I love you, I love you America.

 Well, well, well children, I'm poking around the ol' Blogger account and this occurred to me. 

This coming Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, all this nonsense should be over. I have a good, positive attitude about the presidential election. It has all just been so tiring and divisive. And honestly, it has really broken my faith in American culture. 

But, hopefully, this coming Wednesday morning it will all be over. At least the mathematical determination of the of the outcome of the election should be over.

I do have some personal philosophical investment in the outcome of the election, as  we all should. I'm afraid that the word philosophical is never considered by many folks participating in this election. But, regardless of how you cast your vote, regardless of where you are in America, regardless of where you are in the world, I love you and wish the best for you and yours. 

Happy 2017, and all!

Here we are at the beginning of a new year. I feel I can say that, unlike years past, we are on the verge of something new. I will just add that I hope that civilization is not about to repeat the Fall of the Roman Empire. That's my take on our current sociopolitical climate, now on to less meaningful pursuits.

First, I must submit a retraction for my post of May 4, 2016. I mentioned that The Clash had recorded the tune Police and Thieves for their Black Market Clash album. This is incorrect, Police and Thieves appeared on the recording titled The Clash. Good tunes none-the-less.

2nd: I wanna round out this evil list of cover tunes with an even number, like ten. I believe we're up to number eight . . .

1. Richard Thompson covers Britney Spears
2. B-Hole Surfers cover Donovan
3. Camper Van Beethoven cover Black Flag
4. David Bowie covers The Velvet Underground
5. The Clash covers Roots Reggae
6. Sister Double Happiness covers 13th Floor Elevator
7.  Plain Wrap covers Buffalo Springfield

How about another punk rock version for the new year? How about These Boots are Made for Walkin' by Seven Seconds?

Happy New Year to you all and I hope to be typing to you again soon.

Fanatical Recycling Social Networking Analysis

Our Research Dept had determined that Facebook is a bit lacking in the Social Networking dept.

Things that I have observed this week.

1. No, Mr. My-daughter-has-a-Hawaiian-flower-tattoo, you can not find a Hibiscus bush with a purple flower in East Tennessee. Notice how a majority of the Hibiscus flower colors are red, pink and yellow? This guy goes in my "cultural decline" file.

2. The Screaming Trees are the bastard love child of Ian Astbury (The Cult) and the Meat Puppets.

Hard to believe that, as a young lad, I saw the Trees and the Meat Puppets play at the same tiny club in Birmingham, Al. That club would be the notorious Nick, notorious if you're from Birmingham because; A. it is so small!, B: notorious for booking punk and alt rock shows or generally alternative music of any kind. I also saw Henry Rollins preform there with Rollins Band and, years later, saw Vic Chesnutt preform there.

Didn't mean for my observation to become a trip down memory lane, music's good, on any day, at any age.

Cheesy Bread, Cheesy Brand

Dear Domino's Pizza,

If Cheesy Bread is the best product you have to lead your marketing chamaign, you might want to rethink you whole business model. But if your goal is to be the McDonald's Corp of the pizza service industry than I think your current campaign is on track.

Where do I start?

I ask this because I have two unrelated issues to mention and I don't want to imply that these are categorically similar. I'll start with the good news; I was wrong, as is often the case, we did not have an S.E.C. football wrap-up. I should have titled that article; End of regular season S.E.C. Football Wrap-up. So, Roll-Tide or Geau Tigers, I really don't know who to support. Perhaps I should support Les Miles 'cause if he wins the National Championship he will have truly earn the title of Mad Hatter.

Second, I'm sad to report that, I have another photo example of cultural decline. Once again I have an example from the world in which I work everyday. The sign says, "Free holder with plant purch's." I asked the cashier if they had plant perches and he said he wasn't going there.

And one more cultural observation, Staind sucks and the band that once gave us this song is now wimp rock too.

The 18th of the month is a good day for me

Or, in this case, the 16th of the month is a good time for me to throw some teases on the ol blog. Here's a random idea I've been thinking of using as a soapbox; three things symbolic of the decline of civilization as we know it, flip flops, lounge pants and wife-beater under shirts. Wearing any combination of these pieces of apparel indicates no intention to go to work or accomplish any task that might be considered labor.

I was thinking of this while driving to work today because these are very popular clothing items in E. Tennessee. While thinking and driving I passed by another icon of E. Tn. culture the discount beer and tobacco store. The tobacco must be cheap at those places because they always advertise brands with which I am unfamiliar, like Pyramid or Tahoe. I have occasionally visited one of these shops to get a six pack and a lottery ticket and their beer prices are higher than the price at the grocery store. This confuses me since the shops are called “Discount Beer and Tobacco.” So, I’m gonna ask them. I’ll look at the grocery store price and go to the discount shop, while buying my Miller Lite or Pabst Blue Ribbon I’ll ask the clerk about the discount. Then I’ll take a photo of the shop and share our Southern Culture with all.

On a more positive note, all the way around, I have three summer beers to write about and hope to start these posts next Monday.

Winter Wonderland at minimum wage.

The weather outside is frightful and all that good mess. It was beginning to snow as I was leaving my temp job recently and one of my co-workers commented, "let's hope it sticks." I'm thinking to myself, "we just worked two short weeks in a row so you people just make less than your requisite $265. a week but you wanna miss more work?" As the guy who made comment is standing out in the snow, waiting for his carpool to arrive?

Happy New Year at minimum wage.

At my “regular” job I’m a Merchandising Representative. If the title sounds snazzy, I’m here to explain the deception of snazzy titles. Merchandising Rep. only means that I’m employed as a whippin’ boy for a third party vendor. Simply, my employer sells their product to a big box retailer and I travel to these stores to merchandise and, or represent the product. Too further complicate matters; I’m employed by a nursery, a vendor and grower of flowering plants and other landscape material.

Of course, flowers and landscape plants only sell during warm weather, so I’ve taken a job through a Temp. Service too supplement my income this winter. This job is at the distribution warehouse for a local media wholesaler. My co-workers are also employees of the Temp. Agency and they are nothing if not consistent. They are consistently entertaining, to me, and consistently criminally negligent. (More on criminal negligence later.)

At the warehouse we “sort” the media all day. This is much like sorting produce, putting apples with apples etc., but the media is sorted by the title. One day we were sorting some travel guides, the title was Barcelona. I made some comment like; “I would love to visit Barcelona,” to which my co-worker replied, “I’ve never heard of it.”

If I could only write as consistently as these people entertain me I'd have a real bang-up blog.