Speaking of Beverages

Spaceley's has sunk to a new low. (We're talking pacific trench here). They have started charging for the little creamers, peanut butters, and honeys. They charge us more for our sodas than the machines charge. And they charge us for food that they are going to throw away. Better the garbage get it than the sprocket makers feel they might rate somewhere above protozoa on the food chain.

When they put the $.25 sign on the little honeys, I decided to put my own signs up:

ketchup : .05
mustard: .03 (cause everybody likes ketchup better)
syrup: .42 (exact change only) (side note - we never rate hot breakfast. Why do we have syrup?)
water: 12oz - .50 16oz - .75 20oz - 1.00 (double if chilled) (this is on the sink)
microwave: .50 for 30 seconds
milk: potable: .10 per squirt. rancid: free (they gave us this milk dispenser which does not keep the stuff at a healthy temp and the milk gets changed tops once a week.)
salt: $10. (we figure we can make the most here)
pepper: FREE! (who says we're heartless?)

one of these days, my attitude will get me fired. In the words of the great W: Bring. It. On.




Oh, and Bruce, if you're reading this, the product goes live tonight. Have a nice drink and a good sleep. Someone should.




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Say What?

I was cruising through the refrigerator section of my local WaWa (that's like 7-11, only waaaaay better, if you're not a Mid-Lantic resident) looking for a new tasty carbonated beverage to quaff. My poison is diet, because, like my sidebar says, I'm a weight watcher survivor, and ain't no way I'm drinking sugar or corn syrup. I save my calories for chocolate!

So, anyhow, Diet Pepsi Vanilla is gone (dammit). There's no Very Berry Dr. Pepper today (drat). But there is a new diet Coke.

Diet Coke Plus!

It has vitamins and minerals!!

Let me state this another way: they've taken a toxic sludge (tasty, but not so good for you), and tried to make it HEALTHY.

There are many things that do go with Coke:
chips
burgers
ice

There are many things that don't go with Coke:
oreos
cotton candy
HEALTHY

what are they thinking?
(oh, and it tastes like a regular old diet coke)

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What's With The Cameras?

I was on my own Saturday (long, long story), so I decided to go to a matinee. I went to see the Reaping. It seemed like it would be right up my alley: bad apocalyptic story with goofy graphics.

And, it wasn't too bad. However.

Ever since that daggone Blair Witch idiocy, there have been films which use this nauseating camerawork. (I am extremely sensitive to this stuff. I had to leave both Blair Witch and Bourne Supremacy and felt ill for hours after each.) Well, about 1/3 of this film used this camerawork.

It was so bad that I couldn't eat my raisinettes. I. Threw. Away. Chocolate.

Nevermind the PG-13 for nudity, language, intense situations. It should be rated for gnarly filming.

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May His Name Never Be Spoken

I realize it’s big news. But am I alone in thinking that all the stories about a killer glorify him in a way that makes his position “romantic” to exactly the wrong sort of people?

If I could do one thing about this whole situation, I would make it so no one published his name or his photo or anything “personal” about him. He shouldn’t be famous. He should be referred to as “the perpetrator” or something equally anonymous, and no details about him should be given that might give him an identity. Outside law enforcement documents, he should be wiped from human history.

Just my opinion.

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A Note from Stinky's School

Dear Parents & Guardians

It is necessary for me to bring an incident in school to your attention. Yesterday, a student brought some empty shell casings to school... [we] determined that at no time did this pose any threat to the safety and wellbeing of students and staff... We are addressing pertinent issues...



It's so weird. In one generation we've gone from required hunter safety classes to this. I understand their fear of guns, but empty shell casings? And sending a note to all parents about it? Next thing you know, we'll hear about the student who was suspended for bringing a quiver to school.

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108 And Counting

A few years ago, I went to Ireland on business. As I was being driven to the office, we passed a sign on the road that said “52 people killed on this road this year”. I thought it very disturbing: it was only April or so, and that “52” was in scoreboard numbers. They expected an increase.

Philadelphia has its own scoreboard. The front of the City section of the Inquirer has the number of homicides in the city for the year. We’re up to 108. A large number of those deaths are attributed to gun violence. In the “irony of the year” category, another shooting occurred yesterday, at an anti-violence protest.

This trend has all of the thinkers in the city scratching their heads. Despite the fact that the city is in pretty good shape, the murder rate has been rapidly climbing over the last few years. Our local self-assigned voice of conscience, Monica Yant Kinney, has been posting regularly about this alarming situation. Some of her recent stories have brought to light the tale of a family who lost two sons to street violence.

The first story (reg. req.) is misleading in some ways – she tries very hard to make the suburban reader associate with the victims. She states early in the story that the children grew up with both parents who were churchgoing and employed, and gives examples of how the boys/men were trying to stay above the thug culture. But their home was actually broken (Dad and Mom did not live together), and the victims’ lives exhibited signs of what most burbians look at as low-level thug culture: out of wedlock children with multiple partners and problems with the law. Yant Kinney puts fuel on the fire comparing the untimely deaths of these two young men to the loss of soldiers in Iraq.

As you can imagine, the spin she put on this story drew reactions ranging from apathy for the victims to “just desserts” mentality. This understandably upset the author, but I can kind of understand it. I do not agree with it, mind you. But I understand it. The average citizen is completely frustrated with the thugs who commit these crimes, and when people are frustrated, they don’t act or think rationally or compassionately.

What it really comes down to, in my mind, is a complete disconnect between those of us who view the city’s violence problem from the outside (neither perps nor vics) and the people who are causing the violence. The majority of people are law-abiding citizens who only wish other people well. To ask these people the root cause of the violence is tantamount to asking most of us to speak Chinese. We’ve heard the language, but it’s just beyond our comprehension. There is not a single person with a conscience who can come up with a reason to shoot someone at an anti-violence rally. The people who commit these crimes think differently than we do.

Until we find the motivations and rewards of the gangstahs and remove said motivations and rewards, there will be an escalation in violence. A person who casually shoots another person on a street corner does not care if you’ve outlawed guns. A person who guns down a child on the way to school does not care if the child’s mother cries. They Don’t Care. Period. At least, not about the same things that most people care about. Sun Tzu says Know Your Enemy, and until we acknowledge that there is an enemy in thug culture and attempt to know him, instead of excusing him, we are doomed to see the body count go higher.

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Goat Gotten

So, this morning I was hanging out with a bunch of people for breakfast. I knew most, but a few I didn't know.

One of the guys had just come back from chaperoning a trip to Europe for some high schoolers. I asked how the trip was; apparently it was a doozy. The first night, he informs us all, one of the kids bought a bottle of wine, though he had been counselled that he should watch his behavior. When he was confronted (he was not drunk), he threw a complete hissy fit (of the "you can't tell me what to do" version, I take it), and really did some bad, stupid things.

I listened, agog, and said, "what a moron."

This woman I did not know looked at me like I was some total beeyotch and said, "kids that age have trouble making decisions." As though that excuses stupidity.

Kid was 17. He blew the trip of a lifetime. (He got sent home the next day.) He was a moron. Sorry.

So, anyway, conversation changes, and eventually she starts lecturing about how scary global warming is. And I say I find the science full of holes, inconsistent, and suspect. She states that we have to DO something, before the southwest dries out. I say I have a hard time saying we should cripple our economy based on computer models which said not so long ago that we were headed for an ice age, and can't predict weather 3 hours ahead of time.

She then starts to lecture me about how the greenhouse gases are eating the ozone. I said ozone depletion was real, but caused by different compounds which we HAD attempted to control. Can't control India or China there, though, and even moreso with global warming.

I asked her what her solution was for an alternative energy resource.

She said solar power. If she had said nuclear power, she might have gotten an agreement from me. But Solar Power. GIVE ME A BREAK. Try explaining how inefficient rare electron-hole laden compounds are to a person who doesn't know the difference between global warming and ozone depletion.

She ended with how maybe we in the USA have "too many freedoms." I shit you not. She said we have too many freedoms.

The same person who thought I was being judgemental for saying a kid who ripped up his friggin passport in a foreign country was a moron thinks she can tell ME how to consume energy.

Boy oh boy, she got my goat. I have been peeved all day. Because after the "too many freedoms" comment, she walked away, as though that was a coup de grace.

My only comfort was thinking that Ogre would be much angrier than I was.

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Happy Eostre!

He Is Risen Indeed, Hallelujah!

Oh, and for you druids in the house, hail Eostre.

le lapin de paques apport des oeufs de paques

(at least that's how I remember saying it in French class all them years ago).

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Reporting From Mommyland

It’s Spring Break. Actually, it’s Holy Week, but the local schools can’t call it that, so they call it spring break. The result is that Stinky is home without a lick of anything to do. So, he decided to build himself a fort.

Please note the front gate, announcing:

Sean’s club only, no girls allowed. (He’s only in kindergarten. I think that’s pretty good!) I’m especially enamored of his flag.

What a cutie!

The moth, meanwhile, has gotten himself a new addiction. He absolutely adores Furious George. He doesn’t even bother his brother much when a new episode, like Furious George Disses the Man With The Yellow Hat is on.

Of course, his fave pass-time is still bothering Stinky. He’s a little brother, what more can be said?

Why just the other night, when Sean was trying to tell a story about what his friends did at school, Timmy kept bursting in with stories of his own. Sean turned to him and said, in his best Betsy voice, “Timmy, stop erupting. It’s rude to erupt.”

Someone should tell that to Mt. Etna.

Coot Coot – Them Gap Boys!

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