One last political post

Some random thoughts from a closet optimist... not that this may cheer anyone up, but some of it's amusing and some of it's interesting (to me at least).

Here's a pic of the guy who won the local House race. I kept it on my desktop all day on 11/3 just because it was such a happy pic- aside from the guy's Osmond-esque cuteness, there's just the joy of knowing that a Democrat won in Texas against a Republican incumbent who went really negative really early, and filled our mailbox with tons of crap for weeks.
( Mark Strama, happy new Texas House rep, district 50 )

Here's something that I saw on Tom Tomorrow's site- ( look! It was all just a bad dream! )

Watching the Daily Show last night, W held a press conference and decided that he was going to randomly (as far as I could tell) insist on a one-question limit, and somehow connected this to 'the will of the people'. Some reporter asked two questions (the cheeky bastard) and W scolded him saying "That was two questions. Obviously you aren't listening to the will of the people." Well, ( suck on this, W )

Finally, some interesting maps...

Slave States... Okay, it's a low blow, but you take your self-righteous indignation where you can get it some days. This has a similar zesty sour-grapes flavor, and is almost certainly inaccurate in addition.

Purple America... you can look at a bigger version, or compare it to population-density-indicating pics; pretty interesting.

Licorice! Gag me!

So I was at the mall last night, and the Wicks y Sticks had a table of Halloween crap on sale. They had some black tea lights in the Yankee Candle Co. flavor 'Witch's Brew', which is a patchouli-based scent, for half off so I snapped them up.

Well, so I get home and open the bag, and it turns out I've picked up some black licorice scented tea lights instead. I called the store, and they tell me they've already packed up the Halloween stuff and shipped it to wherever they ship that stuff off to. I absolutely hate the smell of the stuff. It smells pretty close to exactly like black licorice, which I loathe. Anyone on my list like it enough? I can't return it, so I'm looking to get it out of my house by any means possible. There are 12 tea lights, which are said to burn for 4-6 hours each. That's up to 72 hours of licoricey goodness. Barf. Let me know if you're interested.

Edit: emeraldfyre has made her claim. If she becomes unable or unwilling to fulfill her role as the remover of the offending candles, the offer will be reposted. Thanks, Sheena.

(no subject)

Apparently, shit's just going to go wrong today.

There was the licorice candles.

Then, I'm looking through my bills, and there's some person I've never heard of who wants $250 for my hysterectomy. It turns out this person was a surgery assistant, and they were out of network. No one ever mentioned this person to me, and I wasn't given a chance to consent to having this out-of-network person assist with the surgery then charge me twice what my insurance company was willing to pay. Apparently they have since agreed to only charge what my insurance would cover, but since that happened after the surgery, they're sending me a bill. They mentioned that if I pay the bill within 30 days of the surgery (mind you, this was the first bill I've seen from this person, and I had the surgery in July) I'd get half off. My insurance already paid half of the bill, but that was after 30 days. Anyway, I'm appealing the bill, for all the good it'll do me.

We haven't been able to get into our mailbox for a week or so, and the lock was sticking pretty badly before that. They said 'squirt WD-40 in it' but that did nothing. So I had to go down to the post office to request that they fix it in person, and bring the title of the house. They said "okay." I go out today- there's a new lock. Where's the key? I was home all day, it could've been dropped by, but no. I called the main office, they told me to call the local office which is supposedly open 'til 6pm- no one's answered.

My dad has sent me two emails so far gloating about W's win, including one that mentions how he had a 'comfortable, decisive' majority, continuing on about how it's so obvious all of America wants W... Uh, how the hell is 51% any kind of comfortable? I sent him the IQ thing and the slave states link, just to be an asshole. I'm not in the mood for propaganda, so maybe this will shut down this sort of discourse. Childish, yeah. Sue me.

There's been several other minor annoyances today, all adding up to the Bummer of 1000 Cuts. Feh.