Fuck!

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The supervisor identified herself as a manager named Carla ID#CRU194. I identified myself as an upset customer whose account was locked for some unknown reason. She asked me a few questions about my location, my issue and then informed me that my card was suspected of fraud.

Naturally, I perked my ears up and asked for details of any fraud. She informed me that there had been no direct fraudulent transactions on my account. Rather, she informed me that the ATM networks of Canada, Russia and the United Kingdom have been compromised. I used the term class break as a question and she repeated that there has been a class break [ Ed. note: definition here] of the ATM networks in those countries. The ATM network in Canada has been compromised and as a result, using my ATM card over the Canadian network locked my account automatically. She informed me that this has been an ongoing issue for the last two weeks. When I asked why there was no media attention, she said she wasn’t sure. I said it was a pretty big deal and she agreed.

She informed me that I would have to return to the United States to change my pin number before my card would be valid and in a usable state again. When I informed her that I would be traveling outside of the United States for at least a few months, possibly up to six, she repeated that I would have to re-enter the United States to fix the problem.

More, and more

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Looking at printed wedding gift ribbon some time ago, Kathryn thought it would be amusing to put the 4th amendment on the ribbon, and tie it around our suitcases.

That turned out to be hard to make, but I did make a design for shipping tape which you can see below. The printed shipping tape has the text slant so that as the pattern repeats, the 4th amendment appears as a long continuous string, as well as a block.

You can put this shipping tape on your packages and your airplane luggage. Every time I fly, my luggage gets a card in it telling me how “for my protection�? they have searched it.

Now, when they open my luggage, they will have to literally slice the 4th amendment in half in order to do this.

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I brought up one of my favorite forced birth conundrums the other day, guaranteed to make wingnut “life begins at conception” heads explode. If a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you can only save a petri dish with five blastulae or a two-year old child, which do you save?

We just love Mike Stark, who takes this stuff to the streets. He called Andrew Wilkow’s radio talk show and put the question to him, and Wilkow’s head did, in fact, explode. He was reduced to a sputtering rage, screaming that he would not, in fact, save the two year-old child. Mike hung right in there with him and the results are predictably hilarious. You can just feel Wilkow’s listeners flipping the channel and saying “fuck that noise, that guy’s insane.” It’s a brilliant little sound clip.

All visiting women should be required to take pregnancy tests on entry to the U.S., and then again on departure. A positive test means the child gets to be a U.S. citizen – for after all, “life begins at conception”!

Are fundamentalist taxpayers entitled to a child tax credit for blastocysts if they conceive by 11:59 p.m. on December 31st of the tax year? What if there are two or three blastocysts conceived? Does that count for multiple credits? If fundamentalists conceive, miscarry, and conceive again in the same tax year, does that count as two tax credits?

Is a woman who takes the “morning after pill” after conception equally entitled to the child tax credit in that tax year?

Are blastocysts eligible for benefits conveyed under the Uniform Gifts to Minors Act (UGMA), such as U.S. Savings Bonds, various tax-advantaged educational savings vehicles (i.e. Coverdell and 529 Educational Savings Accounts), annual tax-free gifting limits, etc?

If life begins at conception, why don’t we celebrate Christmas in March?