southsamurai

It was then too :)

Knew several, dated one. The one guy was a bit of a douche, but the one girl was cool. Both of those were from Germany, different parts.

There was a girl from Milan that was awesome. Just one of those people that’s able to make anything fun.

Those, however, were in a higher grade than I was at the time, so there wasn’t as much interaction.

In my junior year, there was a girl from Madrid in my grade. She and a girl I had dated that was from Mexico City were both in the same Spanish class I was taking. Kind of a chance for them to work on more conversational English, and for us americans to have native speakers to talk to. What it ended up being was two kids that spoke Spanish so fast and so well, with slang and accents that the teacher couldn’t keep up with that it was a comedy. The girl I had dated wasn’t an exchange student, she had immigrated with her parents, and was a citizen by that point. And they didn’t always get along, what with the cultural divide and differing personalities, but the teacher was such a twatwaffle that they had more fun screwing with her than arguing lol. But the Spanish girl was really nice. Went out of her way to help other students, and put up with my bad spanish that was part the Castilian that we learned in class, part the stuff the girl I had dated taught me, and all done with a southern accent.

There was also a guy from France that year, but I never had any real interaction with him. Seemed decent from what I heard about him, and he was certainly friendly.

But then, there’s Junko. We shared an art class. She was Japanese. She was also a bit of a metalhead, and an amazing artist. She blew away everyone, including the teacher, on any project we did. Just astounding skill, and wildly creative with it. She ended up sitting between me and a friend of mine just randomly at the start of the year, and a few days later when we both had on band shirts, started gushing about Iron Maiden. She brought in her painting of Eddie, a slightly modified version of the somewhere in time album cover.

So, it was on. The three of us would sit there working on whatever, talking about music.

Which led into me and her working on a project together. A sculpture of Eddie lol but it was fun, and it was a long project we were expected to work on outside of school.

We liked each other a lot. After the project, it just turned into us hanging out pretty much any time her host family was okay with it. At some point, a few months in, we’re sitting in class joking about my dad greeting her in bad Japanese every time she comes over (he was stationed on Okinawa during his army stint) when someone asked if we were dating. I was not aware that we were, but Junko just piped up with a yes and kissed my cheek.

Apparently, she like, like liked me. I did her as well but at the time I was about as clueless as it gets. I can’t say it was love, but she did make my heart do funny things when she’d laugh, which was often.

So, the rest of the year, we dated a bit more intentionally. The closer it got to the end of the year, though, we knew it was going to end, and we also knew it wasn’t something that was long term enough to make any kind of plans. So that was pretty much it. By the time she went home, it was essentially just friendship with occasional kissing. But there was a deeper affection, we just didn’t pursue it. She wasn’t moving here, I wasn’t moving there, so no point in letting things get too involved, you know?

We did exchange letters for a few years, though that petered out until email became a thing got each other’s addresses and kept in touch that way off and on. She had called my dad to find me. It’s been a few years since we last communicated though.

Well, the way I’ve seen it explained is that anything over 4 can be an orgy, as long as nobody is just watching. Otherwise, it’s just group sex.

However, I’ve also seen the argument made that 4 can be an orgy so long as everyone is involved with at least two other people at once.

Me, I say it’s a small orgy when it’s over 4 but under a dozen.

In this case, it was nine people. 4 dongs present. But they were all putting things into each other (if you count tongues, and I do) and modestly mostly with more than one person, so it wasn’t just group sex with enough people to count as an orgy.

And yes, I did watch for a while. It was. . . interesting. It was too weird to be arousing, what with the suddenness of it, and the location, and the utter lack of aggressive exhibitionism. Like, obviously they wanted to be seen, it was public. But it wasn’t like they were paying attention to being seen, they weren’t just watching people watch them. It was almost performance art tbh, just performance art with jizz.

Weird?

A full on ceremonial magic ritual. Weird because they just rolled up in a van, started unpacking things, did it, then packed back up and left. It was obviously well planned and organized. When I asked one of them what was going on, and the initial response was nervous, I explained that I have no problem with it, just curious, and another one said that just didn’t have the time to explain, but I’d thank them for it if they did.

A small orgy. Weird because you don’t expect it in public.

A line of young men marching in clown shoes, and nothing else. Frat initiation. Dong was flapping. I don’t think it needs explaining why it’s weird.

Three drunk rednecks who lost a bet pulling up to a leather and cowboy gay bar and asking if there was anyone that would spank them. I volunteered gladly. I then spanked them and told them if they ever tried to start trouble anywhere I worked, I’d fucking curb stomp them. One of the most entertaining events in my entire time bouncing that particular bar.

Weird but disturbing, a bunch of people hovering over someone trying to figure out if she was dead or not. Not trying to help, not doing anything at all other than debating if she was breathing. Weird because wtf, you assholes. Also why it was disturbing. Woman was drunk off her ass, passed out, and was likely damn close to death because she was hypothermic. Cold to the touch, and the EMTs said she was in rough shape overall. And yes, I had to make the call to 911, none of the assholes could be bothered, and cell phones were present.

I can keep going, I’m 50, and spent a lot of my years in jobs that had me out in public a good bit lol. You live long enough, you accrue a book worth of weird shit people do in public (and private).

Ahhh, not all of us went to Sunday school lol. Those of us that did, didn’t all pay attention, and those that did didn’t all accept it and internalize it enough to reference.

Like, I went maybe three times? Then I bailed because it was a tad, well bullshit. Too much of it just didn’t scan.

With that, there’s a lot of room in the concept of theft, of stealing that goes beyond taking things illegally. Looking at it in the context of an economics class, it’s obviously meant to try the students thinking about things on a broad level, a way of breaking the box so that they can not just think outside it, but really abandon it so that new concepts can be explored fresh.

That’s the framework of my response.

I reckon so, yeah. Better than nothing, right? Been plenty of good with the bad. That’s about all a disembodied energy form could really hope for, after all.

Yeah, that .bat works really well. Makes pretty much any network access so much easier to set up and use.

Welllll, not really.

I’ve never had the kind of jobs where it was possible. My main two on the books jobs were as a nurse’s assistant and a bouncer (including some titty bars). You can’t usually drag a kid into a patient’s home, and you can’t have anyone not employed there or a relative/representative of the patients present when providing care in nursing homes.

Now, the drag club, I would have gladly taken the one kid I partially raised in, but the whole alcohol laws made that a no-go. And my current kid, we’ve already got a trip to the city planned for when they can get in legally just for a good drag show.

However, back when I was raising what was essentially a nephew, but not related by blood, he did come to the office with me a few times when I was in home health, and did hang out in the office with me and my boss in the office during the day when one bar wasn’t open.

But only the home health place was a semi official “take your kid to work” thing. Once was an inservice where we could bring kids since it was during hours they’d be out of school, the other was an actual bring your kids day.

The inservice one was decent enough, since I wasn’t the only one to bring a kid, and they all had a lot of fun snacking and playing games supervised by a lady that was originally a peds nurse. The other, it was more of a boring-ass tour thing, so it flopped. But he wanted to go, and I didn’t have anything better planned.

Do you mean a true expiration date, as in “this food is not safe to eat”, or just best by?

If it’s the first, I tend to trust my nose and eyes up to a point, depending on the type of food stuff that can grow things that will make my anus prolapse get treated more by the exact date than my nose, same with stuff that’s hospital bills in food form. If the date is up, that kind of stuff goes out even if I can’t detect anything off, because the risk/reward just isn’t favorable. Similarly, if my nose does pick up something off, idgaf what the date is, it gets trashed.

It does help that I’ve got creeping on 40 years of kitchen exposure and a damn sensitive nose.

But best by? Most of the time, a properly sealed container of something that was safe when it was put in the container can take weeks or months past the best by date, when unopened, to have a noticeable change in taste. Some stuff, particularly canned and freeze dried goods, you can sometimes open them years later and have no detectable difference from something freshly packaged. Obviously, it isn’t everything, since some stuff preserves better than others, but food safety isn’t usually affected at all.

You gotta be more careful with meats, as an example. It won’t necessarily spoil, but it goes tasteless and textureless before some other ingredients.

It really is a case by case basis though. Something like canned tomato soup? It’ll taste exactly the same for years. Something like minestrone, though, you go to to a year after best by and you’ll notice everything being extra mushy, and the flavor gets blander. Sometimes, even a few months past in that specific soup.

But freeze dried? I’ve never had anything freeze dried be worse over time if the package is still sealed. That’s kinda the point of freeze drying. If it does change, it’s on a scale of decades, assuming a good seal on the packaging.

Things like salt pork, there’s a fairly firm time limit on. Less so with pickled vegetables, though texture gets bad with some things. Regular dried meats, like jerky, unless it’s vacuum sealed, it’ll get kinda blah within a week or two of the best by date. Dried fruits, peppers that kind of thing can last years even without packaging. I had a big box of dried peppers that lasted like five years and the last chili I made with them was just as good as the first. Not a bit of difference in taste, texture, or heat level.

Worst thing I ever had that was past best by was deviled ham. I’m not even a fan of the stuff to begin with, but you wanna talk about something getting funky and even more sludgy, holy crap. It even smelled like vomit. Well more than usual lol.

Who cancelled it?

That’s what it comes down to.

If the person that took out the loan cancels it by some kind of fuckery, then you could likely call it stealing.

If it’s the entity that made the loan, obviously not.

If it’s an agent of the government, which is ultimately the expression of the collective people which defines what stealing is and isn’t, then it would depend on how it was achieved. If the agent of the government acted within the law as established at the time the loan was cancelled, then it can’t be stealing from a legal standpoint.

Now, is it ethical? That’s a different question. It could be seen as a form of theft, but I would argue that it is no more or less theft than taxes, fees for government services, interest, etc. If it is stealing, then pretty much every government enforced payments are theft to begin with, which includes the interest on those loans.

I just ran across a post asking about what fast food burger is best.

So, I gotta ask, which whataburger? There’s two. One is a chain out of Texas. The other is essentially just two restaurants in a town where my cousin lives lol.

I’ve never had the Texas version.

But the other one? Wayyyy better than Wendy’s.

It kinda depends, and my opinion has to be tempered with the knowledge that not all chains are everywhere. That means the only white castle I’ve had was frozen, I’ve never had in n out, etc.

What chains are present within reasonable driving distance, or that I’ve had elsewhere are: sonic, Jack in the box, McDonald’s, burger king, Wendy’s, Hardee’s/Carl Jr’s. You can add steak n shake, cookout, and five guys, if you consider those as fast food (I do, but some don’t). I’ve also had what-a-burger when visiting family, though not often.

There’s more than one kind of burger, which makes it difficult.

As an example, Hardee’s does these burgers that are huge, and supposedly black angus beef. Amazing burgers for a fast food joint. Arguably as good or better than burgers at sit down restaurants, including steak houses (depending on which one). But they’re a specialty burger, and that’s not always comparable to standard burgers.

And there’s a difference between something like a big mac, that’s piled with stuff, and a regular cheeseburger.

So, for my money, my actual favorite fast food burger of any kind is Burger King’s regular cheeseburger. It’s just the small patty, a slice of cheese, a few pickles, nurses mustard and ketchup. Simple, enough so that your really taste the beef, but the toppings serve to enhance that flavor rather than cover it up (which is what happens with whoppers and big macs). Plus, the size is more reasonable. I don’t feel bloated by one, even with a drink.

However, the Frisco burger from hardees is bomb. Sourdough bread rather than a bun. Not the best sourdough tbh, but it’s still a decent enough attempt. The bacon and tomato work well with it. Not a fan of mayo, so I would order it without. Haven’t had one in ages though, because they’re freaking huge. 800+ calories, and it’s like you swallowed a handful of those sponges in gelcaps that kids take into the bathtub with them. It’s too much food.

Those would be my top picks for a fairly standard burger though. One smaller and kinda generic, the other a belly buster that’s sorta specialty, but not a vast departure.

That being said, there’s a style of burger I’ve had when visiting family that’s called “Carolina burger”. It’s the toppings that make it a style, not the burger itself. Chili sauce, onion, slaw, mustard, with pickles optional. The chilli sauce is not standard hamburger/hotdog chili. It’s its own thing, with hundreds of recipes, at least. Every family does their chili sauce different. Definitely the best regional burger I’ve had.

The best Carolina burgers are not fast food available anywhere except at a whataburger, and they don’t call it that. I looked it up, and they call it a hamburger and the bigger version is a what-a-hamburger. Which, it’s important to note that this is not the same chain as is in Texas. This is just a couple of joints in one town in North Carolina. I’ve only ever been to them with my cousin a few times, but holy shit is it good. They also make this strangely good drink concoction called a witch doctor, which is basically every drink they have, plus pickles and pickle juice. But they’re technically a drive-in and sit down joint, not a proper fast food joint, but they are just as fast as any of that big chains. It’s worth the trip just for the burger though.

Not that fast food burgers would be my pick for a burger 90% of the time, though.

Ehhh, depends on what you consider right and wrong. Some folks might say I did do something wrong. They’d be wrong, and assholes, but they might say it ;)

So, I worked in home health as my main job. Started in facilities, but burned out and moved to home health.

There’s extra rules when doing home health because you’re in people’s homes, which can be a lot of complication. Not all of them are good rules.

A case I was working, it was 24/7 coverage for a very wealthy elderly couple. That meant at least two caregivers present all day, every day of the year. Those of us that were regular, steady caregivers on the case got you know the family well. A lot of rich folks are absolute assholes to workers in their home, these folks weren’t. Genuinely nice people, a really perfect case to be on.

So, I tended to work either overnight, or late afternoon to late night, depending on how everyone needed the schedule. Since the clients covered whatever the insurance didn’t, and the family erred on the side of regular, reliable caregivers over set schedules, the office was glad to make things work so that if someone needed to do something with their kids or whatever, we’d all work it out so that the patients were covered and nobody lost hours either.

Enter the other worker that preferred a similar shift to me. She was awesome. She would bust her ass for the patients, was one of those people that’s easy to get along with, even if there’s a disagreement or misunderstanding. Was and is one of the best people I ever worked with. We aren’t close, but we keep in contact, especially since covid, which is a long story in itself.

Anyway, her and one of the patients’ grandsons end up spending a lot of time together over a few months. Enough so that it was pretty obvious it was going somewhere. Now, to the best of my knowledge, she never, ever engaged in any behaviour that would have impacted patient care, and I know for a fact she never did when we were there at the same time. To the contrary, when we’d all be sitting down in the kitchen, chatting and such between checking on the patients, it didn’t matter what they were talking about, she would cut him off mid sentence to go handle things

I heard the same thing happen when they were alone together in other rooms as well. She didn’t mess around with the job at all, in any way.

If they were finding time to canoodle or whatever, they were quite and stopped when it was time for work. In other words, nobody did anything inappropriate while at work.

However, they did go out together eventually. And they got seen by one of the office staff (it isn’t exactly a highly populated area, so you’ll run into everyone eventually).

So it was drama. They called in all of us that worked the case, acting like they were fucking cops investigating a crime. Which set me off hard. I got the call that they wanted me to come into the office “for questioning” after I had pulled a shift with those patients, then gone to work at a second job (and had to physically throw a dude out of the club, which is not exactly refreshing after two long shifts). Woke my ass up, calling five fucking times, leaving increasingly shitty messages.

Now, I was younger. I was a lot nicer, a lot more patient in my youth. Now, I’d tell anyone pulling that shit to go fuck themselves. But back then, I agreed to come in. I had no clue what they were on about, but there had been rumors going around that the administrator who had recently gone on vacation wasn’t coming back at all because money was missing. So I figured it had to be something about that, what with the ever increasing shittiness of the messages.

I get there, and the lady that was nominally “human resources” starts out with a threat. Starts with. Saying that I could be held responsible too, if I don’t tell the truth.

I’m sitting there on about three hours of sleep, so my mouth opens and asks her what the fuck she’s on about. Which turns into her trying to scream and fire me (she didn’t have that ability at all). I walk the fuck out, go to my actual supervisor, and tell her I’m about done. The HR twat comes in behind me telling my supervisor to fire me.

My supe asks me to head to the break room and have some coffee, and she’ll be right with me.

When she gets there, she’s rolling her eyes and apologizing. We sit and have a cup of coffee while she explains what it’s really about, that my co-worker is dating a family member of a client. She asks if I know about it. I reply that even if I had, after the blast of crazy I just caught, my memory would disappear really fast.

She basically says “dude, c’mon”, in polite southern lady. I told her that I had never observed any inappropriate behavior of any kind by my co-worker. She asked if I had anything to add, and my mouth opened again. I said that the next time anyone from the office called me like that, they could go fuck themselves, and I’d find another job in fifteen minutes. Which got a laugh and an eye roll from her. Miss Patty was awesome as a supervisor lol.

So, the HR Lady, and I use the term loosely, did try to fuck with me after that, but I don’t know how it would have shaken out because the company folded. The administrator had run off with pretty much every drop of cash he could pilfer from the company.

The patients ended up following the bulk of us that worked there to a smaller, but way better, company. A few of the regular caregivers just quit the industry entirely, and a few went to the only other company around at the time instead of the smaller one the rest of us went to.

The co-worker and the grandson ended up getting married a few years later. I went, and it was a good match imo. They were happy as pigs in slops, hanging all over each other all night lol. Still married, still happy afaik.

On my end of things, idgaf about those two getting together the way they did. If they’d compromised patient care, it would matter, but it didn’t. If anything, it would have improved it, but my co-worker was already deeply devoted to the job, she couldn’t be a better caregiver, period. It’s one of those rules that makes sense on the surface, but fails utterly when real people are involved.

Overall, ignoring the kind of device, it’s my preferred linux distro, followed by android, followed by other distros, followed by windows 7.

I wish Linux mobile was ready for what I need, but there just isn’t app parity currently.

The learning curve switching from win7 to whichever version Mint Linux was on at the time was acceptable. No harder or easier than picking up android for the first time once installation was finished. Easier than when I’ve had to dick around on iOS. I can’t say what the switch would be like now since only my laptop is running dual boot with 10 right now, and I never open it at all. I kept the windows partition for some of the crap with self publishing that isn’t as easy on Linux, but I find there’s no motivation to boot to Windows lol.

I really like excels android overall, and I used to run custom roms on everything, and had a ton of fun playing around like that. But Google has made android suckier, if not sucky enough to switch to iOS or put up with the flaws of mobile Linux (though it has been a while since I tested anything in that regard). So, as long as android is essentially controlled by a for profit company, I don’t know that it could be my favorite os.

Linux wise, Mint is the tits. Yeah, there’s distros that do some things better. But damn, I’ve thrown mint on all kinds of boxes and then just got to using it for what i want to do, not fiddling around with things. The bullshit canonical pulls isn’t an issue, and that’s nice. Popos is pretty similar in that regard tbh, but I prefer the default looks of mint better. That’s a niggling little thing, but such is life.

Maybe…

I’m going to fuck it

Thank you for making my point

Nope, nope, nope, not playing your game, not gonna happen

Annnd there it is folks, the vegan that has to assume moral superiority.

Honestly, just don’t be a dick about it.

It’s like being a good insert religious group. You live your beliefs, and don’t push them on other people. It’s really that simple. That’s what people hate about vegans.

If someone asks, it’s perfectly okay to explain why you follow a religion, so it’s fine when the question is about being vegan. It’s when there’s a conversation about something else, and you insist on shoving your beliefs into it that’s there’s a problem. Or, when the conversation is such that talking about your beliefs is the goal, insisting that the other people agree with your beliefs.

It’s that simple. It’s that easy.

I troll vegans. It’s easy to do because a lot of them treat it like a religion and are zealots, or are arrogant enough to think that they’re better because of what they believe. But, irl away from the anonymity of the internet, it rarely happens, and the vegans I know are fucking great, because they don’t shoehorn their beliefs into things, and don’t act like jerks about it. It’s why I’ll gladly cook vegan for them when they’re guests.

You know how people bitch about jehovah’s witnesses and mormons knocking on their door, or the baptists (or other christian sects) leaving shit on their stoop or shoved into doors? Don’t be like that. If you’re in a situation where you would not be surprised that someone would be angry/annoyed by someone going on about being wiccan or christian, or hindu, they’ll likely be the same about veganism.

Live your beliefs, don’t show them off, and anyone that has a problem with you is the asshole, not you.