Saddam Update

Posted by: caltechgirl at 04:49 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Yep. Pretty Much

Anyone who was part of one of the AIDS debates at DW knows this one is true:

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Eminence the Very Viscountess Caltechgirl the Sophisticated of Wallop upon Deane Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Heh. Dean(e) knows we're cool.

h/t His Imperial Majesty Rsm the Apocalyptic of Longer Interval

Posted by: caltechgirl at 10:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Attention Target Shoppers-- Target SUCKS

Or more appropriately, Attention Target Returners. Especially those of you who got gifts without gift receipts.

Look, you all know how much I love Target.  Not any more.  Some of you know how strong a statement that really is.

According to Vanessa, "manager" of store 1417 in Fresno, Target's return policy is that if you DO NOT have a receipt for that item, any return is only issued as a "suspended transaction" and you can only purchase:

THE SAME ITEM or a similar item
ON THE DAY OF THE RETURN
AT THAT STORE

This means that you may only purchase an item from that particular department. In my case, kitchen electronics. If you want to buy clothes or shoes or something and you returned a blender. Yep, sorry. You can't. But would you like a deep fryer?

Without a receipt they place SERIOUS restrictions on what you can get for a return. AND if it's over $100, good luck sucker. The lady next to me at the return counter was returning a PSP someone gave her son. They told her that they couldn't even take it.

Even worse was the father whose son had received a jacket he really liked but was too small.  The kid wanted the same jacket, but this store didn't have his size EITHER.  They couldn't give him a gift card to go to the other Target in town and get one.  AND the jacket had already gone back to the floor while he was shopping, so they wouldn't give it back to him and void the return.  When I left he was warming up to get as pissed off as I was.

As far as I know, Target is the ONLY store that restricts what you can spend your return $$ on after returning a new, unopened, fully functional item.

Kind of ironic when their signs promise "EASY RETURNS!  EVEN WITHOUT A RECEIPT!"

In fact none of this policy (as it was explained to me) is even ON their website.  Here's the sum total of what it says regarding store-purchases returned with out a receipt:

Don't have your receipt?

In most instances, Target stores can verify purchases made within the last 90 days on a store account, third-party charge account, check or GiftCard using our unique Receipt Look-up system.

In fact, their website even says the following for target.com purchases, but nothing for Target store purchases:

Refunds to a Store - Gift Recipient

Form of Payment: Your refund will be issued as a GiftCard good for purchases made at Target stores and on Target.com.

They already got the $$$, folks.  It's in their coffers.  Why THE F*CK should they care what I want to get for that money??? 

And why do they care for store purchases but not Target.com??????

And believe me, I know from experience, if it didn't come from their store, the computer won't recognize it, even for common items, like video games.  They don't need a receipt to verify it was sold in Target. 

Between this policy, Che on everything, and last year's "Happy Holidays" and Salvation Army fiascoes, my once favorite store is quickly going to the bottom.

So I won't be shopping there anymore, and you should tell them how you feel about this ridiculous policy.

Call: 1-800-440-0680 or fill out the form here.

Better yet, email Investor Relations and tell them how much money this stupid policy is losing them here: investorrelations@target.com

Posted by: caltechgirl at 04:33 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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You can dress a thug in fancy clothes...

But you can't take him to church.

Sorry, David Stern.  Bullshit fines aren't the answer.  All 7 of the suspended players should face the same punishment as Ron Artest.  If you want them to play nice, make so that they play nice or don't play at all.

Dammit.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 11:28 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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The Holocaust on paper

The horror was DOCUMENTED.  On paper.  It's all there.  17 miles of file cabinets containing Nazi records on everything from head lice to mail records to executions...

17,000,000 victims: Jews, laborers, homosexuals, and political dissidents.

The documents are being scanned and will be available within the next year to a number of research programs and libraries.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 07:54 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Tech Support Hell-- Earthlink SUCKS

Go see what Earthlink made Rachel go through just to NOT fix her problem.

But don't forget to call her first to verify that you are, in fact, reading her page.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 04:27 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Don't let the door hit you where the Good Lord split you...

Ban Ki-moon was sworn in today as the 8th Secretary General of the United Nations, officially ending the decade-long term of his predecessor, Kofi Annan.

Today, Mr Ban pledged to "be mindful of... loyalty, discretion, and conscience" and to "set the highest ethical standards..."

Even if all he does is remind people that taking bribes is a bad thing, he'll already be miles ahead of Mr. Annan's repugnant term at the helm.

The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal reminds us of the words and deeds of the UN under Annan's direction:

...When Mr. Annan was named Secretary General 10 years ago, he did so as the U.S.-backed candidate of reform. Jesse Helms, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Mr. Annan that "if you choose to be an agent of real and deep-seated change, you will find many supporters--and even allies--here in the U.S. Congress."

Senator Helms's expectations were not met. Seven years later--thanks to U.S. military action that Mr. Annan did everything in his power to prevent--we learned that he had presided over the greatest bribery scheme in history, known as Oil for Food. We learned that Benon Sevan, Mr. Annan's trusted confidant in charge of administering the program, had himself been a beneficiary of Iraqi kickbacks to the tune of $160,000. We learned that Mr. Annan's chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, had ordered potentially incriminating documents to be destroyed. We learned that Mr. Annan and his deputy, Louise Frechette, were both aware of the kickback scheme but failed to report it to the Security Council, as their fiduciary duties required. However, we haven't yet learned whether the senior Annan illegally helped his son Kojo obtain a discounted Mercedes, an issue on which the Secretary General has stonewalled reporters.

Earlier this year, Mr. Annan was also forced to place eight senior U.N. procurement officials on leave pending investigations on bribery and other charges. Vladimir Kuznetsov, the head of the U.N. budget-oversight committee, was indicted this year on money-laundering charges. Alexander Yakovlev, another procurement official, pled guilty to skimming nearly $1 million off U.N. contracts. The U.N.'s own office of Internal Oversight found that U.N. peacekeeping operations had mismanaged some $300 million in expenditures.

...

Mr. Annan came to office after a stint as head of U.N. peacekeeping operations. The period corresponded with the massacre in Srebenica of 7,000 Bosnians and the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda, both of which were facilitated by the nonfeasance of peacekeepers on the ground. It was later revealed that Mr. Annan's office explicitly forbade peacekeepers from raiding Hutu arms caches in Rwanda just four months before the genocide.

The world's worst man-made humanitarian catastrophes have since taken place in Zimbabwe, North Korea, Congo and Darfur. Mr. Annan has been mostly silent about the first two, perhaps on the time-honored U.N. principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states other than the U.S. In the Congo, U.N. peacekeepers haven't stopped the bloodshed, but they have made themselves notorious as sexual predators.

Funny what can happen when a ball-less, incompetent, selfish mis-manager takes over a large organization, no?

These are the facts, folks.  Under Annan's "leadership" the UN has failed.  In Darfur, in Congo, in Somalia.  In Kosovo and Rwanda and the middle east.  And these failures can all be traced to one person: Kofi Annan.

In a global community the objective SHOULD be the protection of human rights and promotion of tolerance and communication.  Under Annan, the UN's objective appeared to be "anything that makes the US look bad". 

By default, that attitude prevents the neediest among us (like the Darfuris) from receiving the help that would otherwise be freely offered.

Ask the Kosovars.

Mr Annan has singlehandedly brought the UN from an organization of hope, that had the possibility of effecting real global change to a mockery of its former self.

Opinion Journal says it more eloquently than I can:

Mr. Annan came to power at a moment when it was at least plausible to believe that a properly reformed U.N. could serve the purposes it was originally meant to serve: to be a guarantor of collective security and a moral compass in global affairs. Mr. Annan's legacy is that nobody can entertain those hopes today.

So Long, Kofi. Please enjoy a very restful retirement somewhere far away from the media. And while you're at it, see if you can convince your buddy Jimmeh to join you.

h/t Lex

Posted by: caltechgirl at 12:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Passing Gas

Or, How the Very Expensive Plumber f*cked up....

So our next-door neighbor, a lovely woman who I will refer to as "JoAnn" has been having some trouble with her hot water heater. Including a hell of a flood last week. Good thing we have clear drainage. She decided to replace it sooner rather than later, and sooner turned out to be yesterday. As she told me last night, she chose the most expensive plumber to do the replacement simply because he had a reputation for NOT screwing things up.

In any case, JoAnn works strange hours. Like she leaves the house between 10 and 11 in the morning, and usually returns after 9 at night. So in this case, she left them the spare garage door opener to get access to the garage, where the water heater lives, with the understanding that they would bill her and close the door after the new machine was up and running.

One thing about the garage. JoAnn's garage and ours are under our respective houses and are connected by a walkway and a staircase that leads to each of our back doors. So you can enter either of our garages from the other. This, in fact, is why we knew in advance about the repair. She wanted to let us know that strangers would have access to our garage. No big deal, unless of course they like to steal empty cardboard boxes or Army uniforms. Or laundry detergent.

So I leave the house at 6:30 am, husband in tow, and drop DH at work before I go on to my own office. I had meetings and things all day yesterday, culminating with a staff meeting/ party. So I don't get home until 6:30 PM. All I wanted to do was address Christmas cards and veg in front of the TV. And go to bed early.

Did I mention I left here at 5:30? Fucking LA trafffic.

Anyway. By the time I arrived home it had been at least 3-4 hours since anyone had been in either garage. I pull into the driveway and roll down my window for the garage opener (which has a weak ass signal) and as the door opens, I smell something.

By the time I pull in and turn the car off, I know what it is: Gas. Immediately I go into panic mode. I run out on to the driveway and dial the house, meanwhile yelling at DH to pick up the phone. He picks up the phone and I ask him to open the back door and tell me what he smells. He concurs that it is gas and rings off to call JoAnn's cell.

In the meantime I have recovered sufficiently to realize that if I could drive into the garage that there's not enough gas to flash over, so I go over to JoAnn's garage and hit the button to open the door and turn off the light in my garage and then back the car out and park it on the street.

DH then went down to the HOA reps' house and asked about the shut offs, and she brought out the gas wrench, and we turned off JoAnn's gas at the main. Within 10 minutes, all of the gas had cleared.

I'll find out from her this afternoon why this happened, whether it was a blown pilot light or a loose connection or what.

Scary, though.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 12:50 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Christmas Shopping With an Attitude

If you don't recognize yourself in this one, you've been doing all your shopping online (good for you!)...

h/t QOAE

Posted by: caltechgirl at 09:38 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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This is so wrong, it's funny

Some people should have their license to think REVOKED.  Ladies and Gentlemen I bring you another example of a brilliant IDIOT:

A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals

"There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular.... I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you're also getting substantial quantities of estrogens.

Estrogens are female hormones. If you're a woman, you're flooding your system with a substance it can't handle in surplus. If you're a man, you're suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your "female side," physically and mentally.

... If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate. Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby's endocrine system just can't cope with that kind of massive assault, so some damage is inevitable. At the extreme, the damage can be fatal.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them. "[emphasis mine - Ed.]

No shit, there's more.  Read the whole blasted thing.  It speaks for itself.

I don't care what you believe about homosexuality and its origins in an individual, but this guy has his science completely bass-ackwards. Don't let this idiot scare you off of a very healthy food that is a good source of protein for those of us NOT allergic to it.

h/t Boi From Troy

Posted by: caltechgirl at 08:21 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Matt and Trey: Prescient or just Damn Smart? You decide.

Shamelessly stolen from Armed Liberal at Winds of Change:

Over at HuffPo, Alec Baldwin, (of the "Film Actors Guild") speaks out on what's wrong, and what we need to do about it. One of these is real, and one is a line from a puppet movie. Can you tell which is which?

Quote #1: "By following the rules of the Film Actor's Guild, the world can become a better place; that handles dangerous people with talk, and reasoning; that, is the fag way. One day you'll all look at the world us actors created and say, "wow, good going, fag. You really made the world a better place, didntcha, fag?" "

Quote #2: "There is an answer to this problem. There is a way to defeat terrorism while building new and better alliances in the Arab world. It will be an enormously complex and difficult diplomatic puzzle. But the first step might be oddly simple. Get rid of the CIA, which has outlived its usefulness and is an embarrassment to this great country, and rebuild and reform US intelligence capabilities to fight this new type of threat. I think our hopes must begin there."

Answer below the fold, in case you didn't know
more...

Posted by: caltechgirl at 09:39 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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It's a child, not a political plank

The Vice President's daughter is pregnant and due in late spring.

I am overjoyed for what seems to be a close and loving family, by all accounts, to be adding a new member.  I am beyond happy for Mary and her partner Heather that they are about to realize their dream of becoming parents.

Seems a lot of people can't feel that way.  On one side, they're too busy blaming the VP for supporting policies that go against his daughter's (and her partner's) interest.  On the other side, they're panicking because a conservative leader is about to have a grandchild with homosexual parents.

Every article I've seen on this goes out of its way to point out that Gays and Straights are both up in arms over Mary Cheney's bundle of joy.

You'd think it was the second coming, or at least a new Brangelina baby for all of the fuss going on out there today.  Or maybe that you'd picked up an old newspaper.  Didn't we go through this when Melissa Etheridge and her (then) partner Julie Cypher had children a decade ago?

Can't we get past this and just say that a healthy baby is a blessing to a family, no matter how traditional?  Can we admit that two stable parents are always better than one, whether it's two moms, two dads, or one of each?  Can we agree that this child will have some wonderful role models for strength and integrity?

I am disgusted.  These opportunistic political vultures have taken what should be a happy occasion for the entire family and turned it into a political fracas.

For myself, I will say this much:  Congratulations to Mary and Heather and their families.  I wish you a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby, and all the joys that come with that.  Anything else that anyone has to say on the subject is bullshite.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 01:59 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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