I'm not sure if you guys were aware but back at the end of 2005 and some time into 2006, someone got ahold of enough personal information to take out a huge loan, get a bunch of credit cards, buy a whole lot of electronics and other crap - all under my name. I think, all told, the fuckers ruined me to the tune of almost a million dollars before I even got a phone call.

Thankfully, though it was a harrowing experience, the morons were local so when they went to a Best Buy with their credit card in my name after their jig was up, the Hawthorne, CA police arrested them. It cost a lot of money, but certainly not a million bucks, to get the sons of bitches in court and then in jail but it happened and I got reimbursed for the legal stuff along with the money I had to pay to make absolutely sure it was off my credit report.

What does this have to do with anything? Since I'm moving very shortly, I signed up with Comcast for cable. Got a call the other day to let me know that I had a past-due balance which, of course, is interesting considering that at no time in my life have I ever had a Comcast account. When I got in touch with the loss prevention people at Comcast, it turns out that their record is a match to my social security number only and the account was from March to August of last year (remember, I've been with the parents the entirety of 2011). So I'll be going to get that part of things taken care of.

Having done it before, getting someone put behind bars for the federal crime of identity theft, I relish this opportunity. Though, this time, I'll probably have to change my SSN but whatever. I'll keep you all updated.

I told Caniprokis about this the other night when we were hanging out and I said, "Man, that sounds like the kind of shit I would say on Insult." So I'm gonna repeat it here.

I forget which news program I was watching and who the people were that were having a little round-table discussion and this one guy suddenly just blew up at the other panelists. They, of course, were talking about the economy and what we can do to fix things.

What he said was something along the lines of this:

• All of that money - the equity, the savings, etc. - went to people when all of these Americans got fucked over. The money didn't just vanish into thin air, it was bilked from Americans by people.
• So what did we do? We handed money to the people who were either directly responsible or indirectly (in the sense that they should have been paying much better attention) because they run banks and such.
• How about we just take their money? Those people we, instead, handed money to? How about we just divvy up their savings accounts, liquidate their stocks, etc. and give that back to the American people? And rather than a trial or something, that will be their penance for fucking us over?

Now, I understand how debt works and so I get the lunacy of just assuming that the money didn't vanish, as the guy was saying. But, as I said to Caniprokis, it definitely sounds like the kind of half-hashed pipe dream thing I would post about. And, other things aside, I support taking down bank executives and giving their money to the people who can't make house payments. CLASS WARFARE, BITCHES! Don't like it, you can occupy my dick!

What, did you think I was going to be reasonable on Insult?

Lio: Your rant is funny. I like it more knowing that you work for a company where the managers don't know the difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents.

Reading through the September issue of Money magazine, I became infuriated. No, it wasn't about how badly that one person messed up trying to make a loan payment; nor was it about the couple who couldn't agree on financial matters. It was a different, smaller article tucked in between a few others. The title of the article is, "The Right Price for Your Kid's Rite of Passage." The tagline is, "Teen celebrations are getting expensive. Does showing the love always mean spending the cash?" The article talks about stuff like a Sweet 16 party, a Bar Mitzvah or a Quinceañera and the average cost being $10k, $9.5k and $8k, respectively. How to plan the party, how much to spend and etcetera.

What a crock of shit.

"We all want to mark these milestones in a way that lets our children know we're proud of their accomplishments," writes Jean Chatzky. "If you don't throw a humdinger of a fiesta, do you risk sending the message to your child that you don't love him as much as his friends' parents love their kids?"

All I can offer Jean in response is, "Wow." Actually, I can offer somewhat of a response: tell your fucking kid to grow up. What kind of spoiled brat expects their parent to spend between 8-12 percent of their salary on a stupid party? Coming of age, my ass! I still haven't grown up, let alone the absurd idea that I actually became an adult the day I turned eighteen. Why not have your kid work to pay for the party? I had to start working at 16, but I never got a damned thing, and I'm okay with that. What's wrong with kids today that they have to be so friggin' materialistic? Apparently, Money asked some parents and kids how much they would spend on a party.

Tarita said her max on a Sweet 16 for her son, Dominique, was $2k. Meanwhile, Dominique (he looks like he's got 50 Cent playing in his head twenty-four hours a day) feels that $15k would be adequate. If I were Tarita, I would take my not-fully-grown son over my knee and spank him for fifteen hours straight. Fifteen thousand dollars! What in the world is wrong with that boy?

Maybe I just don't get it because I don't have kids. I know for sure that my parents love me and they didn't spend diddly squat on my ass until after I moved out of the house, though. To me, it seems ingrateful to think something like, "sending the message to your child that you don't love him as much as his friends' parents love their kids."

Perhaps I'm thinking about it too hard.

Well, for the first time in I don't know how long, I don't really really need money, which is mildly comforting. Nonetheless, this school still sucks too. 1st, I owe the school and the government an unbelievable amount of money in loan debt. Absolutely unbelievable. Private schools are a really, really dumb financial choice- I just can't see how the name on my eventual diploma will translate into a concrete monetary benefit that will take care of the huge added expense. Even if my mother could have paid for school, I should've taken the difference between the cost of attending here and the cost of attending one of the other schools I got into and invested it, put it into an index fund or something, for a while.

So, last semester I owed the school X amount of money, and I was able to get registered without paying the school all the money I owed them. It was nice. X amount of money starts accumulating interest at 1.5% a month in January. La, la, I ignore the "pay us" letters, keeps on gathering interest, and by August, the total's grown by almost 13%. Okay, fine, but, then, right before I get registered, pay off the old debt, all that, they send my account to collections, and charge a 15% fee on the past due debt amount - I'm up to 30% more than what the initial debt was - in 8 MONTHS!

I wish I could buy Cornell debt and deal with it the way they do, I'd be making sick amounts of money, that's what, over 40% at least annual interest? Bastards. They do a lot of other annoying things, like charging $6000+ for 8 months' worth of occupation of any of the terrible little singles on campus.

Like, all in all, the school will have been 'worth it', but, financially, it's a mess. I should be getting my first Big Red Donations call next semester too, and I have a lifetime of them to look forward to.

Stun

The key to staying healthy on that diet is drinking lots of water, as far as I understand. The diet puts a lot of strain on your kidneys, sends the fat through them, right, and you need water to flush the fat out. Without that, you can get into kidney trouble. Exercise is important, too.

So, I was watching MTV Jams, you know how things go, when this video from this group Big Tymers comes on. It's great, just these two guys doing this funny little stationary groove while they rap about their cars. One guy wears some sort of funny Burberry tracksuit. Anyways, the song flows along, and one of them mumbles something about his G-Wagen, and then flashes to a picture of the inside of the wagen briefly. It looks like the guy had the interior of his G-Wagen, this $80k SUV, refinished in Ostrich skin. Now, Ostrich is extremely expensive, like $800/pair of shoes, and the G-Wagen is pretty big, so the cost of covering the seats in that must've just been insane. Isn't that great? (The whole song is about how they can't afford all the shit they're buying - "hood rich" (the name of the CD the song is on) is their term for it). The American Dream, my friends, the American Dream.

Stone

You know, a measly $3,000 would solve all of my problems. If there was $3,000 in my bank account tomorrow, I'd be such a different person.

Fuck this! I just went to Bluemountain.com. I just wanted to send some crazy Kwanzaa cards for the holidays and the bastards have made it so you have to pay for their shitty e-cards. You now have to be a member and it costs $11.95 a year. Now it's true that's only like a dollar a month, but that isn't the point. And it isn't the point that I'm being cheap. The point is every motherfucker now a days wants a peice of my wallet...my very empty wallet. FUCK THIS!

On a more pleasant note, it's Wilson and Levres' one year anniversary, so congratulations guys. I love you both!

Ha ha, it's funny to talk about myself as if I was someone else.

1212 Out.

Well, this is a first for me... travel anxiety. I due to fly to Belgium for a visit on Thursday. I am not anxious/nervous because of a fear of flying or anything... my problem is that my passport's location is unknown to me.

Last week, I went to the embassy and applied for a visa. On Friday they were to FedEX the thing to me (overnight). It did not arrive Saturday. It did not arrive today. So now, I am freaking out. If it does not arrive Tuesday, then it wont arrive until Thursday (and be too late). Wednesday is the 4th of July and FedEX does not deliver. If they havent shipped it yet, I have to go back to Manhatten to pick it up. If they shipped it to the wrong address, I am fucked. If they shipped it 2day fedex today, I am fucked.

I don't know what I'll do if I cant get my passport. I bought my ticket and I can't move the date on it at all. I am not happy at all. What is worse is that I am completely in the clouds on this one... I have no reason to believe any of the possibilities are more likely than any other.

sigh

The point of tipping at least 20% is that the average tip is 15%, and I want to do more than the average. Because I'm looking for service that's better than average, because the difference between 15% and 20% is really minimal (but the waitress completely notices it), because a lot of kids our age are really shitty tippers, and I don't want to propagate that reputation, so on and so forth, I always want to tip 20% if I have the cash, and if I'm going out to eat in the first place, I ought to have the cash to tip 20%.

No one is going to think "uh oh, another 12% tip, time to bring my customers more water" - they'll probably assume the people they served were cheap, since a lot of people ARE cheap. Penalizing people by lowering the tip (which is what giving a lower gratuity is) is stupid. When I have a regular job, I'll tip 25% standard - for the same reasons that I tip 20% standard normally...it makes the server feel better about themselves while they're working, and it's usually a pretty small amount of money in the long run. I'm also a proponent of the much-debated 'pretty tip', which is optional of course, and maybe is an extra 5% or so.

Oh, oh, this "calculate the tip based on pre-tax price" thing is fucking stupid. You spend $100 on dinner, tax is 8%, and 20% of $8 is $1.60...$1.60, which is meaningless. I've just thought it insulting to see someone doing the little tax deduction in their head to get a subtotal (if it's not listed) before calculating tip.

Pizza is rounding off to 20%. Don't ever tip change to taxi drivers, it's insulting.

With haircuts, I've been going to the same guy at Branford Haircutters for 5-6 years, I don't want to ever get my hair cut by anyone else...I give him whatever I have in my pockets, $6 or $7 or something. If I had a better job, I'd give him more. Tipping's just a show of respect, when you're being served by someone who you respect for any reason, give them whatever you can, I say. I've got mad love for all the people in the service industry.

There've been a couple of times where I've left a shitty tip, but those were instances where I've spent way way more than I thought I was going to (re: Pepe's (die Pepe's)), and on second thought, I still should've tipped normally).

Also...don't get separate checks. They're stupid, classless, a pain in the ass for the servers...round up the prices of everything you had to the next dollar, and then pay your fraction of the tip, like Pippi was saying (tip should be 20, 5 people, everyone pays $4). If you don't have the cash to pay properly, tell someone else and let them take care of it or borrow a few bucks from them.

If we go out and spend $20 on food in a group each, you can spend $3, $4, or $5...not a huge difference to us, $2, but it's nice to the waitress... just put down $5. 15% standard is for suckers.

Stun

Caniprokis is more correct about tipping than Calliander.

Tipping is a social etiquette. There is no 'standard rule'. An etiquette belongs to the society. There are lots of totally different societies. You are part of just one.

Tipping in the society Calliander and Caniprokis belong to generally means 15% for lunch, 20-25% for dinner. Other societies, such as Europe.. leave no tip unless for exceptional service or large groups or something 'extra'. Actually, it's that way in MOST of the world.

Generally means just that.. generally. Dinner for instance is more work (you have salad and extra things for a larger meal). Groups over the size of four are going to be more work too. Once you have five, you have a non-standard table. There is going to be less area for plates, etc.. hence more clearing, more drinks to carry, etc.

Personally, a waitress at a restaurant should get nothing if they are HORRIBLE. But, if they are that horrible, you should also complain to the manager. So, leave a tip unless you want to tell the manager about the bitch. For lunch, leaving 6-10% is fine for bad bad service.. but your lunch is going to be cheap, so 15% is reasonable.

For dinner, you shouldn't leave less than 12-15% for bad service if you are going to go back there.

If you are dining with others who tip more than you.. GET A SEPERATE CHECK or TIP THE SAME PERCENTAGE. When you decide on a percentage at the end of the evening.. ITS A TABLE PERCENTAGE. Not "Well, I didn't get a drink.. why should I pay for refills?". Too bad, dick. Get a fucking seperate check.

Arguing about the bill is bad too.. UNLESS two people want to pay it and they are fighting over who gets to pay.

If someone buys you dinner, return the favour on some level.

For delivery, I like the buck and change system for small orders, especially when sober. So, if your order is $11.45, you give the guy $13.00. If you are stoned, let the fat kid lay down his fifty-dollar-bill and act so stoned that you don't know what change is.

I only recently learned about hte tipping for hair cuts. I don't quite get that one yet.

The toughest tipping is the driver situation. Like, the hotel van picks you up at the airport. I tipped using $2.00 bills :). It was classy. One dude only got two bucks because I carried it all. Another got $8.00 cuz he carried it and it was sorta heavy. A big trip would be like ten bucks a person.

In Europe, if you still must tip for everything, tip only 50% what you do in the US...

Pappy, don't remove this from the main page. This is for Caniprokis, who insists that you leave a 15% minimum tip for lunch and a 20% minimum tip for dinner. Dumb argument, I know, but I figured I'd found out where he got this idea from when every other one of us grew up with 15% for average service all the time. I found absolutely nothing supporting the notion, so the only conclusion I can come to is that because FatherOfCaniprokis finds 20 bucks in his asscrack when showering every morning, he's able to leave 20-25% tips all the time for dinner. But, because you need concrete evidence for matters of etiquette, I present several links to prove my point.

• First Link - search for "phoenix" and you'll find it
• Second Link - search for "GRATUITY" and you'll find it
• Third Link - search for "tipping" (wow)
• Fourth Link - search for "restaurant"
• Fifth Link - search for "benchmark"
• Sixth Link
• Seventh Link

I think the most compelling evidence of all comes from Walt Disney World.

Lunch wasn't mentioned in any of these; I'm assuming that you leave the same tip for both lunch and dinner. So, from these sites, I was able to come up with a good tipping guide. If you get poor service (I would suggest when it's not busy - it's not necessarily the server's fault when it's busy), you leave a 10% tip. Maybe a little more or less. I would never leave a penny. People who do that are rotten. Nobody gets service THAT bad. Anyway... If you get average service - the person doesn't do anything wrong, but just doesn't go that extra mile - you leave a 15% tip. And, if you get great service you leave 20%. If you're in a big party or a fancy restaurant, I'd leave 20% for regular and 25% for great service. Simple as that.

And I don't especially consider the Ground Round or Modern as fancy restaurants. Nor do I consider four or five people a big party.

Times have changed. I have had a complete financial turn-around over the past 20 months. Somewhat like the freakin' economy.

It's funny how things work. Like.. 20 months ago I felt secure and stuff. So when I stopped growth, I didn't really care. Twelve months ago I started to feel the crunch of lack of grown (since I spent about fifteen grand in early 2000).

By the time I realized the trouble I was in, I was too busy to fix it. See, for hte past 18 months I have been working on a particular project. This project has sucked everything from me. Originally, I thought the project would be done in February 2000. Things blew out of proportion and the project turned into a large scale operation. By June, it was huge. I really thought I'd be totally done by then.. and I tried my best to get it done before going to Africa.

Okay, so now it is more than six months since then... what happened? Well.. the project has grown yet again, totally out of expected proportion. What I have now is a fantastic product (even if I do say so myself), an empty wallet, and a tired brain. Like.. I am feeling like I've missed out on a whole bunch of crap. Like.. 20 months of my life.

Like... a lot still has happened to me despite the 60 hour work weeks (plus school). But still.. I feel like I am missing out on my college life. Like.. I am supposed to be able to sit around and do nothing every day and play frisbee and do lots of drugs..

I look around and see what people are doing around me.. people just hanging out, nothing pressing to do except maybe some homework here and there.

I suppose I will get my reward.. at least, I hope so. It's days like today that make me nervous that I threw away 20 months of my life.

Today was one of those days which wasn't absolutely horrible, but just was not good. No sunshine. I got the results for two of my midterms.. neither please me, but I am not going to cry over either of them. I also went to the ATM to take out money, and it wouldn't let me because I don't have $20 to take out.

I'm still peddling my wheels, but I am not going anywhere.

Sure, tell me to shut hte hell up. 1999 spoiled me, and I got too comfortable. Bah.

Warning, Calliander will now spew one of his "out of left field" comments. Thank you.

I'm glad the stock market is so low. Fuck the stock market. It sucks.

I figured we needed a break from all these memories with something stupid.

Okay, well.. here's the thing about Saturday. It is a grab bag.

The reason it is a grab bag is because then:

• If you can't afford to buy something (although.. its $15.. steal it from your folks or something), then you simply don't receive anything and you dont have to feel bad.. maybe left out, but not bad.
• It is too expensive to buy for all friends. I have always wanted to do a gift exchange with friends, but either I don't have the money or the friends dont..
• It's fun.

This isn't supposed to be difficult or complicated. No need for excuses. Bring a gift if you want, otherwise don't. It's sort of like giving a gift to everyone, but only one person keeps it. And you get something in return. So, it has all the kindness of giving, but cheaper.

The funny thing is, I exchange gifts with people I don't even know. On IRC, I have 'known' some people for years.. but never seen them or spoken with them (mostly). Well, one of the people bought me a gift (I have an amazon.com wishlist). So, I bought him a gift in return. I am sending gifts to a couple of other folks who are also sending me gifts. It's weird, and silly and sure, I'm not pleased about spending money.. but I do feel a bit obligated to buy them a gift if they buy me one.

This year I have spent more on gifts than ever, and the funny thing is I have the least amount of money to spend this year. I loaned out money to Caniprokis and Wilson, leaving me with $36.84 in my bank account. Yes, $36.84. I have $16 in my wallet tho. And while it might still be more than some people.. it is sort of a new experience to have no money. I'm used to having more than two thousand in my account. Bah.

It doesnt stop me spending though.. I am hoping I get a paycheck in January. But, it doesn't look like it anymore.

I just finished wrapping my presents up, I'm talking on ICQ with LioConvoy, and it's doing that freezing rain stuff out right now. My car is covered in a sheet of ice like it were a new coat of paint. However, from my living room window, it looks like fragile snowflakes falling and weaving an intricate, white blanket onto my grass. If I didn't know better, I'd think it were Christmas and Santa was about to arrive with his reindeer and his sleigh. There's only one phrase which can describe my sentiments about all this stuff: FUCK THAT.

Over the past few days, starting with Sunday, I've spent a total of 250 dollars on family members. Specifically my mother and my sister. I really don't have that kind of money, but I spend it anyways because I see things I absolutely know my mother would love. And my sister gets her usual: a gag gift (this year, XXL sweatpants and XXL jogging sweatshirt - she's like a toothpick) and a $25.00 gift certificate for a local music store. I haven't bought my father anything yet, but I plan on buying him a leather jacket and a new wallet - not necessarily leather for the wallet, though. So, in total, I'll be spending a total of probably 450-500 dollars for Christmas. That's probably 400-450 more dollars than I have to spare.

So screw Christmas. Screw Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, and several other gift-giving holidays I'm too ignorant to know about. If I ever have children, they aren't getting a damn thing except on their birthdays. And if they wonder why their mother and I don't celebrate good old X-Mas, I'll calmly explain, "Well, there's a very simple reason: Daddy is cheap. Daddy & Mommy don't have the extra money to spend. We'd rather not fool you with a myth and make you think you weren't good kids when, in actuality, Mom & Dad can't afford lots of presents." But don't think I'm getting all soft - I'll say that even if through some miracle I end up with a lot of money to throw around. Maybe I'll toss an, "Plus, don't you kids like the Benjamin Franklin toilet paper?" in if possible. Giving isn't about buying presents. At least Hanukkah doesn't lie to kids... but there's still that whole eight gifts thing.

I'd like to make up a song, but I'm currently too tired to figure one out. Had I done so, it would've been to the tune of "White Christmas" - hence the title of this rant. So imagine a really funny song being sung by none other than that crooner Bing Crosby, with words so well written you couldn't shake a stick at 'em. That wouldn't be mine, but I can hope. Have a crappy night and suck my dick. Thank you.

Oh my dear Gatekeeper... you need to learn how to keep that infamous temper in check. How can you keep any gates if you keep flying off the handle like that. Jiminy, arcee's a newby... you've gone too far a few times, but do we snap back, no clearly not. So what if arcee's a fem-nazi womyn... you're masoginist douche bag... it all equals out. And so what if she's complaining about people's bitching. It's just as much her right to bitch about that, as it is for you to bitch about her rant, or for me to bitch about yours... human. As I recall it was you as a newby here that said that MC needed to stop bitching about her life... human. In summation... you need to stop taking everything as an offense to your manhood... that may be what led everyone to believe MT's lies...

LIOCONVOY!!!

Since I seem to be wasting more time ranting, I might as well complain about a country that is high up on the fucked up list: Zimbabwe.

Now, this little country has been a mess since the beginning of time, but in the last twenty years (since they broke away from Britain basically) very little has changed. A lot was supposed to change when the breakaway happened but little did happen.

So now you have a country that has very little exports, and no money. They export a lot of tobacco, and it makes up for a huge percentage of their yearly income. Soooo.. you have a lot of poor angry people, who decide that they want some land. So they go take over farms.. killing farmers, farm hands, black or white. So now you have a lot of squatters and angry people destroying tonnes of crops. And what does all that mean? It means that the already poor country now has far less money coming in. And does the government realize this and try to stop things? No.