Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Rite Aid Republican


“Don't swear.  And 'by God' make sure you do the right thing and vote Republican this year."
"Really? Republican?"  I said smirking with amusement.

But that's not where it started. Earlier at checkout we had a prior exchange.
"That's right!" the seeming republican says, "The CEO's sit at the bank and get paid enough for all of us!!  This poor guy can't hardly afford his 2 beers I bet!!  And they make that money to just sit there and do mostly nothing!! "The 66 year old-ish republican campaigner, haunting the Rite Aid checkout and the poor clerk paid to stand there and be subjected to him, says to me this evening as i arrived at checkout.  Stepping aside from the clerk for me as he said it, harboring his unopened bag of 'Munchos' he was no doubt 'deciding' whether or not to purchase.  Rite Aid won't kick you out if it appears you might buy some chips there.  Don’t let the door to door religious people find that out ok?

But this wasn't the beginning either. When I walked into the Rite Aid initially that evening for a couple cold and cheap beers, he was there in the doorway, piping away like a boiling teakettle.  In passing as I entered, minus a look but with a quick gesture of his hand, he paused his 'obviously delightful' story, "Stick around, you don’t want to miss this, it's good."  He delivered it in mid sentence, all without skipping a beat, he expertly popped it out like a midway vendor at the state fair, and went right back to his story.  He cued it up just for me. Right? I never doubted for a pico-second that it was for me and everyone else that walked through those doors for this seasoned performer.   I didn’t stop.  I didn’t even pause or consider stopping.  The only thought I paid him was negligible, barely living at the back of my mind for the least measurable, smallest amount of time.  Hardly worthy of note to my consciousness as the sound of his continued bombarding of the other customers faded away from the ever nearing beer cooler.  It was a wordless awareness of a state of feelings about this salesman type guy.  It was sort of like, "I hope/wonder/desire if he/him/guy gone when i go back/am done/checkout"  Just a flicker of an awareness of the things that spawn actual thoughts dwelling only for the briefest moment at the edge of not being able to give any less of a shit about the situation one way or the other.

“Don't swear.  And 'by God' make sure you do the right thing and Vote Republican this year." Exactly 3 sentences prior to this, and it’s hard to ignore him when he insists on speaking directly to you,  "That's right the CEO's sit at the bank and get paid enough for all of us!!  This poor guy can't hardly afford his 2 beers I bet!!  And they make that money to just sit there and do mostly nothing!! "

 "Yeah in Japan CEO's only make about a maximum of ten times the median wage."  I could tell at that point that I had lost the old huff and puff somewhere between 'Japan' and 'median wage'.  So in an attempt to bring it back to his level I wrapped it up with a name always applicable when describing the ever widening canyon between median wage earners and CEO’s.  "Not like here where the top CEO’s make 400 times the median wage, OR MORE.  Assholes." 

“Don't swear.  And 'by God' make sure you do the right thing and Vote Republican this year."

I kept checking out, handing the cashier my money.  "That's very Republican of you to tell me how I can acceptably talk and then asking for my vote.  I think I might have to vote for Obama.  Again"

You have to love the infinite Republican morality when he is completely comfortable appealing to me now, telling me "I made the mistake and voted for Obama the first time too, but it's OK, no one is perfect. We won't EVER make that mistake again."  'Vote Republican this time and all is forgiven' basically. 

Exiting the first set of double doors I saw him setting his Munchos down to follow me. It was just something you could see in his stance and his demeanor.  I turned away to have him follow and put my fist up and shouted smiling, “GOP!”  as he followed me out to the parking lot.  I looked back as he was exiting the last set of auto doors, just after I said it, my fist still raised, my face still smiling.  He was beaming.  Giddy almost.  He parroted my cry, "GOP!" raising his fist over his head like mine, with a slight bend in his arm, just like mine.  Still smiling I said the next three words questioningly with a ‘Is this right?’ manner etched on my face, straightening the bend out of my arm for emphasis on each one.   


“Greed?  Oppression?  Poverty?”  Thinking back on it I think he may have parroted “Greed” and the first part of “Oppression” before he realized where exactly it was that I had taken him.   His good mood faded like water down a once clogged drain that had just been snaked.  He mumbled a couple unintelligible things as he got in his car.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Barry it with Viagra please

It's funny how people can just "Get behind this." I wonder what it is referencing specifically? 
 Compared to the day he got the country I am very unsure as to the amount of "screwing" of it that has taken place. I remember being a full time college student with a baby that showed up 2 months after he took office. And i remember being on foodstamps then since we were so poor, and how they went up 200$ right after Obama took office. And how Gas dropped 2.50$ a gallon then from over 4$ a gallon to around 1.60$ a gallon.  And I remember how much less fighting took place at my house after the noose of bills lessened that little bit to let us breathe finally. I remember Obamacare guaranteeing that people can't be ejected from their healthcare plan once they contract an actual disease or run into an actual condition. I remember realizing what a gunshot wound that must have been in the side of "For profit" insurance companies. There would be no more collecting 300$ or 400$ or more dollars a month from people only to make them pay their own deductibles when problems arose only to search for an ejection clause in their coverage if they contracted an expensive long term condition such as cancer.

If you've been fucking us Mr. Obama, please, by all means, pop a viagra and keep on going man. It feels great. 

Friday, April 13, 2012

SOCIAL NETWORKING RAMPAGE

I went on a social networking research rampage tonight in response to the news that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook support the new SOPA bill clone CISPA.  First I went and researched what viable sites might be worth checking out as facebook alternatives.  You know, there needs to be a newsfeed going based on your interests and when your friends say stuff in the newsfeed you generally give a shit,that’s why they are there after all and not blocked, and you hope they give a shit about things you say; and don’t block you.  If you deeply agree with some friends you barely knew that added you on facebook after a night at the bar on all manner of things like, for example,  how awesome sarcastic E-cards are; or Occupy Wall St. love it or hate it, or whether Brock Lesnar sucked or had talent in the UFC; then all of a sudden you have met your new news feed soulmate and entered personal satisfaction Nirvana; at least for the next 5 minutes until you go play "Words with Friends" or "Bubble Witch".  You know; FACEBOOK.
So in an effort to see if there were other places where this magic could take place I joined Bebo, Badoo, Google plus, and checked out the current state of Myspace.  These were the ones that the Wikipedia article on “Social networking sites” said should be close matches.  Bebo is apparently a dead and dying old myspace style site.  I had never even heard of it before checking out the link I posted.  So I immediately went and joined up and checked things out.  They suck balls. It’s pretty terrible.  There is no easy way to find any friends.  Every profile, NO JOKE, ALL OF THEM, listed peoples most recent activity and that activity was from 2009.  EVERY PROFILE I LOOKED AT.  It was kind of like looking at a death date on a headstone in a graveyard your car broke down next to. 
Badoo is listed as a "General" networking site, but it is definitely a dating site.  It is CRAZY EASY to get a profile up on Badoo though.  You single?  Get your ass on over to Badoo.  The site is cool, the interface is slick, and you won’t be single that long if you are at least both fishing for dates there and not clinically insane.  Don’t get me wrong, plenty of you single motherfuckers are def clinically insane so let’s just pretend you’re not and focus on making some sacrifices and hooking up eh?  Rofl.   At the Badoo site nearly every time you click on anything the site prompts you to put in pics.  And the pics can come from facebook.  THAT’S HUGE.  Google+ doesn’t even do that.  Too bad these geniuses don't run a more "Hang out with friends" kind of place like Facebook or Myspace.  They could run the show.
Myspace was a surprising journey tonight.  Justin Timberlake bought it awhile back, not too long ago, and there have definitely been a wide variety of changes.  The news feed looks just like Facebook now, and you will remember that is what this journey into social networking started off as.  The search for a Facebook replacement.  So now Myspace has a very Facebook like interface and design, while at the same time, allowing you to set up your info page like you always did before.  I think if they made you use your real name, they would be a very legitimate option.  It’s too bad they fail to have anywhere near the game attractiveness of Facebook or Google.  It’s also a shame they can’t relaunch under a new site name and allow existing myspace users to log in with their old myspace credentials.  SPACEBOOK!  I think that is realistically all they would need.  Oh and maybe a juggernaut like ABC and DISNEY pushing their name in nearly every hosted show like they do for Facebook.  Timberlake might have some dough but he doesn’t have that kind of swagger to through around.   He does have a great deal of pull with NBC due to his SNL fame though.  Maybe they could work something out.   
The king daddy option of the night however was Google+.  Google has Facebooks number.   And they are Google.  They have free books, and free games, and they offer some of the best perks in the world as an employer.  They stand up to governments when Governments get annoyed with wikileaks and want to ransack internet users information.  GOOGLE IS GOOD PEOPLE is what I am getting at.  They have respect for individual rights, and a brilliant vision for the future of mankind.  Oh and yeah, they have Zynga games.  And blogging.  And photos.  And newsfeeds for your friends.  And their user group interface where you can just shuffle people in and out of different news feeds… left me speechless.   I am definitely happy Zuckerberg put himself forward as a supporter of castrating the internet tonight; if he hadn’t I wouldn’t have done this research and discovered how good Google+ was finally.  Jesus, wtf was I waiting for?  I guess I was just another satisfied Facebook sheep.
The bottom line tonight is that I left out a lot of sites like Reddit, and Gawker, and LinkedIn, and Pinterest because  I wanted a “Facebook” style site that was about 90% EXACTLY like what we all love about Facebook.  Myspace has some of the games we know from facebook, but not a lot of them.  Honestly Myspace has really kind of transformed into a very facebook style place as of late though and are worth a login to your old account at the least.   Myspace still rocks Facebook’s face as far as being able to have music on your profile, and lets not forget that there is a “Forgot Password” button on their login page.  Facebook’s real competition that I found though tonight is Google+.  Google+ has Facebooks number.  IT HAS FACEBOOK’S FACE SON!  Google+ has all the games, maybe not the exact games, but the Google+ version of the same Facebook games from the same publisher, Zynga, and a slick android marketplace interface for your droid phone to get those games and apps too.  If you are rockin a droid phone, you really ought to be on Google+.  Hell, if you support keeping the internet the way it is you should be on Google+.  See you around ;)
Bebo:                    http://www.bebo.com/
Badoo:                  http://www.badoo.com
Myspace:            http://www.myspace.com/
Google+:             https://plus.google.com





Friday, April 6, 2012

The socialism of "Drill Baby Drill"

As I recall, gas hit 1.60$ a gallon for quite some time after Obama took office.  He did release oil from the reserves, and did get us a couple years of relief from the prices we are again suffering.

But you know what is actually really funny about a US government triggered market control of something like the price of oil?  It's socialist.  The "drill baby drill" idea is in fact a socialist idea.  Whether they know it or not, the same people crying about big government and health care reform, are the same people crying for socialism in things like "drill baby drill".

Here's a general letter from America, about oil;
"Dear US government, please release cheap oil into the market from your federal oil reserves in order to drive down the price of oil, especially the price of gas at the pump.

Signed,
Everyone, including and especially Fox news fans, and the greedy, objectivist, narrow-sighted Ayn Rand mother***kers that constantly cry about big government and socialism."

The "Drill baby drill" concept is a socialist concept that wants for the US to mass ration cheap oil availability into the market and thereby reduce the cost of gas. It's that simple.

It's kind of like my last boss. He would cry about big government and then tell me not to worry about work being slow because I could just claim unemployment. HOW IRONIC. He claimed 2 days unemployment every other week himself. Whah boo hoo da gubberment is evul, oh btw I'm cool with unemployment insurance benefits.

So what do you want? You want a safety net or not? You want to admit some forms of socialism are actually desirable?  Or would you rather continue to live in a fantasy world where you never actually have a valid opinion because your opinion is more all over the place and flip floppy than Mitt Romney's voting record? 

Anyway, here is the candidates stances on energy policy.

http://www.cfr.org/united-states/candidates-energy-policy/p26796

And here is the link to the "Socialism" article on wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

Have a great Easter and I hope you find many so many eggs, YOU WIN.  :)