Diary of a Fat Slob: Because I'm an ass

Because I'm an ass

Leftovers & Links #64

With his newfound fame and adoration as a star of the right wing, I’ll bet Kyle Rittenhouse has boinked more women in the past month than I have in my entire life. I’d take any of mine over all of his, though.

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This is a quick primer of where we are in the amazingly slow ‘investigation’ of whatever the hell happened on January 6. I’ll endorse the link because it’s good to be well-informed, but don't be too disappointed when it all leads to jack shit.

Donald Trump and his band of merry men will face no legal consequences for any of their malfeasance and treason.

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The Catholic Church wants you to know “Santa Claus is an imaginary character.”

I’m tired this morning, so please provide your own punchline.

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Was your favorite sci-fi writer for or against the Vietnam war?

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A company that sort of provides health care insisted that I needed some lab work, but they couldn't tell me what it would cost. Afterwards I received notification via email that they wanted $111.49. I ignored their five emails for five reasons:

① I hate the company
② I hate the whole damned US health care system
③ I'm rankled that they wouldn't tell me a price prior to the work
④ I neither asked for nor agreed to e-billing, and
⑤ I'm just generally an ass.

Well, they finally mailed me a bill, so on my bank's website I've set up recurring payments of $30 per month. I could afford to pay $111 all at once, but paying slowly costs them a little more, and I like that because of reason 5.

The company's response is that I need to call and talk to their billing office, to get approval for this plan. Nah, the plan has been approved by me, and that's all the approval I need.

Haven't yet seen the bill for last week's emergency room visit, but it'll be lots more than $111. When that bill comes — by mail, please — it'll mean $30 p/month for probably years, but toward the end I'll reduce the recurring payments to $10, then $5, then $1, and when I owe them just one dollar I'll stop paying, because I'm an ass.

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The card I received from my mother for graduating college.

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Time magazine is not worth reading, and Elon Musk is their Person of the Year, but he's a cancerous lesion on America, isn't he?

My human of the year would be Eugene Goodman.

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Reddit readies IPO filing.

I have no opinion about this beyond "shit happens." I’ll continue enjoying Reddit until they finish making Reddit suck, a task that seems well underway. This line from Reddit’s co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman made me chuckle, though:

“All good companies should go public when they can.” Pausing and pondering, maybe going public is the point where whatever few “good companies” there are, go bad.

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Before he mentally left our planet’s orbit, I used to listen to Robert Kennedy Jr’s radio show/podcast. I drifted away ten or fifteen years ago, when I grew weary of his recurring fixation on fears of vaccination. I thought he was merely a nut, though, and surely not many people could be swayed by a nut, right? Boy, was I wrong.

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One-word newscast:

Good news:
• abortion
• Covid

Bad news:
• dead

Climate news:
• bouncy
• typhoon

Stupid news:
• asshole
• cheesecake
• unwoke

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The only way Microsoft can get people to use its shitty Edge browser is by forcing them to.

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1,306 legs, but does it know how to use them?

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I don’t think I’ve ever exited a website faster than I clicked away from juandavidcampolargo.com, but "don't judge a book by its cover" and all that. It's probably wrong to think I can understand and dismiss the site and the man, just from the full-screen image, almost certainly Photoshopped, of him wearing a clip-on mike, on stage, offering all the answers.

Thus I talked myself into returning, but two more minutes reinforced my original snap judgment.

Mr Campolargo is "a curiously ambitious teenager" who says, "My mission in life is to help people and to me that means creating companies, writing books, giving TEDx Talks, inventing products, and doing things society can’t and won't do."

I respect the quest, Juan David, but hope you get sidetracked by something else, soon. Life is more interesting than anything on your to-do list.

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Here's a guy with a more intriguing quest:

America on foot, instead of from a car.

Many of the cities and neighborhoods we ostensibly built for ourselves were actually built for our cars. Anyone who has ever tried to walk to a grocery store in a typical suburban neighborhood, for example, or cross a six-lane arterial to get from a Target to a Best Buy on foot, knows that to be a pedestrian in most of America is to work your way around a lot of obstacles. There are roads with no sidewalks, where you must teeter tightrope-style along a narrow shoulder flanked by 60 mile-per-hour traffic.

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Green Day’s Kerplunk was thirty years ago, and of course Larry Livermore was there.

“What’s this album about, Larry?” I was asked more than once, to which I could only answer, “Oh, you know, the usual: amazing songs about love and introspection and conquering the universe. C’mon, guys, you’ve heard Green Day enough times by now.”

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There are (or were) a thousand corner stores in Frisco very similar to VJ Grocery, but it's the one where Steve McQueen bought some TV dinners.

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What’s in your box of Kellogg’s cereal? Cruelty.

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Mystery links — Like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:

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Sing along with Doug:
Zonked, by Red Prysock & His Orchestra