It’s September 1. I’m sorry, that’s insane.
ICYMI, we have a local update on the situation in New Orleans.
Other than that, let’s see what else is happening, shall we?
Declaring Afghan war over, Biden defends evacuation efforts
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-war-over-afghan-rescue/2021/08/31/a388b88e-0a76-11ec-9781-07796ffb56fe_story.html
Wut?
Last man out: the haunting image of America’s final moments in Afghanistan
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/31/last-man-out-the-haunting-image-of-americas-final-moments-in-afghanistan
Don’t take the free vaccine, but pay hundreds for a fake card. Makes sense. /s
15 people face charges in connection to a conspiracy with fake Covid-19 vaccine cards, DA says
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/31/us/manhattan-charges-covid-vaccine-card-scheme/index.html
I don’t think these guys understand what pro life means.
“Chaos on the ground”: Uncertainty, legal questions abound in hours before law banning most abortions in Texas is set to go into effect
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/31/texas-abortion-law-supreme-court/
Guess what her name is? GUESS!!!
The traffic patrol officer at this school is a chicken. And it wears a fluorescent vest.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/08/31/chicken-traffic-patrol-school-hen/
Have a great Wednesday!
Who among us does not enjoy a humorous animal video? For me, a non-Canadian with familial affinity to Our Neighbor to the North, the weatherman’s accent adds extra charm. Many thanks for this, Meg.
I’m all in with Woofers the Weather Mutt.
…was it my imagination…or did it seem like he called the dog “storm” at one point?
It’s too early to be annoyed, but here we are! My new dishwasher is supposed to be installed today, according to Lowe’s. They were supposed to supply the time last night (they did not). So i call the number at 7pm to get this info… They close at 5pm. Sigh. I put my order number into their website, and i don’t exist. I swear, if these assholes just show up today, I’m sending them away and getting my money back. What ever happened to customer service? They not only don’t try anymore, they go in the complete opposite direction.
When our washing machine broke (and this caused considerable panic, because we have a very affectionate Huge Hound who sheds and regrows fur every four hours or so, so the washing machine ran full-tilt for years) Better Half went somewhere, it wasn’t a Lowe’s. There were no washing machines to be had. Supply chain issues, Covid, stuff from China stuck in the Port of Los Angeles, & etc. Best guess would be about four months.
Better Half reasonably said, “If you don’t actually have washing machines to sell, sell me the floor model. As long as it works I’ll take it.” So they did, and gave him 30 or 40% off. That’s a good “hack.”
Delivery was arranged for a Monday, he was given an order number and a delivery window. He called the store on the preceding Saturday to confirm and an employee said, “We don’t deliver on Mondays. Who told you that?”
Better Half, not to be dissuaded, replied, “Who told you that you don’t deliver on Mondays? Let me talk to someone else.”
So it was fine, it arrived, got it hooked up, I’m using it as I type this. I’m sure the misinformed employee is still there doling out misinformation, if they want to be, because while there is widespread unemployment in The Greatest City in the World™ (it is over 10%) there is also a labor shortage for low-paid, thankless jobs like this.
Yeah at the moment stock isn’t the issue but the install team (anything that requires a plumber) is backed up weeks due to the previous lack of supply. They told me it could be a month and it’s only been a week, so it’s possible the whole thing is tits up!! Be nice if i could talk to a human though.
I just looked this up and we don’t really have Lowe’s in the 5 boroughs, there are a handful of locations, but they are plentiful in the suburbs. They sound terrible and I’m sorry for what you’re going through.
When the washing machine came in we asked our friendly, super-competent super (that is our internal name for him, the Super-Competent) if he knew how to set it up and of course he did. He refuses to take money for tasks like this, even though they are out of his purview and he has every right to be paid like a resident would for any service provided by an outside vendor.
We keep a log book and at the holidays we have his base gratuity and we tot up how much we would have paid an outside person to do these acts for us and add that. It’s all cash, which is the New York way, so sometimes Better Half has to go to a teller window and write out a personal check because the ATM has a withdrawal limit.
@PumpkinSpies, sympathy! Home repairs, appliances, scheduling, oh my! I find slumping into resignation helps lower my blood pressure, because this type of thing is fairly often the norm? Low-level example: I am trying to juggle appointments around meetings; I say to the very nice person on the phone, “Afternoons, any day but Tuesdays.” She replies “I have Tuesday morning at 9:30″…
@PumpkinSpies I had an appliance issue with Lowe’s that took 7 months to resolve. It involved multiple returns and deliveries, discounts that were promised and not received, and Lowe’s claiming I hadn’t paid for a washing machine they owed me $300 on. I can’t even count the number of phone calls made, the menu is ridiculously long and when I’d finally select the right department it would disconnect. Of course this was all before I got my vaccination so I wasn’t going to the store. I finally managed to connect with a lower level manager that understood the problem and fixed it for me. When I needed a new dishwasher did I buy it from Lowe’s? No, I did not. Good luck.
Considering I’ve been hand washing since March and decided to replace it on a whim, they don’t want to get on my list. I have places and brands I haven’t shopped from in 20 yrs. 😛
I respect that!
Once upon a time, Mrs. Butcher and I bought a washer and dryer from Best Buy. When the delivery truck arrived, they had the wrong machines–these were a cheaper model. Turned out they delivered our machines to the wrong people…then they refused to go back and get them and tried to get Mrs. Butcher to take these shitty ones. She told them to go pound sand and get us a new set. A week later, we’re told that those were the last in-box machines they had, but that they would sell us the floor models at a discount. We said OK and actually got the difference in money back (on a fucking Best Buy gift card of course, so it wasn’t ever really a “refund”). All went well for about three months and then the washing machine went to shit. They came and fixed it and three months later it broke again. On and on this went, and I looked at the retailer warranty which included a lemon clause–a clause for which they had long since met the conditions. So, we went round and round with these fuckers for a couple of years until I finally got hold of the CEO and said that unless he wants to receive a phone call from the state attorney general concerning their fraud, he will fix this right fucking now. It got fixed. We got brand new and upgraded models, and that was the last time we ever dealt with a major retailer for a purchase like this. Our current machines were purchased from a local shop and on the rare occasions when there is a problem, these guys are right on it without any bullshit.
Every time I think of replacing my 30+ year old Maytags I think again.
Update: called their number and they’re not exactly on the ball. But i did get a window of 8-11am. However, the plumber himself called me 30 min later to say they set their own schedule thankyouverymuch, not the office, and they will be out 12-4pm.
Oy vey. At least it’s better than the 12 hour window my dad got when Lowe’s was coming to install a washer and dryer….
So Roe v. Wade dies, not with a bang but a whimper.
The right wingers on the court understand the value of keeping a taxidermied corpse on display — they can deny to the press that it’s dead, while the body can be paraded around as a war trophy and occasionally bent into menacing poses when needed for scare purposes. This way the priests can still thunder from the pulpits and the ministers can pull more money from their flocks.
The press will get sucked into debates over whether it really is dead, and ignore the consequences for actual women. Because the last thing they want to do is engage with reality — the visuals and voices they prefer are always, in the end, gray men in suits.
I am wondering if there will start being a significant increase of infants surrendered to state care because of this.
I definitely expect an increase in maternal mortality rates due to lack of medical care and botched attempts at abortions.
That chicken is awesome.
Okay, maybe I’m just different, but I’m sitting here wondering what kind of simpleton requires assistance (and will pay hundreds) to forge a vaccine card?
I have Adobe Creative, scanners, etc. and can easily make a perfect copy of a card (every schoolchild in my county has access to all of that, BTW). But even if you took that away from me, I’d simply need some Wite-Out and a photocopier (available at every public library) to create a flawless forgery.
It’s a piece of white cardstock with black printing on it, for crying out loud. It’s not a damn Treasury note with hidden watermarks, security threads, color shifting ink, and micro-printing. It’s cardstock. You don’t even need a color photocopier.
I guess if you’re stupid enough to be frightened of the vaccine, you’re stupid enough to not understand photocopiers and Wite-Out. And you’re stupid enough to hand somebody hundreds for a photocopy. But damn, that is seriously stupid.
I really don’t get it. The vaccine is FREE. And Safe.
these people live in a completely different reality.
which is completely devoid of facts or logic.
They are simultaneously convinced that COVID-19 is a: Democratic hoax to… make people wear face-masks?, just like the flu, but overblown to… damage the stock market?, A Chinese Bioweapon, that they should both not be concerned about, but be very angry about, and spread by illegal immigrants, because… racism?
And to top it off, there have been people on the right arguing that somehow vaccinated individuals can pose a threat to unvaccinated individuals, that wearing a bit of cloth on your face is detrimental to your health, and that children are immune to it.
And a week or two back, I read some article about a growing online community of people denying the germ theory of disease.
It’s like some deity took Voltaire’s prayer as a challenge…
Well, considering that there was a 24-year-old woman who was just arrested attempting to return from a trip to Hawaii with a forged card documenting that she’d received two doses of the “Maderna” vaccine, the whole issue of something like cardstock may simply be above some of these people’s paygrade.
Illustrative addendum with “Get Off My Lawn” qualification:
https://kitv.images.worldnow.com/images/21306042_G.jpeg
Also, assuming that she’s responsible for filling in the details herself, is it just me, or have people born in the ’90s pretty much decided to jettison writing by hand altogether? (I mean, my handwriting used to look kind of like this as well . . . but I happened to be about a third of her age at the time.)
Not people so much as schools. They don’t worry about handwriting any more, preferring to focus on keyboarding. Cursive might as well be Sanskrit to my 19-year-old.
Problem is, they don’t actually teach keyboarding either, and kids simply hunt and peck. Knowing how to use all 10 fingers to type makes you a wizard akin to Harry Potter. And typing 60-90 wpm? The youngsters are awestruck.
It’s funny — I took typing in middle school and my mother was furious. “You shouldn’t waste time with that crap.” But of all the things I learned in school I’d ranking actual typing as number one on the usefulness list. I don’t use calculus or chemistry, but typing? I do that every single day of my life.
Totally agree with that. My middle school typing class laid the basis for me using a computer keyboard every day.
my handwriting is a crime against literacy as i use lower and higher case indiscriminately and switch between block and cursive mid word…
Wasn’t there also a recent case of someone getting caught with forged vaccine cards for children too young to be eligible for the vaccine?
Like, I’ve literally put more thought into how my character for a tabletop RPG would forge some documents….
Helluva lineup there, @MegMegMcGee.
– I would have guessed “Henrietta” on the hen, but I’m old and the kids these days are more gender-fluid.
– A guy named “Markwayne” can’t find his own office and expects to find individuals in Afghanistan. More magical thinking from the GOP. I expect to hear that Markwayne was found dead in an airport bathroom (drowning).
– I know generalizing is bad, but all I can utter as a reaction right now is “Fuck Texas with a megachurch”.
[curtsies]
I’m glad the chicken made ya’ll as happy as it made me!
Markwayne wasn’t lost. It was his lame excuse to eyeball the hot receptionist in the next office over every day.
I expect Markwayne of the GOP to be doing something entirely different in an airport bathroom…
Just because he has a wide stance, it doesn’t mean anything, PS!
😉😆😂🤣🤣🤣
The “wide stance” incident happened here at MSP international airport😄
Yeah I didn’t have much reason to consider giving my money to anyone in Texas before, but you bet your ass I am not doing any vacations, etc, there now.