Things I'll Never Understand...

For reasons I won't go into here, I spent a day watching people attending a close-out sale of high quality shoes and clothing, priced at 20 cents or less on the retail dollar.



I'd always heard stories about the behavior of people at events like this, and, sad to say, the stories are true. Rudeness and skulduggery are the norm, and civility ends at the front door.



I am not a misogynist. Honest. But I'll never understand the behavior of women who are intent on getting a deal. Here's what I witnessed:



Tag switching -- So here's this leather skirt. It originally was $200. It's now $20; an amazing bargain. Yet some woman still attempted to remark the price to $5. Said woman is a high-powered executive in the entertainment industry.



"Is this cute?" One gal says to another, as she pulls a shoe from the shelf and slips it on her foot. "Oh, look at this one." Off comes the original, where it is kicked several feet away on the floor. Repeat this scene a dozen times by one customer, and then multiply that by another dozen women. No shoe is ever returned to it's original position on the shelf next to its mate. This never happens over in the men's shoe section. Why do women do this?



I'll bet you didn't know that women's shoes can magically transport themselves all over a store. I found them in the women's clothing department, which makes sense, I guess... trying to match shoes with a dress or something... but how do they end up shelved with office supplies, or even furniture? Again, men's shoes don't travel.



Moses forgot the eleventh commandment: Thow shall not covet thy neighbor's clothing pile. There were no shopping carts at this event, so every woman had a pile of clothes they shuffled around on the floor close to their feet, lest ye fellow shopper attempt to make off with one of their finds. It seems that if it's on the rack, it can't possibly be as good as something another shopper has already picked out. Go figure.



Lack of shopping carts does not deter the motivated female shopper from improvisation. Step one: Go to furniture department. Step two: Select sturdy office chair. Step three: Pile items selected for purchase as high as possible onto seat of chair. Step four: Purchase items, wheel chair to loading dock. Step five: Abandon chair.

Three New Things To Worry About

Number 3 on today's list:

The Chinese. They just showed the world how a billion communists can put on a really good Olympics, while effectively squelching all dissent at home. Memories of their event will make the one four years from now in London look amateurish. (Remember when the Olympics were for amateurs, by the way?) If you don't think the Chinese will be the number-one nation in the world in a few years, you're kidding yourself. Or you live in India.

Number 2: Buried in today's news briefs: Iran launched its first satellite. Let that settle in for a minute: A country that is only a couple of clicks to the right of nutzo North Korea on the fanatic scale now can de-orbit a nuke (that we know they will have any day now) anywhere they want.

Number 1: Stalinist Russia is alive and well and in the hands of Putin and his lackeys. It only took them about 15 years to crawl back from total collapse, and this time they have the advantage of the West needing their oil and natural gas. Putin can put the squeeze on Western Europe any time he wants, and I'm guaranteed he will. I hope our boys ion the Army haven't forgotten how to fight a land battle that doesn't involve dodging random terrorists with home-made bombs, but will involve thousands of Russian tanks. And did you note that when they left Georgia, they took all the American technology we'd given the Georgians with them? Expect to see a Russian version of the Hummer in a few months...

Had I Only Known...

Back in my college years, I had a dream.

I would someday be a newspaper publisher.

To accomplish this goal, I studied business and finance in school, and when I graduated, I took a job 425 miles away from home as a management trainee at a community paper, part of one of America's great newspaper chains.

I worked at newspapers large and small for the next quarter century. I held positions in both retail and classified advertising management in a frustrating quest to move up the corporate food chain.

I hung in there, confident that if I ever got the chance, I could produce a paper that was valued both by its readers and its stockholders. I never made it. I burned out, left with a few boxes of memories, a 20-year-old IBM Selectric, and those pesky PTSD nightmares that haunt me to this day.

Little did I know that had I avoided the newspaper industry entirely, I could have ended up publisher of one of America's greatest papers. At least, that's apparently what it takes these days at the Los Angeles Times.

Check this link:

TBO.com - News From AP

Why I'm Quitting The Republican Party

It's the straw that broke this Republican's back.

Much has been written about our skyrocketing oil prices, and how speculators in the oil market are greatly to blame. In 2000, speculators accounted for 37 percent of the oil market; today the number stands at 71 percent. These people are dealing in paper, not barrels of oil. They are not using the oil they trade; they do not affect demand.

I heard that 47 Republican senators have stood up and criticized speculators for driving up the price of gas.

Now, a government task force says the price of oil is up due to increased demand, and speculators are not to blame. (How many Republican political appointees are on this task force, anyway?)

The White House has chimed in and says the same thing. Supply and demand. Yet demand worldwide is up only a little more than one percent and demand in the USA has fallen slightly.

And guess what? The Republicans have suddenly gone silent on shutting down oil speculators, and the Democrat-led effort to put new controls on them is in danger of failing.

Do you think the oil companies and Wall Street have told their Republican buddies to nix this, because it might cost them money? I do.

President Bush gave the rich a huge tax cut with the idea the benefits would trickle down to the underclasses. And once again, the President and his rich cronies are once again thinking of themselves rather than the good of the nation.

I don't want to be associated in any way with these people. I quit.

John McCain is a good man, as far as I can tell. I may vote for him. If I do, I won't be voting for his party or a continuation of the crap the current administration has pulled on us.

I don't exactly trust the Democratic Party either, but I think working class citizens, organized labor, and other truly mainstream American interests hold more sway with them than in the Republican ranks.

So: call me an Independent for now, and get back to me in four more years. If I haven't quit the country all together and become an expat residing in some other nation.

Those Whacky Russians!

Cross CNN with The Onion, and you get the old Russian standby, "Pravda". It was a hoot back during the cold war; now they're apparently hired the writers of the gone but not forgotten Weekly World News. All we're missing is Bat Boy.

You've got to love a news source that leads with a story about Laura Bush leaving the White House before George's term is up, 'cause George and Condi Rice are having an affair. And don't miss the article about how apparently Americans are adopting Russian children just so we can murder them.

Pravda.Ru: Russian news and analysis