^ I know, I'm so disappointed. Just let the baby birdy get torn asunder, pwetty pweeze?

I blame the secret desire for bird death on that annoying bird Tweety, and the annoying Road Runner, and those infuriating ducks Daffy and Donald... Road Runner cable...

Can this bird just DIE please?!

Oh and I definitely do not equate the killing and stuffing of birds with the hatred of women, driven into my dark and empty soul by my antagonizing mother. No, no, no. Nope.

@RedSky

Selling assets and, to a certain degree, the reduction of public employment is an unreasonable demand. There's too much controversy about the effects it has, with me being clearly biased to one side.

Privatisation of essential services (healthcare, public transport, electricity, water) is being opposed or even undone in significant parts of Europe, since it generally came with worse service at much higher costs and no accountability whatsoever. Therefore I see it as very reasonable for Syriza to stop the privatisation of their electricity grid and their railroad. There are, of course, unessentials that might be handed over to the private sector, but like Varoufakis said, not in the shape of a fire sale within a crisis. That'll only profit the usual scavengers, not the people.

Similarly, public employment. There's good public employment (essential services, administration) and "bad" public employment. Troika demands included the firing of cleaning personnel, who were replaced by a significantly more expensive private service. And a Greek court decision ruled the firing as flat out illegal. For Syriza to not hire them back would not only have been unreasonable financially as well as socially, it would have been a violation of a court order. Same for thousands of others who were fired illegally, according to a ruling by the Greek Supreme Court.

Troika demands are all too often against Greek or even European law, and while the previous governments were fine with being criminals, Syriza might actually be inclined to uphold the law.


On the issue of reforms, I would argue that the previous governments did bugger all to establish working institutions. Famously, the posts of department heads of the tax collection agency were auctioned for money, even under the last government. Everything is in shambles, with no intent of changing anything that would have undermined the nepotic rules of the five families. Syriza's program has been very clear about the changes they plan to institute, so if it really was the intent of the troika to see meaningful reform the way it is being advocated to their folks at home, they would be in support of Syriza.

Interventions by the troika have crashed the health care system, the educational system and the pension system. Public pension funds were practically wiped out during the first haircut in 2012, creating a hole of about 20 billion Euros in the next five years.

I would like to address the issue of taxation specifically. Luxembourg adopted as a business model to be an enabler of tax evasion, even worse than Switzerland. In charge at that time was none other than Jean-Claude Juncker, who was just elected President of the European Commission. He's directly involved in tax evasion on a scale of hundreds of billions of Euros every year. How is the troika to have any credibility in this matter with him in charge?

Similarly, German politicians are particularly vocal about corruption and bribery in Greece. Well, who are the biggest sources of bribery in Greece? German corporations. Just last week there was another report of a major German arms manufacturer who paid outrageous bribes to officials in Greece. As much as I support the fight against corruption and bribery, some humility would suit them well.


As for the GDP growth in Greece: I think it's a fluke. The deflation skewers the numbers to a point where I can't take them seriously until the complete dataset is available. Might be growth, might not be. Definatly not enough to fight off a humanitarian crisis.

Surpluses. If everyone was a zealous as Germany, the deficit would in fact be considerably narrower, which is a good thing. Unfortunatly, it would have been a race to the bottom. Germany could only suppress wage growth, and subsequently domestic demand, so radically, because the other members of the Eurozone were eager to expand. They ran higher-than-average growth, which allowed Germany to undercut them without going into deflation. Nowadays, Germany still has below-target wage growth, so the only way for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to gain competetiveness against Germany is to go into deflation. That's where we are in Europe: half a continent in deflation. With all its side effects of mass unemployment (11%+ in Europe, after lots of trickery), falling demand, falling investment, etc. Not good. Keynes' idea of an International Clearing Union might work better, especially since we already use similar concepts within nations to balance regions.

Bond yields of Germany could not have spiked at the same time as those of the rest of the Eurozone. The legal requirements for pension funds, insurance funds, etc demand a high percentage of safe bonds, and when the peripheral countries were declared unsafe, they had nowhere to go but Germany. Also, a bet against France is quite a risk, but a bet against Germany is downright foolish. Still, supply of safe bonds is tight right now, given the cuts all over the place. French yields are at historic lows, German yield is negative. Even Italian and Spanish yields were in the green as soon as Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it takes.

The current spike in Greek yields strikes me as a bet that there will be a face-off between the troika and Greece, with very few positive outcomes for the Greek economy in the short run.

QE: 100% agreement. Fistful of cash to citizens would not have solved any of the core issues of the Eurozone (highly unequal ULCs, systemic tax evasion, tax competition/undercutting, no European institutions, etc), but it would have been infinitely better than anything they did. If they were to put it on the table right now as a means to combat deflation, I'd say go for it. Take the helicopters airborne, as long as it's bottom-up and not trickle-down. Though to reliably increase inflation there would have to be widescale increases in wages. Not going to happen. Maybe if Podemos wins in Spain later his year.

Same for the last paragraph. The ECB could have stuffed the EIB to the brim, which in return could have funded highly beneficial and much needed projects, like a proper European electricity grid. Won't happen though. Debt is bad, even monetised debt during a deflation used purely for investments.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, too!

We stuffed ourselves silly at dinner. Time for a nap.

Thanks, hello, and happy Thanksgiving to you and yours as well

We are well and happy, but perhaps we ought to take out more time occasionally to give thanks, it's not really a thing here.

I think we'll skip the stuffing ourselves silly part though, all the same.

If I was going to worry about toilet aerosols it wouldn't be in my own bathroom where my toothbrush might get contaminated with a barely detectable sample of my own shit. I'd worry about breathing the air in the men's room at my local football stadium where there are 30 urinals and 20 toilets all being used by guys who have been stuffing their faces with chili dogs and nachos and drinking way too much beer.

You are disturbed, but I like that.
So, you are postulating, in the style of your post:

A mouse stuffed into a hamster, stuffed into a guinea pig, stuffed into ?
then roasted?

lol. Good grief.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

To use the released video to promote your full story instead of trying to squash it everywhere. It's shitty that someone did this, and it's not right that they took it from your computer. But now that it's happened, you'll have a hard time stuffing the genie back in the bottle.

Best of luck, it's a neat concept.

I actually found District 9 to be nearly unbearable. They had so much to work with given the setting and undertones and they made a corny action movie with a cliched love story stuffed in.

Envoy here, is at least up front about its intentions. Nobody is going to be surprised or disappointed when it turns into ET with fancy CGI violence.

From a former Comcast employee:

"If I was reviewing this guy's calls I'd agree that this is an example of going a little too hard at it, but here's the deal (and this is not saying they're doing the right thing, this is just how it works). First of all these guys have a low hourly rate. In the states I've worked in they start at about 10.50-12$/hr. The actual money that they make comes from their metrics for the month, which depends on the department they're in. In sales this is obvious: the more sales you make the better you do.

In retention, the more products you save per customer the better you do, and the more products you disconnect the worst you do (if a customer with a triple play disconnects, you get hit as losing every one of those lines of business, not just losing one customer). These guys fight tooth and nail to keep every customer because if they don't meet their numbers they don't get paid.

Comcast uses "gates" for their incentive pay, which means that if you fall below a certain threshold (which tend to be stretch goals in the first place) then instead of getting a reduced amount, you get 0$. Let's say that if you retain 85% of your customers or more (this means 85% of the lines of businesses that customers have when they talk to you, they still have after they talk to you), you get 100% of your payout—which might be 5-10$ per line of business. At 80% you might only get 75% of your payout, and at 75% you get nothing.

The CAEs (customer service reps) watch these numbers daily, and will fight tooth and nail to stay above the "I get nothing" number. This guy went too far; you're not supposed to flat out argue with them. But Comcast literally provides an incentive for this kind of behavior. It's the same reason people's bills are always fucked up: people stuffing them with things they don't need or in some cases don't even agree to."

http://np.reddit.com/r/television/comments/2arg1k/comcasts_customer_service_nightmare_is_painful_to/ciy33bx

Lyrics from the YT page:

1,2,1,2,3,4
We accept her, one of us, we accept her, one of us!
Gooble gobble gooble gobble!
We accept her, we accept her!
We accept her, one of us, we accept her, one of us!
Gooble gobble gooble gobble!
We accept her, we accept her!

(We-we) we came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
I was testing you - and you passed,
Dental plan! Lisa needs braces,
Be required to fart on a regular basis,
I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse,
Channel 13 - Eyewitness news!
Robocop, who is he?
Dead or alive you're coming with me.

In a hurry to be fed, beady eyes and big blue head.

I'm telling the truth Doc, you gotta believe me,
Why does everything I whip leave me?
My beautiful chocolate! Candy is dandy,
Fava beans and a nice Chianti,
You can count on Slippery Pete,
Suicide will be nice and neat!
I didn't build the Panama canal,
Open the pod bay doors please, HAL,

These aren't the droids you're looking for,
These aren't the droids we're looking for,
I am not a number I am a free man!
Rosebud.
To The Idiotmobile!
Right away Michael,
I-I-I-I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.

We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
You don't understand I coulda had class,
Round and tasty on a bun,
Ooh Zippy look what you've done!
Finally! Cast off those lines!
No, I've been nervous lots of times,
Red Rum! What's the matter honey?
Just robbed Boss Hogg all of his money!

We came, saw, we kicked it's ass,
Writing checks your body can't cash,
I was elected to lead, not read,
I feel the need - the need for speed,
Watch out for snakes, a good man's loafer,
HQ - my hat looks like a muffin - over,
My god it's full of stars,
There was no driver in the car..

In the car (repeat)

Well you see I'm in hot pursuit!

There are only two things I love in this world - everybody and television!
#The Simpsons
#Run With Us!
Ugh - you must be shrooming,
Wait for me Moomin!
Cross live to meet the host of that show, Meat Boy,
I want to go to there.

We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
An oil tycoon - like a.. moustache,
Nice beaver! I just had it stuffed,
I don't give a shit, close enough,
Where's me washboard? I'll get me coat,
Y-y-y-you're gonna need a bigger boat,
What'd she say? I think she bought it,
Suck it monkeys! I'm goin' corporate!
C'mon let's take a drive! A drive?
Number 5 is alive!
It's only a laugh, no harm done,
Pickles, french fries, yum yum yum,
Bueller, Bueller, Bueller,
It's 2 degrees cooler,
The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long,
Six words in the whole song.

We-we-we accept her, one of us, we accept her, one of us!
Gooble gobble gooble gobble!
We accept her, we accept her!
You are number 6 5 4 3 2
I am not a number, I am a free man

We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
Give me my 20,000 in cash,
We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
I think you woke up the dead with that blast
We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
I think fast, I talk fast,
We came, we saw, we kicked it's ass,
Lois, this is not my Batman glass,

Your video, Hamster Stuffing His Face With Carrots, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Training him like that I think once he's down with the stuffed toys, he'll start with the furniture.

That was cute right up to the point where he eviscerated the stuffed animal.

Tim: That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
Sir Robin: You tit! I soiled my armor I was so scared!
Tim: Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!
Sir Galahad: Get stuffed!

Here's the real swirly.....Two tandem cunts in matching ski-gear downhill on black diamonds forcing the admins they dream will suck their cocks, stuffing my head into a prep-school bathroom toilet unable to defend myself against some shit.
Y'all run with that.