Somehow I seem to have lost my rant topic. Well, whatever - if I care enough I’ll do something about it. Just like how I’m blocking all smtp traffic from Korea now.

Anyways - most recent house loan statement said that they’re raising our monthly payment by several hundred dollars.

Um, no.

Of course, there’s all this fine print and you have to squint and pull out your secret decoder ring to figure out what’s going on - but then we figure it out. Personal property tax is calculated every six months. Instead of putting in the fact that our tax is going from $x a month to $y a month, they put in our new tax is $x+$y a month.

Nope, that’s wrong.

Next step, I call up the stupid loan company and play voicemail option bingo for a while until I finally get a person. Hint - all good voicemail systems should shove you to an operator if you keep hitting zero. This was not a good voicemail system.

After several calls and a quick lesson in Spanish voicemail, I get a live body on the line and we discuss stuff for a while - she goes and gets some other people, we read some forms, etc. Finally she says - “Well, this is what the tax authority sent us. If you want it fixed, you have to call them.”

I now have the number for the Loudoun Cty tax authority to call tomorrow. I just wonder if I’m the only one, or if a bunch of people are getting double taxed right now.

… (3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is
not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they
are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them
as they fly overhead.

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1925.html

Congads to Mr. and Mrs. Evil Bastard on their new little bastard.

Leah Dianne was born 2:45 am on Monday, Mom and Dad are doing great too.

From dc-stuff:
” Let us pretend that there is a village in the mists of Nowhere.
Durak the Ignoble, leper, fool and resident of this village, has the habit of finding feces from all the creatures of hill and dale and bringing it back to the town square to play with. The townsfolk loathe Durak, because he is an idiot, and because he does nothing useful, and because he constantly brings the odor and filth of shit with him whereever he goes. The townsfolk repel him each time they see him with cudgels and brickbats, but Durak, having a thick skull and little mind to process “pain” inputs, is not affected even one tiny little bit by this. God protects fools and madmen.

One day, during a shit-finding excursion, Durak finds a large diamond. This diamond is the largest that any of the townsfolk have ever seen, and it is as brilliant as the summer sun. Light dances and sizzles among the natural facets of the jewel, exposing no flaw in their travels. The townsfolk, naturally, remark on the jewel:

“This is amazing. It may, in fact, be the first valuable thing that Durak has ever brought back to the village.”

Question for the audience: Is this a statement about Durak, or about the diamond?”

“The Direct Marketing sector regards the telephone as one of its most successful tools. Consumers experience telemarketing from a completely different point of view: more than 92% perceive commercial telephone calls as a violation of privacy.
Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.”

http://www.xs4all.nl/%7Eegbg/counterscript.html

“Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.
..
Depending on which poll you look at and how the question is asked, somewhere around 85 percent of us call ourselves Christian. Israel, by way of comparison, is 77 percent Jewish.”

http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptTheChristianParadox.html