Three strikes and Sam is out

Google "Walmart Sucks" and you can be entertained for hours.

I go for the groceries and little else. I resisted even that until the day my local grocery store wanted $3 for a little can of corned beef hash.

Occassionally I permit a little spasm of optimism to shake up my generally cynical outlook. Today was such a day. I needed three things: a children's book, a set of book-ends and a "forced" bulb -- a bulb in a pot. I had 30 minutes on my lunch break so thought I could sweep it all up at Sam Walton's megapolis.

Stop One: The garden section. Says the stocker to me, "We aren't carrying those (forced bulbs) right now."

Perhaps they are waiting for July, when forced bulbs are all the rage. Please note the sarcasm.

Stop Two: Household goods. No sign of book ends. I track down a clerk. "We don't carry those anymore," sales associate says.

My rather flimsy temper is beginning to fray. "Don't people put books on shelves anymore?" I ask. She just looks puzzled, poor thing. Maybe doesn't know what a book is.

Stop Three: Book section. I go back and forth amidst trashy paperback romances and coloring books, in a vain search for something resembling children's literature. Walmart's stock, at least at this urban location, consists of about three picture books and some pathetic Disney princess paper-waste.

Strike three, you're out.

I have come to understand the big box store strategy: Convince the world that you sell everything. Drive your competition out of business with your falsified claim. Then carry almost nothing.

But of course I have only myself to blame. Sam depends on people like me to fill his pockets. If millions of joes like me were to go elsewhere, his empire would crumble.

Unfortunately, I would have to be willing, once again, to pay $3 for a can of corned beef hash.

Aargh!

Charlie Brown was the master of a certain expression of agony that is today largely replaced in pop-culture by reference to various forms of poop.

"Aargh!"

It always rose in shaky black font letters above his unhappy head.

Today is an aargh day for me. Today I know how he feels.

In spite of writing the event down on not one but two calendars ...

In spite of a personal phone call that I received yesterday reminding me ...

Still I went about my work this morning somehow believing that Thursday (i.e., tomorrow), not Wednesday (i.e., today), was the day of the big event.

It was no less than a very important community meeting in which I would not only represent the school district, not only make the announcement that our school district would host the next meeting, but also would receive a nice, hot lunch.

Someone called me from the meeting an hour into it. My absence had been noticed.

Not that it did any good but I drove on out there post-haste, too late to do much of anything, certainly too late for the lunch.

I missed kicking the proverbial football and I can't even blame Lucy for this one.

I sat through what was left of the meeting with my tummy rumbling. I drove back to the office in the rain and ate a cold tuna sandwich alone in the break room.

Why is there some stubborn, stupid, part of me that resists looking at my calendars, that fights so hard against the attempt of the rest of me to actually be an organized, productive human being? Why cannot I extricate that part of me, pluck it out like some kind of tapeworm, kick its sorry %$^, then throw it beaten and bloody into the cargo hold of a plane bound for Mogadishu?

Doin' the moron mosey

"You're bringin' on the heartbreak
Bringin' on the heartache." --Def Leppard

Oh, you child of churlishness
you stalwart of stupidity
didn't your parents ever teach you
to look both ways?

My laptop and my lunch go flying
from passenger seat to the floor
My blood boils
and I hail you with my horn

Consider yourself lucky
that I blasted your ears
and didn't break your bones
with my bumper

You give a shrug
you idiot you
"What, me worry?"
Oh, you'd worry all right

If you woke up shattered
in a hospital bed
or worse, in that corner of hell
reserved for the incorrigibly stupid

You are a man in body
but with the naivete of a newborn newt
and the cranial capacity
of a punch-drunk 'possum.

Brilliant behavior

My morning has been quite busy, keeping administrators in the know about some junior high school pea-brain who called in a bomb threat to his school.

... From his school.

On a cell phone.

Repeatedly.

His cell phone.

Not some stolen phone that could be tossed in the trash without a trace.

Not a corner pay phone from which one could walk away anonymously.

His own phone.

In the school.

Yeah,he's been arrested. Ought to be charged with egregious, felonious public stupidity.

Ig-Nobel Peace Prize: the death of a great idea

Today it finally hit me:

Whilst the Nobel Prizes in medicine and other fields, are honorable and generally deserved, the Nobel Peace Prize itself, being actually administered by an entirely different body of judges -- a handful of secret folk from one little country in Europe on Planet Earth -- no longer means anything.

It now bears all the grandeur for thinking folk of an award from MoveOn.org, PETA, the NRA, the Moral Majority or a committee of delinquent kids in your local middle school. It is purely and completely in the hands of determined leftists, a sham, a mockery of the grand idea that it once was. As such, without some attempt to broaden the judging pool, it no longer deserves respect.

I began to understand this when Jimmy Carter won the last time and it was made quite clear that he received the award as a poke in the eye of the-then president of the U.S.

I don't like Jimmy Carter. I hate his politics, his disaster of a presidency and his recent generalizations. BUT, even so, I can recognize that he is a hard-working man who has labored for decades in the cause of peace. I could understand the case for Carter getting the Award.

But Obama?

Has Obama ever confronted a dictator? No, he shakes their hands.

Has he ever promoted democracy? No,he is doing his best to ensure that it dies in Honduras.

Where was he three years ago? In a gulag? Under house arrest in Burma? Confronting the People's Liberation Army in China? Hardly.

Maybe Obama will eventually do wonderful things in the world. But even some of his strongest supporters concede that this designation was a little too early given.

Snake-a-phobia

My blogfriend Kat's healthy, well-informed attitude towards snakes is an inspiration to me. She knows to watch out for them, but She doesn't panic at the sight of them nor seek to kill them.

Lately my state seems to be racked with snake-a-phobia. I overheard someone at a meeting last week express relief that another friend had run over a snake in their neighborhood. My nephew-in-law,who does maintenance work at an apartment, told me with great exaggerated gestures the other day, about how he had deliberately run over a "big copperhead snake" with his riding mower and "chopped it all up."

When I conjectured that perhaps what he saw might have been a harmless black snake, gestures of annoyance were sent my way and insistence that indeed, it was a copperhead.

Now I know that copperheads and water mocassins do live in my area. I also know that they don't seek out people and are part of a snake population that also includes serpents of a non-venomous nature. I have hiked the swamps and hills of my surrounding woodlands for more than ten years and failed to see a single snake, whether venomous or non. In other words, we are hardly in peril.

And I really get annoyed with people who kill a harmless, even beneficial creature, just because it is a snake.

I will not buy cypress mulch

The tragic genius of man is that if he works at it hard enough, he can find a way to exploit just about anything.

How about an ugly, inedible sea mollusc? Well, turns out the cuttlefish makes a great toy for caged birds. A root that forks like the legs of a man? Medically useless, but try telling that to superstitious people who pay dearly for ginseng. Horseshoe crabs? Scientists drain their blood for research.

Somebody recently discovered that the great sentinels of our southern swamps, cypress trees, make a long-lasting, pest-resistant garden mulch. And the saws are now cutting them, fast and furious, to sprinkle upon the suburbs of America.

That is a sad and sorry fate for such a special tree, arborial neighbor to the 'gator and cottonmouth, the eagle and the muskrat.

I will not buy cypress mulch. I will not be as those who tore down the buildings of Rome for cobblestones and doorstops. I will not spread the shattered shavings of this wild wonder upon my petunias.

http://mygardenguide.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1242&Itemid=27

Doo-doo

I know the difference between due and do.
Just as I know the difference between its and it's.
Sabbath and Sabaoth.
Your and you're.

But I just sent out an all-hands email to our school district declaring "do to the inclement weather ..."

And so, though I wish I could blame evil spirits haunting my computer, I feel like a complete moron.

Like a Dallas Cowboys fan.

Like a hoary old Marxist-Leninist still kissing Mao's picture on the wall.

Like one of those dim bulbs who show up with, ahem, gifts and plans for underage girls in To Catch A Predator.

Like high school dropout rock musicians who attempt to articulate government policy.

Like ... well, you get the picture.

Dumb. Dumb as a sack of sand. Dumb as Patrick Star(fish). Indeed, dumb as Patrick Star on crystal meth after dropping out of high school to become a Mao-suit-wearing rock musician in order to impress an investigator posing as an underage girl in a stake-house (not steak-house) somewhere in Anytown USA.

In-doo-bitably.

Snarky Scotsman!

What is worse than an editor who miscorrects text, introducing an error where no error existed before?

Perhaps a blogger who keeps promising to visit his blog friends and barely follows through?

I did swing by Trisia's bloghouse last night, and Maria's briefly today, but I am still embarassingly behind. And I can't expect visitors here if I never leave Isis, can I? That's an iron rule of blogworld: you have to give to get.

Today, I had to send out a release about a local concert series which would feature the classic works of Aaron Copland. Yes, Copland, not Copeland.But yours truly introduced an "e" into the text that was sent to me, being quite unfamiliar with the family history and the doughty old Scotch immigrant who anglicized the family name from Kaplan to Copland.

A little research would have saved me, but I did not do it. I thought I knew best.

No one has called me on the carpet yet. But the day is still young.

Have we lost our manners or our minds ... or both?

Someone posted this up on that yahoo questions-answers website, and the issue was resolved and closed before I could add my input.

"Would this be considered rude?
Last week I was at Disney World, and I stopped for a cigarette break in one of the "designated smoking areas", which is clearly marked and written on all the trashcans and ashtrays as the only places to smoke in the park. It's even marked on the maps so people know exactly where they're located.

Well, all was fine and dandy until about a minute after I sat down and lit up a cigarette, when a couple decided to sit down next to me in the smoker's area to eat. After a few seconds, the lady started doing the "fake cough" that non-smokers do when they're annoyed by your smoking, then she just gave me an evil death stare. When I didn't respond to her, she went off on me about how disgusting smoking is and saying "Can't you see we're f**king trying to eat here?!?!"

I was shocked. Yes, I know smoking is disgusting and gross and yadda yadda yadda... but if she felt that strongly about it, why on Earth would she sit down in the smoker's area to eat her food? Out of all the places in Disney World to sit down, you choose to sit in the smoker's area and then yell at ME?!? The area is CLEARLY marked... she could have sat across the street... I don't get it.

So was it rude for her to yell at me or did I do something wrong that I'm not aware of? Why would she sit next to me in the smoking area if she felt so strongly about smoking? I'm so confused.
2 weeks ago
Additional Details
2 weeks ago

Thanks for the answers everybody. I wish I wasn't so non-confrontational... I wish I said something to her, but I was just in shock that I was being cussed out at Disney World of all places for seemingly doing nothing wrong.

I know most nonsmokers are offended by cigarette smoke, and I'm pretty used to being berated for it, so I always try to be as polite as possible, which I thought I was doing by smoking in one of the few places I was allowed to in the park.

I don't know if she was trying to prove a point or what she was trying to achieve by sitting there... I mean, she was sitting practically right in front of the ashtray, so she obviously knew she was in the smoker's area. I seriously don't understand."


Something no one mentioned in their responses to this poor guy: not only was it a designated smoking area, he was in that place FIRST. When it comes to the great outdoors, unless there is a sign that clearly says NO SMOKING, if I see someone smoking and I choose to sit next to them,I have zero right to complain.

More and more lately, it seems that when it comes to smoking, people have utterly forgotten their manners -- and I am NOT talking about the smokers!

As most of you know, I do not smoke. But I passionately object to people using their dislike of smoking as a screen for simple, ugly rudeness. It's the smokers today -- who will be attacked tomorrow?

And now I will step down from my soapbox and let my blood pressure return to normal.

Freaky Friday

I wore tennis shoes to work today.

My worn-out, dirt-stained tennis shoes.

They don't go well with my slacks and tie.

My office does not celebrate Casual Friday, by the way.

I cannot explain why I did this. But by the time I realized my mistake, I was of course 30 minutes drive from home and could do absolutely nothing about it.

Stupid Person Number 3,423,455

Dude comes blazing by me this morning in a red Mustang like I was Granny Go-slow and he was fresh off the NASCAR track.

I'm doing my usual 70-75 miles per hour or so (I guess that's about 160 km or whatever), keeping my eyes out for the cops that love this stretch of the freeway. Yeah, it's 55 mph for no reason that I can understand and I hate it myself.

So I know Hotshot Harry had to be nearing triple digits.

Like the fade-out dot on an old tv, he vanishes down the road ahead of me, leaving behind the roaring of his engine.

Couple minutes later, I see him stopped on the shoulder with Smokey getting out to write up the ticket.

What an idiot. If you are going to drive that damn fast, you'd be better be sure you have a radar detector AND a radar jammer in your car.

Didn't look so cool any more sitting there while everybody else rolled on by.

The wisdom of some old Roman dude

"Vulpis ad personam tragicam"

Personam tragicam forte vulpes viderat:

"O quanta species inquit cerebrum non habet." -- Phaedrus

No, I don't understand the Latin without a handy translation to guide me. But I like the look and the sound of it. And the sentiment is classic. Here it is in English:

The Fox Before the Tragic Actor's Mask

A fox, after looking by chance at a tragic actor's mask, remarked: "O what a majestic face is here, but it has no brains!"

Gas Prices 101

Last month, some well-meaning soul sent me an email urging me not to buy gas on May 15 to punish the oil companies.

Sadly, their effort apparently bore no fruit, as I heard of no bankruptcy proceedings for any major oil companies the next day.

Now, the latest missive is to boycott Exxon indefinitely. Nice try, once again. Won't work. America (the U.S.) is too diverse a nation these days for that, which is good in many ways, bad in others. In other words, there is no godlike figure who can stand up anymore and command the devoted loyalty of virtually the entire nation. No Martin Luther King Jr., no Cesar Chavez, no John F. Kennedy, etc. If the Messiah Himself appeared in Central Park tomorrow and told the nation to stay home next Thursday, millions of people would still be found out playing golf on that day, oblivious, clueless or obstinate.

Here are a few things to consider if you are currently seething with hatred for oil companies:

How big is your car? If you are driving an SUV or some massive pickup that carries around nothing heavier than your butt and a few leaves that drifted into the back of it, then please go away, go far, far away, because your complaining only makes you look stupider.

How heavy are the taxes on gas in your area? And did you vote for the politicians who support/imposed them, who are now crying crocodile tears about high gas prices? Again, go away, you bother me.

Are you aware that stats show that despite our whining, Americans are buying more gas than they were two years ago?

Are you aware that millions of people in China who used to ride bicycles in the post-Mao days, now drive cars? And that their cars run on gasoline, just as ours do? And that they have just as much a right to drive cars as we do? And that until we finally, as a planet, overcome our gas addiction, the laws of supply and demand dictate that all those new gas tanks will keep the price of the stuff ever higher? And that no internet campaign, no angry boycott, will change any of that?

Somebody killed the Easter Bunny

Upon exiting my neighborhood this morning, making the very sharp turn where the posted speed limit is 20 mph, what to my wandering eyes should appear, but a rabbit, flattened in the left lane.

I pondered how anyone could accidently,while driving anywhere close to 20 mph (on a road with little traffic and few distractions) run over a rabbit, one of the fastest creatures around. And I'm not superstitious, but to kill a bunny so close to Easter just seems like a bad omen.

I'm an admitted speed demon on the freeway, but even I am quite aware that children, not just small critters such as that unfortunate rabbit, inhabit neighborhoods and people too stupid or distracted to slow down and pay attention in such areas, should have their drivers licenses burnt to ash, their nose hairs plucked and their behinds permanently exiled to the city bus system.