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Dec. 5th, 2003 06:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
Darkness Day
When I was a kid the fakest of fake trees were popular: the all-silver, shiny aluminum ones. Well, that was my whole world this morning. Overnight an ice fog came in,. By dawn all the trees, pine, fir, oak, maple, were covered by a thick coat of hoarfrost. They looked like they were made of silver floss. Then the sun came up and turned the silver to rose and gold. Glorious!
Today is Darkness Day, a personal holiday of mine, if you care to call it that. It's the first day the sun rises after I'm supposed to be at work and sets before I'm supposed to go home.
It's rough getting to Darkness Day. I'm very much solar-powered, and my mood, energy, and even ability to think clearly go straight to hell about half-past October. Each day is about an hour shorter than the one before, or so it seems. Then the clouds come in, and we don't see the sun again until one of those brilliantly cold days in January.
But this year, we've had several breaks in the overcast, like today. We haven't gone a solid month without sun yet, which is unusual. I'm feeling chipper. And the worst, for me, is already past.
Monopoly Money
Got my first "new" $20 bill today. It's got a bit of that multicolored foreign-bill Monopoly-money thing going, but it's not nearly as bad as it could have been.
I favor stodgy money. Since people have to accept the worthless stuff on faith, it's best it be some design so unremarkable it never catches their attention, never makes them think. If people started questioning the worth of money, it would be...
It would be what? Good from a philosophical point of view, but I suspect the whole economy would go (further) down the tubes.
That Wicked Hitler cut the Jews' Profits by 0.5 Percent
Friend of mine encountered an interesting example of how Honest Businessmen think. His job is regulating underground storage tanks, which will develop holes one way or another if they're not properly made, equipped, or inspected. If a gas station's tanks don't meet the standards, it's his job to "red-tag" them. Then they can't be refilled until the problem's fixed and he removes the tags.
He warned one gas station owner several times, but today he went out and red-tagged the guy's tanks, since in spite of the warnings the owner hadn't fixed anything.
"What you DEQ nazis are doing to gas station owners is just exactly what Hitler did to the Jews," the Honest Businessman shouted. "There's no difference. None at all."
This is yet another of those situations we encounter about which further comment would be superfluous.
When I was a kid the fakest of fake trees were popular: the all-silver, shiny aluminum ones. Well, that was my whole world this morning. Overnight an ice fog came in,. By dawn all the trees, pine, fir, oak, maple, were covered by a thick coat of hoarfrost. They looked like they were made of silver floss. Then the sun came up and turned the silver to rose and gold. Glorious!
Today is Darkness Day, a personal holiday of mine, if you care to call it that. It's the first day the sun rises after I'm supposed to be at work and sets before I'm supposed to go home.
It's rough getting to Darkness Day. I'm very much solar-powered, and my mood, energy, and even ability to think clearly go straight to hell about half-past October. Each day is about an hour shorter than the one before, or so it seems. Then the clouds come in, and we don't see the sun again until one of those brilliantly cold days in January.
But this year, we've had several breaks in the overcast, like today. We haven't gone a solid month without sun yet, which is unusual. I'm feeling chipper. And the worst, for me, is already past.
Monopoly Money
Got my first "new" $20 bill today. It's got a bit of that multicolored foreign-bill Monopoly-money thing going, but it's not nearly as bad as it could have been.
I favor stodgy money. Since people have to accept the worthless stuff on faith, it's best it be some design so unremarkable it never catches their attention, never makes them think. If people started questioning the worth of money, it would be...
It would be what? Good from a philosophical point of view, but I suspect the whole economy would go (further) down the tubes.
That Wicked Hitler cut the Jews' Profits by 0.5 Percent
Friend of mine encountered an interesting example of how Honest Businessmen think. His job is regulating underground storage tanks, which will develop holes one way or another if they're not properly made, equipped, or inspected. If a gas station's tanks don't meet the standards, it's his job to "red-tag" them. Then they can't be refilled until the problem's fixed and he removes the tags.
He warned one gas station owner several times, but today he went out and red-tagged the guy's tanks, since in spite of the warnings the owner hadn't fixed anything.
"What you DEQ nazis are doing to gas station owners is just exactly what Hitler did to the Jews," the Honest Businessman shouted. "There's no difference. None at all."
This is yet another of those situations we encounter about which further comment would be superfluous.
