At my job, the toilet seat is covered with the piss of the last guy. So I'm not sitting down on that fucking thing.

Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a leopress above the Serengeti.

I genuinely thought well into my 20s that "leopress" was a female leopard because of this fucking song.

So are sharks.

We have something like that, it's called Medicare. You just have to be 65 to get into it. A very reasonable proposal, first mooted in the '90s, was called Medicare-for-all; the idea was that they would just lower the eligibility age by two years every year to allow the country to ease gradually into universal healthcare. If we had done this back then we would have universal healthcare today.

Some people blame Hilary Clinton for this, because she allegedly rejected this option and instead pushed for immediate universal health care back when her husband first became President. I think this is probably a distraction from the real culprits. The private insurance companies fought like hell against universal healthcare and would have fought just as hard (and just as successfully) against Medicare-for-all.

I glanced at a porterhouse for sale at my local grocery a few weeks ago. $54. The fuck? I'd balk at paying that much at a steakhouse, cooked and with sides and a couple of beers.

I drive a roadster and people assume I'm incredibly rich. I bought the fucking thing nine years ago for $8000 -- tell me what new car today costs less than $1000 a year to own and operate.

I only get steak if it's close to expiration and marked way down. Ironically it's better at that point anyway since it's been aged (as long as you eat it right away). Otherwise I'll buy top or bottom round and hammer the shit out of it with a tenderizing mallet and flash-seer it; taste is quite good and you let the mallet do the work instead of your teeth.

My mom for this last year had a home helper who was making around $21 an hour. She would order lunch every day through Grub Hub, usually $15-$20 just for the food and then another $10 for the delivery. She was willing to work for an hour and a half just to pay for her lunch. And she would always complain about how shitty and cold the food was. Even weirder is that she was a great cook herself, I provided whatever groceries she wanted, and she had plenty of time to cook whatever she wanted, and she still did the Grub Hub shit. I just do not get people.

Coffee is / was the big one. I used to stock the cheap, store brand stuff for when I needed a morning lift. That was pre-tariff $9. I’d also stock the good stuff, the brand and variety that I really like a lot, usually around $12 a bag. Tariffs kicked in, the “cheap” stuff went to $20 per lb immediately. The good stuff went to $22 (but only like 12 oz or something). So, no more name brand, and I cut way back on coffee consumption. Fucked up part, tariffs are done and the prices dropped, but nowhere near the old price. The cheap stuff is still $14, so $5 more than 1.5 years ago.

Holy hell, where are you buying coffee? I still get most of my coffee at TJ Maxx / Marshalls where they often have 12 oz. bags (on clearance) for $5 or so. Even LiDL coffee is only $6.50 for a 12 oz. bag.

I got lunch for my mom and myself at Five Guys the other day. Two burgers, one order of fries, two fountain drinks, $44. I wouldn't even have minded the price if it had been, y'know, fantastic food, but it was just mid. Burgers were bland, fries were limp and greasy -- so greasy that the bottom of the bag broke open when I got it home -- and even the drinks were watery. For $44!

I tried Taco Bell yesterday for the first time in years. At least it was "only" $11 for a mexican pizza, two tacos and a large drink. Unfortunately it was utterly disgusting, everything tasted like stale wheat flour which was weird because I don't think the food actually had wheat flour in it anywhere.

I have dental insurance and it's near-fucking-worthless for this level of work (which I've a lad a lot of in the last few years). It pays only a small percentage of the costs and the payout is capped at $1500 per year, nowhere near enough to cover the cost of a single implant. I wouldn't even bother having the insurance in the first place but it's a free benefit provided by my employer.

Chain dentists are a fucking abomination, though. You're guaranteed to get work you don't actually need because of the corporate pressures they're under to generate revenue.

I broke two front teeth and had a wisdom tooth knocked loose and later extracted in a fall at work. Workman's comp insurance is supposed to pay for it all (many thousands of $$$) but so far they've balked for the last eight months. Meanwhile my dentist has eaten the entire cost. Workman's comp insurance treats people only through preferred providers, but they have no preferred dentists or oral surgeons so it's a bit of a grey area.