Honestly, the position I prefer to be in. It confirms you know their taste.
NOW, you want a truly disturbing version of this? Try getting it right, only its the more expensive one, so she refuses to buy it or let you pay the difference, or even buy it for her! … and with the way these sales and store-stock rotation work, its often not so easy as coming back next month, next week … even the same day, to get it for whatever-next-holiday-that-probably-falls-too-late-in-the-season-anyway. Sneak a picture of the tag? Congratulations, its somehow out-of-stock or never sold on-line, nor in nearby stores.
People that are convinced they are going to be the next sales/shopping/couponing deity are the WORST to want good things for. Short route to fadish or gimped products that do not work as well as advertized, or in the case of things like Black Friday televisions, what you would otherwise get them if they would only let you when there’s time to be certain.
Before you read too much into that last sentence, the minimum age of a TV or monitor in my house is ten years old, and the average close to 15. As a former professional PC, TV, Printer and Appliance repair man, that’s one bite from this I managed to avoid while still letting it give me nightmares.
On the off chance the checksum on yours is different, you don’t want it somehow noted and flagged by … anyways, levels of paranoia I get and respect. They can’t take that thumb drive if its air-gapped!! Keep it hidden and safe children, its my legacy!
If I could find a dense and permanent enough storage medium, I would take (a copy of)it all to my grave… Feeling like by the time such reaches consumers at a reasonable price, it will also be able to hold a copy of the Pole Shif Survival Guide.
I pirate things I have right in front of me!! Scratched DVD’s that won’t rip, same for CD’s, and sometimes old digital formats that are no longer well supported, or in the case of eBooks, don’t re-flow properly. Yes, some of us are still doing weird shit we got used to on Blackberries and Palm Pilots(These days I use Sprint Reader, but I’ll also read the material normally when studying for a test).
Some shows or movies I pay to stream don’t work well on whatever device I’ve opted to play them on. Knowing why doesn’t magically give me the means to transcode as needed without screen capture; Piracy skips the steps of watching them on a device I didn’t mean to just to edit/trim and then have them in a format I no longer need!
A large amount of my outlook revolves around the notion that once you can forgive ANY human for existing, the justifications for holding much of anything against(or mistreating) any but a select (relatively)few just melt away and indulging in the notion that I myself am exceptionally horrible (self-loathing) is just vanity.
I honestly don’t get how someone can come to the conclusion that ending humanity is absolutely desirable and not just skip to the step of ending themselves. That’s surrendering the high ground at step one, and just because I believe they deserve to draw breath more than they do doesn’t mean I won’t block anyone who openly subscribes to such ideals in a heartbeat.
We got here by being horrible. I’ll believe any other intelligent(or otherwise) life got so far without similar skeletons in their closets when I see it. Not them or anyone else claiming it, but like, a god’s-eye-view of their entire history. Pretending we can’t get over it is just an excuse for further horrors.