series. This probably my fourth time through the paperbacks since I first bought them twenty-some years ago, and the spines are starting to show it. I am happy to see that they are available on Kindle; Shakespeare it ain't, but it's a fun little yarn about a bookish grad student and a deadbeat airbrush jockey getting sucked into a medieval parallel universe with the subsequent wizarding and hacking and slashing. Swash gets buckled, royalty gets rescued, and the evil monsters are pretty unique...FWIW, I don't know if you've been following The Oatmeal v. Funnyjunk saga, but Charles Carreon just got beat up by the internet.
Closing tax loopholes for the poor: It looks like those "Roll Your Own" cigarette joints that have been popping up in strip malls between the payroll loan places and the pay-as-you-go cell phone joints (you know the strip mall I'm talking about; it's the one behind the tote-the-note car lot...) are going to be shutting down. That was a brief phenomenon, and a testimonial to the fact that the American entrepreneurial spirit is still twitching, even with a half-dozen taxation 'n' regulatory bullets pumped into it. Let's hope it doesn't hold still enough for an easy coup de grace. (H/T to Zombie Rush.)
The weatherman is telling me that it will not quite make it to 90°F today. Since the mercury briefly flirted with 91 yesterday afternoon, that will make this the first day in two weeks that the daily high started with an "8".
I had a weird dream last night, but I can't remember it. It had something to do with running around in World of Warcraft with LabRat and Stingray. Since I can't remember my dream, go read JayG's, which is plenty weird in its own right because, Massachusetts, Jay? Really?
Those "roll your own" smoke places were...flipping genius.
ReplyDeleteFigures some bureaucrat figured out they weren't getting their "fair share" from the tax moneys levied on those folk who still go outside to indulge the filthy, evil, horrible, habit...state budgets get underwritten by. I mean, states should send people a free carton in the mail, included at tax time to encourage consumption, you know? Because if people quit, then that's less money in taxes, then smokes become 8 a pack, then people smuggle in cheap counterfeits or drive a vanload in from another state where it's only 6 a pack...
Matt Inman is my hero.
ReplyDeleteSo when are the Federales gonna send in the SWAT Teams to shut them down? It IS the Bureau of Alcohol, TOBACCO, Firearms and Explosives, after all!
ReplyDeleteBesides, the BATFEIEIO needs to divert attention from Fast and Furious. Gotta Re-Elect Obama, you know or else some Heads might roll come next January once "Executive Privilege" is removed. So some Raids on "Small Tobacco" would help with getting out the Base's Votes.
AWK! Hope and change, hope and change, creating jobs! Awk! Polly wanna cracker!
ReplyDeleteMiserable shit-gargling, weasel fucking, ass badgers!
Don't edit yourself, perlhaqr. Tell us how you really feel. :)
ReplyDeleteI don't analyze 'em, I just report 'em Tam...
ReplyDeleteYou didn't even try to get me to New Hampshire so I could have an anchor baby? :D
ReplyDeleteI've danced that rodeo enough times to know you go to the nearest facility, full stop...
ReplyDeleteAnd that was with a woman who couldn't outshoot circles around me...
Do you have a name for the little darling?
ReplyDeleteGerry
Actually (and I hope ATFD isn't reading this), you can still go to the local tobacco shop and, if you're a regular and discrete, get some of the "dry" cigarette grade stuff that's packaged as nice juicey pipe tobacco.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing but a little grease pencil mark on the back to tell it from the real deal.
Congratulations Commisar, we've finally made it to a real black market.
For what it's worth, I don't smoke, and haven't since I developed an allergy to puffing twenty-some years ago. No more caffeine or nicotine, or the migranes blind me.
But I miss it tremendously, encourage smokers to puff in my face, and I bless them when they do.
Given the 20 or so changes of air per hour found in virtually all modern construction, "Second Hand Smoke" is B.S. I resisted the temptation of saying "Hot Air".
I've also seen two peer reviewed studies (which means that people are betting their chances at tenure on their veracity) that put the amount of taxpayer dollars saved by the earlier average age at death of smokers as two to three times the amount spent on their specific medical care.
So we save far more in Social Security and non-smoking related medicare payments than we shell out on a ward bed and O2 for some chain smoker spitting his lungs out into a vacuum sack.
We need more smokers, not less.
I wonder what exactly is being taxed there. Is it the tobacco, or the RYO process?
ReplyDeleteCan I sell leaf tobacco at a higher rate and have a RYO machine I don't charge for? Can I charge a membership fee to join my RYO club?
Can I open up shop with my RYO machine next to a tobacco shop? What if I sell one like zig zag does?
It looks like it's the machine owner that is taking on the burden here. What about someone who grows their own?
Nah, lot's of ways I can get around that.
Look for the Choom dealers to open up a new line for "Camels" coming over the border.
ReplyDeleteCoffinails.com
ReplyDeleteGrow yer own.
If they actually get the nerve to pass prohibition on it, this may be profitable.
Barbara Hambly used to be a favorite author of mine, but she has a habit of putting her characters in more trouble than they could possibly handle and contriving a deus ex machina to save the day (IMO). TTotD was a neat series, but Mother of Winter ruined it for me.
ReplyDeleteI weary of hearing "loophole" from our civic servants.
ReplyDeleteI buy my P-M's in blue, these days. RYO is to much like work. Still trying to quit, though. Little Tamjay scares me. I might lock my windows tonight. A svelt, bald, baby, with a goatee. Gender be-dammed. That's scary.
ReplyDeleteThat roll your own tax reminds me I need to stock up on reloading components. I don't smoke, but bad ideas spread fast in the government. Roberts just emphasized that they can throw their weight around wherever they want, as long as they call it a tax.
ReplyDeleteRYO cigarettes - NYCity did this a coupke of months ago, on the basis that what the customer walked out with was cigarettes and cigarettes are [heavily] taxed, but it is still OK to buy the tobacco, tubes, and a machine of your own (roll one at a time not 200, from $3 for a plastic cheapie to %50 for a decent metal one or $200 for motorised). Since I do this, I hope the Federal is the same. Still asinine: what next, charge us the same tax for lumber as furniture? For sheet metal as cars?
ReplyDeleteSwash gets buckled, royalty gets rescued, and the evil monsters are pretty unique...
ReplyDeleteThat they are, that they are. I'd add that the accounts of combat training, bladework, and spellplay are among the most realistic this side of The Deed of Paksenarrion. Although I must sadly echo the opinion that Mother of Winter and Icefalcon's Quest are a step down in quality from the original trilogy.