Kid just got his first dose of the HPV vaccine, paid for by the
government. of course one of the side effects of vaccination for hpv
is uncontrolled sexytimes in previously virginal children, so i am at
the drugstore buying him condoms and liquor*.
* if by condoms and liquor i mean acne cream and shower scrubbies.

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

i got the kid a graphic adaptation of A People’s History of AMerican
Empire and opened it up to Zinn writing about reading Dickens and
getting pissed off as a kid. and then i was thinking about why it is
that A Christmas Carol is the only Dickens novel read in school.
Dickens was the most famous (though not my favorite) of the victorian
social justice writers. he was all about class war, evil rich men and
struggling poor people. A Christmas Carol makes it look like all you
need is for rich men to individually grow a conscience. his other
novels generally include some legal system mechanics to bring about
change, not individual contrition.

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

There have been these stories about how wonderfully non-abusive
egyptian protestors have been, especially towards the women
protestors. it sounds familiar, a story i’ve heard before. our boys
aren’t abusive, they’re good
progressives/democrats/revolutionaries/christians/whatever. I read
these stories with one eyebrow cocked. and then today the story of
laura logan’s rape and beating was released by cbs. i don’t know who
attacked her, jubilant protestors, the military, the police? but it
was decidedly not non-violent. the murders of protestors at the hands
of police are not non-violent. The beatings and detainment of press
and protestors are not non-violent. it is irresponsible to call this a
non-violent uprising, even though the protestors were non-violent. we
have to remember that. we have to know the risks of violence that
non-violence includes, especially if we are female. that doesn’t make
non-violence any less important but it does diminish the risk and the
sacrifice when we don’t acknowledge them.

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

okay peeps, get your math hats on. kid and i disagree with the book’s
answer to this problem.
you have a lightpost 6 meters high and a dude 2 meters tall is
standing 10 meters from the post. how long is his shadow?
kid and i figured that due to the slope his shadow should be 5 meters
long. book says 10. what do you all think? and why?

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

Dear Virgin Mobile:

Forgive me for contacting you all this way, but so far my efforts to get assistance in all the usual fashion have failed, including the contact us form on the Virgin Mobile website.

I am extremely disappointed in your mobile broadband service. In late October I purchased the usb Novatel device and used the service for one month. It was great. But in December I got free mobile internet for a time and did not reup until January 29th, when I discovered that the usb device no longer works. I was told another device would be fed exed to me overnight. That device wasn’t even shipped for 2 days (so much for overnight) and then fed ex wouldn’t deliver it because your customer service agent screwed up the address. This is the second time I have had a problem with Virgin Mobile and fedex. At christmas I ordered my son a cell phone. It was early December and should have been easily delivered before Christmas. It wasn’t shipped until late December to arrive on or after the 28th. I canceled the order and bought a phone in a Radio Shack instead, but it took until January to get a refund on the canceled order.

So now I am out $80 for the original USB device, which worked for only a month. I have requested a return of the $40 monthly fee I paid on January 29th and haven’t been able to use at all. It hasn’t been refunded. When your products and service work, they work really well. But for me this has been a very expensive experiment where I have essentially paid $160 for internet service for one month, which is overpriced by any standard.

In the mean time, the shiny new phone that I bought for my son and that he loves has a battery issue. We’ve had it for less than 2 months and it won’t hold a charge. I know that if I call your customer service number I am just going to be disappointed and frustrated again by the ineptitude. That’s $140 for a phone that worked (really well) for about a month. This is becoming a pattern. Perhaps you need to put disclaimers on your products that they are meant for one month’s usage only. I picked your company instead of adding my son to my T-Mobile account because you had better prices. But now I am seeing that you really do get what you pay for. In the many years I’ve had T-Mobile, I’ve never had a product break though I keep my phones long after the contract period.

All I want is a credit on the broken usb device so I can go buy another one in a store and not deal with your shipping problems and my son to have a phone that charges. But your customer service manager was incompetent, arrogant, and a few more words that I don’t want to put in this letter. I just want my service and devices to work the way they are supposed to and you would have a loyal customer. Instead you have a very upset and decidedly poorer customer with no value to show for it.

Sincerely,
RQ

(fyi- this was emailed to every Virgin Mobile & Novatel exec whose address I could find. If you all want to help, perhaps twittering and facebooking this to boost the signal would be lovely).

Mubarak has resigned.

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

alongwith the fuckwads who think America’s poor people aren’t poor
enough because they own tvs, the asswipes who run the people of
walmart website, and the this is why you’re fat douchenozzles.

At the grocery store today the kid and i each got a super fancy
collosal cupcake from the bakery. mine was german chocolate, kid’s was
black forrest and they were each the size of a newborn’s head.
best part, they were $2.49 and paid for with food stamps. suck it you
tiresome blowhards, those cupcakes contain enough calories to get
through the day all in fat and sugar and chocolate. plus there was
fruit, coconut in mine and cherries in the kid’s.
(afterwards we did have a super healthy veggie dinner of brussel
sprouts, salad and mashy potatoes but we could totally live on
cupcakes alone)

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

fuck you Mubarak and the horse you rode in on. you are a wankstain on
the ass boil of society, you suck sour donkey balls, you’re the king
of douchebaggery. in bulgaria they call you salad face. i curse you in
farsi and russian and hindu and italian with taunts about what your
tongue does to the rectal areas of various farm animals, mostly goats.
i wish you a lifetime of hemroids and kidneystones and impotence, you
fucking asswipe.

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

that mumbarak is resigning tonight.

i don’t know how much i trust the people who just spent 10 minutes
discussing lindsay lohan’s ‘Innapropriate court dress’ (it was a white
sweater dress for fuck’s sake. get over it) but if this is true then
w00t w00t for Egypt!!!

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

I need some new go to insults. while i love ‘douchebag’ and ‘asshat’
they are both now too common to have a real, visceral insult effect.
I’ve been kicking around ‘fuck-knuckle’ but i want something that
really hits you in the gut with awful. peeps, what words do you use?
rules for insults are ironclad: they must not insult a group of people
who are not the original insultee, including any insult ending in
-tard. If you have to explain how you insult isn’t really sexist,
abelist, homophobic, etc then you probably shouldn’t use it (douchebag
is the only word i’ve ever seen pass this becuase i am forever
explaining that douching and douchebags are universally bad for
women.)

—
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning