h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you don't want people to laugh, Ag, you must not tell your stories so wittily.

I have tidied and sort of cleaned, and now it is time to be off.

What I haven't done is any of the Things I Have To Do in terms of paperwork. I have got a pile of Phone Calls to Make, and a pile of things to Read and Think About, some of which include , (some of which include Letters to Write, and some of which are certainly Things to Sign, and I have a straightforward pile of Things to File....

*sigh*

At least they are all laid out neatly on the table with the filing boxes nearby also on the table, so there is no excuse for not spending an hour or so on Monday, and another hour or so on Tuesday, and getting rid of them that way.

Actually, I am at my best in the early morning, I ought to start on them then....!

Epiphany Warning

Procrastination is a good thing, and I am practicing so that I have it off pat when the next thing on my list is dying.



B

*skips quietly over the backlog*

I arrived home yesterday to find that my parents had gone away earlier than I had expected and I couldn't get into the house. Eventually I bit the bullet and called a locksmith. We would have buggered off to Loughborough (where GF is at uni) except the dog was locked IN the house!

So an hour and a half later the patio door lock had been removed, and a new one put in. GF got home to find me and a rather strapping young man sitting together in the hallway waiting with a bill for ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN POUNDS for her to pay

Just be glad it wasn't a rat Ag

Kat

*listens to everyone's stories and wonders why his life isn't anywhere near as interesting*

I have rats in the house. Not funny.

Interesting? Mouse poo is interesting?

Mind you, being an owl, I suppose you would find mice interesting.

Morning all.

Ag, be glad that you didn't meet your mouse out here; our deer mice are known to carry hantavirus.

I have a tea ball too, although I don't often use it, and I commiserate with you on the loss of yours.

Now, what else was I going to say?

Morning.

Well, the damage done by Rita is starting to take its toll. No news on how the house fared...but we've got our prayers going up in a steady stream about it.

Four years ago, I know the prayer group of the church I attended prayed for a hurricane to just go away. The news anchors the next day said that "We don't know what happened. Hurricanes DON'T just die off like that. But we're glad it did." Kinda wish that'd happened now.

On top of it, the people renting the house down there caught up with paying, in a bad way. They're trying to move away, but the mortgage person they're dealing with wouldn't let them move on until they'd paid us because "they had the money," as he said in a phone call....so they paid him a money order for what we were owed. He told us that he'd mailed the money order up to us.

Today, it turns out that no, he hadn't mailed it. And now the money order is sitting in a desk in Lake Charles. Assuming the desk is still there.

We needed that check....this'll cost us hundreds, maybe thousands. That's a degree of money that we've never *ever* been able to deal with paying at any one time.



I wish I was six again. When this type of thing happened back then, I'd get scared....but I never understood the magnitude of just how horribly, horribly bad things were. And things always got better, just as they will this time, I'm sure.

And while I'm sitting comfortably up here worrying about stupid things like money, I forget to pray for the people who's lives are in danger down there, or the people who've financially suffered even *more* than we. I mean, yeah it's bad for me, but some of those people won't *ever* be able to recover from something like this.

Hmm...still, I can't help but wonder if we'd indirectly qualify for some of that hurricane victim aid that FEMA's helping out with. We wouldn't spend it on jewelry or things like some of the scammers, of course....we'd just pay enough to cover the bank fees from the mis-sent money order that probably won't get to us because of this.

Sorry for monopolizing the situation for this post. I needed to say some things, and needed people to hear them. I feel better now.

And you know, it's something of an ego boost to realize that it takes a hurricane to depress me.

Affy, luck with that...

Natural disasters don't depress me. How people handle them depresses me.

My ex is playing the "fun parent" card for all it's worth. I asked him last week to let ME take D to see The Corpse Bride. Does he? Nope, he took her to dinner and to see it and oh yeah...bought her stuff she doesn't need.

I'm really miffed.

Ag, if I find my teaball, I'll send it to you.

[MTG{KEA}]

[Bagpuss]

Oh, Affi, that's bad news about the money order -- but yes, I think you can recover damages from FEMA. In the fullness of time, of course, and well down the queue behind the victims of Katrina, but eventually.

I would like to know more about the allegations of scamming. My neighbor, a closet-racist, hastened to tell me a story of an evacuee who used her $2000 FEMA debit card to buy herself a $600 Vuitton bag. I have no idea whether this is true or whether it is in the nature of "welfare queen" generalizations.

Thing is, once you've been granted the compensation is it not up to you how you spend it? Be it on a new carpet or...a Vuitton bag?

Affy, hope all goes well.

You are likely correct Kat, buying something like a hangbag is stil not right though.

Kids are losing all their toys today, it's a matter of being able to walk across their bedroom without injuring myself. As far as they know, the toys are all being donated to charity in reality, they are being taken to our storage unit. Deception it might be but, who knows, maybe they will learn this time.

Marv, I could say I hate you for that webcomic but, I finished the archives last night/this morning.

The subtext is that those [insert minority group] here don't deserve any federal/state/charitable aid because they just spend it on dope/cadillacs/vuitton bags. They are inferior and therefore I do not have to feel guilty about my racism, which has just been justified by this single person's action.

Here's what I find on Google:

Earlier this week, the New York Daily News reported that "profiteering ghouls" were using the debit cards in luxury-goods stores as far away as Atlanta.

"We've seen three of the cards," said a senior employee of the Louis Vuitton store at the Lenox Square Mall in affluent Buckhead. "Two I'm certain have purchased; one actually asked if she could use it in the store. This has been since Saturday."

Restrictions on the cards say they can't be used to purchase alcohol, tobacco or firearms.

The clerk at the Louis Vuitton store said: "There's nothing legally that prevents us from taking it, unfortunately – other than morally, it's wrong." The unnamed employee told the Daily News two women who had made purchases with the card each bought a signature monogrammed Louis Vuitton handbag in the $800 range.

Meanwhile, in Memphis, Tenn., residents told News Channel 3 they saw Hurricane Katrina survivors purchase designer jeans, high heels and purses with their $2,000 emergency debit cards. According to the report, one Katrina victim was spotted at a Cordova clothier buying stacks of $65 designer jeans. Another viewer reported spotting a survivor buying "over $700 in high heel shoes and purses" at a Memphis department store "while (her) younger children, most of them looked under the age of 3, looked like they haven't showered in weeks."

"If they make an inappropriate decision as to what to purchase, the whole issue of victims' rights comes into play," said Bill Hildebrandt, chief executive officer of the Mid-South chapter of the Red Cross. "They have a right, I guess, to be inappropriate."



OK. This started with http://www.nydailynews.com/ -- go have a look at the site and draw your own conlusions about the tabloid level of the paper.

Now there are lots of rumors going around about jeans, jewelry, beer and strip clubs, and I can't find proof anywhere. At no place in any article I've read do I see any mention of color, either.

Oh, Affy

David, how can you possibly say that other people lead more interesting lives when you spend such a large proportion of your time in the Library of Doom?!

Almost (but not quite) worth being locked out of the house if one ends up in the company of a strapping lad .

The house is so quiet without my family. And the novelty of cooking only for myself has somewhat worn off over the past 5 weeks. Still, the half-bottle of pink champagne is going down well ... and (unlike B) early morning is not my best time anyway ...

Mol

*Sidles in wearing a Nittany Lions T-shirt and sits down on the sofa. Tracer soon follows, wearing lion ears.*

I'm back, and Penn State won the game today!

Over the past three months I've been working as an usher at Post Gazette Pavillion, ruining my ears. I've moved almost 200 miles east, and have settled in Happy Valley, living in a four bedroom dorm with a girl from Bombay that went to school in North Carolina and a girl from Shanghai who has been here about two months. It's been an experience.

*Passes a over to Affy, because he needs it.*

*adds a missing to Mol's posting*

*drags in a bundle of sympathy for Affy*

I have library fines. ME! The ex-librarian! With fines! What is the world coming to?

Why is it when S and I go to the supermarket together we spend FOUR TIMES more than either of us spends on a solo trip? Talk about exponential increase. Mind you, I left S for three minutes to go find a pint of goats milk and when I came back he'd somehow hoovered up the entire vegetable counter. And me bleating (it's all the goat-milk) 'But we have veg to finish at home...' *peers into the shopping bags* And what are all these crisps doing in here? Was this my idea? It was? Oh.

And now for something a little serious. A dear friend-and-relation has sent me a children's story they've written. Other pals are telling them it's a brilliant idea. And heck, yes, it IS a brilliant IDEA. Just no plot and uses words like 'processing'. How many six-year-olds like words like 'processing'? I am supposed to be ironing out the ole' grammar, this being my main area of expertise according to everyone in the known universe (oh, hey, I even get introduced to people as 'my daughter who can spell'). How do I tactfully point out that the plot needs to be dragged out of wherever it has got to and reinserted into the story?

Oh, and how many words should a picture-book for up to six-year-olds actually have? We have 1184. I think some (some? much) editing is needed. None of this changes the fact that the basic idea is fantabulous and would make gorgeous pictures.

I hate all this 'let's let Ag take a look at it and deal with the grammar' thing. Because it never is JUST the grammar, is it? The amount of unutterably dud novels/ letters/ essays/ leaflets/ reports/ CVs/ proposals I have had to read... oy vey... Nevertheless, I don't want to accidentally squash this one because the IDEA is so darn cute.

Ag, has it got nice pictures?