argus

Forwarded from my sister with the comment “who needs a gun”: Arkansas man kills deer in house

Emperor Misha over at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler posted a piece about the “news” streaming from the “occupied territories” — including a link to a fascinating 18-minute video clip that examines some raw footage that was clipped, edited, and provided to the world media by the ever-eager-to-whine “Paleoswinians”. It is a must-see.

(If the link doesn’t work, let me know — I’ve got the clip and can make it available)

This plus this says it all. Incompetence and finger-pointing, while your frickin city is still under water. Water that is now killing people, by the way.

Went by Publix Saturday afternoon to pick up a few items …and at the checkout, the cashier informed me, somewhat sheepishly, that my Discover card was rejected. Hmm. “Well,” I think, “I did make a somewhat-out-of-the-ordinary purchase from Dell on Friday… but not cool.” Resolving to check into it upon arriving back home, I whip out the Visa and all is made right.

Of course, I promptly got distracted when I got home (Nichole and I parked it in front of a movie), so I had completely forgotten about it when we left to meet Preble for some grub at the ever-delicious Folks. Dinner was fine, simply fine, and when the bill arrived I pulled out my favorite star-spangled plastic to even up my debt with the house. This time, the cashier/waitress not only returns with a sheepish look on her face, but she brings me a slip of paper from the card-receipt machine: “Transaction rejected”, or something similar. Very not cool — although it is abstractly entertaining how the cashiers always seem embarrassed by some clod’s card getting rejected. Now doubly embarrassed (once over just for it having happened at all, twice over for realizing that I forgot to check on it earlier in the day), we beeline straight home to talk to the friendly people at 1-800-DISCOVER and find out “WTF”, as the kids say.
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John Stossel delevers a sanity check on the whole “bottled water” phenomenon. Interesting, since I stock bottled water (whatever is the cheapest at Sam’s, mind you) here in my snack store at work — and people do indeed love it. I won’t drink the water out of the water fountains here at work (you should see what a glass or bottle filled up from them looks like — reminds me of those sea monkey kits from childhood), but I don’t buy the bottled stuff for myself — a Brita filter on my tap is more than adequate, thank you.

What I found particularly interesting about ol’ John’s article is the ad hoc, “unscientific” — but still quite compelling — experiments his team conducted. Definitely worth reading.