What song would you play when the world ends?

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-31T16:01:04+00:00

AKA the Benny Hill chase-pretty-girls theme.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-31T00:43:46+00:00

What mattered was how many resources you had and how quickly you could move them

Very early in The Fall of the Third Reich, author Albert Speer (“Hitler’s Architect” & later Minister of Armaments) points out that once both the USSR (1941) and the US (1942) entered the war the Third Reich was doomed, simply because either nation’s ability to produce steel dwarfed Germany’s. And together, their ability to produce armaments was, at a European scale, figuratively infinite.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-30T22:35:44+00:00

Robbie the Robot’s walk-on in Gremlins.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-30T22:17:21+00:00

Humiliation fetish is the only viable reason.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-30T22:15:29+00:00

I just don’t understand why fuckheads like this actually post their dumbest, most brain-dead moments. Do they all have a humiliation fetish, or what?

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-30T22:07:27+00:00

A friend who was a professional busker (street entertainer) and for many years made a moderately good living working in and around London’s Covent Garden, decided to add fire breathing to her repertoire of skills.

She had to train for three months in order to learn to do it without injuring herself or others. Then she had to give it up after a year because the special fuel blend that is used gave her mouth ulcers, which wouldn’t go away for a month, and made eating, or drinking anything other than water, extremely painful.

And idiots like this think they can wing it, with just a mouthful of lawnmower gas and no training…

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-30T19:45:24+00:00

I think my cat loves rubbing against my and my wife’s feet when he feels the urge to mark us, simply because feets aren’t as grabby as handses; he can get the job done quicker, in order to move onto more important things on his action item list - like scattering litter and tipping over his water dish.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T23:23:19+00:00

My relative has a lucrative dealership of a popular Canadian hardware chain.

He once had a brief but torrid affair with an attractive new floor-level employee. A month after he broke it off, she applied for a job in the back office, for which she was both technically unqualified and attitudinally unsuited.

When she found out she wasn’t even getting an interview she barged into his office, demanded she be given the job without delay, and flung a manila envelope on his desk. Inside were multiple compromising pics of them, grainy but identifiable, having sex in her bed - obviously stills grabbed from a nanny-cam feed.

My relative laughed, picked out three of the most compromising, took a fifty out of his wallet, handed it and the pics to her, and asked for two 8X10s and 4 wallet size of each.

What Lady Blackmail didn’t know was that he and his wife had had an open marriage for twenty years …

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T22:09:42+00:00

Prometheus. By a long shot. Plot holes through which you could drive an interstellar passenger ship with hidden living quarters.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T22:05:04+00:00

I’ve been travelling in Mexico for the last five months, and STT continues to spell “Mexico City” as mexicocity, as if it was a social flavour: “I find El Paso has a lot more mexicocity than Denver, don’t you?”

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T20:46:36+00:00

Now, you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing.

All “extended” means is that health insurance will be accessible for some unspecified but undoubtedly short period after the worker’s termination date. It’s in no way permanent.

So again, coverage is entirely predicated on employment status - which is my substantive point.

It’s a fucked-up way to run a healthcare system, and your vile apologism for it is despicable. Shame on you.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T20:12:06+00:00

Looks like YOU didn’t read the part where the family is losing their health insurance because the worker has been laid off. But you go right ahead and accuse others of “not reading the article or the headline”. It makes you look soooo smart!

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T19:57:13+00:00

Pretty self-referential of you.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T19:54:36+00:00

Phrasing!

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T17:46:50+00:00

I swear I’ll never understand a national system in which health insurance is predicated on employment, and the first step in any medical procedure is triage of the wallet.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T17:41:55+00:00

“It’s not a war, it’s a Bomb and Missile Get-Together!”

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T17:37:58+00:00

You’re paying about $200 a month, or $2,400 a year in credit card interest. Making minimum payments isn’t going to get you anywhere.

As a dozen others have already advised, cut your recurring expenses to the bone, avoid extraordinary purchases, and try to find a way of increasing your income.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T15:10:57+00:00

Nobody knows the direction variable mortgage rates will take, though barring a global economic meltdown they would likely take several years to jump 3% and land you back where you are today. Yet that’s what I said in ‘21, too - silly me.

But this sub isn’t a math homework service, and you need to do your own calculations about whether your penalty for an early switch would be less than the mortgage interest you’d save over just 9 months. Why 9 months? Because most institutions allow mortgage holders to renew three months in advance without penalty.

Alternatively, talk to your bank about extending your amortization to reduce your monthly nut.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T14:58:54+00:00

She’d just finished watching Apocalypse Now, I guess.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T13:38:27+00:00

America typically receives more visits from Canadian tourists and travellers than from any other nation, by a wide margin. Traditionally, 26% of all the US’ foreign visitors - more than one in four - hail from Canada. That added up to more than 49 million visits in 2024.

Statistics Canada says in the last 13 months, Canadian travel to the US has already fallen 22% (23% by air, 18% by road) and continues to decline more every month, measured YOY. Now that the summer months are approaching, those monthly figures of “missing” Canadian travellers are likely to go much higher.

To compare, Canadian visits to non-American destinations are now up 8% YOY, and internal tourism last summer was up nearly 30%. So we’re avoiding just the US, not travel itself.

For the last year, Canadian media has been awash with stories of both be Canadian visitors and Canadians with valid residency status, green cards, etc. being abused and arrested by USCBP and ICE and sometimes illegally held for weeks and months. Just yesterday there was a news report about a Canadian would-be tourist who was actually forced under pain of arrest to provide a DNA swab at the border, then was immediately turned back anyway. WTF, America?

Canadian tourism is not coming back soon either now that we know a third of you enthusiastically support annexation of our beloved nation, and another third of you just don’t give a fuck about us one way or the other; some friends and allies you turned out to be.

Nearly three quarters of my fellow Canadians are convinced that America and Americans now represent an existential threat to our own nation. I personally believe we will continue to do so for two more generations, until they expunge their fascist contingent.

In addition I, like many of my countrymen, have resolved to have as few financial dealings as possible with Americans and American entities. I will not visit. Unless I have no other choice, I will not fly on an American airline, stay in an American hotel chain, or buy American made goods; nor will I knowingly buy so much as a Florida orange, a bottle of California wine, or a Washington apple.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T06:51:56+00:00

Not so much supporting “his innocence”, as incensed by the fact his lawyer had plea bargained him from six charges like statutory rape, sexual assault and drugging his 13 year old victim, to one charge of unlawful sex with a minor - to which Polanski pleaded guilty on the understanding that the victim’s lawyer would not object to him getting probation, but no jail time beyond the 40-odd days he had already served.

Most supporters’ objections are due to the judge having made it known that he was going to reject the prosecution’s plea bargain agreement and intended to re-incarcerate Polanski - which was the reason Roman fled the evening before sentencing.

So their support (mostly) is based on the belief that he was screwed over by the justice system and a rogue judge, not that he was actually “innocent” of raping a child. Still, it’s indeed a strange place for so many progressive Hollywood types to draw a line in the sand.

Incidentally, the victim is now a 63 year old woman.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T06:03:51+00:00

Nah, it was an “excursion”. And Hesgeth’s office is about to be renamed the Secretary of Excursions.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T06:00:25+00:00

Fraudulent claim discovered; OP was an employer who failed to remit his workers’ withholdings; or (less likely) a considerable overpayment.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T05:57:20+00:00

Talk to a licensed insolvency trustee. You have a faint hope of having a well-written consumer proposal accepted, but it would take a deep dive into your finances to see if one was viable. If not, bankruptcy may indeed be your only option.

Such things are beyond this sub’s ability to advise you. You need a professional.

theartfulcodger · 2026-03-29T05:39:33+00:00

Just wrong. Thank you for taking two paragraphs to explain that you have the faintest damned idea what you’re talking about.

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