Although he'd probably use his own finger and hand you a little card from his bandaged hand.

Would he send you a disappointed message the next morning if you refused to eat the finger? There is just no pleasing Cartilage Head.

Anyway it's not like he announced he was gonna bomb Russia on a hot mic or anything like that.

He did not address the question of what happened to Chuck Williams, Founder of Williams-Sonoma.

I was also disappointed in this story arc and I have returned from the dead just to complain!

None of Beef's actions have made sense to me, from the first shot where we were supposed to be "swerved" by the idea that he was cheating on Molly with a prostitute, to his totally passive acceptance of CH's scheme. Maybe in Onstad's head (or somewhere on the fanflow) this is consistent with RB's characterization but he is not doing a good job of communicating it.

I could buy Beef just chastising himself in those words based on the fact that he has got depression, but to have it confirmed that Beef "failed" somehow, I just don't understand it.

I mean, who is the dying man? Is it the karma machine? Or perhaps the president of Williams-Sonoma, whom he abandoned to the angry lesbians?

I'm sure the real answer is supposed to be "himself" but I can't really figure out why; see my earlier complaints about not "getting" RB's characterization, I guess.

Well the Karma Machine was a good design, anyway. And the detail of Molly calling it his "little" 'zine-around club. I mean, who is not driven crazy by having their interests referred to in this way?

For what it's worth, side_show, I thought the lottery ticket story was cool. When I first read it, I was thinking "Oh, that's such a waste of money, why would you do something like that?" and then I thought that, if you're spending the money on the lottery, the money is just going back to the government (isn't it? I don't actually know how this works with scratch-offs). It's a sort of strange, almost self-defeating thing. I can see how there was a lot to talk about. There are a few different avenues of thought that can branch off from there (economy, gambling addiction, the nature of art) if you stop to think about it. I'm glad that it got people talking.

I also find the story-broadcast one really interesting, but I can't think of a way to express why without getting weirdly touchy-feely in my third post on a message board. Just assume I wrote something here about six degrees of separation and never knowing about all the lives you touch and all that jazz.

Okay, I am a long-time lurker, and I am so so sorry that my being motivated to post here for the first time is in a random political thread. You guys are awesome! Seriously!

But this:

I want to move to Japan. I want to live in a country where the trains run on time?  Oh, wait, one where there actually are trains, even. They wouldn't put up with this shit. At least if they did screw up this bad, they'd be mortified and commit harakiri. Is that too much to ask?

...just spurs me to feel I need to post. I have my Bachelor's in Japanese, I work as a translator, I've spent a lot of time Japan, and I have a number of friends/roommates who have lived there in the span of years.

The trains in Japan do not always run on time. It's true enough that trains rarely run late because of infrastructure difficulties, but when they do not run on time, the primary cause is because people are jumping on the tracks to kill themselves. It's a phenomenon common enough to have its own term (tobikomi-jisatsu; "plunging suicide") and its own official government euphamism (jishin-jiku; "human accident").

Japan has one of highest suicide rates of any first-world country, and it's largely because of those personal standards they hold themselves to. (I don't know if you were being serious with the line about them committing harakiri if they messed up, wombat, but it's honestly pretty accurate.) The Japanese are masters of the art of suicide, both grotesque (as the farmer last month who drank a bottle of pesticide and then threw it up, poisoning at least 50 around him) and sensational (as the newscaster last month who suffocated herself in her car several weeks after posting a disturbing note in her blog about how she had become a demon).

Seriously. I mean, I love Japan; there's a lot to love about Japan. It's a beautiful and fantastic and very efficient country. But there's also a lot about them that is not to be envied.

Anyway sorry I'll go now and let you guys talk about puppies I promise.