Author Archives: Candice

Why I read very few of the most popular blogs

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Number of posts per day: a fuckload
Portion of the fuckload I give a shit about: a few
Portion of the few that I’ve already seen on smaller blogs: most of them
Portion of the few that are original content or links I that haven’t already seen in the last week and that will therefore be reposted by smaller blogs within minutes to hours: the rest (i.e. not very fucking many)

I’d make this into an infographic, but here’s one thing that’s been boring me to death lately: infographics. They’re over. They’ve been over. (Not as over as steampunk, though.) Please stop. Construct the Venn diagram for this post in your mind, if you must.

I do need the rest of you to continue slogging through Boing Boing, anything Gawker, reddit, Digg, even Kottke (and I have a deep-seated, long-standing hatred of Kottke… of which the origin has been forgotten, but even so, fuck him). You are my social sieve. Thank you for contributing to the efficiency by which I jam my brain full of pointless trivia.

Or, ideally, Google could somehow figure out a way to make Reader weed out or group duplicates in my RSS subscriptions? Please? I don’t really need to see 50 reposts of every XKCD comic.

Sorry, starving people in Africa

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Which should I feel more guilty about? Wasting food or wasting money?

At the local grocery store one gallon of milk costs less than whatever the next wacko American size down is. Half gallon? Quart? Who cares. Point is: a lot of milk = $1.46, way less milk = $1.54 (I might be off by a few cents here; it’s not like I employ a fact checker).

There is no way in hell my husband and I will ever use an entire gallon of milk before it spoils. Frozen milk is just bleh, plus I’m way too lazy and short of freezer space to do that anyway. I only buy milk once in a while for recipes.

I bought the gallon. Half of that might end up in stomachs. The other half will be poured down the drain in chunks while I make my disgusted face.

Stupid. Just stupid. So let’s just turn this post into another excuse to quote The Simpsons.

Kent Brockman: Coming up next, a new fad that’s sweeping the nation — wasting food.

There’s also a Facebook group for this shit, since there’s a Facebook group for absofuckinglutely everything: New Craze sweeping the Nation–Wasting Food. Actually, there are several wasting food groups, that’s just the first one I found. Arggle blarggle.

I miss you, Interac

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I often need to go to the bank to transfer money from one account to another.

By which I mean: I take money out of the ATM (from account A), and I put it right back into the ATM (to account B).

Why in the hell should that be necessary?

I might not complain so much if it wasn’t for the fact that there is a branch of my bank (Chase Chase Chase Chase I hate you Chase) less than a block from my apartment.

But the ATM at that particular location is always giving me this bullshit:

In case that’s not legible, the marquee at the top reads “This Chase ATM is currently unable to accept cash deposits…”

That marquee mocks me about 50% of the time I visit that ATM, so I’m forced to go to the next branch. And I usually have to walk both ways because the CTA sucks. I believe I’ve complained about them many times previously, so I’ll spare you now.

All to take money out of the machine and put it right back freakin’ in.

Did you Americans know that in Canada you can just e-mail money to someone? And I ain’t talking about PayPal, neither. I’m talking about Interac, a mystical, magical future technology that I miss with ridiculous amounts of missitude, and am not going to bother explaining because, having tried before, it is clearly beyond the understanding of Americans. But with the Interac network I certainly wouldn’t need to walk to an ATM to transfer money to myself, and I wouldn’t have to move my ass from in front of my computer to send money to anyone in Canada with a bank account and an e-mail address. An. Y. One.

When I tell people in Canada about the American banking system, it’s like I’m describing something from the Stone Age. They are amazed by how bass ackwards it is and look at me with confuzzlement. America: please to fix before I curmudgeon myself to death.

I don’t think there was a Saturday this week

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What happened on Saturday? Was there a Saturday? Did I sleep through Saturday? Yesterday, I thought it was Saturday. I was happy about that because it meant I had one more whole day to finish some stuff that I was supposed to finish by Sunday (but that isn’t finished yet because today is inexplicably Monday instead of Sunday). Then Sean told me it was Sunday, like, now (meaning: then). Something is wrong. Did we skip ahead an entire day instead of an hour when we moved our clocks? Not that I bothered touching any of our clocks. Any clock that can’t keep track of what time it is on its own has no business being a clock. Sorry excuse for a time machine! And any clock that can’t keep track of what time it is on its own in my apartment has not been set correctly in over a year. I just don’t give a damn what bloody time it is. That’s one of the few luxuries of being broke. Doesn’t matter what time it is. I don’t have anywhere to be. Time is money, and I don’t have any of either of them. Well, as a matter of fact, I have a shit ton of time on my hands. Lemme go wash it off. Takes a lot of soap to stop the passage of time.

lovely].juastlovely].

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y]key]boardiasn’tqworkingtodasy].theqworastpartiastheaspacebar.
icnauaseenterthough,qwhchiasgoodbeauaseidonqwnttheliastogettoolong.
thiasiasprobably]aqwhlelotoffuntoreasd,butbelieveme,it’aseenleasasfunfore.
igueasai’llbeastoppinby]beastbuy]todasy].
grrrrrrrrr.ididn’taspillany]thingonitorany]thing.
ittookmeabouthalfanhourtoevenbeabletologintomy]computer,
beauaseiicouldn’tty]pemy]pasasqword.
ithinki’mgoingtobeasignignoffoftheinternetforaqwhilenoqw.
aseey]oulaterkidas

But why block so many people, Candice, why!?

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I post damned irregularly over here, so (nearly) no one reads this blog, and all none of you have asked any questions, but I’m in blabbity mode today.

@questular is my follow-whore Twitter account. I’ve got plenty of followers over there, but approximately 0% of them value me and/or are of value to me. Or did/were, when I was still messing with them, anyway.

I don’t post links on @candice nearly as often as I used to (I moved my linkage to @candibot, though I haven’t put much effort into pointing that out), but when I did, depending on the time of day, I usually got at least 20 clicks (with 500-some followers), as opposed to maybe one click (with thousands of followers). 500 (now 777) is an artificially low follower count, but of the hundreds (and hundreds) of followers I’ve blocked, hardly any of them were ever interested in me in the first place. Good riddance, meaningless integer incrementers!

I’d like to be able to keep track of how many people are really paying attention to me. Since my follower count doesn’t automatically reflect that (although spammers, at least, are eventually removed), I do it by hand. Pointless, really… in the end, there are just about the same number of people who give a damn about my feed, but I do it anyway. OCD?

I know normal people probably just check out how many people reply or retweet or follow their links. I shrug, and I shrug again! Possibly (definitely) I just have too much time on my hands. But I doubt very much that the number of replies/RTs/clicks I get has been affected more than the teensiest little bit (though I’m gladly minus the contributions of jerks, perverts, spammers, idiots, and trolls), and my percentages must be crazily higher than they would have been otherwise. So if I ever start to care about that, bonus for me!?

Also, my followers are awesomer than yours (on average), :p

It would be so lovely if they’d let me protect my account (approve or reject followers) without making it private.