AngryDeuce

Oh, tons. Her mom and dad were pissed more than anyone else, her mom for understandable reasons, the sentimentality of it and watching her little girl walk down the aisle, but her dad moreso because he was a major schmoozer that sat on their town board, owned many local businesses, is friends with state-level representatives and was a “VIP” that had already been pressuring us to invite people that neither of us even fucking knew for networking purposes which really pissed me off (less so my wife, she grew up with that shit). He offered to pay for the wedding which in itself was a source of stress as I didn’t want to give him any angle with which to dictate the manner in which the wedding was conducted and damn sure didn’t want it to turn into some state function.

My wife hated that shit, too, but it caused drama between my wife and I because her parents were up her fucking ass about this shit and she felt like she was in the middle despite being in full agreement with me because she’d given in to this sort of shit so much in her life she was used to it…she’d never had so much as a birthday party that didn’t have at least three dozen people there, most of whom were there for her dad, not for her. I was just not going to let her family push her around, and I had zero hesitation in telling them to back the fuck off, which her dad was definitely not used to.

My family is a lot more “live and let live” with that sort of thing. I have some cousins that spent the equivalent of new car money on their wedding, and cousins that did like us and just went to the beach and had a friend of theirs get ordained and perform the ceremony while everyone is in their bathing suits with wet hair, but its very much left up to the people getting married and nobody else gets in the way because that’s not their place. We have our own drama but at least in that regards its way better. My parents more or less said “Congrats, go have fun!” lol

My wife and I were 6 months into planning ours and so fucking stressed out over making it a great experience for our honored guests. A text from her mother that read “Well if you invite X you have to invite Y or else it’s going to be an issue…” was the straw that broke both our backs, but there had been months of this shit prior to that point, to the point where it was affecting my wife-to-be and I’s relationship and we never argued like we did over planning our “traditional” wedding.

None of the stress was internal, it was all external…people weighing in with their opinions of our plans, what we should serve, oh this person doesn’t like that, you should have this instead, well this person is going to insist on bringing their kids even if they kids are not invited so you’d better plan on having settings for them, dont use that photographer use this photographer or else wedding ruined, dont get this caterer get this other caterer or wedding ruined, dont have it here, have it there, or wedding ruined…

So we both said “Fuck it” and eloped. Found a small bed and breakfast a few hours away that offered a literal Elopement Package…the owner was a certified JP, his wife did all the decorating…they even provided witnesses. All we had to do was show up. The price was just under what the photographer alone was going to cost us.

Happily married for 10 years now. Best decision we ever made.

God on the PC end of things youd get like a literal book with some games. Keyboard overlays for controls, posters, all sorts of fun shit.

My bills literally list them as separate line items, theres the clinic copay, then the doctor copay.

Occasionally I even get two separate bills, one from the hospital, one from the Dr. Guessing their practice is the source of the one and the hospital system is the other?

Either way its fuckin annoying to be paying out of pocket 30+ bucks only to be told the equivalent of “gee i dunno take Tylenol I guess”.

Oh, you see an actual doctor? I haven’t seen an actual doctor in the last like 3 years, always just a physicians assistant or other nurse.

Still get charged the dr copay though, funny how that works.

I wouldnt be surprised if the doctor is an AI construct and theyre just running my symptoms through whatever insurance company provided AI bullshit at this point.

Dude and what the hell is it with that weird vomity aftertaste? I swear to god I dont remember it being that way when I was a kid but something in the new chocolate just leaves such a nasty aftertaste on my mouth…

As a former kleptomaniac, I cant wait to see all the self driving trucks getting helplessly forced to the side of the road and ripped off while the people monitoring the cameras in India or Thailand frantically try to get the US police force to give half a shit about their fucking self driving truck getting stole from.

People about to make bank if they ever try to pull that shit, and it aint gonna be the people owning those trucks lol

It bears mentioning that the large scale protests you see in other parts of the world are often in places where there are strong worker protection laws.

In the US almost every single person is literally one major medical incident away from living in their car, one missed mortgage payment away from living in their car, and one missed insurance payment from not getting the medicine they literally need to survive. Most US states allow an employer to fire one of their employees without any warning or cause whatsoever, so long as the reason for the termination doesn’t fit into one of several small boxes…which they would need to admit for it to be actionable, anyway.

My point being, a big part of the reason why you don’t see protests like you do in say, France, is that unlike France, the people here are largely wage slaves that cannot afford to even miss work when suffering from extreme illness, let alone to take to the streets over that asshole pedophile acting like an asshole pedophile. This has been by design.

Don’t mistake a population of people spending all their energy holding onto the little they have for one that supports this regime. Whether you think their action or lack of action is justifiable, you need to at least admit it’s understandable.

Dude, as someone that worked, briefly, in retail at a corporate level, the agreements between the major players like Coke and Pepsi and the big boxes are like some Van Halen “no brown M&Ms” level shit on both sides of the equation.

I have seen emails describing what happens when a coke representative walks into one of those stores and finds that their product is not merchandised within X feet of X aisle or is out of stock on the shelf and there are serious financial sanctions for that shit. Something is minor as a customer setting a 12 pack of 7-Up on top of the stack of Sprite has gotten escalated to levels that would be ludicrous to a layman.

Everything, every single shelf or peghook or rack in that store, has a dollar amount attached to it, and the sums of money being exchanged over whether your product is placed at eye level or down on the bottom shelf is unreal.