When I received a gift card, there was no question that I’d spend all its value. The question was how long should I mete out my real money purchases? I had a luxury budget, but kept it fairly inconsistently because I had another luxury budget as well of flexible magnitude. Perhaps combining them one month would let me buy every song on my list. Why not? I’d do so eventually. Better to punch up the variety now rather than listen to my favorites nine times before downloading the last few on the list.

Also, I hadn’t added too many songs to the ipod Monica gave me and wouldn’t start evaluating my family’s CD collection for some weeks later. I had some from earlier downloads, but half were wmp`s & itunes didn’t like that. So, I had only my then hazy commitment to a budget to stop me.

In the end, miserliness mostly stayed my hand. But, the range of quality spoke just as loudly. Sure, I had some cool songs at the top (Day of Freedom Rachel Lampa) but the bottom was half-hearted additions like Kiss me Kate‘s “Brush up your Shakespeare” and a profane version of “Banks of the Sacramento.” I am mighty glad I didn’t waste my money on those duds and still haven’t. I took to tracking down radioed songs and established a profile on Pandora that continue to pull up hits.

In that sense, the conclusion is the same. The material is used, but replenished as are my savings. I’d just never want to go anywhere near 10% of my desires at any one time. 100 dollars nets me about seven trade paperbacks. My shortest list of unproven media (ie all of Alan Moore’s works are pretty much guaranteed to be worth the money I spend, proven), comics, has 37 items. That is roughly five hundred dollars in a shot. (Amazon would not be happy with their free shipping.)

In writing that, I have the sense that perhaps I would dislike the day after. I would look at my semi empty list (still has proven works) and miss having a stack of potential purchases to fuss over. Of course, that’s stupid because I would have a ton of comics to work through, perhaps over half a year. I wouldn’t even look to buy anything else for a long time and would – potentially replenish it with a few intriguing titles before then. Moreover, pretending an ‘empty feeling’ would give credence to critics of Consumerism who berate us for accepting consumer training. It would never do to let them be vindicated in the least, he stammered while hugging his velour body pillow as his tivo playing flat screen winked out for the night.

I had no idea about the racket system, but now that I am in the recently added Moscow and looking back on Cuba, I realize how nefarious the system can be. It isn’t a terrible design in itself, but the purpose behind it is less than charming. I guess Zynga needs to pay the bills somehow.

Crickets, from my experience in keeping them, require very little to get by, but they commit two grievances which often end in their death: drowning and cannibalism. Water dishes are impossible for crickets to drink from without falling in and dying. They are that stupid. Usually you see them getting some form of vitamin enriched jello or, more often, a moistened sponge to lick from. Next you have the cannibalism, in which a cricket will readily eat a fellow deceased cricket, ensuring its own death as they become quite deadly. I don’t know whether it’s bacterial build up or what, but one dead cricket on your tank floor can lead to dozens more if it isn’t picked up in a day or so.

I have never seen crickets lay any eggs, or perhaps it is that they all die / get fed to the lizard and their small chamber subsequently bleached before they have a chance to hatch. From what I can tell, however, it is incredibly easy to raise them and I think it’d be MUCH easier to supply a ridiculous amount of insect meat even as compared to poultry. I have to point out that, even if insects caught on, we’d still see horrible treatment of both Chickens and Cows due to our continued reliance on eggs and milk, respectively. Synthetic options are available for that, certainly, but I just didn’t see insect meat being a solution on that front in any meaningful way.

It’s funny when you talk about people shying away from insect consumption based on their appearance. I once ordered shrimp as Honda Ya, the yakitori place on El Camino, and the dish came with the entire shrimp fried, eyes / feelers and all. I didn’t eat a single one. Still, I prefer shrimp (fully prepared) over many other dishes so I can only imagine that insects could be prepared in a way that didn’t involve any staring, judging eyes.

Anyways, yeah, I am not suggesting the bills will be bad or even inefficient at what they seek to do. 1C, for example, seems pretty common with the government. They borrow from some group in exchange for unseen kickbacks and lobbying down the road. I could argue that our Californian government has mismanaged funds in the past and therefore should not be allowed to have their measures passed, but that wouldn’t be the real reason why I am against them in the first place. It’s a non-issue. They could be irrefutably the most perfect methods for fixing our current problems, and I would still vote against them if it meant I would be getting my selfish desires. This may in fact classify me as Neutral Evil, but I honestly do not care. That may be a prerequisite for the label, however.

As for the spam thing, hopefully you have the Akismet plugin installed. I’m not sure if I set it up for you or not, but it’s very good at blocking the spam bots from bothering you for verification; Akismet has stopped 3,779 spam messages in my blog’s tenure.