seryn: water drop (crystal ball)
The only time someone tells you that you don't need to get official legal documents is if they're too young to be cynical yet or if they're old enough to be hoping you're naive.

Simon's family universally told me yesterday that we don't need official wills or medical power of attorney. Um. yeah. Right. I didn't realize women could grow twirly moustaches to look like a casting call for Snively Whiplash villains from the silent film era.

How completely fucking stupid do I look?
seryn: flowers (Default)
I was re-reading a fic where Harry Potter is at Aunt Marge's funeral. The minister is extolling her virtues as someone who was kind to orphans.

That got me wondering if all funeral eulogies are sarcastic.

I haven't been to many funerals at all. Most of them have been for people who weren't ever alive in my personal experience. Obscure relatives where you're dragged along because your parents couldn't leave you home alone for a week and don't know any sitters in a strange town, yeah? Mostly those.

The exception is my grandmother. It was my experience that she was bitter and nasty. She was also cheap and mean. If there was ever something negative that could be said, her mouth was already open and half-way through saying it before anyone else could even process what the worst comment would be. I can give you an example. I went out of my way to bring my then fiance to meet her. She hadn't seen me in at least 6 years. First thing she says, "You're still fat!" My fiance said, "If this is what your family is like, I don't know that I want to marry you because then I'll have to deal with them." So, my opinion of my grandmother is that she had nothing nice to say ever, about anyone. And that she would go out of her way to be hurtful and destructive whenever and wherever possible.

At my grandmother's funeral, the preacher said that she was well-loved, never had anything bad to say about anyone, and was only dead because Jesus had clasped her to his bosom. There was some commentary about how only the best people go to heaven and because of that he was sure [Grandma's name] would be the jewel there.

If that is what heaven is like, then anyone else sent there would be in hell. She would be that clump of toxic mold found in the middle of a loaf of bread when it was broken.

The only way anyone who had ever spoken to her would be able to say that kind of eulogy is by using mental air quotes and thinking of every word as sarcasm that is just undetectable by idiots and morons.

Or maybe everyone knows this about eulogies.

The goal is to find the most ironic statements and then say those as if they were truth.

I would like a non-ironic funeral service. If when you're speaking you have to say, "She was so blunt, you could never get away with deluding yourself and we all hated her for it." That would be better than lying. I don't want to be haunting my final services and hearing any of you saying, "She was always so nice, never anything but a kind word no matter what trouble you had." We all know that isn't true.
seryn: flowers (Default)
I found something interesting.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20090626.html

(Hopefully that becomes magically clickable, but I'm to the point now that I rarely click on hidden links... following a tinyurl makes it trivial to be rickrolled or goatse'd.... so visible text links that are hopefully magically clicky for those who are lazy.)

It is discussing the idea that the newspaper which sat on Governor Sanford's emails for 6 months might have done so because the emails are protected by copyright.

There isn't a lawyer on Earth who would say printing those emails in their entirety was Fair Use. It doesn't matter whether the person writing them is an elected official because that only covers work-related email; although there are gray areas about what is work-related, these emails were clearly personal. And copyright is automatic and instant, you do not have to claim it or register it in order for your work to be copyrighted. (It might be hard to prove if there is a competing claim, but the copyright exists.)

I found that to be extremely interesting.

Also: after yesterday's screed against the piss-poor news coverage in this country (both newspapers and television) I went out and found quasi-official blogs covering legal news and signed up for the feeds. I saved so much time yesterday by not needing to watch the news... all they had was blather about Michael Jackson. I didn't get it. He's been gone from the public eye for like 20 years, he might as well have been dead already, so what's the big deal? Sure it deserves a mention, but not 6 hours of solid coverage. The news media was so absorbed by this, I was surprised no one was suggesting Governor Sanford had hired a hitman to kill Jackson. Nothing else would have gotten them off Sanford so fast. I'm feeling a little cynical because I really was thinking how damned lucky Senator Ensign was that Governor Sanford was "off hiking the Appalachian Trail" and again how lucky Sanford was that someone pop-culturally famous died. If Farrah Fawcett had waited a week, I'm sure Senator Ensign would completely get away with his infidelity.

(Aside question, is there a word for men cheating on their wives like "cuckolding" for wives cheating on husbands? If not, can we create one?)
seryn: flowers (Default)
When we get to a certain age, life's little ironies stop seeming quite so random. I was going to say that they stopped seeming funny, but I still find some of them quite hilarious.
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The bitter ones are like when you cannot buy pills for joint pain that do not come in child-resistant packaging. Thus if your joint pain is in the hands, you cannot open the bottle. The irony is that almost all children can open these without struggle.

The funny caveat to that is how if you buy cold medicine in a moderate size, it comes in blister packs that require the backing to be peeled before the pills can be popped through. I need vice grips to peel the backing. But if I buy the same medicine in a jar of several hundred (more than a year's supply) the cap is merely push-and-turn. So I take my bulk-pricing and smile.
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It took me years to learn how to shave my legs in the shower without getting water up my nose. Now I do not wear shorts and recent medical advice is recommending nasal rinsing in lieu of decongestants.

The only funny part to that is seeing the commercials for women's razors and knowing that I am saving the cost of a nice lunch.
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I am surprised they make make-up remover. I find that it usually stings, it does not remove make-up better than normal face-washing, and it costs like they purify it from unicorn spit.

The irony is that no one makes anti-perspirant remover and soap does not get that build-up off.
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Why do restaurants have glass-fronted refrigerators? They have inventory tracking systems and employees whose job it is to keep track of ingredients. At home, I have to open the door and pull out a drawer to find that we have no more cheese. Obviously it would make more sense to have the glass doors for home use.
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Who chooses where outlets are? Do these people ever vacuum?
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Who designs kitchen appliances with 18-inch cords? Have they never tried using them in a real kitchen? I have to slide my toaster to the front of the counter so I don't peel the laminate off the upper cabinets from repeated heating, but the cord is too damned short.
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Why do so many people prefer AA batteries to built-in rechargeable ones? I get that it's nice to be able to swap in batteries you can buy at the supermarket, but my camera has a proprietary battery pack (replaceable) and it lasts 3 times longer than non-rechargeable AA batteries in similar cameras. So I am very unlikely to need another set of batteries comparatively. It also has the tremendous benefit that no one will wander off with my camera batteries saying I don't take pictures that much anyway. I try not to buy devices that need me to buy batteries because we never have any of the right ones.
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Why do people tell other people to, "Take lots of pictures?" No one seems to want to look at them. And... why do the people who say that usually not own cameras of their own?
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