Site Designish

Over the next week I'll be creating a new site for an area Disabled American Veterans chapter so I don't know that I will be getting to my posts as planned. I know... You are looking at my site and wondering what the hell am I doing making a site for anyone. : )

Well, I don't charge, which is just the right price for them since they are a nonprofit and a web presence isn't a huge priority for them. Someone asked and I wasn't about to tell a group that I respect "No".

I don't know if I will link to their site or not since my site is a little obnoxious.

Oh well... In the mean time I guess I can attempt to encourage everyone to take a look at eBay's charity auctions. Their program is called Giving Works. You can search for items by charity or by item type (in case you want to buy something but don't care which charity benefits).

Now for today's featured eBay auction:

Auction End - Apr-14-07 13:28:26 PDT

Blog Template by LunaStone
LunaStone makes some great blog templates. She is offering a few on eBay at discount pricing to test the waters on eBay for blog template sales. I'd buy one from her, but my My Little Pony and Crystal Meth addiction has totally wiped out my bank account. Check out her design site (and it's blog). It's good stuff, I promise.

Harry Potter Nonsense

So, I might have made and posted the following picture:


I may have also implied that anyone over a certain age who was excited about the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book was a cuckoo for Coco Puffs (wait, that's a different cereal).

Here in the US, the book is marketed as a young adult/children's book so the only time it gets placed anywhere other than shelves with Nancy Drew and The Baby-sitter's Club is when it gets placed in it's own stack at the front of the store so the mobs can find it quicker.

If you saw this post earlier, you'll probably notice that I altered it...

eBay Store Item

Problem With Visas

I'm not talking credit cards. I'm talking H-1B work visas... The government has a cap on the number of visas they give out. Apparently wealthy companies like Microsoft are crying about H-1B caps...

Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, Sun, HP, and a bunch of other companies make up this group called "Compete America", which some how claims that their goal is to keep America competitive. They do this by lobbying so American companies can hire as many foriegn nationals (via those handy H-1B visas) instead of looking to the American workforce.

They have all these lovely stats about how Americans are not going to college in certain fields... For example, in 2005 51% of the engineering masters degrees issued at the top universities in Illinois were awarded to noncitizens.

Why are American students not going after these degress? I've got one guess... Because greedy companies hire huge numbers of H-1B visa workers to do those high end jobs so they can get away with paying them less than what they would expect to pay an American citizen with the same qualifications.

Continue those hiring practices over a decade or so and you create a scenario where students do not see the value of racking up the student loan debt or investing the time in obtaining a Masters or PHD in Engineering (or other fields).

If your business can not operate within the extent of the law, YOUR BUSINESS MODEL SUCKS. In the case of Microsoft, which has plenty of cash, they can still afford to hire qualified American workers and still make a profit. Hiring guest workers (legal or not) paid at a lower rate are the same as outsourcing the job overseas.

This reminds me of the California farmers whining because their crops rot in the field when there are no illegal immigrants to harvest for them.

Unfortunately, because we have been skipping down this path for so long in the case of food/agriculture, we've pretty much fucked ourselves. The industry cheated to keep prices low. We as consumers didn't care because prices remained low. Now there is no simple solution to having legal labor while maintaining the markets at current price.

Legalizing all of the illegal immigrants does no good. Employers would have to pay them a legal wage (and pay payroll taxes on those workers). They would then need new sources of pennies on the dollar laborers.

I've got no problem with people coming to America to make a better life for themselves. The problem is the company that pays an illegal wage or attempts to avoid paying "normal wages" so they can continue inflating C-level employee pay. The trend in the US is to constantly inflate C-level pay at the expense of others.

For example, in 1965 the average CEO made 24 times as much as their average worker. In 2005, the different went from 24 times more to 240 times more. See more related stats, like how CEO's in other industrialized nations average only 30 to 40% the pay that CEO's here make...

I'm sure someone will explain to me why I'm wrong...

eBay Store Item

They do.

Danny Goes Krogering

Tourette's Guy videos crack me up every time that I see them... Why, I don't know. Well, maybe I do.

He's an asshole. He's loud. And he doesn't give a fuck.


Parts of these videos are staged. But I seriously doubt the people of Krogers (or Ralph's, Owen's, Fry's, Pay Less, Dillons, Hilanders, Smith's, or any of the other Kroger store names) would play along with this game...

Staged or not, thank the almighty dollar that these people make these silly ass videos at the risk of physical injury, getting arrested, or any other legal nonsense.

eBay Store Item

Danny is my hero...

Something New?!

The Grocery List From Hell is coming back to life and it's going to see a few format changes...

I'm thinking a posting schedule so readers will know what to expect on certain days.

Here is the break down:

Similar to the old content:
1 day per week with a snarky news bit
1 day per week with my attempt at photoshop or a cartoon
1 day per week of something random on my mind

New will be:
1+ day per week I will highlight something that I've enjoyed reading/viewing over the past few days... Most of it will be blog posts from blogs that I haunt.
1+ day per week I will promote other bloggers eBay auctions

Do you have an auction or ebay store? Let me know about it. Did you write some really great post that will make me laugh or change my world view on the impact of shelled peanuts? Let me know.

The news bit and the photoshop stuffs will most likely fall on a certain day of the week, once I figure out what that day is.

Martha "Mazola" Vasquez

Martha Vasquez was sentenced to 15 years in prison for playing doctor. Apparently she was injecting Mazola brand corn oil into client's asses to help reducing aging. More than one of her clients went into a coma from complications related to this creative use of corn oil, including one Maria Aguirre-Castillo who completely stopped aging after she after a week of being in the ICU.

I don't think that is what poor Maria meant when she said she wanted an ass to die for...

In my humble opinion, I think that Mrs. Vasquez was charging a bit much for her services. Mazola only costs a couple of dollars and she was reportedly charging around $1400 for the injections. I don't know what the going rate for a plastic surgeon is, but you think you could get a something not quite so deadly for $1400. The least she could do is accept coupons.

Mazola's website actually has a fantastic "Which Oil Should I Use" chart to show the uses and benefits of each of their product lines. Unfortunately though, I couldn't find anything on their site about which product line to use when injecting their oil into one's ass or breast. Is that what the medical community means when they say "off label use"?

Enough of that nonsense though... EBay has the below pamplet on of home remedies from 1918 that's cover obviously served as the inspiration piece for Pearl Jam's Vitalogy album.

Auction End Date = Jan-25-07 11:40:05 PST

The health secrets of Eddie Vedder