Browsing Posts published by sabrina
“In 20 Years, the American Welfare State will no longer be needed”: an interview with Grover Norquist by Pablo Pardo of El Mundo [Original (en español), Google’s mostly-legible translation]:
Q: You would like the cut the state by half in 25 years. How? A: The key is in pensions and health. Last year Bush approved the creation of personal accounts in which each citizen accumulates savings to pay for health assistance. And the platform includes a partial privatization of Social Security (“pensiones”). These two areas are a third of public spending in this country. In 20 years, half the population will be in private assistance systems and pensions. And the Welfare State will no longer be needed. To this will be added reforms to the EPA and a reduction in the authority of the FDA, which authorizes the sale of pharmaceuticals. Q: And that will be the society that you want. A: It will be a truly American society. And we will bury the Europeans. Further, we will reform immigration legislation, and bring over one million of Europe’s best minds every year. You will also be finished. But quickly, let me say why we are freer than you. Q: Why? A: Because we can have weapons.
this man is clearly insane. what the hell are you thinking? “we will bury [you]”? you will be “finished”?
way to make friends. asshole.so i got an email out of the blue, today, from someone who reported to me that material had been taken from the soap site and put into an ebook which is being sold on ebay. actually, the person who contacted me says that she’s identified five or six sites from which material was taken.
now i’m really curious. i’m tempted to spend the £5.99 to buy a copy of the ebook and see for myself. except, of course, my paypal and ebay accounts are associated with my viv address, which is associated with the soap address, and were i to buy a copy i wouldn’t want to tip my hand like that and hint to the person that i was looking to see if they stole my work. bah. i’m torn between annoyance that they blatantly ignored my copyright, and amusement — the site must be a success if it’s worth being stolen and sold for cash. still, i don’t appreciate having someone make a profit off of the information i intentionally provide for free — granted, the buyers get what they deserve in regard to paying something that they ought to have spent five minutes googling for, instead, and i don’t have much sympathy for them, but it does tickle my cranky button that someone’s out there making beer money off my work and i’m not being acknowledged. also, i just don’t understand why people would buy a crappy ebook for £5.99 on ebay when they could…oh…say…go to an actual bookstore and get an actual book from a respected author for probably £6.99 or or £7.99 or so. people, people, people.now you low-carb fuckers have gone too far! don’t mess with my wonder bread!
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Interstate Bakeries, the purveyor of lunch box staples Wonder Bread and Twinkies, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, felled by the combination of a more health-conscious public and smothering operational costs. The nation’s largest wholesale baker, which had shown signs of financial weakness for months, filed for Chapter 11 reorganization and installed new management, saying it intended to survive. The company said it would continue operating its bakeries, outlet stores and distribution centers. … For more than a year, Interstate Bakeries has struggled with declining sales of its bread and sweet goods products, a drop the company and analysts blame on the popularity of high-protein, low-carb diets such as Atkins and South Beach.
(see also the Trib’s story.)
i think i’ll stop on my way home from work and buy a loaf of wonder bread just on g.p.ow.
ended up walking down north clark from foster to division, about five miles. i would have done the entire distance home except for two things:- my shoes were not walking shoes, and they were starting to be a little bit bitchy about it, and
- i really, really had to pee.
i wimped out and hopped on the red line at clark/division and took it home. climbed up to the street level, took off my shoes and hose, and walked home barefoot.
this morning in the shower i realized that my left heel is totally messed up. i thought it was just rubbed sore on the inside side of the heel, but i managed to do some quality damage to it without noticing (much). it’s really sore. i had to bandage it up and wear actual shoes instead of sandals to work today. woe. it was such a nice night for a walk, too. the entire time i was walking through lincoln park, i was wishing — for no real reason other than this — that i was in london: if i was walking through green park at 2AM, *they* have a bathroom! i’d have to pay 20p to use it, but by god it’d be there. the odd bit was that i didn’t really start out intending to walk home. i mean, seven miles is a pretty long walk for the middle of the night when i have to work the next day. but it was so nice out, and i left la donna and walked south, intending to get on the red line at lawrence, then i thought i would just take the #22, only i often find it hard to wait for busses because if i’m walking, i’m doing something, — instead of just standing there wasting time — so i usually just start out walking and inevitably miss the bus because i don’t see it coming up behind me, and then keep walking since i missed my stupid bus. i didn’t miss the bus last night so much as i never really felt like stopping. it was so nice out. it felt really good to be outside. i had thought that i would go into the jewel at clark and division and use the bathrooms there (and maybe buy another bottle of water out of my persistent guilt about using businesses’ bathrooms without buying their stuff, regardless of how much money Jewel-Osco has gotten from me over the years), but i stopped outside it briefly to talk to a well-dressed fellow named victor for a while. he was aghast to learn that i’d just walked south from foster, and really liked my perfume (Lemon Tea from the Body Shop, for the record). i thought he was going to evangelise at first, but apart from one comment about going for a walk being a good time to talk to god, he didn’t. i ducked into the jewel eventually only to discover that they close their restrooms until 6AM. this pleased me not. so, back out and onto the subway. in front of the dunkin’ donuts, someone stopped me and wanted to know what CD i was listening to. i said, it’s a band called Death Cab for Cutie, and he responded, what the heck does that name mean? i shrugged and said that i didn’t know really, and ducked downstairs to get on the train. i got home at, what, 2:30, and i thought i would just fall asleep. walking five miles and drinking a 1L bottle of evian from a handy 24-hour walgreens — this latter was perhaps not the best idea i had, considering the lack of public toilets — erased the nice buzz from beer and wine, so i wasn’t particularly worried about being hung over. also, i was kinda tired by then. i did manage to fall asleep around threeish, but i was awake again by four something, and my head was full of The Dark Tower, such that i couldn’t sleep. this did not stop me from trying, so i sort of lay in bed in this half-dozing haze, thinking about the situations in the book and wishing my brain would just shut up long enough to go back to sleep. i hate that, when you really want to sleep but you can’t because there’s too much going on in your head and there’s no way to stop it. and i don’t really have any tricks for dealing with it, other than getting out of bed and reading a book until i’m truly exhausted. that wasn’t really going to work since i had to go to work, so i didn’t try. possibly a good plan because the book is somewhat emotional to read. also, i wouldn’t have wanted to curl up in my reading chair and get my dirty feet from walking around downtown barefoot on my nice clean afghan my mom made for me. so, that was last night. exciting.
