"Puppet wrangler? There weren't any puppets in this movie!" – Crow T. Robot
In China, people with tattoos and piercings are widely frowned upon and viewed as social outcasts.
Which is weird, because here in the United States, people are constantly getting tattooed with Chinese characters. (Even when they don’t know what they mean.)
Do you think Ed McMahon had any idea, way back when he was first introducing her on Star Search that one day Britney Spears would be the instrument of his personal downfall?
So if I’m getting an economic stimulus payment from the federal government this year, the check hasn’t arrived yet. But even if it does arrive, it will likely only cover about half of what the state government suddenly says I owe them.
Which would be about $1,000, one hundred of which I already paid when I filed my taxes in April. I know this has been “Fred’s Not Very Good at Math Day” and everything, but even I can spot the difference between 1,000 and 100. Considering that I didn’t owe much more than $100 last year — and neither my income nor spending habits changed dramatically in the interim — this new bill comes as a real shock. I’ll need to closely re-examine my tax return — oh damn, I have a copy, right? — and try to decipher the paperwork that New York sent me earlier today.
And hopefully it all will prove to be a mistake, and I won’t actually owe them $900.
I think I’ve already proven once today that math is not my strong suit — and neither, for that matter, is politics — but indulge me for a moment as I openly muse about both. Feel free to let me know if I get neither of them right.
Let’s assume that Barack Obama wins the Presidency. And let’s assume he picks someone other than Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Whether they are in office for one or two terms, it will be 2016 before another Democrat than Obama will have the nomination. (Unless there’s some strange circumstances under which the Democrats would hand the 2012 nomination to someone other than the sitting President.) If Obama serves two terms, chances are his VP will get the nod in 2016. If that VP loses, a Democrat will have a chance again in 2020, but if that VP wins, the next shot won’t be until 2024, when the Democrats will likely support whoever the sitting VP is at that time. And if that VP isn’t Hillary Clinton…
I’m just saying. In 2020, Hilary Clinton will be 73; she will be 77 in 2024. Think about all the bad press and jokes about John McCain’s age we’ve seen this election cycle. He’s 72. Even if age wasn’t a factor — either in reality or in the voting public’s mind — that’s an awfully long time to wait for the Presidency, especially for someone who seems as bound and determined to win it as Hillary Clinton does.
She has to recognize by now that the 2008 nomination is lost to her. Her best chance of becoming President, then, is to either be Obama’s running mate in this election — so she can run again in 2016 — or help ensure Obama’s defeat — so she can run again in 2012.
That, or leave the party altogether and run as an Independent in 2008. But that’s just crazy talk…right?
I just had a quick brain freeze a few minutes ago. I was buying something, and the total came out to $6.05. I handed the cashier a five-dollar bill and a single…and for some strange reason I thought this was enough. I was convinced — even as she politely asked, “Don’t you have five cents? Don’t you have any change?” — that she owed me money, that she was only asking because she didn’t want the chore of making change herself from the register. It was only afterwards, once I’d left the store with my purchase, that I realized the very obvious mathematical error I had made.
Um, thanks for letting me buy something anyway! I promise to be less stupid the next time I come in there!