LT Poopers just finished cleaning my morning yogurt cup and I'm checking my news feed.
So in the news... not sure what all the hullaballoo is about Steve Jobs' passing. (R.I.P., by the way.) Was he like Bill Gates, who defied convention and succeeded wildly after he eschewed "traditional" education? (Which today, doesn't hold a candle to a classical college education). A nobleman? A visionary? Anything more than a grand corporateer? Why have 14 people on my Facebook made some kind of comment? The first few probably were those that wanted to "scoop" everyone. The next wave, just looking for an excuse to use the bullhorn. A few geeks were legitimately disturbed.
UPDATE: O.k., Steve Jobs was cool. (LINK) He hung out with the Hare Krishnas across town, walking 7 miles for his meal. He did leave college, but only because it was overpriced (bonus points), and only took a $1 yearly salary since 1997 (major cool).
~~
Speaking of corporateers, in my section of Mudville, we have several cookie-cutter "big box" style pet stores already, and across the street some new pet superstore is going up. Why? Monstrous concrete plazas teem with Harris Teeter and Walgreen's. How many huge pet stores and drug stores do we need in the same 5 mi. radius? This is why people call southeastern Virginia "Strip Mall Hell."
For the sake of revenue, the city council in tandem with the real estate owners have deemed it necessary to choke the life out of a small Shell gas station that had been run by the same family for 41 years - and replace it with another Walgreen's. Their rationale was about the corniest thing I've ever heard: that this promotes the "live/work/play environment" we strive for. G*d, what, is this The Sims? Enough is enough - so ugly, so tacky. We're lucky we haven't named it "towne centre" yet, which inevitably follows in the cycle of snobbishness.
Keep the little guys in play - do your part to support them. As to the pet store sitrep - I have at least FOUR massive pet stores within five miles of me. To be fair, the new one is a privately owned local franchise, so I will support it. We sag, we lag, our industry and production is nearly completely foreign-based, efficiency ordered, convenience centered. So as an appropriately placed reminder of what's lurking up-river:
"China has enjoyed a long time running a massive trade surplus against the united states and other countries and as the country has grown fat with our money and we have grown fat on their cheap goods the American people are hurting for jobs and low wages and it is time for the free ride to be over." ~roguepatriot
No big box post would be complete witthout letting it be known that we welcome our new Big Box overlords! Down with creativity and self-enterprise! Up with live-work-play "towne centre" concrete oasis with Walgreen's at the heart!
We have it good. But we also have it bad. We are living the lives of leisure and comfort that our parents and their parents and so on wished for us. No full comment from here yet on all these micro-protests being staged ("Occupy Wall Street") but they're getting a lot of negative publicity. Lots of self-contradiction (capitalism vs. mandates for freebies), lots of confusion, lots of shilling for propagandists like George Soros.
~~
So here's some bachelorrific stuff to end on: Last night approx. 11:00 P.M., I went to work on repairing the sh!tter, which is leaking at a slow rate, leaving a high water mark on the sides. I did this while listening to Wes Craven's Swamp Thing, then I marveled at the synchonicity of these two events.
I fixed a heavy frying pan today which was warped at the center (dented outward) and did not distribute the heat evenly. I lamented at not having a hammer handy to do this. So I put it on the countertop upside down, and smacked it with a palm heel. Suddenly, this confirmed my status as a man. Still can't cook fried chicken worth a **** though.
As I tossed out the empty package of roasted vegetables, which had been used to top my fried chicken sandwich, the container splattered leaving olive oil trickling down the wall. LT Poopers needed a little bit of guidance, but she was able to mostly lick the wall clean, and that spared me from wetting down a sponge and doing it myself. I'd like to thank my parents on up for affording me this privilege.
No comments:
Post a Comment