Well…I was going to put this in the morning one on my life but I forgot for some reason…so, I’ll do it here and it will serve two purposes…it will get me caught up, and it will say Happy Birthday to one of my favorite rock and rollers…Joe Walsh turns 66 today and he has been a large part of the soundtrack that has accompanied my life from the days of the James Gang, through the Barnstorm years,, and into his solo stuff…who could not like an album named “The Smoker you drink, the player you get” or “you can’t argue with a sick mind”….so, Happy Birthday, Joe…and many, many more….
Category Archives: Misc
Can Walmart get any more tone deaf?
Well…if you follow the news at all, you’ve seen the veneer start to crack on the supposedly wonderful company Walmart over the past year or so, exposing the just awful employee policies the company has…and the amount of subsidies that the American people give to each and every store (over a million dollars a year per store, 3.5 billion dollars total). But now, it has even gotten worse…with a store in Ohio setting up a food donation area in an employee lounge so workers can donate food so other workers will have a Thanksgiving dinner…yep, you heard it right…Walmart wants its poorly paid employees to subsidize even worse paid ones so they don’t go hungry. There is so much wrong with this I don’t know where to start…if Walmart was so damn concerned that it’s full time employees don’t make enough money to buy food without food stamps (and it’s not…it’s a policy they support), why not just pay them more? Or, buy every employee Thanksgiving dinner? But, even with the countless billions of dollars in profit they make every year, they won’t pry even a few extra dollars out of their grasping hands to make sure their employees don’t starve….what a poor excuse for a company…and the reason I will never set foot in one….geez…
Who would ever do “snapshot by Progressive”?
Well…this thought just came to me while I was doing the last post and this damn Progressive commercial came on…who would ever do that? Who would be the people who would give an insurance company the ammunition they need to cancel your insurance? Or, to not pay a claim if they determine that you were going one mile an hour over the speed limit when you were run into? I know that some people will make the specious argument they use for allowing police to search anyone for no reason…”if you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t mind being searched”….so, if you’re not speeding, you shouldn’t worry about Progressive searching your data….what a load of crap. why would anyone give up their data for a few bucks off your car insurance? I am a professional speeder who has not had a ticket since 1974…shouldn’t that be more important than being one mile an hour over the limit? I am just glad that my car is so old it doesn’t have one of the new “black boxes” that records everything that you do in the car…even GPS location if your car has that feature…we need to stop giving up our privacy to these corporations who are just waiting for a new reason to screw us over…geez…
Another reason to hate Walmart…
Well…just a shorty on the jaw dropping stupidity that is the management of a Walmart here in Michigan who fired an employee for getting into a fight with some men who were assaulting a woman in a Walmart parking lot…and their reason? That they have a zero-tolerance policy for workplace violence….so, this guy is supposed to just leave this woman being attacked to keep his job? What a stupid, nasty company Walmart is…I’ve got nothing more to say…geez…
Goodbye “Burn Notice”…
Well…I have kind of been dreading this day for the entire summer…it’s the day of the last “Burn Notice” and I am not sure what to think about it. As my friends know, this has been my favorite show since it came on the air seven years ago, and I’m sure they are tired of hearing me talk about it….as classic tv goes, it won’t get into the top ten by a long shot, but there has been just something about it that has struck a chord with me…how can you not like a show about spies, with a hot woman that is just as dangerous as the men (or more)…and Bruce Campbell? Oh, well…I’ve been through this many times before with other shows…and this one may have been cheating a little since I am behind for the month. Felt the same way when “The Sopranos” ended…and my Thursdays are going to be emptier for a while…I guess that’s life…
It’s Europe’s turn…
Well…after listening to the increasing drumbeat for war in Syria, one thing came to me that has not been mentioned much, other than on Kos…why are we so hot on attacking Syria and footing the bill for the whole thing? If you look at it with a non-neocon eye, you can see that Europe has at least as large of a GDP as the US does but even more to the point is that the conflict in Syria and the effects of the refugee crisis to come is going to affect Europe much more that it will us. I know that this has been a humanitarian crisis long before the use of chemical weapons and they are being used as an excuse for a bombing campaign, but there are many, many humanitarian crises across the globe…what makes this different? This is a question that no one has answered yet…what about the Arab league? Why can’t these folks do something? All I can say is that there are many other actors who should be involved before the US and I think it is time for them to step up and take some responsibility for their own region…let’s give our military the rest it has earned….12 years of constant war is just too much for our soldiers to bear.
Drummers…
Well…out on the bike today, my brain went off on on a tangent and started thinking about drummers and the differences in their styles and how that fits with the music and the bands that they played with. Okay…you can stop here if you don’t want to hear about it…it is, after all, just opinion and I don’t know what it will mean…but, it’s something I do from time to time. Oh, and none of this is meant to be a value judgment…just observation. So, to start, I’ve thought about the bands that I like and their drummers….Nick Mason from Pink Floyd, John Bonham from Led Zepplin, Manu Katche who plays with Peter Gabriel, and Keith Moon from the Who. Of the group, I think Nick Mason is the simplest….when you listen to Dark Side of the Moon for example, there is nothing fancy or complicated there but it just fits with the style of the music..it’s even better when you see him live…there is just something about it….then, with John Bonham…it’s pure power, not busy at all but more of hypnotic, trance like drumming that goes so well with the mysticism in many of their songs…Kashmir comes to mind or When the levee breaks….Manu Katche seems to be a hybrid with more African type beats but that may be a product of Gabriel’s writing more than anything…seems to be medium busy and complex…then, you have Keith Moon who is one of the busiest drummers I have ever heard….again, though, I think he fits the Who’s style which is more in your face…daring you to like it or not. Okay, my opinions… and I’m not sure why I even wrote this…and I’m not sure I even like it….but, it did get me caught up for the month so that is something…
Just a little trail weirdness…
Well…haven’t done one of these in a while but just wanted to relay one little part of weird that happened today…on one of the downhills that ends in a sharp corner, I came upon a bunch of turkeys that were walking on the trail and they just took off running right down the trail in front of me…not flying, but running until they could get off into the brush…it was one of the strangest things I’ve seen in a while and they can move quite fast….but, why not fly? I know they can…maybe I’m just not threatening enough…oh, one last thing, a group of turkeys is called a rafter…had to ask the phone….that it could understand what I wanted was pretty cool…
Gonna cheat a little today…
Well…I was going to rail about the police state tactics that have become the norm in local sherriffs and police departments and the unwarranted proliferation of swat tactics for every situation…okay, maybe I will talk about that a little…a few days back, a man went missing from his family and they reported to the police that he may be distraught…not armed or anything like that but just having some mental problems…so, what was the response of the police here? To roll out the local swat team with their full body armor and automatic weapons…yep, a mentally distraught man that is just having some problems and the only response the military blinded police around here could think of is going to defcon 1…not sending a psychiatrist or other mental health professional which is what the situation warranted. It seems to me these folks are just looking for the chance to play army man…and when this nonsense happens, people end up dead by accident…I, for one, have had enough of the militarization of the police in this country and the idea that every citizen can be treated like a terrorist…when the swat teams are the ones propagating terror on the rest of us…they should all be disbanded and the members of these teams retrained to see the people they are terrorizing as their bosses again…geez…
RIP James Gandolfini…
Well…I usually don’t do these…oh, I guess I do…so I think I’ll just keep going…it was sad news when I heard yesterday that James Gandolfini had died of a heart attack with his 13 year son old at his side….I feel just awful for that poor kid….when I was out with G last night she reminded me of the “Sopranos” marathons that we used to have when we first met and that a part of our memories had just died, too….not sure if I believe that but anytime a 51 year old dies, that is just too damn early…and I think of my own mortality….not much else to say right now so I’ll just end with rest in peace….