salewoman in Arizona

A saleswoman was driving toward home in Northern Arizona when she saw an Indian woman hitchhiking. Since the trip had been long and quiet, she stopped the car and the Indian woman got in. After a bit of small talk, the Indian woman noticed a brown bag on the front seat.

"What's in the bag?" she asked.

"It's a bottle of wine. I got it for my husband," said the saleswoman.

The Indian woman was silent for a while and then said, "Good trade."

Guru brands £484bn U.S. aid 'half a Viagra'

THE world's second-richest man has dismissed Barack Obama's $787billion stimulus as just 'half a tablet of Viagra and a bunch of candy'.

Warren Buffett warned the U.S. President's first rescue package - worth £484billion - 'doesn't have really quite the wallop'.

The investment guru believes a second, more potent stimulus could be needed to jumpstart the world's biggest economy. His warning will increase the pressure on Mr Obama, who is not convinced of the need for a further bail-out.

Mr Buffett, who supported Mr Obama in last year's election, said the U.S. is showing little sign of returning to growth. Americans suffered 'a shock to the system' following the financial chaos of last autumn.

Although there were signs that the economy was starting to recover, Mr Buffett predicted that U.S. unemployment, which is already at a 26-year high of 9.5 per cent, could peak at 11 per cent this year.

Known as the 'Sage of Omaha', Mr Buffett, 79, has amassed a £23billion fortune as one of the world's most successful investors. In 2002 he warned complicated investments known as derivatives, which were at the heart of last September's banking meltdown, were 'financial weapons of mass destruction'. buying sildenafil online north carolina

wow, it's been a long time coming for an update. some background on the last few months. things have been exceptionally busy and i've been trying to not take idiocy to heart as much. well, really the busy thing; i haven't had time to post.

but here i am with what has to be some of the stupidest commenst to date.

in order to understand some of these, some background will need to be given. when a new game comes out, we have to supply "set up" info to our accounts so that their receiving can receive the product correctly. this set up includes; weight, dimensions of individual units and also case pack dimensions. simple enough.

simple, meet club accounts**. club accounts, meet simple. you kids play good together and no fighting.

unfortunately, club accounts HATE simple. i mean, simple must have taken club accounts milk money, stole his bike, fucked his sister or something cause club accounts and simple are like open wounds and whiskey.

so this one club account, that shall remain nameless, wants us to ship their games in "keeper" cases. these are the long plastic cases that you see at the best buys of the world. the ones that the cashier needs to open before you leave the store. ok, no problem. we'll do the work for your stocking clerks cause we know you hire what are essentially the menatlly handicapped.

but wait, we want more! we designed a nifty shipping carton/tray thing in which you put six units into, close and ship. that way our floor monkeys only have to tear the top off and put the box out on our tables. ok i says. it's an extra expense that we have to eat but hell, happy customers make for fatty profit.

now HERE is where it gets fun. we had the boxes made to their design and dimensions. we've bought the boxes. we've bought the keepers. now they chase us to no end to get the deminsions of the nifty shipping/tray.

i don't know your fucking dimensions nor do i want to. YOU supplied them to ME and now your threatening to cancel orders if WE don't get YOU the dimensions THAT you supplied to ME?

go fuck yourself and your 300 piece nation wide order.

more to come as i vent.

**club accounts - these are the "big box" stores that typically require a membership. you know the ones, you go in and but a gross of toilet paper to save 1/2 a penny on a roll. or hey! that 5 gallan can of refried beans just saved me three cents an ounce!

a question overheard, not directed towards me

in all honesty, had this been asked of me, i really could not tell you how i may have responded. some options that spring to mind:

* "you're shitting me, right?"
* i instantly and permanently become stupider
* stared blankly until that half second when no one else is looking and just shoved them out the third story window. it'd be akin to putting down old yeller
* taking their hand, walking them slowly to a conference room, asking them to wait while i go gather HR, their boss and an independent witness; asking them to repeat the question once more.

so what's this question?


"um, are fed ex and ups the same company?"

please leave me alone.

go away, please. not only do i not need your input for something that i have done at this company for 4.5 years and in this business for 10+ years, i find all of your comments to be asinine and a complete and utter waste of my time and resources

in closing, it would serve the company far more if you would focus on why print is late then help in planning cd manufacturing and pack out, two things that by your own admission, the last time you had anything to do with was during the 16 bit era of gaming. times have changed; media has converted from cartridges to discs; lead times are shorter; capacities are different; gaming is now high profile, no longer a niche market. in today’s age, we consider vendors to be partners and we treat them as such; whining will get you nowhere.

not only do i find your input ludicrous, i find it tedious and your personal hygiene quite disgusting and you have an “atrocious ignorance of personal space” (thanks E.A.B.)

"Are you a moron in a cage?"

"NO!"

"Moron on the loose! Moron on the loose!"

I was approached with a sheet that I had made that has the dimensions of a product, 7.5 L x 5.5 W x 0.5 H. In the other hand, was an actual PS2 game. Foir those of you not into gaming, it is the same size/shape as a DVD case so you have a visual.

With these things in hand, they are set on my desk, the person looks at me and asks "can you help me figure out which is which?"

I get a ruler and point out that the longest number is 7.5, Long = Length. I point out that the middle number of 5.5 is how wide it is, Wide = Width. Then I point out how deep it is, 0.5.

"OH! Height is the same as Depth?"

Depends on how you look at it moron but those numbers should be self explanatory.

I may throw the Pi symbol on there as a fourth dmension, simply to watch the struggle manifest itself between the brow.

The American college town

If a friend should ever ask for a book that epitomizes the best that geography can offer, I recommend Blake Gumprechts new volume as a near-perfect candidate. In The American College Town he takes a landscape familiar to every reader of this journal and makes us see it afresh. He dissects its complexity with astonishing thoroughness, using a rich mix of archival material, personal observation, and field interviews. He offers deep case studies, but remembers the need for broader context. Finally, he assembles the total package with spirited, clean prose, some of the best academic writing I have ever seen.

The American College Town is a beautifully designed and well-conceived book. Sandwiched between an introduction that defines the subject and a conclusion about its future are eight thematic chapters. These range in length between 29 and 44 pages, and each illustrates a characteristic of such towns with focus on a particular community. In order these are: the campus as public space (Norman, Oklahoma), fraternity rows and other distinctive residential areas (Ithaca, New York), campus business districts (Manhattan, Kansas), progressive political attitudes (Davis, California), alternative life styles (Athens, Georgia), sports culture (Auburn, Alabama), high-tech centers (Ann Arbor, Michigan), and town-gown tensions (Newark, Delaware). Each chapter is organized historically and illustrated by 10 or so well-chosen photographs and reference maps. The author, one soon learns, is as skilled with camera and mapping software as he is with words.

College towns are a classic example of voluntary culture areas, those created by people who migrate to wherever they think they will find likeminded souls. As such, we might have expected scholarly work on this subject before 2008. Gumprecht blames the neglect on academic farsightedness and the natural human tendency to overlook what is all around us (p. xvii), but I hope this books success will inspire parallel probes into the many other self-sorted places, from retirement centers to the Pacific Northwests ecotopia.

Extensive work underlies this book. One gets an initial feel for this by paging through 64 pages of endnotes and reading that personal interviews numbered over 200. It is clearer still when reading astonishingly detailed accounts of, say, the evolution of Manhattans Aggieville business district or Daviss political culture and realizing that these were assembled from primary materials such as city hall minutes, old Sanborn maps, nineteenth-century diaries, and on-the-spot interviews. Most telling of all, perhaps, is the authors sad confession that this book ultimately sapped so much time and energy that it hastened the collapse of his marriage.

Even readers who have spent decades in college towns can glean much from Gumprechts work. The first chapter, for example, is an interesting exercise in definition. If one selects American cities where university students constitute 20% or more of the total population and, of these, eliminates big cities and suburbs, the result is about 300 college towns. He notes how these entities are rare in other countries (where urban universities are the rule), explains why they are so numerous here (state as opposed to federal control, a scattered population, religious sponsorship, and local boosterism), and identifies six subtypes. He also relates how many of the phenomenons characteristic traits emerged only after an enrollment surge in the late 1940s.

The thematic chapters are uniformly rich. The University of Oklahoma, with its wooded groves, formal gardens, and public auditoria is a perfect demonstration of the open, verdant nature of most American campuses. Their contrast with cloistered, inward-looking universities in Europe is stark. One learns that fraternities at Ithaca were outgrowths of literary societies and at Manhattan that Aggieville bars were scarce until the 1960s when women were first allowed to enter them freely. Documentation of progressive political initiatives at Davis and the music and art scenes at Athens is interesting, too, including a contradictory reluctance in these increasingly middle-class towns to promote social justice and provide affordable housing. Such conflict between alternative and corporate culture reaches a peak in the Ann Arbor discussion on that towns love-hate relationship with pharmaceutical companies and military contractors.

Unlike any other professors I know, Gumprecht has worked previously as a newspaper reporter, sportswriter, librarian, and music executive. This experience flows into the book. His arguments for five of the chapters also have been honed through previous publication in scholarly journals. All this has helped him to achieve balance between detail and overview, history and the present scene, scholarship and storytelling. In fact, I see self-indulgence in only two places: the preface where he nostalgically recalls his drifter days in Lawrence, Kansas, and the Athens chapter where he obviously identifies with the six artisans he profiles. If I were his editor, I would have shortened these discussions.

A related problem comes from a compulsion to be thorough. Even though this book is a pleasure to read at 348 pages, I think it would have been even better cut by a third. With a little less detail on Shug Jordans coaching career at Auburn, Ann Arbors industries, and Newarks landlords, we would still have a clear picture of the uniqueness of college towns. The bonus might have been Gumprechts dream to interest a trade publisher in the project and to create one of the few geographers books ever to capture the attention of the elusive general public.