Reason 8,475,232,997 to hate Walmart

I don’t shop at Walmart.  My number one reason has nothing to do with how they treat labor, how they ruin small towns, or anything like that.  It’s rather quite simple: there is no Walmart near me.  In the vast suburbs of northern tax-free Delaware, Walmart is nowhere near where I live or where I shop. 

Walmart has a culture of low-prices, but they’re only pennies less than Target for any item.  It’s not worth the extra gas I’d spend to schlep all the way there.  But the other reason is that even if it’s the nicest Walmart in the country, it’s still a Walmart.  I don’t know how things are in other parts of the country (if I’m traveling from state to state, it’s to visit ballparks, not Walmarts), but Walmarts up here are cluttered and unorganized, have long checkout lines, and have a certain skeevy factor about them.  I’m sure I’m just stating the obvious, as there are countless blogs that go into this ad nauseum. 

Like www.peopleofwalmart.com.  This blog is hilarious.  It chronicles the “characters” that shop at Walmarts across the country.  Do a google search, and there isn’t a people-of-target dot-com.  And I don’t know what it is about Walmart, but it just attracts people like this, even up here.  You can imply some of these people live in trailers, or as we like to say in Delaware “manufactured housing”, but I’m sure some like in shacks, hobbles, caves, etc.  OK, but for a gem like this one, there’s always a story like this one to counter it.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/arizona-couple-suing-bathtime-photos-prompt-wal-mart/Story?id=8624533&page=3

So this couple has some pictures they want to develop.  OK, probably digital images, but who’s arguing semantics here?  Oh, that’s right, me.  So they have the obligatory pictures of their cute kids in the bathtub, you know, the ones all junior-high kids fear their parents will blow up to poster-sized and put on display at a school assembly, or simply whip them out when they meet the boyfriend/girlfriend before the first date.  Yes kids, we really do this for this sole purpose.  But it’s NOT to swap them creepy people on the internet who have to register with the local governments and are not allowed to give out candy at Halloween. 

Now I could insert a punchline about living in Arizona, or how Conservatives are ruining the country, or even how hippies are letting their kids run around the house nekkid.  But I think that in today’s society that awards fifth-place trophies and is hyper-letigious (I still think they should sue the BALLS off Walmart), I think the lesson learned here is to invest the money in a photo printer.

Hi, my name is Chris, and apparently, I’m a child pornographer…

Blog Psychic Episode Two

How long do we have to wait until Kanye West admits his interruption of Taylor Swift’s VMA acceptance was 100% and completely staged? 

And why do people make a big deal over this, as if we didn’t know this whole thing was staged in the first place? 

And how am I so sure it was staged?  Simple.  If I bum-rushed the stage, security would have tossed me out onto 6th Avenue quicker than the D train running underneath it.  You’re telling me that because Kanye was a celebrity security would just let him slide?  What if it was some creep like Woody Allen?  They’d put him on the next bus to Bellevue. 

Game, set, match.

Rack me!

Three Strikes, and Yer Out!

Today is a day that all New Yorkers (including displaced ones like myself) take to heart.  One of the most despecible things to happen not only in this country, but in the history of this planet.  No need to give a replay to history here.  But here’s what pisses me off. 

First of all, it’s been eight years, and the Trade Center site is still a hole in the ground.  The red tape, bickering among interest groups/designers/planners, etc., and we still have nothing to replace the Twin Towers yet.  NYC built two baseball stadiums since 2001.  The Empire State building took 406 days to build.  Clearly the terrorists have won.

But nothing worse is people that profit from 9/11 merchandise.  I’m not talking about all the American flags that were made in Taiwan.  Or the hack CD’s of bad parody songs that not even a two-bit morning zoo show would play.  What pisses me off is what I saw on TV earlier this evening.  The Yanks/O’s were in a rain delay, so we shifted over to the Phils/Mets, and since they’re playing down here, and the rain has already passed, they were actually playing.  Mets batted in the top of the first, and then the Phils came to bat.  But I got confused for a minute because the Mets were wearing red caps.  You know, the ones MLB forced ALL teams to wear (with their own logos in stars and stripes) which were red, even if your team doesn’t wear red anywhere on their uniform.  That means the Yankees, a team that hasn’t changed their uniform since the early part of last century, has to wear a dopey red cap.  It looks horrendous.  And it’s sole purpose is that dopey fans will buy one with their team’s logo.  It is purely for profit.  And that, among other reasons for another rant, is why I’m calling for Bud Selig’s head on a platter.

As quick and current as a news magazine…

Summer came and went.  Time flies when you’re having fun.  Or doing nothing.  I’ve had a lot of ideas to write about, and they’re all bouncing around in my head.  Time to put fingers to keyboard.  In the mean time, let me leave you with this little tidbit.

What ever happened to seeded watermelons?  I’ve found them for sale exactly once this year.  They’ve all been replaced by those new fancy “seedless” ones.  I’ll use quotes here, because they’re not like navel oranges or limes, which truly have no seeds, but are rather filled with those white seeds.  Like cucumbers, you can swallow them.   But my big gripe with the seedless watermelons is that they’re completely devoid of any flavor.  They don’t have that real sweet flavor of a really ripe good old-fashioned watermelon.  Yes, I can chunk them up, and throw them into a fruit salad, or give it to the baby without fear of choking or cracked teeth, but what’s being sacrificed in convenience is flavor. 

Now where can I get me one of these???

From wikipedia