General Chitchat for November

really nice Patty
thanks!

thanks pattygirl for the man and women jokes u must get + from me , the 2nd one is smart and wise too.

Grrrr, I'm having such a furstrating day today that I've got to vent. Don't ever, ever, ever, EVER believe what you see on a travel TV programme.

We have a major TV programme coming to film one of our resorts tomorrow for three days and the presenter is such a fucking primadonna that he'll only work for a couple of hours a day. So, instead of filming him having breakfast in one of our gorgeous restaurants (which was scheduled at 8am in order not to bother any of our guests who are paying around $1000 a night) he's now asking us to set up a table for him on the beach which we can film at a more user-friendly 11am.

It'll look lovely of course, but it's not something any of our guests (or his viewers) would ever be able to do because we don't offer private breakfasts on the beach. In other words, it's entirely faked.

We're also creating a fake spa treatment for him because it'll 'film better' and a different, more camera-friendly, menu for him at one of our signature restaurants.

He's messed us about so many times I'm really pissed off and have a good mind to write to the newspapers to tell them what really goes on.

Anyway, thanks for letting me let off steam!

In other news, I've spent the past half an hour on our speedboat (location scouting with another company for a possible photoshoot next year) and we were mobbed by dolphins! They seem to like the sound of the outboard motor.

That's how my day is shaping up. How's everyone else?

Not as exciting as yours, it's 2:30am and I'm shopping online for x-box games. Your day with the exception of the gotta do it my way asshole, sounds like much more fun. So what happens when this airs and guest want breakfast on beach, do you hand them a basket and towel?

You should sic the dolphins onto him, now that would make a cool segment. I have often wondered about some of those travel shows cause I was living in a suburb and they did a thing on the food and let me tell you none of the locals would be caught dead eating in at least one of the places they said was great and the truly great place got ignored cause of it's decore. Just think of the dolphins they are relaxing and the travel reporter will get karma flying back at him one day! I must say hanging out in a boat with dolphins isn't part of most people's job makes up for the asshole.

lucy wrote:Not as exciting as yours, it's 2:30am and I'm shopping online for x-box games.

Lucy, 2:30 a.m. and you're shopping on line? I give you a lot of credit for getting up that early. I take Ambien sleeping pills at 10:00 p.m. which knock me out cold for a solid 4 hours only. After that I'm on my own. I've been awake since 2:30 this morning too but too stubborn to get up. I should get into the habit of going on line. LOL

Starting to rethink the Ambien habit too.

Wish I had Ambien to develop a habit! Just kidding,was on line shopping for my son who was asleep at 2:30, he is the one who helps me with everything computer. So I got sneaky and had him help me order Avon on line right before he called it a night, went on line after to shop for him with all " how to do" fresh in my mind.

Yes lucy, my son is computer savvy too. I snag him every chance I get to help me with my many, many computer problems. He's pretty good at helping me but is starting to throw the instruction book at me. LOL

Cindigirl, you do much more than I've ever tried to attempt so the instruction son/book is working.

Well thanks lucy. At least now I know how to post a new topic in the proper thread so Katie doesn't have to get mad at me anymore.

It's easy to post a video, just look it up on UTube, right click on the http address line, click on copy, go into COH (in the right thread lol) and paste.

Dexterdidit wrote:You should sic the dolphins onto him, now that would make a cool segment. I have often wondered about some of those travel shows cause I was living in a suburb and they did a thing on the food and let me tell you none of the locals would be caught dead eating in at least one of the places they said was great and the truly great place got ignored cause of it's decore. Just think of the dolphins they are relaxing and the travel reporter will get karma flying back at him one day! I must say hanging out in a boat with dolphins isn't part of most people's job makes up for the asshole.

Same here. When one of the food guys on the Travel Channel did his show here, only 1 of the 3 places would be the type of place locals would go.

Sorry you had such a shitty day Katie.

Just peeking in to see if we have any new and exciting news on our man. No such luck, I see. LoL

You must listen to this. I was told all would enjoy this, I hope so.

http://www.wabcradio.com/FlashPlayer/default.asp?SPID=22807&ID=2050461

what did he say?

Here's a story that will piss all the 99% ers off!

http://news.yahoo.com/rich-people-behaving-badly-waiting-marie-antoinette-moment-160146998.html

Rich People Behaving Badly: Waiting for our Marie Antoinette Moment

By Roger Kay | Forbes – Mon, Nov 28, 2011

There is an info meme gaining increasing clarity, and it has three threads: rich people behaving badly, oblivious to their context; poor people getting angry and more vocal about it by the day; and media egging them on.

Looking at the motivations, we can tease out what each group is doing.

Rich people want to keep their money and continue to enjoy it, but they are aware, to varying degrees, that too much flaunting will get them in trouble. They fight redistributive schemes, but the less contextually aware among them still do silly things like buy up oceanfront property and build a castle that blocks the view that everyone else had been enjoying up until then.

Poor people, well, it’s hard not to see why they’re angry and growing angrier. They’ve been good Joes, paid their taxes, put in their time, and their gruel is getting thinner with each passing day. And their information sources keep telling them how the rich are living, which creates a truly unpleasant dissonance.

The media is the one that’s more difficult to figure. Start with the idea that they’re in the business of selling newspapers. With instant feedback mechanisms these days, it’s easy to see what people want to read, watch, or listen to. And apparently, they want to know about the lifestyles of the rich and famous, even if it makes them angry.

I have a neighbor who recently acquired two young dogs. These pooches came to my notice one summer dawn when one of them started yodeling at 4:30 a.m. I asked the man of the house about it, and he gave me a whole song and dance about how his hands were tied. “I’m working seven days a week,” he pointed out in his heavy Irish brogue, “and gone by 5 a.m. They have to run sometime.”

While I was sympathetic to his plight, I was trying to elicit some sympathy for mine. He then launched into a long pull about his job. He’s a foreman on construction jobs for the very rich. The reason he was working around the clock is that he had a job that started as an $800,000 renovation bid and quickly turned into a $4.6 million project. To accommodate this increase in scope, the schedule had been extended from late October to Christmas. “We have to have it back to them by then,” he noted, almost apologetically.

He went on to say that he had 60 people working on the job, that he has to get there first to open it up, and stay last to close it down, and that not a single piece of furniture, sculpture, or painting could take so much as a smudge. “It’s as if I were a guest in their house.”

He described a larger project, recently completed for Red Sox owner John Henry, which had employed 600 people for 18 months. “We were putting food on the table for 600 families,” he said, I thought a bit defensively. “We’re glad to have the work. Everyone else just wants the cheapest possible, but not these guys. They want the best there is. And we give ‘em that.”

Never mind that in a hundred years that chateau will be subdivided into multifamily units, just like the ones built earlier for the colonial rich. Good thing each of the 15 bedrooms has its own bathroom. It will make the reconfiguration easier. Just add hotplates to each.

As our conversation ended without much of a resolution, I wondered aloud whether we create these impossible demands by the rich by allowing them to make them. Money may be fiction, but it is powerful magic, and feeding 600 families may require something akin to slavery in these times.

And speaking of slavery, someone I know quite well works in the movies. She’s in production on a Ben Stiller vehicle. Now, this is a guy who behaves badly. He has no fewer than 12 assistants, all pretty girls. “Maybe he’s hoping some of it will rub off on him,” her husband suggested over the holiday.

No one, except “the beauties,” as the rest of the staff call them, can look at him. That’s right. “No eyeballing,” came down the word from management. Eyeballing people are fired immediately. A woman in production was caught in Stiller’s headlights, and she peeped, “Hi” at him. Gone from the set within the hour.

His last film cost $70 million and brought in $170 million. So, he can do what he wants.

It’s worth listing a few from my own industry, technology.

Steve Jobs never wrote down the rule, but no eyeballing was the law of the land at Apple during his day. Americans, and Californians in particular, have an independent streak. Caught in the elevator with Jobs, and the natural instinct would be to look him in the eye and say, “Hi, Steve.” But your natural instinct would be wrong, and he would respond with something like, “What did you do when you worked here?”

Then, there is Mark Hurd, a guy who dealt himself a few extra cards with every hand, all while keeping others on the straight and narrow.

And Hurd’s friend Larry Ellison. Well, his poor manners are legendary, from exercising his droit du seigneur on the hired help, to flaunting his wealth, to trash-talking pretty much everyone.

And I almost forgot to add one important name: Rupert Murdoch, a man who straddles the very top skootch of 1% AND the media, whose sins go well beyond the self indulgence of many of the others, who manipulates sovereign governments, including our own, with his wealth. May the shadow of his empire pass from over us soon.

So, we have the rich behaving badly. But can we take a closer look at the media’s role? They are the ones who keep covering the peccadilloes of the wealthy ad nauseum. The press appears to be fomenting revolution, but perhaps it’s just that people continue to want to read about what they don’t have.

In an excruciatingly detailed discussion, Jad Mouawad tells us of the growing disparity between first class and coach sections on commercial aircraft. He makes the economics pretty clear, but what’s the point? Anyone who flies is well aware of how it is.

On any given day, one of the major publications is shoving our noses in the difference between our lonely shacks and the multiple houses of the rich and famous, endless virtual real estate “tours” posing as news items. Then, there’s the fawning coverage of how Larry Page and Sergey Brin outfitted their 767.

In your face.

So, now we get down to the little people. The 99%.

An engine can’t run with some of its bolts and washers banging around in its oil pan, and a society can’t run while some — even many — people are near desperation while others are complaining that their fois gras hasn’t been prepared properly.

In America, we have a bedrock ethos that allows this situation to get out of hand: the belief in the potential of getting rich. The fact that I might get rich, even if the chances are slim to none, holds me back, and lets me excuse you for actually being rich, and perhaps flaunting it in my face. The flaunting did go into hiding a bit during the beginning of the recession, but if anything, it’s gotten worse lately as the gap between the rich and the rest of us grows wider.

Years ago, I saw the entire class layer cake standing outside Fauchon, a high-end gourmet food boutique on the Place de la Madeleine in Paris. It was lunchtime.

Milling about the large plate-glass windows was the middle class, released for an hour from its drudgery, ooohing and ahhhing over the unbelievable displays of food-as-art: glazed chicken with fruits and nuts embedded like mosaic in the glaze, cross-sections of Pâté en Croûte with 15 impossible colors presenting themselves on the surface, pastry constructions that would make Lego envious. The French have an expression, “lèche-vitrine,” which translates as “window shopping,” but literally means “lick the shop window” with its implication of fawning. These people were licking the windows because that’s the closest they were going to get to licking the actual food. Thrills for the cheap seats, but at least they could afford the seats.

In the sun, slumped against the stone of the lower wall was a beggar, his cup mostly empty. He probably figured that folks shopping in that area would have money. In principle, he was right, but people were ignoring him anyway.

Inside the shop, behind the window displays, stepping mincingly across the black and white tiled floor, were just a few real shoppers, dressed in their understated designer clothing. You couldn’t hear anything, but you could see the “specialists” at each station bobbing and nodding obsequiously as the shoppers asked questions about their fare. Behind a discreet pane of half-height glass, the smoked salmon slicer stood over his charge, fine blade ready to carve off translucent slivers for laying in artful rows on wax paper. With their quick hands, the confectionary servers turned boxes of chocolates, chosen individually, into lovely presents tied up with golden bows.

The French, they know something about class, class warfare, and revolution. A revolution is a pretty messy, inefficient way to redistribute wealth, but one that people finally turn to when they see no alternative. The history of the French Revolution tells of men who tried to reform, but were rebuffed, stymied, and outmaneuvered by the entrenched nobility. It tells of misspending on foreign wars, a wavering king, and a broken tax system that allowed the very richest to push the burden back onto the rest of society.

A good example of this very sort of tax dodging was covered at sickening length just this past weekend by the New York Times, which told us how the Estée Lauder heirs manage to keep their dough out of other people’s hands. Some figures from Wikipedia: the top 1% in the United States earned an average of about $1 million in 2009. Rounding the population to 300 million would give us 3 million people in the top 1%. Let’s group them into households of three and say their income would be about $1 trillion. Not bad, but not enough to make much of a dent in the $13 trillion debt. On the other hand, their net assets, about one-third of the total $55 trillion in the United States, or $18 trillion, would go a long way toward putting things to right.

© 2011 Endpoint Technologies Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Just to let you know, I'm around but working long hours because of photoshoots and my TV crew.

Also, I've just been diagnosed with bronchitis and after googling the drugs the doctor's given me Iv'e found out one of the medications can't even be legally prescribed in Europe or the US!

I feel absolutely fine if a bit woozy so I won't be posting.

Hope you feel better soon Katie, don't want to ask how he managed to get you the drug if it's been banned elsewhere! Have plenty of rest.

It's still legal in Asia! And clearly the drugs are working: I've just pitched a men's mag editor a celebrity story where aforementioned celeb goes shark diving. Clearly nothing says 'luxurious, indulgent, extensive six-star resort' more than sharks, right? Right??

You better believe it. Only the rich and famous are selfindulgent enough to go shark diving at a six-star resort. Hope they take your idea and fly with it. It would make him so macho looking even if he is a "prima donna" or whatever the male version is.

Glad the drugs are working and that you are starting to feel better. Guess all that good old home weather got to you after being so used to Asian weather. Be well and rest when you can. We'll miss you.

I hope you feel better soon, Katie! Good luck with the Shark! Their bite is worse than it looks! All kidding aside, sounds like a good promotion!

Get well Katie! Sharks scare the shit out of me!

no Shark
it's not that!

LoL @ the sharks. Feel better soon Katie.

An update on my mom, we saw the surgeon today. It is definitely cancer but he said its early (stage 1) and the most treatable kind. We are meeting the plastic surgeon next Tues and then they will do the mastectomy and reconstruction all in one surgery. He doesn't see any indication that it has spread but they will biopsy the lymph nodes when they do surgery just in case. Hopefully she will have her stitches out and be on the mend by Xmas. That is the plan anyways. So while it wasn't the greatest news, it was encouraging at least. It definitely could've been much worse.
Thank you again for all the thoughts and prayers. Please keep praying for a speedy recovery.

I will, MyGirlKylie! Glad to hear it's early enough to catch. I want you to know I'm thinking of you, too. You take care of yourself. The news is kind of a relief but you'll wear yourself out if you don't take care of yourself! Please take good care of yourself so you can take care of her! XO

my best thoughts
for you both

Thank you Cinders & its me!

Hopefully hubby will be home for the holidays by the time she has surgery so he can help out with the kiddo. I should ask Santa for a big bottle of Bailey's to get through the next few weeks. LOL

better big hugs!!!!

Glad it's an early find, MGK. Sounds like the Drs, have things pretty well in hand, doing mastectomy and reconstruction both at the same time. Better than going under the knife twice and healing shouldn't take much longer. Will continue to pray for your mom and all your family.

Don't forget to let others help with your kiddo MGK, so she has time to have fun away from hospital. Will keep you and yours in my thoughts and prayers, you let others take some of your load,so you can focus on your mom. Please take care .

I'm sorry that it's cancer but very happy it was caught early. Best of luck to your mom.

Okay, Folks. This is either a great finish to your day or a good morning's start! Hope you enjoy!




SONG--UNDER THE SCOTSMAN'S KILT

You'll be humming it all day...

https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=MZ35SOU9HTM

The Polish Divorce



A Polish man moved to the USA and married an American girl.

Although his English was far from perfect, they got along very well.

One day he rushed into a lawyer's office

and asked him if he could arrange a divorce for him.

The lawyer said that getting a divorce would depend on the circumstances,

and asked him the following questions:



Have you any grounds?

Yes, an acre and half and nice little home.



No, I mean what is the foundation of this case?

It made of concrete.



I don't think you understand.

Does either of you have a real grudge?

No, we have carport, and not need one.



I mean what are your relations like?

All my relations still in Poland .



Is there any infidelity in your marriage?

We have hi-fidelity stereo and good DVD player.



Does your wife beat you up?

No, I always up before her.



Is your wife a nagger?

No, she white.



Why do you want this divorce?

She going to kill me.



What makes you think that?

I got proof.



What kind of proof?

She going to poison me.

She buy a bottle at drugstore

and put on shelf in bathroom.

I can read... it say:





~~~ Polish Remover ~~~

Thanks for the laugh, Patty! Very funny!

Lmao @ the joke, Patty.

Hope you're not Polish. How are things going? Hope you're all hanging in there. Was out shopping yesterday and heard a lovely country song "I'm Gonna Love You Through It", about a woman with breast cancer and how love makes all the difference. I'm not sure who singing it, but think it might be Martina McBride.
How's your kiddo doing? Suggestion - if you haven't told her that Grandma is sick, I think you should. She'll be able to sense the tension and sadness in the house, and will be frightened because she doesn't know what's wrong. You don't have to get too descriptive, just let her know she's sick and doctors will help make her better. I know she's close to your mother and it might help. (Voice of experience).

We're hanging in there. Feeling much better since the doc told her it was the most treatable kind. I told the kiddo, explained the surgery, and told her that we would have to take care of Nana afterward (she loves to help out). Tried to keep it age appropriate, told her that cancer is a cluster of bad cells and that they were going to take it out so Nana wouldn't get sick. tried to not say too much so she wouldn't be scared but wanted to prepare her for Nana being out of spoiling commission for a few weeks after surgery. We had a good laugh about Nana getting new boobs for Xmas(she's super flat chested). LOL, Tried to lighten the mood for her.

Myg - you did great. Not for just now but for any hard times in the future.

Thanks Blubell.

you are great, MyGirlKylie


and thanks for the kilt song
LOL

Ya done good MGK! She'll get to spoil Nana now!