The get gas different in Switzerland

Ahhh winter, when Europe descends on the Florida Keys, wierdness just seems to happen. Last year I caught three German tourists trying to lift my Miata up as I came out of KMart in Key Largo. They assured me they could do it because it was so very very tiny and they were so very big. I told them to cut it out and drove off watching them laughing as I departed. This year? Well. Last week Switzerland was well represented.

I drove into the Shell station at mm 100 and two very cute girls (about 20 years old) were at the next pump getting gas – or trying to. One popped around and asked me which number was regular. I showed her. After a few minutes I went around to their side to see of they needed help. I have learned to recognize the signs. I make it a point to be as nice as possible to the tourists no matter what. It’s bad karma to have people bitching about your island half way across the world.

Anyway. They were stuck.

Swiss Miss Number One: What is “Debit”?

Me: Is that card a credit card or does the money come directly from your bank account?

Swiss Miss Number One: It does not come out of bank account.

Me: Then it’s not a debit so tap “No”

Swiss Miss Number One: What is “Zip Code”? I have a code. Do I type it here?

Me: No. It won’t work. You need to reset the pump. You will have to take your credit card inside to the clerk and tell her you want to fill up on pump number three.

Swiss Miss Number One: Oh.

Swiss Miss Number One then proceeded to get into the car, gas cap dangling, and drive off. I looked at Swiss Miss Number Two.

Me: Is she coming back?

Swiss Miss Number Two: I don’t know.

Swiss Miss Number One came back.

Me: Why did you just drive off and circle the station?

Swiss Miss Number One: You said to reset the pump.

Me: I guess that means something different in Switzerland. We’ll just move on now, shall we? Take the credit card inside, give it to the cashier and tell her you want to fill up at this pump. when you are done, go back in and get your card and pay. Can you do that?

Swiss Miss Number One: Yes. Thanks!

I have no idea if they ever got gas that day. I had to get to work. I feel bad about leaving them, but I, too, had to reset the pump.

Reason to buy a huge HD TV: Spartacus: Blood and Sand

So I saw some previews for Spartacus on TV and asked Dave to TiVo it if possible. He was rather reluctant. In fact, he didn’t. Sadly for him, it was on last night when there was nothing else to watch and he had already watched every episode of “How it’s made”, “Mythbusters”, and every other geek show imaginable so he had no standing to refuse my request to put it on. I half watched the first few minutes as I was doing dishes and laundry – long, LONG day yesterday. You have no idea. All of a sudden Dave said something like, “You gotta be kidding me.” So I made him back it up.

Ho Mah Gawd.

London
(ANI): Spartacus: Blood and Sand, dubbed the most explicit television show ever, has gone one step further in shocking senses after filming a raunchy foursome. The series, featuring graphic violence, strong sexual content, and major profanity, stars Rebus star John Hannah opposite Lucy Lawless
from Xena: Warrior Princess. ~ TV show Spartacus shoots raunchy foursome

Words fail me, they really do. Ladies? You have GOT to watch this series.

Trailer

Nalini Singh responds on Amazon

NOT the same Nalini Singh, January 12, 2010
By Nalini Singh – See all my reviews

This is Nalini Singh, the author of the Psy/Changeling and Guild Hunter series. I’ve been getting inquiries about this book – and I want to let you all know that though we share the same name, this book is by a completely different author. Please do not buy it thinking I wrote it.

If you ever need to check if I have a book coming out, the Books page of my website, as well as my author page on Amazon, is kept fully up to date – and I’m always more than happy to answer any questions via email: nalinisinghwrites AT gmail DOT com

I have to say I enjoyed the hell out of the Psy series and just started the Angel series. I recommend.

Buck v. Bell (1927): “Three Generations of Imbeciles are Enough”

Have you ever wondered why abortion was eventually approved as the law of the land? It did not begin with Roe vs Wade. It did not begin with women’s rights advocates. It began in a far darker corner of the US legal system building precedent upon precedent. In Buck v Bell the following quote is on record:

““It is better for all the world if . . . society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”
~Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The story is rather horrifying and you can google it yourself, but what I feel is the important thing people should understand if they did not get this in school is that, as the world wondered at the Origin of the Species and all that it meant for mankind and the planet, there were men and women who decided that natural selection was failing the human race and that, as brilliant, sentient beings, we could do better and that we were actually obligated to play god in the face of plague, poverty and hunger. Killing off the non-contributing members of society for the good of the workers was a kindness in the long run. This was common thinking. The class wars were not pleasant. Abortion was the sound of the educated classes winning round one.

—-

As I have a few more minutes I would like to add that this thinking is not in the past. James R. (Ron) Weddington, c-council in Roe v Wade wrote to President Clinton in 1992:

“But you can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No, I’m, not advocating some, sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can’t afford to have babies.
.
There, I’ve said it. It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and…well…so Republican…
.
Condoms alone won’t do it. Depo-Provera, Norplant and the new birth control injection being developed in India are not a complete answer…
.
No, government is also going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions…RU 486 and conventional abortions. Even if we make birth control as ubiquitous as sneakers and junk food, there will still be unplanned pregnancies. There have been about 30 million abortions in this country since Roe v. Wade. Think of all the poverty, crime and misery …and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario…
.
We don’t need more cannon fodder. We don’t need more parishioners, We don’t need more cheap labor. We don’t need more poor babies”

I especially love this piece of propaganda: “any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and…well…so Republican…”

I’m not sure which Republicans he is talking about but it seems oxymoronic to say that the party against abortion is also the party against the individual being treated equally. It is when Republicans advocate equality that we are called monsters. Everyone has an equal right to LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What this letter is proposing is that every one is NOT equal and it’s stupid to allow the less equal unfortunates continued control over their miserable existence. Rather than propose opportunities be funneled into these segments of society, liberals always recommend extermination at birth as a way of solving the problem. They say these people are simply not capable of overcoming their disadvantages and they should be “managed” by people who know how.

Cure crime – kill babies.

Notice that this is not about women’s rights. These women are looked on a breeders of criminals and burdens to the system. This has been going on for a century right there in letters and writings and in our history and yet – if you talk to a liberal they act as if this dark side to their shining accomplishment does not exist.

We don’t want our daughters punished with babies.

I am only poosting this because AV requested that I back up my statements with some facts – so here they are. You are free to agree or disagree as you like, but stop kidding yourself that abortion is about a woman’s right to chose. Birth control. Special conditions beyond a womans control. These are choices and freedom at work. Whole sale slaughter of a class of people deemed undesirable? That isn’t about women and equal rights. That’s about one class of people taking advantage of another class for the purpose of social engineering and Hitler did not invent it, we did.

Here. Here is a recent example of this thinking

For AV

This is a quickie that references this link extensively: http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/19214417/Eugenics-and-Economics-in-the-Progressive-Era

The average liberal is generally for raising the minimum wage whenever the conversation comes around to it, and most conservatives fight this concept tooth and nail.

Why?

Most liberals assume that this is because conservatives are hateful monsters who despise poor people and want them to die. This is not true and if you understand the history of how the minimum wage came to be, you will understand the conservative view point a little better. At the link I provided – and I haven’t read it all I just skimmed because I was actually looking up Sidney Webb and “the unemployable classes” for an example of what I remember from history to illustrate – you will find that the progressive \ liberal party understood very well that the implementation of a “living wage” would kill jobs. You hear conservatives say this all the time. “Don’t raise the minimum wage. It will kill jobs.” Mostly liberals ignore us and do it anyway – and it kills jobs, forcing another swath of the barely surviving portion of the population onto government assistance and an early grave.

It really does.

And there was a time back in the day when liberals acknowledged this out loud as the intended outcome – with out fear of appearing mean or cruel.

I know. It sounds crazy. But when the minimum wage was enacted the IDEA of it was to do eactly that; put a certain class of people out of work and ostensibly kill them off. Read down to this paragraph on that link I gave you above:

For progressives, a legal minimum wage had the useful property of sorting the unfit, who would lose their jobs, from the deserving workers, who would retain their jobs. Royal Meeker, a Princeton economist who served as Woodrow Wilson’s U.S. Commissioner of Labor, opposed a proposal to subsidize the wages of poor workers for this reason. Meeker preferred a wage floor because it would disemploy unfit workers and thereby enable their culling from the work force. “It is much better to enact a minimum-wage law even if it deprives these unfortunates of work,” argued Meeker (1910, p. 554). “Better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.” A. B. Wolfe (1917, p. 278), an American progressive economist who would later become president of the AEA in 1943, also argued for the eugenic virtues of removing from employment those who “are a burden on society.”

Liberals WANTED the “unemployable classes” to die off and they worked several angles to make this happen – abortion being one, minimum wage being another.

Conservatives on the other hand, fight for the individual to be free to earn what he or she is worth and for the life of every child. Google some of this – learn actual American History. Know where these every day things originated and why they came to be and you will understand what the hell that crazy conservative is saying the next time the topic of minimum wage comes up in conversation.

The George Bernard Shaw that you did not learn about in school

Well last week kind of sucked

… but I guess it’s how you look at it. The good news is, the cold snap seems to be over. The bad news is all the fish appear to be dead. I don’t know if they are all dead but it sure as hell looks like it on the surface. There are reports all up and down the Keys of massive fish kills, all tropical shallow water varieties. Thousands of turtles reported stunned from the cold washing up on the beaches all up and down the coast. Not all of them are dead but enough of them are that it really makes you wonder. Even the hurricanes didn’t kill this many fish. Sad.

I’m waiting to hear from some divers on just how bad it looks from underneath. What has floated up is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. At least one crew of Marine Biologists has headed down to Key West to do a turtle count and reef check. They will be there for two weeks. We’ll see. The students at Island Christian School went down to the bridge and counted the fish kill and varieties. Puffer fish, hundreds of bone fish, large angel fish, hog fish, the cowries were climbing out of the water up the pilings to escape the cold water. Marathon fisherman reported grouper, snapper, game fish galore floating on the surface. If the fish are dead then the coral must have been affected as well.

The birds survived – I think. Many iguanas did not. Turkey Vultures are having a field day. The gulls and other water birds are pretty happy with the feast.

Did Nalini Singh Really Write This?

My America: Things Kinda Suck Right Now But I Have Faith (Kindle Edition)
by Nalini Singh (Author)

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
My Big O: I am just clearing up some thoughts in my head….

I DL’d a sample and it’s a badly written brain dump on American politics that almost takes your breath away in its stupidity naïveté. I checked her Bio and she lives in New Zealand. I don’t think she’s ever lived in the U.S. which is why I’m questioning if it’s her because this writer says she voted for Obama. Gotta be an American citizen to vote and Romance Author Singh was born in Fiji – not an American possession or terretory, doesn’t list the U.S. as ever having been home at any point in time … it’s not outside the realm of possibilities but they are remote at best.

Title on Kindle is typo-hell as follows: Things Kinda Stuck (sic) Right Now but I Have Faith By: Nalini Singh ~ I am not a politician. I am not a scholar. I am not a pundit (I really hate this word). I am not a professional. I’m not even a college graduate. I am a writer: a writer, a thinker, a person, but most importantly, an American. If a lot of people read this, gosh darn, thanks for reading! And if a lot of people read this and hate it and criticize my style of writing, the language I use, or the opinions I express, Oh well. That is what has made our country great. While I feel that we have been repressed from certain freedoms over the years, our freedom of expression still rings strong. People of all different colors, race, religion, and sexual orientation have been able to make the world know just how they feel. It isn’t always easy and sometimes people are subjected to certain vulgarities and injustices when the do voice whant they believe in their hearts. Keep believing and keep voicing your opinion. I hope the style of this book doesn’t sidetrack readers from the message of freedom and hope. You don’t have to be a spelling wiz (sic) with a huge vocabulary to read this book. You don’t need to be an attorney to read this book. You can be a professor, a judge, a cop, a chef, a college student, a stay at home mom, or a lost teenager trying to figure out what this all means. This is My America.
~ Nalini Singh
A.k.a nal4america

There is a picture of her – looks like the Author photo kind of – but is this a hit piece? Her blog is benign. Her website is also politics-free and ordinary.

If it IS her I’d really like some confirmation. I’m thinking there is no possible way an author this careful on her blog and website would write something like this in such highschool level language on such an incindiary topic. When you begin a book essentially saying you have no education and no background on which to base your opinion – “talking out of your ass” is another way to put it – who does that? Correction. Who does that and puts their professional name on it – the name that makes your living? I? don’t make a living as a writer and I have always been upfront on the fact that I am a Republican and a conservative. So I don’t really count. But most fiction authors – with a few exceptions like Orson Scott Card and Stephen King – keep their politics to themselves as much as possible.

If it’s not her, someone needs to tell her that is out there on Kindle. Her Bio says she’s worked as a lawyer and a teacher and yet this book opener says the author has no college degree. There is no possible way they are the same person.