x=usr(1536)

Holidays no longer have fixed dates.

I am wearing Jon's pants.

But do you have Battletoads?

For shame.  The man puts forward a clear and cogent argument that places proof of his assertions in public for all to see, and he receives only mockery in return?  Clearly, society is sick, sick, sick.  I, for one, am immutably convinced.

BTW, does anyone know how to remove gold spray paint from around the mouth area?  Asking for a friend.

Suck a butt, any butt!  Now put it back in the pants with the other butts, crack-down so I can't see it.  Was this the butt that you sucked?

Great movie!

I miss the desert.  We just get flat and dusty.

We've got a society full of adult children who have no control over their emotions.  Couple that with the entitlement mentality and we're screwed if it continues much longer.

@SpiceWare: speaking of S-Video and LCDs, have you ever seen one that's both 1080-capable and has an S-Video input?  I've seen plenty that top out at 720p and have both, but not a 1080p model.

Sweet!  Those are becoming rarer and rarer by the day!

Paging @Stephen

If it's any consolation, I went through the same thing earlier this year with a car stereo repair service running through eBay.

After sending the seller the head unit plus payment through eBay, he strung me along for a few weeks about parts availability before finally stopping responding to my messages.  This was after I had agreed to accept a replacement unit in working condition rather than my original one as long as he transferred over the larger-capacity SSD I'd installed a couple of years ago.

eBay told me to get bent because repair services apparently aren't covered by their refund policies.  Went to the cops, they called him, I had the original non-working stereo back plus a refund inside of three days.

eBay is not worth the trouble of using it.

Re: lands of opportunity: if Putin could go from KGB agent with the rank of lieutenant colonel to taxi driver to nominal president-for-life of a world superpower, there's definitely something to that.

Totally agreed that there are other extremists waiting to take Putin's place.  Prigozhin doesn't strike me as particularly political - at least in terms of ideology - though he wouldn't turn down the power that comes with politics.  He'll happily present whatever position will help him attain that power most easily, and if this week it's that the Kremlin is wrong, then that's this week's position.

My suspicion is that he wants to play both sides: annex the Ukraine as a permanent part of Russia, but also denounce the current regime (and its actions) in order to appear as a credible alternative that isn't looking to escalate tensions with NATO.  Personally, I'm not buying it: to my mind, he's just another Putin but from a different background.

None of this comes as any surprise.  It was par for the course with the Soviets, and also with the Tsars on occasion.  History repeating itself certainly does lead to interesting times, to be certain.

Can't imagine why she'd say that; Russian history is so straightforward and easily-digestible as to the reasons why it happened the way that it did!

Oh, wait.

Quite honestly, I don't think Wagner has much of a chance of doing anything significant unless the Russian armed forces well and truly botch something that makes it possible for them to get a wedge in.  Since the words, "Russian armed forces," are involved, it's entirely possible that they could bumble something that makes a coup a possiblity - but the ways in which the Wagner Group would have to conduct that campaign would more or less have to be on an assassination basis since they have no air support and limited (mechanised) ground capability.

Still, if Putin was rendered unto his maker by way of a bus / 7.62x39mm round / anything, really, no tears would be shed.  I'd just hope that the new king was an improvement over the old one, which seems unlikely in a Wagner coup scenario.

@save2600: it's the only civilised way to boil water 

Is this a North American thing?  Of all the kettles I've ever owned in my life, not one has been without a switch.

Granted, most of those were 240V units - but the 110V one we have now has a switch on it.

I consider it my civic duty to lose weight through wrenching.

Hasn't really happened yet, but, I felt it was necessary to take the liberty of mentioning it 

The one thing Redbox has been consistently good for: expanding your movie collection for cheap while not getting nasty letters from your ISP.

Basically, yes.  They're only really surviving in areas where decent bandwidth isn't available.