The armed forces in the United States have come around to the idea that men and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals, can be soldiers, but they are still sticklers about plumage. Hot pink lipstick is not included in battle gear.
OTOH, I have seen no men fussier about their appearance than soldiers preparing for ceremonial duty. And uniforms certainly used to be much more plumage-y than they are now; see the 11th Hussars, whose main distinction was "the incredible tightness of their cherry-coloured overalls" and were known as the Cherrypickers as a result. If you go to a military ball or something along those lines, the distinction is stark between the civilian men in black dinner jackets or black tail coats and the military men in mess dress of every colour.
marines in dress uniform are hott. weddings where they do the thing with the swords also rule.
I'm actually trying to get an underemployed friend a job at my other friend's aid mercenary business (which is up and coming, and 99% on the level). she'd do advertising, essentially, reaching out to USAID and NGOs to offer security in war-torn areas. they're opening new offices in somaliland and northern rwanda. she won't have to go there, though.
but anyway what I was saying to her is that she'd have way more boyfriend possibilities with all the hot former navy SEALS around and she was affirmatively not interested. she thinks they're meatheads. I was like, this is the fucking navy SEALS, they're not meatheads; they save those guys for infantry. she does not love a man in uniform. I'm totally mystified.
The Navy dress uniforms are much nicer than the Marines'. So there!
actually true, I just see them less often. my home in s.c. is right by parris island. if I lived in annapolis I'd probably have thought of that sooner.
I always used to think that the whole "ladies love a man in uniform" thing was a sort of Victorian joke rather than an actual contemporary observation. But I have since discovered that it's twue, it's twue!
3: I'm actually trying to get an underemployed friend a job at my other friend's aid mercenary business
I don't suppose they have any need for experienced non-profit administrators based in the Midwest, huh?
3: I'm actually trying to get an underemployed friend a job at my other friend's aid mercenary business
I don't suppose they have any need for experienced non-profit administrators based in the Midwest?
Because I really want to work for mercenaries!
9 has "sitcom potential" written all over it. Also reminds me of the only decent joke ever to appear on "Friends".
"I can't believe I'm actually considering working for Popular Mechanics."
"Hey, if you have to work for mechanics, those are the guys to go for."
1: Isn't there something in Anna Karenina about the cavalry officers sitting in cold baths to make their deerskin breeches tighter than tight?
I've mentioned before that I was quite impressed by the NFL quarterback sized SF guys I met in Kabul this summer. Not meatheads, so far as I could tell. I was also impressed by the ex-Gurkhas manning the checkpoints too, so what do I know.
From hanging around in a JTF environment episodically over the last 6 years, I also have to say that if I was picking a service to join, or to make irrational generalizations about mental whateverness, it's the Navy by a long shot.
11: No, you're thinking of Absolute Beginners, mods and Levis.
natilo, how to you feel about moving to somaliland? I believe it's some sort of libertarian paradise. naw, but I bet they will need some DC people if they don't already have them--they must, actually, I know they lobby USAID. their claim to fame, such as it is, is that they manage the whole aid project (with the NGO directing). so they don't hire any afghan subcontractors, they hire each and every person themselves, and they do the payroll, and set aside a certain number of jobs for women (even untraditional ones such as carpentry etc.) their pitch is that 80% of your money is wasted when you get it is far as kabul and then just send someone off with the cash, hoping they'll build an irrigation system, but unable to come with them to see, because the proposed location is unsafe. whereas my friend sends lots of former navy SEALs with guns to guard your convoy, and your irrigation project, so you can make sure it gets built properly. it's a reasonable business model.
14: If I could speak Somali, I'd pretty much have guaranteed employment with social services non-profits here in the Twin Cities for the rest of my working life.
The whole DC grind has never sounded that appealing to me -- I've had friends there in gov't and NGOs and it always seemed like they were inordinately happy to be gone when they left.
Sigh. I guess it's back to the salt mines for me.
12: I recall a land-navigation instructor telling us about a former SEAL who was taking the course to prepare for Army S.F. selection ("Wait, doesn't the 'L' already stand for "Land"? "Yeah, but it's mainly "SEa" and "Air") and, when asked how long and difficult he wanted his solo expedition phase to be, answered "7" (on a scale of 1-5; I asked for 2 and got caught in the rain and almost lost my way anyway).
he was just getting ready for the one where they drop you from a helicopter into some desolate national park in utah without any supplies and then wait for you to show up at the assigned point 3 days later.
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So, say you were someone who was interested in the the work of a small, non-profit arts organization, but you weren't necessarily a big backer of it. What would be a good way to get you in the door, and how would you like to be asked to update your info on email and postal mailing lists?
Door prizes?
Free events?
Raffles?
Fancy galas?
Dinner parties?
Work days?
Partnerships with other orgs?
Something wacky?
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17: We got dropped off by a biofuel-powered van, thank you very much.
18: I would vote for something wacky, but wacky is time-consuming for wacker and wacked. What about a nice ticket-discount or preview-night invitation list, with special "meet the artist" Q&As?
18: An appealing, well-organized work day is great, but a bad one is offputting. If you can find stuff for ad hoc volunteers to do, and make it look like fun, I bet you can turn them into donors.
17: And we got a knife, a blanket, a tarp and a little baggie of dehydrated lentils. I hadn't gone so long without a book at hand since I learned to read.
18: Honestly, what would get me to be more interested is if they made an explicit promise NOT to bug me.
(rant)
I hate hate hate how every arts organization in town has mandated identity information collection these days. There is no such thing as paying cash for a ticket any more, ever. Last time I bought film festival tickets I argued with them for several minutes and they WOULD NOT let me buy without giving a name and address. And I can't remember the last time I went to a play without having my name and details demanded.
I guess the next step is to give them fake data, but I really just wish that their development directors would stop blindly following fundraising advice and understand that obnoxiously tracking your customers and spamming them with mailings and selling their name to other small nonprofits really turns people off.
(/rant off)
More seriously, the single biggest driver of support for community organizations IME is sex and dating opportunities. The organizations with the best volunteer corps are the ones that have successfully managed to turn their events into appealing and fun opportunities for single people.
I've seen warehouse packing, meal preparation, and all manner of other activities turned into good events.
I gave FORTY DOLLARS to Planned Parenthood and for the next three months I got either a call every day between 3 and 4 PM, or a call between 3 and 4 PM AND a call between 7 and 8 PM. I know it's a robot doing the dialing, but that is just creepy, guys. I gave FORTY DOLLARS.
I answered the phone for a couple of the calls and they were specifically asking for a subscription donation, that is, an automatic donation every month. The idea of a one-time donation seemed to be quite undesirable compared to that.
23: It is annoying. But I have to laugh a bit when they all send out the last ditch, end of the year pleas for donations: did you not notice that I bought the discount student tickets?
It is also funny sometimes to see how the name-selling works. A few years ago we bought some symphony tickets, and very soon thereafter started getting regular mail from AARP.
I hadn't gone so long without a book at hand since I learned to read
IYKWIMAITTYD.
no, actually, that sounds awesome. 'night all.
Can I join the rant about arts organizations? I buy tickets from the A.R.T. about once every other year. They make you open an online account. So I open an account every time, and by the time I'm ready to buy more tickets two years later, I've inevitably forgotten the user name and password. So I open another account. Which means that I get half a dozen copies of every email missive they send me -- all sent to the same email address.
Tangentially related: when you are filling out the personal data, the A.R.T. website, instead of asking your gender, asks "How do you identify?". The choices, disappointingly, are limited to the customary "male" and "female".
"How do you identify?". The choices, disappointingly, are limited to the customary "male" and "female".
Other options:
"The oppressed everywhere"
"Strong, independent heroines in Regency England"
"Radar cross section"
"Distinctive pheromone emissions"
23: Yeah, I hear you on that. The thing is, I don't feel like we're spamming people at all. Like not in the slightest. I do an email blast approx. every 2-3 weeks, but only when there are things to actually report. And we haven't sent a mailing out in a year. And we never phone people. (Although we probably should once a year.)
This is why I think we have a lot of lukewarm supporters. Turnout for shows is pretty abysmal usually (we did sell out the small show I organized last week though), and we don't get a lot of people outside the core group involved in anything. It's frustrating. It's all well and good to say that nonprofits should not depend on grants so much (and right now, we really can't), but that's not compatible with having a support base that doesn't really get motivated to help.
I dunno. This is why I want to do some kind of unethical, for-profit job. Non-profits are in really bad shape right now. Everybody's scrambling for the same nickel.
[For context: 4-5 years ago, my job had almost half-again the budget, 2.5 FTE (down to 1.5 if that) staff, huge sales and lots of donations. Now we're really struggling. It's sad.]
24: That is good advice. I wonder how I would spin that? "Adult [thing that we do] Mixer" sounds a little desperate for all involved. And the thing that we do attracts women by about 10-to-1 over men. Which would hopefully be a selling point, but you know how the Nice Guys (tm) of the Internet are.
We do have an annual big party (as distinct from our annual gala, which really sucked this year), but that is more about the insiders hanging out and gossiping, rather than meeting new people.
I gave FORTY DOLLARS to Planned Parenthood and for the next three months I got either a call every day between 3 and 4 PM, or a call between 3 and 4 PM AND a call between 7 and 8 PM. I know it's a robot doing the dialing, but that is just creepy, guys. I gave FORTY DOLLARS.
PP, or more precisely the company to which they've outsourced their fundraising, is really incredibly intrusive, even by the standards of charities.
"Adult [thing that we do] Mixer"
"What? We stand. Standing is what we do."
31: I have a really fantastic album by them; kinda hilarious that they're touring.
The ruff and the reeve are the M and F of the same species, but are so different that they're been thought to be two different species. The ruff is extravagent in appearance. They are an atypical lekking species, and everyone should go to wiki to learn more. Also, mating balls.
37 suggests that Natilo obviously needs to start running an Annual Ruffs & Reeves Dance. Dress: lekking-casual.
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Needs to be buried deep in comments. My organization basically commits akind of Medicaid fraud all the time. Basically, documents get backdated so that we can bill for services provided before a treatment plan has been finalized and signed.
We also probably embellish some of our contacts. We do this less than other agencies in the state, because we have been told that we don't bill enough.
The tricky thing is that we bill by the day, days where there's a rehabilitation intervention related to an individual action plan.
The thing is that we don't actually get any money for what we bill. The state Department of Mental Health gives us a fixed amount of money. The money doesn't even go to the State Department of Mental Health. It goes into the general fund. The state pays 40-50% of the cost of a medicaid event, but since they've already allocated the money, they want us to maximize our billing so that we can get more federal money.
The funny thing is that CMS has announced that community mental health centers are going to be under scrutiny for fraud.
Nobody I know is getting rich off of this. It's driven by crazy, changing expectations from DMH. I'm not doing anything now, because I need the job, but I sort of wonder if I should report this to the Feds somehow.
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Anon Resident, do you think it would be wise to ask one of the key/holders to delete your normal e/m/ail from your sig?
Yes. I didn't see that it was there.
39: I work with Medicaid in what is almost certainly a different state, and not mental health, so grain of salt, but is your billing by any chance used to generate CPEs or something by which the DMH gets the federal money it eventually gives to you, albeit not tied to your billing? If so it could indeed be a CMS target, I think.
It's pretty tough thinking about all the financial shenanigans that go on with Medicaid, knowing that most or all of the money so obtained is going to help people desperately in need. It's kind of ridiculous that it's all under administrative systems that have the bare minimum of consistency and logic that the CMS has the manpower to check for; I wish it could be federalized, even though that would probably leave me jobless.
Have you considered telling Joe Paterno?
39: I have no idea what you should do as for reporting. It may just be that the higher-ups at both places have an understanding and it isn't fraud so much as fucked-up. Then again, it may be fraud, so try not to sign things.
Oh, and you should check if your state has started the federally required Recovery Audit Program yet. RAC will bring contractors sniffing around everything done in Medicaid and getting a cut of anything recovered, regardless of any gentlemen's agreements.
42: No, it's worse. The money does not go to DMH. It goes in to the general fund which pays for roads and all that.
I *have* to sign stuff. I try to make sure my stuff is on time. Thank God, I don't have a license. In the past, I signed the actual date and was told to change it by a senior person.
The Fed website says that you need to have a specific Medicaid number, but you can bill under Rehab option for uninsured people.
West Virginia got audited and had to pay back a lot of money.
46: It might be okay if it's pursuant to your state's waiver, which can void a number of standard federal requirements.
The billing for the uninsured and undocumented? I'm sure that's fine.
So I discussed the advice in 24 with one of our board members, and she had a great idea for how to put something like that together with a couple of other groups. We'll see if it pans out.