Thursday night: 'I don't see why you would bother saving money. We're making so little right now, any savings you make will be completely drowned out by future savings when we get higher paying jobs.'
Friday night: 'Oh, my god, if we don't get paid early, I won't be able to pay my rent.'

So you don't have enough money and can't see how having MORE money could solve your problem? SRSLY?

For someone who spends most of her time in other countries, she sure is American.

(Potentially relevant link)

The Peace Corps is considered good diplomacy. Send Americans over to help community development and other countries start to like us.

Tommy Thompson wanted to send medical ships around the world to serve as roving hospitals for poor nations. Medical diplomacy.

Kiva, similarly, is about diplomacy. I don't know if donating money that way is as beneficial as donating to PATH (though you have a good chance of getting your Kiva money back to re-donate, which is pretty cool), but if pro-American diplomacy is something you support, that should be another major benefit of Kiva.

How important is it that other countries like us? Seems like if we're decent at doing good things with our foreign policy then our being popular and respected benefits everyone. If we're trying to invade non-aggressive nations based on known-to-be-false evidence, having other nations say 'Get lost'--as France did with Iraq--is a good thing. (Had Britain [and don't forget Poland!] done the same, maybe we wouldn't have gone into Iraq at all.)

For the next four years, at least, I'm guessing we'll be in the former category.

(Potentially relevant link)

My last attempt to solicit exorbitant quantities of money from my readers resulted in a grand total of 0DKK (which is still equal to 0USD, even with the improved exchange rate). Alas! Alack!

Okay, you people refuse to give me money for posting on my blog. Makes sense I haven't been posting on my blog.

So here's what I'ma do: I'm going to walk 5km (so far! I know! They make me sign a waiver and everything in case I die!) and you rich people will donate money to help feed the poor starving people who also have to walk 5km each day to get food.

WTF? No, really, that's the logic. *shrug*

Money goes to such-and-such. Notice how I'm not on that list. How sad. And I'm the one doing all the work. (A leisurely walk counts as work, right? No? Then I'll walk really, really fast. Usually I'm the first walker to finish. Some people run. Cheaters.) Okay, I do get something out of it: a t-shirt¹ and some food.

But when signing up on the website, I said something about designating 'UUSC', because I'm with UUCG (though not an actual member; poo on religion). I don't think I was supposed to, but they're unclear. I also had to enter my CC info twice because they screw up if you don't have JavaScript on for their domain (NoScript: use it!) but I only paid once, it appears, so that's cool. Anyway, UUSC is good people, I suspect.

Play

Last year the UUCG teens performed a CROP Walk miniplay showing how to ask for donations. To paraphrase (and skipping the intro):

Wrong way:

Nicolas: 'Hey, do you want to support the...oh, never mind'
*walks off, leaving the potential donor (my dad) shrugging most hammishly*

Right way:

Lilani: 'Hey would you like to donate money to fight hunger?'
Feryl: 'Sure! Here's money!'
Lilani: 'Gee whiz, thanks mister!' (No, that wasn't quite how it happened in the script, but improv comes naturally to the most witty of us.)

Scary thought

Sometimes potential donors ask stupid questions.

Right way with scariness

What's-her-name (d'oh!): 'Hey would you like to donate money to fight hunger?'
Potential donor: Who? What? Why?
What's-her-name: The CROP Walk is blah blah blah.
Potential donor: Why should we donate money to fight hunger elsewhere when we have hunger right here in North Carolina?
What's-her-name: That's a good question!² Blah blah blah, one quarter of the money blah blah blah.
Potential donor: Okay, then.

Top fundraisers!

I was just looking at the Greenville, NC CROP walk page and I'm listed as the #2 fundraiser. Because I pledged 20USD for my own walk. Karon O'Sullivan (#1) has 230.00USD. Ohnoes, I'm losing! Quickly, go donate 210.01USD to my walk! Go on, you know you want to enter your credit card number into some strange website. Who wouldn't?

'5km is nothing.'

Fine, donate money and comment telling me to do it twice, and I will. 10km. Wow, so very far.

¹ In 2004(?), they had extra t-shirts, so they in 2005(?) they reused 2004 t-shirts, and pretty much no one notices.
² No, that's a bloody idiotic question.

(2007-09-14 16:20:30) haiciM: Oh, the price of the ticket has gone down 3 DKK since I last checked. Cool.
(2007-09-14 16:21:04) haiciM: Even so, it is so close that I worry about it going up. I think that I'll just buy now.
(2007-09-14 16:21:13) lkbm: Saving you nearly $0.56. Whoohoo.

Someone elsewhere commented that 3DKK is nothing, so I was going to start a 'give me nothing' campaign using PayPal. Sadly, that may be against their AUP:

You may not use the PayPal service for activities that:
...relate to transactions that..(b) support pyramid or ponzi schemes, matrix programs, other "get rich quick" schemes or certain multi-level marketing programs'

So donate 3DKK (~0.56USD) to me because you like my blog, not because I want to get rich quick...from my three readers. (I use a sitename@wescnet.cjb.net email address for each site, so my PayPal account is paypal@...)

(Or support the ACLU, but they need more than 3DKK.)

I usually over-pay my credit card bill slightly. Having a slight credit doesn't hurt anything, right? Well, a few months ago two of them sent me checks. End of the fiscal year, I guess. The first one didn't say a thing about why they sent it. I didn't know what was going on until the second one came.

Just now I got a third one. This may be the last; I only have three or four credit cards. Anyway, this last one--from Washington Mutual--is for $0.01. They sent me a check for ONE CENT. La-di-FRICKIN-da! I'ma drive down to the bank right now and cash this baby!

I don't understand people. They're stupid. This, I don't get.

Now, I can understand the casual, 'I'm just moseying through life--I don't need to think about every little thing' attitude. I don't like it, but it's just laziness. But it's when you want to find an answer and still refuse to think that makes no sense.

I recently posted a contest to guess the cash content of my wallet. Unsurprisingly, no one's gotten it, but after I while, I gave a hint: 'How many pennies would a sensible person have in his wallet'.

Nearly everyone ignored this. One guy popped in to say 'None, they're useless by themselves'. Of course, the tires on my car are useless by themselves, yet I keep them there whenever I want to go some place. Mentioning this merely confused the nut, though.

Anyway, I don't have the optimal number of coins in my pocket. Clearly, what one wants for exact change-making ability is 4*0.01 + 1*0.05 + 2*0.10 + 3*0.25 + optional: 4*1.00 or 2*1.00 (if you have a two dollar bill). This assumes you get to replenish your wallet between each transaction, of course.

I go for 4*0.25 because someone might want 'change for a dollar', and wouldn't be happy to be given a dollar bill for their dollar bill. (Though an excuse to short-change them one cent as a fee could be nice. Hmmm...) I have 8*0.10 because I like dimes. I have 2*0.05 because...well, no good reason.

I'm also lacking any ones at the moment, which is a problem.

Luckily I very rarely use cash.