Most images have been removed to prevent peeling and irritation.
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31st July, 1997, Submitted
by Viki Reed Click Here to return to
Front Page©1997 Vikki ReedBut today, as of the age of 31: I am broke. Sure I pay my utilities and immediate bills. I scrape by. I'm not homeless or on welfare, but there is no visibility into the future as far as financial freedom. Having a kid is out of the question until it becomes undeniable. Taking a vacation is out of the question unless it entails great responsibility to a family member.
Going to the doctor relies utterly on having employee based health insurance, otherwise, it's TO THE FREE CLINIC!
No cable TV, but always enough money for cigarettes, which are about $25 a carton now, but you can't immediately hide a carton (ergo your addiction), so you buy them by the pack. If you ever want to get bummed-out, think of all of the useful things and extravagances you could've bought if you had only quit smoking the year before.
ATM's make it possible for you to withdrawal an average of $15 more than you need-and never put back into your account-at the same time.
You wanna know how broke I am? I am just broke enough to piss-off a mugger. That's right. This is the last thing I'll hear before I am rendered unconscious by a pistol-whipping: "Mother&^%$!~ TWO DOLLARS?! Where's your credit cards? You don't HAVE ANY?!!!"
Credit. Oye-vay. I was under the impression that once you'd filed for bankruptcy, that you would be issued more credit because you have a clean slate, but whenever I see my credit report, you can see in find print at the bottom, that this rule only applies to Donald Trump, Debbie Reynolds, and Wayne Newton.
To be honest, I really don't want credit again. I only want to be able to rent a car, buy a plane ticket, order the odd "Music of the Seventies Collection", and pick up the odd lunch for friends, and buy clothes every week...and buy things from the on-line world...
Just shoot me if I ever do something stupid like financing underwear. Do you have any idea as to what the resale and appreciation value of used panties are? Zero! Yeah, zero! I tried to get rid of them via the classifieds: "PANTIES. BLUE. `95. ELASTIC IN GOOD CONDITION, 1 STAIN ON CROTCH-MUST GO!" I couldn't move them! So in the interest of my finances I am wearing them until they dissolve, I'll just leave em where they dissolve.
Please feel free to kick my ass if I should ever consider buying cigarettes or soda at 16%. Sure. Coffee is a good investment in the immediate future, it's wise to pay for something on-time that will be urinated out of your body within hours of charging it to your credit-card.
Being broke doesn't get scary until one or more of the following things happen to me:
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(Pasadena, CA) Microsoft's
domination of the software industry has raged like a disease for over a
decade now. Business applications, entertainment software, internet, cable
television and NBC are only a few of the conquests etched into Bill Gates's
headboard. But now, finally, one man has stepped up to strike back at the
behemoth were it will hurt them the most: the Operating System.
Frederick Nedermyer, of Pasadena California has developed what he hopes will be the death of Microsoft. Nedermyer, originally IBM's first choice to develop the OS for their fledgling PC concept, initially rejected IBM's offer and has spent the last decade delivering mail for the US Postal Service, and listening to the endless complaints from his wife of 22 years. Comments such as "You could've been Bill Gates," and "Well I guess you couldn't have handled being the world's wealthiest man anyway" repeatedly failed to bring Nedermyer out of his creative coma. Finally, late in 1996, after his wife died, Nedermyer began improving upon his original OS concept, and believes that he is now ready to take the throne that was rightfully his.
The Doors 97 Operating System will ship later this month. It's features include fully functional 32 bit multitasking, a terminal security and Internet Firewall system called 'Storm Door', 'Closet Door' a simpler version of Microsoft's file manager, a 'Cellar Door' that allows users to modify and adjust almost every function of the operating system, and a 'Bathroom Door' that will store deleted files until a user "flushes" them. Doors 97 stores applications in separate 'Rooms' and assembles the Rooms along a central 'Corridor' for easy access and retrieval of files. There is also the 'Living Room' where users can access their favorite applications without going into several different Rooms.
While Doors 97 is far more straightforward and simpler to use than its rival, Windows, Nedermyer believes that his marketing campaign will be the "Real Kicker." Nedermyer will begin circulating two-page ads in Forbes, Wired, PC User and People that reads "You can work, or you can play, but with Doors 97 you will never have to do Windows." and features the slogan "Stop Looking Through Windows. Come In Doors."
Nedermyer is already hard at work on his network version of Doors called 'Revolving Doors', which he hopes to ship early in 1998.
SBN has recieved no word yet from Microsoft, as our E-mails have been blocked out of the Microsoft postoffice.
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"We crossed 'em with bats, which are also mammals. Now they can fly as perty as ya please."
City officials here are worried that the new flying pigs may try to drive out the native bat population under the Congress Avenue bridge. Others are less skeptical and say there isn't room for the pigs under the bridge.
"You might say that'll happen when pigs fly. But then I guess it could happen if you say that," said Mayor Kirk Watson.
All in all the city expects that the flying pigs will bring in more tourist dollars and allow the city to tear down more parks and wildlife in favour of, "really big buildings and factories and stuff."
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(Valles Marineris) The Mars
Pathfinder Mission turned up a disturbing discovery today which rocked
the scientific world. Half buried in the dust near a martian rock dubbed
'Scooby Doo' have found a piece of unnatural substance .
"There's not much of it but there is what appears to be writing on it. As soon as we figure out what it might be will begin covering it up," said a NASA spokesperson.
Some observers claim to see words in the markings but NASA is dismissing this as coincidence.
"If you turn the piece upside down and hold it in front of a mirror, it clearly spells THEO FANIDI AT THE WARWICK," said UFO enthusiast Martin Envazhen. "This is proof positive that Martians have BEEN to Houston's Warwick Hotel and DID visit the Warwick lounge and MOST IMPORTANTLY, they DID enjoy the piano stylings of Mr. Fanidi and bought one of his records."
Spokespeople at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) denied that they had picked up radio broadcasts of lounge music from outer space at any time in the past.
NASA officials said they will proceed with an ongoing cover-up of this and other strange findings by reporting frequent communication problems with Pathfinder.
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He did it so he could have a big party in the church with his secretary-I mean, his new wife. Most people don't know it, but kids understand the need for a Catholic wedding. They'll agree to be made non-existent. Magically wiped-way, like Windex on counter-top grease. No 'stain', no pain.
Wow, if you can annul marriage, children and a lifetime, then I say: MORE LINES at the annulment bureau.
I'll stand in line:
Joe Kennedy has a special cubicle in hell right next to mine.
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"We cannot and will not tolerate the continued export of American Dirt to be cleaned in Beijing. We must proudly wash our own soil, here, ON our own soil. I will no longer tolerate this outrageous imbalance in the laundering industry."
Critics point out that Chinese Laundries do not actually send the laundry to China to be washed therefore rendering the legislation useless but Clinton was undaunted.
"They want to tell me I don't know about Chinese Laundering Policies. But I do! Besides I've got a 62% approval rate and rising with every scandal I get into. Who cares?"
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"Science, while important, is not very attractive," said Ginger Matterram ata press conference announcing the decision. "We will not stand by and allow the objectification of young girls to be sullied by the unsavoury idea that they are 'working' 'learning' or heaven forbid, 'producing' something. The next thing you know they'll be at baseball games eating hot dogs."
The by-laws of the City of Tamalco's Little Miss Illinois Pageant Qualification Committee clearly state that the contestants must be "cute, preferably blonde, without blemishes, and a vacuous trusting yet empty stare."
The committee is cracking down hard on this violation as there are rumours the problem is spreading. Allegations have been made that others of the 9 year old contestants have been conducting computer programming, astronomy, archaeology and even other forms of physics.
"I hope they stop it," said local farmer G. Ross Pointeblanc. "My son ain't too bright and it'd sure hurt his sensitive manly feelings to find out that all these cute little things are doing something more important than sloppin' pigs."
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Rev. Dr. E. G. McElwitz introduced the plan at a conference. Calling it the "Three Point Perdition Punishment Plan" he said the boycott would force America back to values of less fun, more boredom, and easier manipulation by the church. "For the own good of course," he added.
Baseball will from now on be boycotted as that den of men in tight trousers that cause lust of the heart and encourage the consumption of hot dogs. Hot Dogs are in turn punished as symbols of iniquity and sunny outings where the human heart turns to enjoyment instead of eternal hellfire.
"And finally," said McElwitz, "The scourge of Apple Pie upon our sacred land shall be right out. Because everyone knows that the apple was the evil fruit of sin that Eve delivereth to Adam and then they went and did naughty things in the bushes that I never get to do and it MUST BE STOPPED!!"
Pending the success of the boycott, the Baptists are tentatively drawing
up boycotts of The Family Channel, All Holidays including Christmas, Birthday
Parties and eventually anything not produced by BAPTCO.
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