Black Friday Shopping Adventures

I have a confession to make. I like Black Friday shopping ... mostly.

I don't like doing it at home, and I don't like doing it alone (two key features of my life right now), but the challenge, the thrill and the general hurly-burly of it all just gets my blood pumping.

I don't like doing it alone, because everyone needs a partner in crime for things such as this. Someone to watch your cart when you need to go to the bathroom, etc. One woman today left her cart and walked around the back of a rack to grab something, and in the two minutes she was away from her cart, the jackals had descended on her cart and taken half of her stuff.

I don't like doing it at home because I live in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has a "fair competition law" which basically states that a company cannot sell a current item at a loss in order to drum up business. Thus, all of the major retailers have to create separate prices and ads for Wisconsin (and Minnesota, as I understand it) in which the prices are about ten percent higher. Needless to say, as a firm believer in the basic tenets of capitalism, I don't like to shop in an artificially created business climate.

So, when Thanksgiving rolls around, I hop in the car and visit one of my friends, and we do a great dinner and go Black Friday shopping.

This year, we had a slightly different plan than in past years. We went out at midnight so that she could snag some kid's pajamas for her boys (an annual tradition). Walmart was a study in order and chaos. Around the pallet of video games, you had all of the ,young, unmarried gamers in what was basically a rugby scrum. Around the pajamas, the moms had told each other what they were looking for and if the one right up at the pallet found yours before she found hers, she passed it to you to help you out. One wonderful woman even got hers, set them on top of the display then helped other people find theirs.

We accomplished everything we wanted, except we passed on stopping at Menard's, due to the fact that the line to get in wrapped across half of the front of the store and down one of the sides.

At almost every store, we were in and out in about half an hour, a testament to Katie's planning and preparation for the adventure. In most of the stores, there was no pushing, shoving or grabbing. Most of the people were kind and friendly.

At BigLots, there was a rather obnoxious woman giving the clerks a hard time over another clerk handing a woman a limited quantity item, then taking it back when he realized she didn't have the "I waited in line for this" ticket they had handed people as they walked in. Then, to top it off, she was arguing with them over the WRONG item, due to the fact that she didn't read the banner at the top of the ad that said "available Saturday only". I felt so bad for the clerk, that when she (somewhat rudely, given that the mistake was hers) demanded to know what time they opened the next day, I chimed in with "the time posted on the door", which then set this beastly woman on me, giving the poor clerk a very short reprieve.

I vaguely remember reading or heading someone say that the day after thanksgiving should be called "thanksgetting". That may sound a bit extreme, but if you haven't gone Black Friday shopping lately, may I suggest you strap on your pads and helmet, and give it a try.

8^) Jim
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:1st St,Sunfield,United States

The Integrity of our Elections

Elections are no longer about the will of the people. There, I said it.

The will of the people, if it to be properly determined has to be done in a manner which leaves no doubt as to the veracity of the election results.

Enter modern elections. Early voting, same day registration, and no identification required have opened our electoral system to widespread vote fraud. wether it is the buying or bullying of votes via corrupt political machines of the past such as Tammany Hall, or modern vote fraud of registering ficticious people from non-existent addresses and then later voting in their names, our electoral system cannot be guaranteed to be safe and accurate.

At a minmum, we need:

• Pre-registration, at least 30 days in advance
• Identification required to vote on election day
• Voting only ON election day or absentee via mail ...

these are the first, sane steps needed to ensure valid and fair elections.

Getting back up to speed ...

once upon a time, I said in one of my posts that I wanted to update this blog more or less daily. As you can see by th etime gap between my last post and this one, I havne't exactly held up to that now, have I? What has made my life soooo, hectic that I have neglected this blog?

Short answer: I am a teacher.

Long answer: I am a teacher attempting to have a life.

In the past couple weeks, I have been turning a few things over in my brain that would affect this blog and a few other things.

#1: I am so buying an iPad. This is important because, well, I want one and a while back I was not too keen on them.

#2: I may retitle the blog. not sure yet, since I really like this title and format.

#3: I want to change the layout .... done! Boy that was easy!

#4: I am contemplating a different narrative style for writing the blog, making it more ... I dunno, personal.

#5: I will stop cross-posting at TCUNation ... too much work involved.

More to come ...

OK, make up your minds environmentalists!

So I was talking to a friend today.  She takes issue with the fact that I take issue with environmentalism.  Our discussion today was caused by this article about Arizona spending $1.25 million to save some endangered squirrels.

She argued that spending the money was a good thing because of the whole circle of life thing, saying you never know what bad things will happen if this particular breed of squirrel goes extinct.  I countered with extinction being a PART of the circle of life, and to name one bad thing that has happened because the dinosaurs became extinct.  Her counter was that dinosaurs became extinct because of a natural event, not because we were building roads through their habitats.

That got me thinking about life and common sense.  According to environmentalists, we (humans) are the product of a billion years or so of evolution.  If this is true, what is humankind but a very evolved animal – the king of the animal kingdom if you will, the top of the evolutionary ladder.

Now the other side of the argument is creationism.  God said, and it came to pass.  End of story.  We are created, we didn’t come from no monkey.  God created the earth, planted a garden, and then created man to care for the garden.  Expand the metaphor of the garden to the planet, and God gave us the earth and wants us to take care of it.

Which leads to the question: why is it that conservative religious groups who believe in the literal words of the Bible don’t seem to care about the planet?  Why is it that eco-leftists who believe we are just another animal care about the planet more than anything else? 

So, my question to eco-leftists and environmentalists is, if humans really are just highly evolved animals, then we are a PART of nature and everything we do is an act of nature.  The answer is simple: ALL SPECIES CHANGE THEIR ENVORONMENT TO THEIR BENEFIT: as sure as that dam built by beavers causing flooding in a valley is a part of nature, that road through the mountains is a part of nature because we are a part of nature (according to environmentalists).

As for creationism, I am not sure what I believe.  Intelligent design, day equals age, seven literal days, evolution, I honestly don’t know any more.  I prefer to focus on the here and now, and spending $1.25 million to save a squirrel population of 250 from extinction really doesn’t matter in the world of the here and now.

Congratulations, Mr. Jobs, It’s a Fad

There are those people. Those … Apple people. They are people who watch the podcasts of Steve Jobs introducing a new product and have an overwhelming desire to touch themselves in naughty places. They buy every new apple product no matter how useless it is.

I work with two guys who are solid Apple guys. Between them they own everything that has ever come out of Cuppertino. One of them has an Apple TV for cryin’ out loud (talk about a useless product. You buy an Apple TV, and then you use it to buy videos … from Apple!) Well, both of my Mac Guys have decided to pass on the iPad until they had proof it was worth buying. Both of them have admitted that the iPad doesn’t really seem to have any real world use.

But, the iPad will be an initial success. Why? this guy in a Bloomberg online article said it best: “It’s ridiculously expensive, way overpriced,” said Josh Klenert, a 36-year-old graphic designer, who still went ahead and bought one. “You may call it a dumb computer or a smart telephone --it’s in between. It’s a unique, sexier device.”

Five hundred bucks for an electronic paperweight seems a little steep to me.

It all started with a bumper sticker …

The Name Game.  Liberal, liberal fee-fi-iberal.  Conservative, conservative moo-oink-ervative.  Lets get real.  Republican?  Democrat?  Liberal? Conservative?  Those terms have become irrelevant.  They have been stripped of all meaning by history and a press that is quick to cast the fog of war on politicians they don’t like.

Many, many years ago, I remember a bumper sticker that said “I’m not anti-abortion, I’m PRO-LIFE”.  This set off a revolution over political naming rights.  Who has the right to determine what a person is called politically?  Pro-Life has such a  … well, positive, sound to it.  Of course, so as not to be considered “anti-life”, abortions rights people decided to describe themselves as “pro-choice”.

Republicans haven’t always been conservatives, and conservatives haven't always been American in their ideals.  A conservative is one who believes that the established order should be maintained and protected, while a liberal wants to change the established order (usually  in the name of reforming it).

By those definitions, the American Patriots fighting for independence were liberals, and the loyalists were conservative.  The Confederates, fighting for states rights and against federal intervention in property laws were conservatives and the abolitionists were liberals.

I think that one of the weaknesses of political discourse today is a lack of absolute terminology.  Mark Levin in his book Liberty and Tyranny prefers the term “statist” to describe the main body of the current Democratic party.  A statist is one who believes in “giving a centralized government control over economic planning and policy” (dictionary.com definition of statism).

I am anti-statist.  I believe that the best thing government can do is get off our backs and let the American People be free and prosperous again.  This is something you will unlikely get with Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives in the United States today.

What conservatives need to win …

This will be short and sweet in honor of Valentine’s Day.  If conservatives really want to win this November, they need something.  They need specificity.  The democrats won by whining and complaining.  The American people, now that they are seeing specifics of the democrats ideas and plans, they don’t like it.

So, for the republicans to win… for conservatives to take the government back, they need to put forth to the people a unified, SPECIFIC plan and message, much like the Contract with America from 1994.  Call it the American Plan for Prosperity or something.  Here is my wish list for the plan:

• Include in it a simplified tax code with three brackets (starting at $18,000.00 and eliminate the EIC at the same time) and close the current loopholes the tax code is riddled with. 
• Include in it a tax subsidy for homeowners who add solar and wind electrical generation systems to their homes if those systems feed power back to the grid.
• Include in it a cap on punitive damages in medical malpractice cases at the amount of the $500,000.00 or the ten-year average of the doctor’s annual salary, whichever is more.
• Include in it a ten-year plan of spending and construction to retrofit all existing federal buildings with green technology.
• Include in it a portability law which allows workers to take their health insurance with them when they change jobs, and allow people to purchase insurance across state lines.

By providing a simple, straightforward plan, with specific, measurable goals, we can take our country back from the democrats who seem hell-bent on destroying it.