things in perspective:
Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 $ 9.52 per gallon
Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 $10.00 per gallon
Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 $10.17 per gallon
Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 $10.32 per gallon
Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 $25.42 per gallon
Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 $33.60 per gallon
Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 $84.48 per gallon
Pepto-Bismol 4 oz $3.85 $123.20 per gallon
Vick’s Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 $178.13 per gallon
And this is the REAL KICKER . . .
Evian water 9 oz $1.49 $21.19 per gallon!
$21.19 FOR WATER! . . . and most buyers don’t even
know the source. But then again "EVIAN" spelled
backwards is "Naïve."
HAVE A GREAT DAY
SPAM . . . I’m not sure who coined that term for unwanted emails but it truly is an insult to such a delicious meat. As we all know you can’t spend much time on the Net without finding yourself inundated with SPAM. I always thought I was careful about filling out forms or taking stupid surveys, a sure way to get your name out to the spammers. I’ve come to find out that I failed miserably.
Six months ago in a moment of boredom I was sitting at my computer looking for something to do. Absentmindedly I inquired of a well known mortgage company about some of the new government programs. To say the least that was a huge mistake that I’ve been paying for ever since. Over the last six months I’ve had to unsubscribe from an endless number of websites for every product currently known to man.
I spend a few minutes of each day unsubscribing the current batch of SPAM with assurances that in a week I’ll have been eliminated from their call lists. The torrent of sites is finally down to less than two or three a day but overall it has totaled more than four hundred in the last six months.
I’ve tried to backtrack many of them to a source I could contact and threaten to no avail. It’s been a frustrating effort with no one to take my frustration out on. I’ve known a lot of people over the years but I’ve never met anyone who would admit to being a spammer. People will admit to being drug dealers before admitting to spamming. At least the drug dealer is selling a product and not simply harassing and endlessly annoying hundreds of thousands of people.
‘Just so you know this is the good SPAM.’
I’ll keep trying to discover one person I can take out my anger on. I could easily be persuaded to violence against anyone who has the balls to stand in front of me and admit to spamming. It would be worth a few days in the local county jail for assaulting that someone and I suspect there isn’t a jury anywhere that would convict me. Everyone hates spammers and that might be the reason those bastards keep themselves so well hidden.
As they used to say on Hill Street Blues
"Be careful out there."
What are two things that most people think about every day. My best guess would be death and sex. With that thought in mind I decided to supply you all with a list of global statistics about many things but mainly death. Many of these numbers are current up to and including today. Some of the information is shocking and some is simply unbelievable.
Global Death Rate
Statisticians have calculated the "mortality rate" for the world to be roughly .883 percent. This means that 1 out of every 113 people in the world died last year.
World Population:
- has reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011
- is projected to reach 8 billion by 2024
- has doubled in 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion)
- is currently growing at a rate of around 1.13 % per year
- growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at 2%
- growth rate is currently declining and is projected to continue to decline in the coming years
- average annual population change is currently estimated at over 80 million
- world population will reach 10 billion persons in the year 2056
As of Today
"This year" = from January 1 (00:00) up to now
"Today" = from the beginning of the current day up to now
"net population growth" = births minus deaths
145,641 Births today
60,991 Deaths today
22,888,972 Births this year
9,585,278 Deaths this year
84,650 Net population growth today
13,303,694 Net population growth this year
Technology
37,472,003 Computers produced this year
2,092,893 Cellular phones sold today
$ 74,559,389 Money spent on videogames today
3,316,866,142 Internet users in the world today
82,805,119,987 Emails sent today
229,774,292 Tweets sent today
1,711,619,570 Google searches this year
Health
1,621,694,128 Overweight people in the world people in the world
1,731,966,562 Water consumed this year (million L)
134,660 Deaths caused by water related diseases this year
661,570,850 People with no access to a safe drinking water source
Natural Resources
Quick Facts: Barrel = 42 Gallons = 159 Liters
31,340,762 Oil pumped today (barrels)
1,158,647,387,197 Oil left (barrels)
13,793 Days to the end of oil (~38 years)
Miscellaneous Deaths
1,215,470 Deaths of children under 5 this year
54,974 Deaths of mothers during birth this year
268,816 Deaths caused by HIV/AIDS this year
1,313,313 Deaths caused by cancer this year
156,851 Deaths caused by malaria this year
Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking
5,659,200,051 Cigarettes smoked this year
799,386 Deaths caused by smoking this year
399,945 Deaths caused by alcohol this year
171,477 Suicides this year
215,859 Road traffic accident fatalities this year
$ 63,971,038,394 Money spent on illegal drugs this year
How’s that for a quick and dirty summary of the human race. Chaos, death, destruction, confusion, and life goes just keeps rolling along.
IT’S MUCH MORE FUN TALKING ABOUT SEX
There are times in people’s lives when life insists are mucking things up. For me the month of February 2016 is fast becoming a month to remember. Let me explain.
I’m back from my two days without blogging and if I remember correctly it’s the first time I’ve missed posting from my every-other-day schedule. I look forward to blogging each and every time and get more than a little miffed when life starts messing with me. Healthcare issues are currently harshing my buzz.
For instance, my two day journey this week was totally consumed by things I absolutely hate . . . doctors, hospitals, examinations, Obamacare, and those always sucky insurance companies. Believe me when I say I hate them all equally. Someday most of you will be where I am now. Retired from decades of working your ass off and wanting to spend your remaining years enjoying life. I think I’ll be the bucket of ice water dumped on your head to wake you up. Good luck with trying to enjoy yourself.
Over the last few years since my private healthcare plan was scrapped and I was forced onto Medicare the government keeps trying to intrude on my calm. As we all know once the government gets involved in anything it’s a freaking nightmare. Getting older is tough enough on the good days but having a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians intruding into your life on a regular basis is madness. The real truth is that the older you get the worse it becomes so start getting your mind right now for what’s to come.
Look forward to a continuous stream of emails from damn near every government agency you can think of and endless changes made to every part of the Obamacare program and it’s requirements. You’re also required to have expensive tests and scanning’s done even when they aren’t necessary. My doctor told me this week I looked perfectly fine, my BP was good, my cholesterol was perfect, and that I was in excellent physical condition for my age. Hooray for me, right? No way. The next thing he did was schedule me for sonogram of my torso. Guess who will be footing the bill for that I wonder. The taxpayers I’ll bet. This test is mandatory for me to meet the Medicare requirements of my Wellness visit. What a large crock of crap. How many thousands of other Seniors are also being forced into these tests at what I’m sure is hundreds of dollars per test.
Lets review my last six months of health related activities. My doctor of 14 years sold his practice and moved back to Pakistan because of Obamacare. My hospital was sold to a large healthcare corporation and I’ve had three difference doctors assigned to me since that occurred. Blood tests, scans of body parts I could care less about, and surveys required by the government to get my opinion of the job they’re doing. It’s nice of them to also keep me aware of just how old I’m getting and all of the healthcare tragedies that might eventually kill me. Like I don’t know what they are already.
Today I spent and hour and a half trying to straighten out my prescriptions that I’ve been receiving by mail for eleven years. I attempted to login to the insurance companies website to confirm my next three months of pills which just happen to be keeping me alive. I couldn’t log on because all of a sudden they didn’t recognize my name, my email address, or my password. I was officially a non-person. I then called them for help and became lost in the maze of their computerized menu system that totally befuddled me which I assume is done purposely. After talking with a young lady from El Paso, Texas for far too long I finally confirmed my prescriptions as required to keep the Medicare idiots happy. Life was finally good, right? No effing way!
My IPad began screaming that new charges had just hit my credit card from the insurance company and guess what . . . they double billed me. It would have been so much easier for me and the government if I would’ve just died when I turned 65.
Let me look into my crystal ball and try to see what’s coming in all of your futures. Maybe free euthanasia clinics? Possibly cut-backs of critical treatments to save money? We can always rely on the politicians to find the “final solution” to the Obamacare, Medicare, and Social Security cost increases. Thinning the herd may be just the answer they finally come up with.
Hopefully I’ll be long gone before those things become your topics of conversation.
GOOD LUCK, YOU’LL NEED IT!!
Are you a technology lover? Some people just put up with all of the new technology but really aren’t all that into it. I’m just the opposite. I love any and all technology and do my best to keep up with things as they progress. I never thought it could happen but I came upon some technology yesterday that annoyed and irritated me more than I thought possible.
My better-half and I were out and about enjoying the single digit temperatures and decided to do lunch at Applebee’s before returning home. Normally I’m an Applebee’s fan but they’re doing something now that just makes me a little crazier than usual. They’ve decided to put their customers to work by placing a small computer at each table. It just sits there and flashes advertisements and screensavers the entire time your ordering and trying to eat. They attempt to entice you to play some stupid trivia games so they can add $1.99 to your bill and keep you occupied while waiting for your food to arrive.
The place was very busy and there appeared to be a serious shortage of waitresses. We were made to wait much longer than normal for our order resulting in a barrage of apologies from the nearby bartender and a roving manager. We sat patiently for quite a while but then I began to get a bit annoyed. Eventually the food arrived and thank God it was delicious. Just as we were finishing our meal the bartender stopped at our table to ask the obligatory question they always ask, "How was everything?" At the same time she nonchalantly dropped the bill on the table and quickly walked away. Little did I know that they expected us to pay the bill using that little terminal at our table.
I’m a firm believer that people working in restaurants should earn their TIPS. If you’re rude, annoying, and slow you won’t get a TIP from me. If your on top of your game and do everything just right I’ll fork over a 20% TIP every time. I’ve been told that TIPS is short for "To Improve Personal Service" and I expect decent service before donating any of my hard earned cash.
I was then directed to just swipe my credit card through the terminal at my table and follow the menus to pay my bill. As the final bill was displayed I noticed a 20% TIP had been automatically added on. I found that magic menu button that allowed me to dial back the TIP to only 10%. While the food was delicious the service was slow and I had to do all the work of checking myself out therefore no 20% TIP.
Then the stupid computer asked if I wanted a receipt printed out or to have one emailed to me. The last thing I need is another company adding me to their email list so they can pelt me with a stream of unwanted food alerts. I indicated I wanted a printed receipt so I could verify the amount I’d paid before leaving the restaurant. I was then required to visit the bar to the only register where receipts were being printed. I was made to feel like some sort of primitive Neanderthal who still needed an actual paper receipt and couldn’t handle the technology. Since I’ve seen too many errors on bills over the years I don’t assume they’re always correct. This Neanderthal needs to see any possible discrepancies immediately and not a couple of hours later in an email.
I have a proposal for all of these so-called progressive restaurants. In the future I will enter, seat myself, and order my meal from the computer on my table. When it’s ready I can be alerted by the kitchen staff on the terminal, walk back, and retrieve my food. When I’m done I can take my dishes to the kitchen, pay the bill on the computer and have my receipt emailed. Then I would certainly expect a 20% reduction on my bill for all of the fine service I’d rendered. I’d never have to talk to or see any semi-interested employees or gushy and insincere managers. I’d just eat my food and get the hell out. What do you think about that?
I now have to admit that there is some technology that just plain sucks. There I’ve said it, once and for all. And for all of those Chili’s restaurants out there, I see you’ve also started this same nonsense as Applebee’s with your cutsy table computers. You’ll probably be seeing much less of my business as well.
The customer is always right or have you just forgotten that.
It seems that Winter has finally caught up with us. Up until now it’s been a relatively mild season as far as the snowfall goes. The temps have been up and down but noting too frigid until this weekend. Unlike many of the other northern states we expect to receive a lot of snow but the temperatures usually don’t go much lower than ten degrees during the coldest months.
My father had a quaint old saying for cold weather like we’re seeing this weekend. He always described it as "cold as a well diggers asshole" and if my mother was nearby it was "as cold as a well diggers elbow". Below zero temps with a good healthy wind were all of that and a bag of chips.
Last night my better-half and I spent our night at home babysitting the grandchildren. We had the good sense to stay inside and not be roaming around in sub-zero temperatures. The house was warm and cozy, the toddlers were reasonably well behaved, and another viewing of Alvin & the Chipmunks was in the offing (Just shoot me now).
Their parents were having a Valentines Day date night and weren’t expected to return until eleven. Just as the boys were finally falling asleep and Alvin and the Chipmunks were coming to an end they showed up much earlier than expected. The current temperature at the time was –2 degrees with a wind-chill of -15. It apparently was just too damn cold for them to do much of anything and they’d called it a night.
It’s now the next morning and I’m almost ready to leave this warm bed. Hot coffee might give me enough energy to pick up all the toys scattered throughout the house before having my bowl of hot oatmeal. I imagine I’ll be stuck in the house for another day or two which doesn’t make me very happy.
I’m moving slower than usual due to a late night awakening where I spent two hours playing X-Box LEGO Star Wars, reading three chapters of my latest book, eating a cookie, and returning to bed at 5am. This insomnia I’ve been suffering with for the last two months is just killing me.
February it seems is a rather boring and utterly useless month. It’s two biggest holidays are Groundhog Day and Valentines Day which says a lot about relevance to me.
It’s such a slow short month that all of our overpaid politicians are forced into action to show the electorate they’ll actually are doing something, even if it’s in February. I can’t list all of the observance that have been piled up into the shortest month of the year because there are just too damn many. The following partial list contains a few weekly observances for this week that will help make my point.
Celebration of Love Week: 7-13th
Children of Alcoholics Week: 7-13th
Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week: 7-14th
Dump Your Significant Jerk Week: 7-13th
Have A Heart for A Chained Dog Week: 7-14th
Jell-O Week: 7-13th
National Secondhand Wardrobe Week: 7-13th
Love Makes the World Go Round; But, Laughter Keeps Us From Getting Dizzy Week: 8-14th
I can just see and hear a group of politicos sitting in a local tavern on any given Friday night telling war stories to each other concerning all of their weeks accomplishments. "I finally got that ‘Dump Your Jerk Week’ observance passed. It’s been a year of hard work getting it pushed through and I was forced to call in all of my IOU’s to do it. It was exhausting work but someone had to finally get it done." His buddy sitting nearby had to do a little one-upmanship, "I had a tough week too. That observance of ‘Love Makes the World Go Round; But, Laughter Keeps Us From Getting Dizzy Week’ was a killer. I spent six months arm twisting damn near everyone to get it passed. The United States is now a better place for it."
I found only two daily observance for February 10th and they are just as stupid. I had to look up the word PLIMSOLL to discover it’s some sort of an athletic shoe. Who knew?
Plimsoll Day
All The News That’s Fit To Print Day
So a great big THANK YOU goes out to those geniuses responsible for cluttering up our lives with more useless crap. We shouldn’t be allowed to vote until we’ve been made to review all of these stupid observances to find out what politicians are responsible for them.
AND THANKS TO NH FOR KICKING HILLARY’S ASS.
‘1969 was an interesting year.’
How to kill an entire Sunday. Let me tell you how I did it. Yesterday my better-half was scheduled to work and I was looking forward to a day of peace and quiet and time to work on MY projects. How could I even dare to imagine something like that, I should have known better.
‘Who loves you Janis’
Unfortunately some months ago I made a commitment to her concerning the laptop she’d just purchased. I promised I’d help her setup the new laptop by transferring all of her photographs from the old to the new. This should teach me a valuable lesson for the future. Never volunteer for something unless you’re absolutely sure you know what your getting into. I thought I knew but apparently I was once again clueless.
‘The spooky Doors.’
I cleared off the kitchen table, fired up both computers, made a pot of coffee, and settled in for what I thought would be an hour or two of work. Oh how stupid I am. Little did I know just how many photo’s she had scattered throughout that hard drive of her old computer. She had pictures from multiple cameras going back six years. There were videos from both her IPhone and IPad and I kid you not . . . more than ten thousand pictures taken with an assortment of past and present cell phones. She apparently has never discovered the use of the delete button. It was a trash dump of photo’s placed on that laptop with absolutely no attempt at organization whatsoever.
‘Jumpin Joe Cocker’
As always I fall back to the old adage “When someone gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I found my own IPod and plugged it in, put on the headset and spent the next seven hours having a 60’s Flashback Sunday. I started out by listening to the entire three days of Woodstock with the original recordings. That required me to immediately switch from just coffee to coffee laced with Drambuie. I then cranked up Joe Cocker, The Band, The Yardbirds, The Hollies, Janis Joplin, The Doors, and even the Greatest Hits of War.
‘My favorite band, The Band. ‘RIP Levon’
At the end of the day I’d transferred no less than twenty-five thousand pictures to the new laptop and was suffering from a serious coffee buzz overlapped with a Drambuie buzz. There’s nothing better than Drambuie so after I finished transferring all the files I stopped drinking the coffee. From that point on it was Drambuie, Amy Winehouse and me. What a great way to spend the day and complete a tiresome project.
‘Sweet Amy’
‘Even sweeter . . . Drambuie on the lips.’
Today I’m back to what I’d call normal but still showing signs of a rather interesting hangover. For some reason my first cup of coffee this morning tasted strangely like Drambuie. How odd! I guess that’s one of the effects of time travel back to the sixties. Along with rocking out, a sore throat from all of the singing along, and being able to return home with no arrests or STD’s to show for it.
That’s what I’d call a good day in any decade.
I awakened yesterday to another snow storm that eventually dropped more than ten inches on us. It was one of those snows that seem to stick to every surface, covering trees and bushes and turning the area into a wonderland. It’s one of the few winter things that can get me to leave the house. As you can see my camera operates just fine in the snow.
Again this morning I discovered even more snow had fallen. I heard the snowplows a number of times during the night as they attempted to keep the roads clear enough to use. The last thing I did before going to bed last evening was to crank up my snowblower and clear the driveway.
My better-half was scheduled for work at 5:30 am and the last thing I wanted was to be awakened early today just to clear snow from the driveway. It’s 09:00 am now and I haven’t heard from her so I can assume you made it to work in one piece. This photo was taken early this morning just as the sun was coming up.
It’s just as beautiful out today as yesterday. The temperature dropped overnight which kept the snow sticking to the trees. Hopefully I’ll get motivated later this morning and get my butt outside for more pictures. Since I’m slowly recovering from this flu I can start getting my life back to normal once again.
I WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS WEATHER AS A KID
everyuselessthing.com 