Quotulatiousness

September 21, 2012

Rick Mercer’s first rant

Filed under: Cancon, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:15

No, not his own … the first one he remembers:

One of my earliest life-defining memories as a kid was being dragged against my will to the bank because Mom had a meeting.

I can remember sitting in a chair next to my mother while she had an excruciatingly dull conversation with a banker. I remember wondering what I had done to be forced to sit through this and if it were actually possible to die from boredom. And then everything changed. I will never forget the moment. The banker leaned forward and said, “Now Mrs. Mercer, do you have your husband’s permission to do this? Perhaps we should give him a call.”

From my point of view the day just got a whole lot better; for the man behind the desk the opposite was true. He had no idea what he had done. He had unleashed a hell storm that he had absolutely no chance of surviving. The poor, hapless man.

To say the oxygen was immediately sucked out of the room would be an exaggeration. To say that the blistering rant my mother delivered to the dumb creature made his ears bleed would not be. Needless to say very soon we were no longer in a cubicle but in a much nicer office upstairs, with a different banker who was doing everything he could to stop my mother from closing every account and going across the street. The dude who suggested Mom get her husband’s permission to open a chequing account was sent to “get the lad a fudge stick.”

Go Mom!

Everyone should rant. Ranting not only makes you feel better but occasionally, as my mother proved to me many times, you might get results—justice, satisfaction or a fudge stick.

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:37

My regular community round-up at GuildMag has been posted. In addition to the usual assortment of articles, videos and podcasts, there is the Mac OS X announcement, a flurry of whining over YouTube monetization, and good information on password security for players.

Gary Johnson polling at 6% in latest Reason-Rupe poll

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:37

The headline most media outlets would run includes just President Obama and Mitt Romney. If you allow more than two choices, however, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson changes the numbers a fair bit:

A new national Reason-Rupe poll of likely voters finds President Barack Obama leading Republican Mitt Romney 48 percent to 43 percent in the presidential race. When undecided voters are asked which way they are leaning Obama’s lead over Romney grows to 52-45.

President Obama holds large advantages among women (53-37), African-Americans (92-2) and Hispanics (71-18). Fifty-two percent of likely voters view Obama favorably, while 45 view him unfavorably. In contrast, 49 percent of likely voters have an unfavorable view of Mitt Romney and 41 percent have a favorable view of him.

In a three-way presidential race, Obama drops to 49 percent among likely voters and Romney falls to 42 percent as the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson gets six percent of support. Johnson is already on the presidential ballot in 47 states.

California’s “wall of debt” actually a very high cliff of debt

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:21

Mary Williams Walsh on the so-much-worse than estimated debt of California:

Gov. Jerry Brown of California announced when he came into office last year that he had found an alarming $28 billion “wall of debt” looming over the state, which had to be dismantled.

Since then, he has slowed the issuance of municipal bonds, called for spending cuts and tried to persuade the state’s famously antitax voters to approve a tax increase this fall.

On Thursday, an independent group of fiscal experts said Mr. Brown’s efforts were all well and good, but in fact, the “wall of debt” was several times as big as the governor thought.

[. . .]

The task force estimated that the burden of debt totaled at least $167 billion and as much as $335 billion. Its members warned that the off-the-books debts tended to grow over time, so that even if Mr. Brown should succeed in pushing through his tax increase, gaining an additional $50 billion over the next seven years, the wall of debt would still be there, casting its shadow over the state.

JourneyQuest S2E9: Retromancer

Filed under: Gaming, Humour — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:24

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