This Happened

[Eliahad]

*wuffles*

[Phoebe]

Small world syndrome arises; I think person I work with and elderly relative of mine used to have some sort of relationship. Don't wanna ask more questions; know too much already.

[Phoebe]

I can't even begin to count how many times I have clicked on the phpbb link below by accident.

[Tahlvin]

I took out a tollbooth gate on the drive back home from the funeral yesterday. I'm convinced my mother-in-law was up in heaven with my stepfather-in-law, and said, "Here, hold my beer while I f#*k with our son-in-law!"

So, as I'm approaching the toll booth at the west end of the Indiana Toll Road, the light is green and the gate is up. I can't even see the last car that went through, it has been so long. I slow down and approach, and the light stays green. Finally, as the front of my car reaches the light/gate, I begin to apply pressure to the accelerator, thinking I've I'm far enough through that it must have registered our transponder. It's at that moment that the light turns red and the gate slams down towards our windshield without any other warning. We're moving, and the windshield pillar of the car slopes back and up, which means the gate gets force forward and upward while it is trying to go downwards. And in the battle between a slim wooden beam and reinforced steel roll cage, the roll cage won, and the gate snapped off from the toll booth. Thankfully, the brunt of the impact was to the metal at the side of the windshield rather than to the glass of the windshield, so the windshield did not crack. And while a small mark was left on the paint on the windshield pillar, it's something that can be removed with the application of a little polishing compound. And since the post-toll booth area is a place of absolute mayhem, where it goes from about 10 lanes down to 2 lanes in the space of a football field, there was no opportunity for me to pull over and talk to anyone about what happened, so I now need to track down contact information for the Indiana Toll Road and let them know that I am the person whose car was attacked by one of their toll gates and won the battle.

[Phoebe]

OMG that's wild! Everyone I know is having a bad week, sorry. There is something going around - bad developments.

[El Jefe]

Fuck capitalism. All of it. Fuck money, fuck laws, fuck lawyers, fuck the whole goddamn mess. Fuck you greedy bastards. Fuck this whole godawful planet and nuke the fucking piece of shit until it glows.

In other totally unrelated news, I just got my first experience of being burned on a freelancer contract. I was falsely reported as in breach, the company acting as escrow agents fucked up and let the hiring company walk with the database that took five weeks of my time, and I have not a single penny to show for it. I can take it to arbitration only, and may possible see 30% of my backpay in eight to fourteen months from now. In the meantime, the hiring company has the entire completed database and is happily using it to add new clients to their business. I'm now immediately several thousand dollars in debt, as that pay was earmarked for my necessary medical expenses. I have no way to pay for my next round of required physical therapy in two weeks, the work on my car to keep it legal to drive now has no funds, and I currently see no conceivable way to make up the lost revenue in time to avoid a complete personal financial meltdown.

Why the fuck did I ever get sober?

[Phoebe]

Oh Jeff I am so sorry. I wish that I lived closer to you so that there was some means of truly helping with this f***** up situation. Is there anything we can do? The events of my day have taught me that I am a very small and very weak person and that the machine grinds on in its own crazy unfair ways despite best efforts. I have a long way to improve. I wish that your life would improve immediately. You deserve much much better and you are making the world a better place - I can tell you that much just by knowing your internet you.

[Stan]

Ah, Fuck. I'm so sorry.

[Tahlvin]

That sucks. So sorry that happened to you.

[akiva]

That is completely messed up. Sorry.

[mimekiller]

Jeff as a natural contrarian I must sadly report that I am not sorry this happened to you.

[El Jefe]

[Phoebe]

I've never really understood the difference between troll as in trying to bait the fish and troll as in the thing under the billy goat bridge or that burst into the girls' bathroom in that first Harry Potter movie. It's like if you're doing the former you must be one of the two latter? How does that work?

[mimekiller]

[Phoebe]

Fascinating. I suppose it depends very much for what a person is trolling. I know some people who really do think Hitler had the right idea and they scare me, but I don't think they're trolling, whether for attention or whatever. Well I suppose they're trolling for followers. Whenever I'm accused of a troll it's because people think I'm saying something disingenuous simply to be argumentative or perhaps to mock someone. Or worst of all, that I'm stating things I don't really believe or making arguments that I know to be poor so that I can prey upon the innocent sensibilities of people who simply cannot resist the opportunity to engage in refutation of those they consider intellectually inferior or who are peddling poor arguments. I don't know what would possibly motivate me to do something like that. Maybe just general misanthropy or the desire for negative attention or daddy issues that I've never had because I really like my dad or something. Actually I probably unintentionally put my finger right on the problem. My dad was such a nice Dad and we had such a happy relationship that I feel completely emboldened to say whatever random humorous things pop into my mind even as it infuriates other people who really shouldn't take it so damn seriously.

[El Jefe]

[Phoebe]

Someone has put cotton balls into my nail polish remover and therefore I am going to all my meetings today with half a remnant of nail polish everywhere. This is how it goes.

[Tahlvin]

I did not realize Laurence Fishburne and Gina Torres were married. But apparently, they had been for the past 14 years, but now are divorcing.

[Phoebe]

Every time my dog goes out there's a squirrel doing some mischief. The dog so hell-bent on destroying the squirrel menace that he cannot stop to pee or poop. This creates problems for the people who need him to go out and pee and poop in a timely fashion and not do it indoors.

[Zen]

Emails from colleges... mailings from colleges... I realize that it's technically a form of praise for our daughter that our house and inbox are inundated with so many attempts to separate us from our money in order to get her onto their campus, but it's getting freaking ridiculous! In October alone, we've gotten 25 messages from colleges and universities, most of which my daughter has never expressed any interest in. (At least three messages from Tulane University... Why?) We get mailings everyday from schools she has never shown interest in. Some days we get two identical flyers from the same school. It is a massive waste of paper...

I appreciate that my daughter is awesome and that schools all around the nation want to strip my bank account of all of its funds in order to educate her, but seriously? (The fact that it wasn't nearly this bad when my older child was going through the process is really what strikes me... He was near the top of his class and qualified for a high scholarship at the school he chose to go to. he could have gotten into a "better" school than the one he chose to go to, partially because of financial reasons and partially because of, frankly, a girl... one that he recently broke up with, which is kind of sad, since he evidently was about to propose to her when she informed him of the fact that she'd fallen for one of their friends and wanted to break up... they're trying to do the "staying friends" thing... I'm not sure how well that's working. I think it's working better for him and the girl than it is for him and the guy... Probably because it's working for him and the girl... lovely... just lovely... sigh...) But anyway, he was a smart kid, but the volume of interest from colleges for our daughter is just... almost overwhelming!)