Greed and Hypocrisy

 

They say there's no free lunch, but today I did get lunch that I didn't personally have to pay for. I did have to pay for it, on my purchasing card, but that doesn't draw from my personal funds. We had a meeting to introduce ourselves to the new grad students, and then we all got lunch, so we sat outside and ate it. Casetta Kitchen makes amazing sandwiches, and their salt-encrusted chocolate chip cookies are a revelation. As my previous boss said, "I didn't know I needed salt on cookies before this."

Right after work Travalon and I hopped in the car, but we didn't go too far, just up the road to the Rodeside Grill, where we had bluegill for dinner. For my side I chose the creole rice, and it was so good that I could have just eaten a bowl of that. We also got hush puppies, which are the most nutritionally useless things. They're just deep-fried balls of cornmeal, but I love them anyway. 

After that we got on the road to Merrill. We are heading up north, and Merrill was as far as we thought we could get tonight, but then we got here so early that I have time to blog. Our trip was mostly uneventful, but when we passed the exit sign for Maine, I was reminded once again of how the town used to be Brokaw, but it had to declare bankruptcy because some evil people from out East bought the paper mill and then closed it. This was the paper mill that made colored office paper in different pastel hues, and now it's very hard to get ahold of such a thing. Back in the day we used to have to print off four copies of some forms: one white, one pink, one yellow, and one a pastel mint green. Of course, now with everything electronic, we don't have to print out those forms, so maybe the paper mill would have shut down eventually, but it makes me so simultaneously angry and sad that these rich people shut it down and put a whole town out of work so that they could make sixty million dollars instead of fifty million dollars, or whatever. It does amuse me that on Twitter, when rich jackasses spout off about how students shouldn't have their loans forgiven, people tag them and say, "This you?" while showing that they have had enormous loans (sometimes millions of dollars!) forgiven by the government. Not that the jackasses probably care - these days people don't seemed ashamed of their own hypocrisy. When anyone points it out to them, they just brush it off and say, "That was totally different." Because it benefitted them. I could make comments about searches of classified material, and how some people were outraged that one person might have handled it inappropriately, but when their person does something even more egregious, they are actually outraged that there is an investigation. But it would be pointless, because nobody ever thinks they are a hypocrite anymore. It's always different in their case - pain hurts them!

Famous Hat