Cancer

I've only been summed for jury duty once, and they seated no juries that day so I got off free.  I may be on the "scientist" blacklist (no one wants intelligent, rational jurors who are smarter than the lawyers).

Late this day (Leap Day) in 1992, my wife proposed to me.
 
My response was to get up, go to my dresser drawer, and hand it to her: I had already bought the ring.
 
(In what women have always derided as a Dumb Guy Thing, I was waiting to ensure that I'd have funding -- i.e., a job -- for the next academic year.)

I go for the "other creepy-crawly" aspect.
 
Leech

I go for the "other creepy-crawly" aspect.
 
Leech

Maxwell Smart

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!
 
IRS Form 1041, whose instructions are 143 pages!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!
 
IRS Form 1041, whose instructions are 143 pages!

For our Shapeshifter, I'll again reach back to my roots, DC Silver Age material, for ... J'onn J'onzz, the Marian Manhunter.

Since I have been appointed executor for an estate, I have started learning of a whole cesspool ecology of opportunistic bottom-feeders I had not previously imagined.
 
There are outfits who are most easily described as the equivalent of payday loan (sharks), but they go after inheritances rather than paychecks.  "Get your inheritance now!" is the teaser line.  Since wills and estates that become active are public records, they grab those wills off the government sites where they are posted, scrape all the names and addresses out of them, and spam those with their come-hither (not, of course, mentioning any terms or rates).  I know this because I got one of the come-hither papermails also, even though I'm the executor.
 
There are also lots of opportunist solo operators who want to buy your house (for rather less than it's worth) but these aren't really a new discovery.
 
I expect I will continue to learn more varieties of scumbags and ripoff artists as I negotiate this estate thing over the coming months, and I will post descriptions and spread the knowledge as I gain it.

For our Shapeshifter, I'll again reach back to my roots, DC Silver Age material, for ... J'onn J'onzz, the Marian Manhunter.

For our Shapeshifter, I'll again reach back to my roots, DC Silver Age material, for ... J'onn J'onzz, the Marian Manhunter.

Our GM's Nightmare character is someone who checks off all the boxes in the descriptor .... from the absolute original trilogy canon ... Gandalf the White.

Our GM's Nightmare character is someone who checks off all the boxes in the descriptor .... from the absolute original trilogy canon ... Gandalf the White.

Since I have been appointed executor for an estate, I have started learning of a whole cesspool ecology of opportunistic bottom-feeders I had not previously imagined.
 
There are outfits who are most easily described as the equivalent of payday loan (sharks), but they go after inheritances rather than paychecks.  "Get your inheritance now!" is the teaser line.  Since wills and estates that become active are public records, they grab those wills off the government sites where they are posted, scrape all the names and addresses out of them, and spam those with their come-hither (not, of course, mentioning any terms or rates).  I know this because I got one of the come-hither papermails also, even though I'm the executor.
 
There are also lots of opportunist solo operators who want to buy your house (for rather less than it's worth) but these aren't really a new discovery.
 
I expect I will continue to learn more varieties of scumbags and ripoff artists as I negotiate this estate thing over the coming months, and I will post descriptions and spread the knowledge as I gain it.

Hey, scavengers need love too!

Mornings are so much better for me now that I've switched from coffee to orange juice. The doctor says it's the vitamin C and the natural sugars, but I think it's probably the vodka.

Tony Bennett, Jazzy Crooner of the American Songbook, Is Dead at 96
ETA: OK, this happened last year -- for some reason, we thought it happened yesterday...

The Paragon: The Flash, Barry Allen, of whom Batman once said, "Barry is the kind of man that I would've hoped to become if my parents had not been murdered."
 
 

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois
 

Moo!

The cow-spiracy is true.