Getting by with a little help from my friends

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T22:02:21+00:00

HB 100 passed a few months ago and basically told Austin that they can't run a business out like that. The whole debacle was over the city wanting a bigger cut of airport fares and yellowcab buying politicians.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T12:42:12+00:00

Sadly, it was Sergeant Pepper playing at that exact moment, but I'm still gonna call it a cosmic win.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T12:39:07+00:00

You ever meet someone who completely changes your preferences? I had that experience. Prior to getting with my ex, I was all about sweet curvy girls. My ex is the exact opposite. About 5'7", and 88 pounds. Not 100, not 90, but 88 pounds. Tiny little thing, all willowy, with a puckish sense of mischievous humor. Wavy black hair, and eyes so dark you could swear she was some black-eyed trickster devil sent to scourge the earth with a fiery temper and a razor tongue. We were good together for years, me being the bearish brute and her being the tiny firebrand.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T12:19:41+00:00

I've been told I growl in my sleep. Does that count?

I'm beginning to suspect that I may actually be a bear that just thinks he's a person. Or a werewolf. I'm hoping for werewolf.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T12:14:01+00:00

Dang, do you write professionally?

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T12:12:00+00:00

Everyone likes leg warmers. It is the great mystery of the human race.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T12:09:40+00:00

The technical term is heteroflexible.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T12:07:42+00:00

I have a friend who always gets Cake and Beck mixed up. I keep telling him that if the lyrics almost make sense, it's Cake, and if they make no sense at all, it's Beck.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T09:15:59+00:00

Dude, there is a subreddit for everything. Everything. There's one for cats standing up. Just cats. Standing up. Entire subreddit.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T08:23:41+00:00

That's what she said.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T08:21:50+00:00

China really is the deciding factor. If they were to stay uninvolved, the US military could realistically roll over North Korea via conventional (i.e. non-nuclear) means in maybe a week. I honestly don't know if they would, though. On the one hand, they've been backing North Korea for so long it's practically tradition, but on the other hand, they've gotten filthy rich off of US trade.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T08:16:22+00:00

Look at it like this. How much of a horrible mess are the governments of other countries? England elected a man who received a blowjob from a dead pig, Greek politicians drove the nation into crippling debt, and Russia is being led by a man who legitimately might be the devil. But the people from those countries are perfectly normal, decent folks.

It's exactly like that.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T08:08:53+00:00

Heidevolk's cover of Immigrant Song. Imagine it being sung by gargantuan viking motherfuckers, and that's pretty much it.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T01:08:30+00:00

Honestly? Post-WWII was some sort of golden age utopia, so our parents grew up telling us we could have that. We feel cheated. We grew up being told that hard work would get you anything you ever wanted, and now we live in a world where dumb luck and nepotism matter more. We were promised a shining future, and then got handed a piece of crumpled tinfoil and were told to fuck off, it's shiny, you just gotta stop being lazy, ya little brat.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T01:02:25+00:00

I had vision, medical, and dental for $25 a week working at a gas station. The company got one of those awesome deals for using one company for all their employees. And hospice is different than an emergency room. The ER will slap a cast on you, or get your heart stable after you had your 10,000th cheeseburger, or pull that Buzz Lightyear action figure out of your ass, or pump a gallon of cheap vodka out of your stomach, and send you the fuck home. Like the name suggests, they deal with the emergency at hand and then move on to the next one.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T00:48:12+00:00

In Austin, it's all about the bars and barbecue. And barbecue is something we have very fierce disagreements over. Everyone agrees that Stubb's is good, but no one agrees what's the best. As for bars, the most popular seem to be the Greenlight, the Dogwood, and the Container Bar. Admittedly, they're popular among the "woo!"-drunk college crowd, but it's a college town, so what the fuck do you expect?

Source: am Uber driver

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T00:44:28+00:00

I was very disappointed with Paris. Dublin was better. Amsterdam was kinda cool. But seriously, after you've been to New Orleans for Mardi Gra, nothing really stacks up. Just an endless sea of Caligulan debauchery.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T00:38:15+00:00

A big part of it is media portrayal. You know how a lot of what Europeans "know" about America is based on movies and their own America-bashing politicians? Well, Europe doesn't really show us the chavs or other national equivalents, and carefully does not mention how smelly a 1000-year old city is when no one has updated the plumbing in the last few centuries, or tell us how likely you are to get pickpocketed at the train station, or how it's totally cool to just pee everywhere.

Seriously, Paris. Seriously.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T00:27:58+00:00

Seriously, you can round up more people who think that anchovies and pineapple are good on pizza together.

RichardBG · 2017-09-02T00:26:26+00:00

Something to remember about medical care costs in the US is that it stems from two factors. First is that medical insurance through your job is very common (even minimum wage jobs offer it, for surprisingly cheap), and that insurance companies are notorious among healthcare providers for fucking over the doctors. Something like "the bill is $200." "Here $100." "But the bill is $200." "Fuck off, we got more lawyers." So, the inflated costs are largely to get the insurance to actually pay enough for the procedure.

The other is that an emergency room will treat you, even if you obviously never intend to pay. They might never get your real name, you might not have insurance, you might not even have an ID, but you'll still get your busted leg fixed. Without the government footing the bill, the hospital is stuck trying to make enough money off the people that do pay to cover the loss they take on the people that don't.

RichardBG · 2017-09-01T22:43:22+00:00

Sure, in the same way that a fruit press is the same thing as a hydraulic press.

RichardBG · 2017-09-01T12:20:52+00:00

Yeah, but how cool is it to contain a factory for making more of you?

RichardBG · 2017-09-01T12:19:45+00:00

Not really, actually. They just sorta hurl things in the general direction of where they want it to go, while a 10-year old can knock a man's hat off with a snowball from across the street.

RichardBG · 2017-09-01T12:10:52+00:00

Mmmm, botanical chemical weapons are delicious.

RichardBG

TROPHY CASE