Month: September 2004

Anyone who reads this blog to any extent knows I don’t spend much time watching television. I do watch movies and my few vices, but for the most part I don’t spend a whole lot of time surfing for shit to watch. Tonight while I was at a relative’s house they had on Wheel of Fortune. I almost forgot this sorry excuse of a program was still allowed to be broadcast.

This is surviving from the golden age of game shows. You know, back when you had your large list of different game shows to choose from in case you thought you had a chance to be a contestant; but more likely just a casual observer. I don’t know if it went as far back as Let’s Make a Deal or anything, but it’s an older show, that’s for sure. Nowadays there aren’t too many game shows out there, unless you consider eating a fucking pig spleen to be a good premise for a game show. Yes, reality TV is nothing more than the game show’s retarded step cousin that we apparently can’t stop from breeding. Of course, I have ripped reality TV enough in the past so I will give it the night off and get back to what I was bitching about in the first place: The Wheel of Fortune. Sure, if you tune into it nowadays, then you would just think it was a prize filled show with a very easy task. Spin the wheel and take a chance. That and be able to solve a goddamn puzzle. Other than that there really isn’t anything too hard to the game, as most of it relies on luck and the common sense of a third grader (which at least one contestant a night does not possess.)

You see though, when I was a youngster and I would be forced to watch this game show it was totally different. First off Vanna (wtf kind of name is that anyway?) didn’t just touch the letter, she actually had to earn her huge ass salary and manually turn the letters. They still lit them up for her so she didn’t fuck it up and accidentally turn the wrong letters, but she actually had to push one of the sides until it started turning and then completely spin the letter box around. I believe that was the practice until somewhere in the year 2000 when unknowingly to fans of the show Vanna caught her hand in one of the letter R’s as she was spinning it for the puzzle FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Due to that unfortunate accident that almost ended her career as the premier letter turner in the United States, drastic changes were made. From that day forward letters were no longer turned, instead a multi-million dollar touch screen system was put in, that in all honesty can run itself. However out of guilt and to avoid a lawsuit, they are keeping Vanna around for a while longer, at least until her tits start sagging some more.

The other thing that is totally different on the show is the prizes. Back in my old days of watching this slop, they didn’t win prizes, they won money. Sounds good doesn’t it? Well, hold onto your hats kids, it gets worse. After each puzzle was solved, the poor Jeopardy contestant reject was then forced to spend the money they just earned on “prizes.” Ah, the illustrious catch… because they never got to bid on anything really nice, it was always lame shit that only dumb fuckers that lived in California would ever want to even own. The poor contestant would win $650 in the round then be forced to waste it on a stupid fucking ceramic Dalmatian. First off I know that piece of shit Dalmatian was never worth as much as they were saying, and I also know that had there been anything better that nobody would have bought half that shit. From what I understand, the reasons that they used to have the shop segment to buy all of those stupid bullshit prizes was because it was Merv Griffin’s way of having a garage sale. He had all of these lame ass trinkets just lying around his house and he thought maybe he could donate them to charity or maybe try to sell them and then it dawned on him. Sell it to those stupid fucking contestants. What a better way to get rid of your crap that even Goodwill wouldn’t take than to give someone money and then say, it’s only good to buy this shit.
Ahh, the old days when Wheel of Fortune wasn’t such a lame piece of shit.

It’s really the only explanation I can figure out. I can’t remember anytime in my life when Florida has been hit so many times like this. Maybe I’m wrong but history was never really my strong point I guess. At any rate I would say that the people in Florida are probably getting sick of the weather. I think God hates Florida because it’s shaped like a giant penis and as all religious people will tell you, the penis is evil. Of course most religious people aren’t really in touch with reality anyway.

I am pretty open minded as far as I can tell. I don’t buy a lot of bullshit out there in the world, but I don’t really try and change things I don’t like because I’m sure there are some out there that do like stuff. One of the newest things I’ve been exposed to is the “one million” campaign going on out there. The campaign consists of a three separate websites all slinging the same bullshit. There is onemilliondads, moms and youth. Of course when you dig a little deeper you see they are all part of the AFA program. The AFA is the American Family Association which sounds rather benign until you get into their propaganda filled website. Now as far as what they say I don’t totally disagree with them as I do think family values is important, although it’s a parents job to instill those and not to bitch because the world is corrupting their kids. I do think of the AFA as rather shallow and closed minded, but then again you are dealing with hardcore Christians here and you have to expect that. From reading on their site I have gathered that Jesus did not die on the cross so homosexuals could marry and therefore they denounce that rather heavily on the AFA site and some of their links. I don’t want to get into that segment at this time… I am more interested in speaking on the “one million” segment here.

The three “one million” sites are all for cleaning up television and taking anything THEY see as objectionable off the air. How do they propose to do this? By writing letters to the advertisers of these programs and try to get them to drop their ads. Some have been successful already and they aren’t stopping. Here is the mission statement (this one from the moms page, although they are all three the same): Our goal is to stop the exploitation of our children, especially by the entertainment media (TV, music, movies, etc.). Mom, OneMillionMoms.com is the most powerful tool you have to stand against the immorality, violence, vulgarity and profanity the entertainment media is throwing at your children. It is time to fight back!

Yes, because obviously none of these moms have a power button or the capability to change the channel on their remote controls. There are plenty of vulgar things on television these days and most of it is on later in the evening when your children should be doing their homework or going to bed. Here’s a novel idea since this society disturbs you so very much. Why not turn off the television and read your child a book. How about play a game with them? Not a violent video game though, since I’m sure you’ve burned all of those, but a nice board game like Candyland… or is that offensive to diabetics? At any rate what I’m saying is that instead of trying to make everything around you sterile, why don’t you instead spend your time trying to be a parent and instill some morals into your child so that when they grow up and are on their own they can make the correct decisions when they are faced with the reality that not everything in this world is pure.
Shows such as South Park are on the air because they have millions of fans (myself included). I don’t have any kids but I do have friends and relatives in the 5 year old range and there is no way I would let them watch South Park or listen to some of my rap music I have because as a responsible adult I don’t want them exposed to that. However, as an adult I do like to watch South Park and listen to rap music that has swear words in it, and therefore I don’t appreciate other people going around trying to eliminate it because they find it offensive. I don’t like oriental food, so you know what I do? I don’t go to oriental restaurants. I surely don’t petition to close those restaurants and try to get others to stop going because I don’t like it, I just make the decision to go elsewhere. It’s my freedom of choice, which if I’m not mistaken is one of the principles this country is founded upon. I always hear them say that it was the most offensive program they ever watched. Well why the hell did you watch it then if it was so offensive? Most normal people would see that, go wow, that’s disgusting and then blip, turn the channel. See, freedom of choice. There is nothing that makes you watch something you don’t like except for stupidity.

Speaking of South Park, their newest beef is with Best Buy because they refused to pull their advertising from South Park. Here is an excerpt from their site: Best Buy continues to sponsor the filthy South Park show on Comedy Central. In fact, they have inexcusably dismissed the concerns of more than 10,000 parents who have contacted them in the past week.
Here’s how Best Buy’s Corporate Relations Manager, Susan Busch, defends their support of South Park. “We do not endorse or encourage any behavior that is presented or suggested by the content of this program. We strongly encourage our customers to watch and listen to programs that are appropriate for themselves and their families.”
This is Best Buy’s message in a nutshell: “We don’t care what you think. We’ll continue to support South Park with our advertising dollars, despite your concerns.”
Although they say they don’t endorse or encourage the behavior presented or suggested, Best Buy gives South Park their personal seal of approval by continuing to financially support it!
Please don’t let Best Buy get away with helping keep trash TV on the air! Let’s make sure they understand we don’t like their salty advertising policy.

Ok, what I’m seeing Susan Busch say for Best Buy is the same thing that I’m saying. Watch and listen to programs that are appropriate for them. You know, that pesky freedom of choice thing again. I’m going to reiterate this point one more time for the narrow minded Christian set in hopes that they will get it through their thick bible beating skulls. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that it should be banned from existence. I know you think everyone should join hands, sing hymns and read psalms until they are blue in the face, but the reality is that not everyone agrees with you.

You see, I don’t like your site or your values but all I am doing is expressing my opinion on that, I’m not pushing your web hosting service to drop you or anyone that advertises on your site to stop because along with freedom of choice comes freedom of speech, and you can exercise that as much as you want. If you feel the shows are bad then go ahead and talk about how bad they are, but don’t try and take them away from me and the millions of others that enjoy them. So although I don’t condone your actions, I won’t attempt to stop them either, because for one I don’t really see you as a major threat, and for two I’m not a hypocritical Christian like those that run the above mentioned websites.

So why do groups like this think that because this offends their little Christian bubble that therefore the rest of us should suffer for it? Like I really want to spend the rest of my life watching Sesame Street and reruns of Touched by and Angel. Of course the clincher on these sites is that it is free to become a member, but… but we would appreciate donations and there is even the option to become a Sustaining member and have your donation taken directly from your credit card or checking account monthly. So after all the bellyaching about morals, it once again comes down to this.

Give us your money in the name of all that’s holy… or we will smite you.

It’s about time Friday finally got here, and thankfully on my weekend off. I did have Wednesday off but that seemed more like a tease than an actual day off. You know, you stay up late on Tuesday and then you sleep in a little on Wednesday then Wednesday night comes and it’s like shit, I gotta get up tomorrow for work. Well, I do have to get up for work tomorrow, and it’s an early office day, but the good side is that I get out of there somewhere around 1:30. I still haven’t figured out what I’m doing Saturday yet but hopefully it will be more than sitting in the house doing nothing. Maybe I can swing a golf club one more time this year.

More stupidity from my corporate office. Now we are supposed to look at our entire store every day and if we have any out of stocks we are supposed to go to another store and buy the product and put it on our shelves. What? So if I happen to run out of the 24 count Tylenol, even though I have 20 other varieties, I’m supposed to jog my ass to a competitor and BUY stuff from their store and then put it on my shelf to sell? It’s not like we have another corporate store a half mile away from us or anything so let me restate this so hopefully you can be as dumbfounded as I am. I am supposed to go to MY COMPETITOR and BUY – AT FULL RETAIL – the product I’m out of stock on and then bring it back to my store and put it on the shelves to sell… and did I mention probably lose money on? So my store that is in competition with all of these other stores will now go buy product at these stores and therefore help their bottom line out and totally fuck our bottom line. It makes you wonder why this company is failing doesn’t it? What’s next, they going to put a shitload of dollar days in the stores? Oh wait, nevermind.

Retail is a tough business, especially when the people running the show and calling the shots are so out of touch with reality. My company’s current plan is to sink a shitload of retail space into dollar days. My retail space. I have already dedicated 20′ of my space to this product and I can’t say the sales have been phenomenal, in fact lackluster may be a better term. So anyway one of the people from our main office comes into the store yesterday and is walking around deciding that we should cut 4′ off this section and we’ll just dump picture frames and well you don’t need that much space for this section etc… Then we will have an entire aisle for your dollar days. Ok, my question is this. My set gross profit percent is 35% for my HBC and 45% for my GM. If I am making less than that at inventory time then they fly into a tizzy and want an explanation. Well, this dollar day bullshit that we are getting in has a whopping 25% markup on it. So if I am to devote an entire 56 foot aisle to this shit what do you think is going to happen to my gross profit percentage? I may not be one of the wizards that work in my corporate office but I can damn sure tell you that my GP is going to drop. Also when you start cutting out items that have $3 to $5 rings on them and replace them with 56′ of items that have only $1 rings on each. Let’s see, 56′ multiplied by $1 = retarded. And I thought the customers were stupid.

The same one that was there yesterday sizing up my department getting ready to fuck it all up wanted to know why we still had 16′ full of summer products at full price. He said we should have marked that down a month or so ago. In case I had not bitched about this in the past on here I’ll give the history lesson now. Back in July, July 14th to be exact I emailed my corporate office GM guru and asked him if I could mark down my garden supplies by 25% so I could help move some of this product around. (We are no longer allowed to make any decisions such as this because apparently after working in the store for nine fucking years I have no clue how to do shit) He emailed me back and asked me what I had and the quantities of each and I emailed that back and then never heard shit from him after that.

So about mid July I assemble a list of all the shit I still own and the prices I want to go at and I send them to this dumbass. Well big surprise, no response which means I resend the email and just happen to copy a few of his superiors. Well apparently that’s what it takes to get a response out of him but the response I get was not an approval to mark down any product but a denial to mark down anything and said that no seasonal markdowns would be approved by him now or in the future. In fact he ends up sending me a list of suggestions of what I can do with all of this product to help sell it. For instance I can work all of my BBQ tools into the regular kitchen tools I have because they will sell throughout the winter at regular price. (Have you read my blog? it gets to -40 degrees here, not exactly grilling out weather). Another wonderful suggestion was to put the bamboo plate holders into the paper plates section because those sell year round, and in fact as I know… the holidays are the best time to sell these. Did I just fall off the fucking turnip truck or something? What the hell do you people smoke up at that corporate office because that is some of the most asinine bullshit I’ve ever heard, and that brings us up to yesterday when I was asked WHY I didn’t have my shit marked down. Luckily I had the email printed up and I was able to pass it along. I hope someone gets fired over this. In fact, I volunteer.

Why is it that every time I look for a new job, one of the requirements is “likes people”. What kind of fucking prejudice is that? Just because I slightly despise certain people… let’s call them customers, then I should be blacklisted on the job market? Technically I don’t hate all customers anyway, just the ones that whine and bitch about stupid shit, you know – 98% of them. So aside from that and the fact that the job market is utter shit I am still employed at my current location. I guess I should be happy that I still have a job, even though it is one I despise and loathe. Of course tomorrow through Sunday I am going to be working in the office, so I get to be up before 5:30 am those days. As you can tell I’m bubbling over with excitement from that shit. There is nothing I like more than getting up before the sun rises and going to work. In fact there is nothing that I would rather do than… oh wait, yes there is. Cutting my toenails with a rusty hacksaw, that would be better.
I watched the Punisher mini-series on Monday. First off, it was over 2 hours and apparently I’m not blessed enough to be left alone for two hours to enjoy a good movie because I think I got called at least 8 times during it. By the last phone call I was ready to do some punishing of my own. Normally I’m supposed to be working during these times, so who told these fuckers I was home anyway? It’s like I get the call and I’m talking to this person going, ok I have this DVD on pause and he is about to shove the business end of a paper cutter into this guys skull. Can you top that, if not call me back in an hour and a half.

Of course as soon as you turn off the phone in this technology driven world everyone thinks you’ve been killed or something. People are like, oh my god I have tried calling you all day and you didn’t answer your phone; I thought something bad may have happened. No, I was just enjoying the peace and quiet of not having the phone ring. Remember back in the old days where you could go places and nobody could get a hold of your ass and you could just enjoy the day? Now people expect you to have that cell phone sewn to your ass so you never miss a call. They don’t care if you just flushed down a nasty shit at the Taco Bell, they need to talk to you. Have you ever had this where someone is desperately trying to get a hold of you for nothing? Well you know, I do have voicemail, you can just talk into that and then I will return your call as soon as I can… muster up enough energy to give a shit that you’ve called. Someone will say to you, well with this new cellular technology I figured you would answer your phone. And of course you say, well there’s this newer technology called Caller ID, and then there is its brother called silent ring. Perhaps I need to introduce you to their great uncle – restraining order.

So I get up yesterday and go to take a shower. Well, I go into the bathroom and I have the shower, not the tub and the shower; so when you turn on the water it’s spraying out the showerhead right away. Anyway, I turn on the water and then I reach in and go to move the showerhead to the left slightly. Apparently that particular model doesn’t move that way, because instead of it moving, it just fucking broke. It broke off. I’m standing there naked looking at this nozzle thing just dumping water out. Well, there’s no fucking way I can take a shower under that because I don’t like to stand that close to the wall. So off to the hardware store it was, because if there’s anything I like to do, it’s going out in public when I haven’t showered yet. At least if they see me with the showerhead in my hand, they might get the idea and grant me mercy. Of course that set the mood for the remainder of the day as I basically just waited for everything else to go wrong; and luckily it didn’t.
I do get to venture back to my wonderful job tomorrow, which makes me oh so happy. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than work, except maybe pull my toenails out with a pair of pliers… but you know, other than that.

I downloaded Netscape last night because I have been wanting to for quite some time. Not because I am ready to abandon IE or anything, but mostly because I wanted to be able to check what my site looks like on both browsers and I can honestly say that I hope nobody that visits my sites has Netscape. That browser completely trashes some of the aspects of my site and I guess I didn’t realize the differences between the two until I put them side by side. So of course that means back to the drawing board for my site. Actually since I never really gave a fuck about the Netscape side of things before, I’m not going to pay a whole lot of attention to them now either. I am going to redo my 3rd Bass site though, getting rid of frames etc. I will try and test the new design elements on that, because there’s no way in hell I’m redoing my entire site this soon, maybe a week or two, but not now.

I’m sure by now everyone has been reminded at least once that it is the three year anniversary of the 2001 attacks. (2004 minus 2001 equals 3 for those not paying attention.) I won’t go into anything really here because as I said last year, I wasn’t really personally hurt by the day, however I know plenty were, so I’ll let them all reflect their own ways without bothering to throw my 2 cents in.
Instead I would like to bitch about a few things; hence the name “disgruntled human”. First off, I’m getting sick and tired of all the stupid campaign commercials I have to endure. Let’s put some shit aside here now. First, I don’t really like George Bush, never have, didn’t vote for him the first time around and won’t vote for him the second time around either. However, I’m not exactly crazy about Kerry either. My problem is this: the economy and national security are the two key issues and 90% of the ads don’t worry about that. Sure they both like to mention the war, but unfortunately it’s the wrong fucking war. Tell me a story about Iraq, don’t waste my time on Vietnam anymore. I don’t care if Kerry’s Purple Hearts are made of construction paper, and I don’t care if Bush did or didn’t go AWOL from his duties. That was a long time ago and it really isn’t going to get us anywhere is it? It’s like arguing over who ate the last slice of pizza last New Year’s Eve, nobody is going to fess up and it won’t change anything. So let’s move on to some more important issues shall we? I mean hell, we only have less than two months before we need to do this whole voting thing and I don’t know who to vote for. Kerry looks and acts like Herman Munster which frightens me some. I always thought Dick Cheney was some sort of android type creature, and now I think Kerry might be too. I honestly think that roughly 95% of the votes Kerry gets won’t be votes for him, but votes against Bush.

As far as I’m concerned Bush acts somewhat like an idiot. He may not be, and for the sake of our country, I hope he isn’t… but he sure puts out that vibe. The president of the US needs to be a salesman and George just isn’t that good at it, and I don’t know if Kerry could be either. I look at the president like a car salesman. I know he’s giving me a total line of bullshit, but if he wraps it up in a nice package, I’m going to buy it. All politics aside, whether you like the man or not, Clinton was good at this. No need to get into policies or moral issues, but I’d buy a car from that motherfucker. Clinton could have sold someone a Yugo with no engine in it because he had that personality and he was an excellent bullshitter; and unfortunately Bush isn’t a good bullshitter or communicator. When I see George give a speech on television I am reminded of high school speech class when you’d go up there and basically forget everything you were going to say, even with the notes in front of you.

So as far as my vote goes, I’m pretty sure who I’ll vote for… and if not I’ll flip a coin.

Way to go NASA, letting yet another spacecraft crash into the ground. Fortunately this time no humans had to die. So we spent $264 million dollars on this thing to collect solar dust and then Jimmy, the head of the parachute department at NASA, forgot to hook up the parachutes to this craft a couple years ago after a long drinking spree the night before. Wonderful. I’m sure for a fraction of the cost you could have gotten some angel dust down the street and saved us, the taxpayers, a ton of money. But of course, being a government agency they decided that there was no need for that because if there’s something we have plenty of in this country, it’s money.

So at any rate, this thing crashes into the desert and busts open and I would assume spills it’s content all over the desert that it slammed into. Isn’t there some sort of contamination going on there? Luckily it slammed into the desert in Utah, where the only living things are lizards and Mormons.

So I wonder if anyone will get fired over this whole thing. I highly doubt it. If Rumsfield doesn’t get fired over prison abuse stuff, then I doubt anyone at NASA is going to be working a drive-thru anytime soon. Of course an article on CNN said this: Because of Earth’s electromagnetic field, much of the sun’s deadly radiation and material never reaches the planet’s surface.

Yes, until we spilled it all over the desert in Utah… Way to go NASA.

Oh no, it’s a Hurricane. In fact it’s Hurricane Frances. I actually heard reporters slightly mention that this hurricane wasn’t as bad as Hurricane Charlie. However you notice that it pretty much ruled the news for a week straight. Why you ask, because they hyped it up so much before it ever even got to Florida that they had to stick with it and make it look really bad. When you evacuate that many people out of a state you have to make it look like they would have all died before they get back. I’m not saying this hurricane was nothing, because it was destructive, but most hurricanes are. I guess if you are going to live in Florida you live to expect that every year your whole life could get blown away in a night. One thing I noticed when I was watching this whole thing unfold on live TV. Why the fuck do these reporters think they need to stand in the middle of the damn hurricane? You could just as effectively sit your ass in a room with the camera pointed out the window and show us it that way. The only reason I even watched coverage of the hurricane this time is because I was waiting for one of those cocksuckers to get hit by some sort of flying debris. I don’t want to see them killed, but to see a garbage can come flying by and knock one of those stupid bastards in their blue or yellow raincoats down would be poetic justice. Then they could continue to report from their new ground position and tell us that’s how bad the hurricane force winds are. That and ask for someone to pull the Rubbermaid trash can out of their ass. I guess I just don’t understand why these reporters stand out there and report like that. Has any reporter ever won an award for doing this; I don’t think so. Plus the fact that so many before them have done this it doesn’t even make it impressive anymore either. You know what, if you want to impress me newsboy, then tie yourself to a fucking pole and jump in the air and see how long you stay there in the wind. That would impress me.

As long as we’re talking about shitty weather, I might as well talk about mine. Yesterday when I left work it was so fucking humid you could hardly breathe. You know, where you walk and if any part of you touches another part of you, it’s sticking. So after work I go home and turn on the fan and relax a while. Today of course it is really nice, no humidity and what not. Well, to go from what we had yesterday to what we are enjoying today, in Wisconsin you usually get some nasty storms. So I was watching the weather on TV and I see tornado warnings in Eastern Minnesota and then they start heading our way. One by one each county is being lit up in the path of the storm and ours was next in line. So around 7:30 or so our tornado sirens go off and apparently we were under a warning until 8:30 or somewhere around then. The only problem was that nothing was going on. It was raining out but it wasn’t even lightning and thundering out. Of course I couldn’t have heard it thunder over the fucking sirens. I think as far as sounds that I hate go, tornado siren ranks up there with alarm clock. So anyway, no tornados hit here that I know of and unfortunately my workplace was still there when I got there this morning. So I guess life goes on.

As I am driving to work this morning at 6am, I was wondering something to myself. Why do people bother putting the signs up in their yard for who they are voting for? Who really gives a shit? I don’t care what my neighbor is voting for and I don’t care who they are voting for either. I thought your vote was supposed to be so private, and here these nimrods are plastering their thoughts all over the front lawn. Is the thought that I might see the sign in their front lawn and it will sway the way I am thinking and now I’m going to vote for the person they like? I don’t think so. I would rather vote for the person that I like the best and for the person I think will fuck up things less than the person who has the most signs per block. That’s the way it should be anyway.

So it’s the last official holiday of summer. Big fucking whoop is what I say. There is nothing spectacular about Labor Day except for the fact that I will work Monday for time and a half and I will also get myself another 8 hours of holiday pay on top of that. Other than that it’s just another day. So everyone is going camping one last time and everyone is going to have fun one more time before it snows and fucks everything up. You know the sad part of the holiday is that our pharmacy is closed on Monday (and always closed on Sunday) and my god you would think it was Armageddon out there. Old people flocking into the store picking up all of their prescriptions because the apocalypse might just happen on Monday and they wouldn’t be able to pick up their pills then. It just boggles the mind with some people. I could see if they had like 2 pills left but I’m sure that over 100 of them didn’t have empty bottles left at home. It’s the same thing when they predict snow in the winter.
The new look of the site is done, at least on my computer. I haven’t uploaded anything yet and probably won’t for a while. I am going to wait until I have at least five new things to add to the site, then I will upload it all at once. So far I have three things completed and added to the site. Hopefully before the month is over it will all be in place… maybe.