2008 in Review

You know, I could make a nice, long, thoughtful post about the year. But, really, I have only one thing to say about the year.

NEXT!

Holiday Greets

Herpy Yiffmas, everyone! :)

I hate technology. -_-

Ghandi

Shamelessly plagarized borrowed from reddit, where it was probably borrowed from somewhere else.

Fun facts about Mahatma Gandhi:

• He used to walk barefoot everywhere, to the point that his feet became quite thick and hard.

• He was a very spiritual person; eating only enough to quell hunger, and hence was quite thin and frail.

• Due to this diet, he wound up with very bad breath.

• He was known among linguists as a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Fed Funds = 0%?

So,  today, the Federal Reserve slashed the Fed Funds target rate to a range of 0 to 0.25%. The rate was effectively at that level anyway, since they couldn't even maintain their previous target of 1%, but this at least confirms that they're doing everything they can to get the economy moving. Of course, this means that foreign investment in the US is now nearly worthless; treasuries are going to pay incredibly low returns (with the possible exception of the 30-year bonds), so there's no reason at all for people to invest here when they can do so much better overseas. In other words, if this doesn't turn the domestic economy around quick, there's going to be very little foreign money coming in and the situation is just going to get worse.

@$%#*( Illegal Mexicans

Yeah, this is going to be politically incorrect. Don't like it? Go read something else.

So I pulled into a facility here in Laredo, TX, not five miles from the Mexico border. When I got here, there was nobody in the guard shack. There are no signs telling drivers where to go. There's no signs of life at all aside from the two other tractors in the facility and the occasional sound of a honking forklift. I ended up calling the place and only after a minute of conversation did the person on the other end of the line understand that they needed a guard in the guard shack.

Another three minutes of waiting, then out comes some guy who looks like he snuck across the border just earlier this afternoon. He doesn't seem to speak English well enough to understand even the most basic concepts of the language and, despite my repeated attempts to communicate with him, he kept trying to talk to me in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish. It ended up decaying into a game of charades in which neither could understand the others guesses.

I ended up parking in the row of trailers, roughly where the guy was pointing, while he presumably got the paperwork sorted out. He didn't even accept all the paperwork that I was trying to hand him; he only took one copy of the sextuplicate stack, when I was only supposed to retain one copy of the paperwork; the other copies are for the other companies that handle the load on the Mexican side of the border. Ultimately, he just said "okay" when I asked if he needed anything else; I left and I didn't care what else happened, since it is no longer my responsibility.

So, to summarize, here's a case where some dick came across the border, doesn't speak enough English, isn't doing his job, and is taking up a job that Americans would be happy to fulfill; I know several people who are looking for work as a security guard right now. And for what? So the company can save on labor by paying less than minimum wage in cash? This is a perfect example of why nobody is going to actually reform immigration law: the fear that morons like this will become even more common and take even more jobs that we have competent Americans for.

Further Confusion is a no-go

I'd been considering going to FC this year, but it was contingent on a
room situation. It turns out that the room that I'd been holding out
hope for is full. Further, though the con had previously announced that
the room block would be re-opened tomorrow, it appears that announcement
was inaccurate as the convention has since retracted the statement.

I'll /definitely /be going to FWA, though. Not sure about the other
conventions this year, though Eurofurence and Anthrocon are definitely
not on my list (can't afford either of them). MFM and MFF are the most
likely ones, though.

I have only one thing to post today:

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