(I know, preaching to the choir).
And while I'm ranting, I thought I'd dwell on checks for a moment. You know, those legal documents that you use to exchange money. The ones with the duckies and bunny-wunnies on them. I can't stand frivolous looking checks. I know a bunch of you have them. I'm appalled at how many checks I've seen of the people who read my blog, actually. Then again, a bunch of you have seen mine too. Friends exchange checks like bodily fluids at times, but that's neither here nor there, the point is while I understand and respect individual freedom of expression, you guys do realize these are legal documents right? I just keep coming back to that. This is how people see you in a binding and legal way. You are confining yourself to the narrow borders of, for example, kitten fanciers, or Rocky and Bullwinkle fans. People are looking at you right now and thinking, "why the hell would anyone have Raggedy Ann checks?" When I make my final will at 80something, perhaps I'll use red ink on lavender paper (http://www.redhatsociety.com), but until then, it will be plain white paper, or perhaps beige heavy bond if I'm feeling wild and free, with a sexy, slight watermark and black ink, because that is what a legal document should look like.
Edit
And as I'm in rare form anyway, let me just loop another one onto the end, it's horribly and unspeakably rude to call people only by the nickname you think they should have when you know they don't like it. No one is particularly interested in your feeling that their names should be shortened and that it's just an ego trip of theirs that they want to be called that. Jeffrey Bodine has every right to request that you call him Jeffrey, not Jeff; Lawrence, not Larry; Elizabeth, not Lisa; Jackass, not ass. You know the drill. Let's try some common courtesy, peeps, I mean people.
And there you have it,
-m