I went into Wal-Mart in workout clothes today. Sweaty workout clothes, since I had just left the gym.
I was not ashamed.
Time was, the only place I would go after a workout would be home, or to buy a lotto ticket at a convenience store. You can't win if you don't play, after all. I've been back home two months now, and after perusing my favorite train wrecks at People of Wal-Mart, I realized that I could go into that store soaking wet and nearly naked and I still wouldn't stand out very much. Plus, there's no one in Wal-Mart I care about enough to want to make a good impression with. Wearing sweaty workout clothes? Need groceries at the same time? Bada-bing, bada-boom, and Don's walking through the aisles of Wally World with dark sweat rings around his neck and under his arms, and probably trailing a musky, provocative odor behind. Just one more redneck in several enclosed acres full of them.
It's freeing, this hewing to the lowest common denominator. I'm a fairly educated person - and a bit of a smarty-pants too - and you couldn't tell me apart from anyone else in there, ditchdigger or physicist or anything in between. That kind of bland anonymity is comforting, like a dirty NASCAR blanket thrown around my shoulders in my time of need. I'm just there to get my pickles and American cheese like everybody else.
Next time, I'm thinking of wearing my Fishnet Speedo Jr. and lobster hat. Just to push the envelope and see how far I can take 'casual Friday' before someone's forced to call the cops.
Showing posts with label wal-mart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wal-mart. Show all posts
Friday, June 3, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Yeah, I Still Don't Care
Last year I wrote about how much I don't care about the SuperBowl.
Nothing's changed.
I decided to give it a try this year. Maybe I'm the one who's turned around on the subject, maybe the rest of the world is tuned into the zeitgeist and I'm just flopping around like a fish suffocating on a dock.
Nope.
I've been watching two hours worth of pre-game show so far, and it's two hours I will never get back. There's been a lot - a LOT - of self-congratulatory back slapping, reminiscing, and blatant pandering. There's a red carpet now, which is clearly calculated to bring the ladies to the TV and keep them there. There are celebrities who have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the game like Keith Urban and Hugh Jackman (both Australian), and, God help me, celebrity douchebag chef Guy Fieri. I defy anyone to explain to me what Guy Fieri has to do with the SuperBowl, aside from shilling Ritz crackers and inspiring my apoplectic rage.
So far it's been one big EXTREMELY commercial waste of time. Give me NASCAR, where at least they're honest enough about sponsorship to wear the product names on their uniforms.
Instead of a brief list of crap I don't care about, this year I decided to compile a brief list of things that should occupy more of your attention than the SuperBowl:
Political unrest in the Middle East - when long-standing dictatorships are toppled, we all need to take notice. Especially when the toppling takes place in a part of the world prone to prideful displays of nationalism. This isn't going to end well, no matter which side comes out on top.
Squalor in Haiti - a year later and they're even worse off than right after the earthquake. At least a year ago Americans were paying attention. Kind of. Now cholera is making the rounds of the shantytowns on the island. Cholera makes you shit yourself to death. Yeah. 600 miles from the US.
Wall Street and Big Bank bonuses - with all the money paid this year to evil, evil, detestable people who aren't worth the hollow-point bullet it takes to solve their problem, the country is moving closer and closer to an hereditary aristocracy. Do we want our nation to turn into Mexico where you're either very very rich or very very not?
Google, Facebook, and many others wiping their asses with your personal privacy. If you use gmail or have an Android phone, I hope you're comfortable with Google reading your mail and monitoring your calls, because they are. Why people take this sitting down instead of rising up in revolt I'll never understand. Or, jeez, just don't use the service or buy the damn phone.
Anti-immigrant politics in Europe - we like to think of Europe as full of quaint, polite old-worlders, but there's rising right-wing sentiment that demonizes immigrants. Europe was never the melting pot America claims to be, but when European countries start to pick one group as a scapegoat for all their problems, we all need to take notice. And, yes, I'm talking about the mass execution of Jews during World War II. It wouldn't take all that much for that horror to happen again. And if you don't believe me, read some of the rhetoric.
Not that I'm trying to destroy your SuperBowl experience...
Yeah, okay, maybe I am.
Nothing's changed.
I decided to give it a try this year. Maybe I'm the one who's turned around on the subject, maybe the rest of the world is tuned into the zeitgeist and I'm just flopping around like a fish suffocating on a dock.
Nope.
I've been watching two hours worth of pre-game show so far, and it's two hours I will never get back. There's been a lot - a LOT - of self-congratulatory back slapping, reminiscing, and blatant pandering. There's a red carpet now, which is clearly calculated to bring the ladies to the TV and keep them there. There are celebrities who have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the game like Keith Urban and Hugh Jackman (both Australian), and, God help me, celebrity douchebag chef Guy Fieri. I defy anyone to explain to me what Guy Fieri has to do with the SuperBowl, aside from shilling Ritz crackers and inspiring my apoplectic rage.
So far it's been one big EXTREMELY commercial waste of time. Give me NASCAR, where at least they're honest enough about sponsorship to wear the product names on their uniforms.
Instead of a brief list of crap I don't care about, this year I decided to compile a brief list of things that should occupy more of your attention than the SuperBowl:
Political unrest in the Middle East - when long-standing dictatorships are toppled, we all need to take notice. Especially when the toppling takes place in a part of the world prone to prideful displays of nationalism. This isn't going to end well, no matter which side comes out on top.
Squalor in Haiti - a year later and they're even worse off than right after the earthquake. At least a year ago Americans were paying attention. Kind of. Now cholera is making the rounds of the shantytowns on the island. Cholera makes you shit yourself to death. Yeah. 600 miles from the US.
Wall Street and Big Bank bonuses - with all the money paid this year to evil, evil, detestable people who aren't worth the hollow-point bullet it takes to solve their problem, the country is moving closer and closer to an hereditary aristocracy. Do we want our nation to turn into Mexico where you're either very very rich or very very not?
Google, Facebook, and many others wiping their asses with your personal privacy. If you use gmail or have an Android phone, I hope you're comfortable with Google reading your mail and monitoring your calls, because they are. Why people take this sitting down instead of rising up in revolt I'll never understand. Or, jeez, just don't use the service or buy the damn phone.
Anti-immigrant politics in Europe - we like to think of Europe as full of quaint, polite old-worlders, but there's rising right-wing sentiment that demonizes immigrants. Europe was never the melting pot America claims to be, but when European countries start to pick one group as a scapegoat for all their problems, we all need to take notice. And, yes, I'm talking about the mass execution of Jews during World War II. It wouldn't take all that much for that horror to happen again. And if you don't believe me, read some of the rhetoric.
Not that I'm trying to destroy your SuperBowl experience...
Yeah, okay, maybe I am.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Losing Touch
I went up to my local Target today, in an unsuccessful attempt to find Christmas presents. There were TONS of people all over the store, which is a lesson for me not to go to Target on a Sunday afternoon. Much more importantly, though, I noticed something alarming, something that shook me to foundations of my identity.
They'd changed the shopping carts.
For as long as I can remember they've had the same carts, metal bases with plastic bodies that also lock up when you try to take them off premises. Which is why homeless people use carts from the 99cent store, they're easier to steal. But Target no longer has the old kind, the familiar kind, the kind I remember.
Now they have all-plastic carts, no more metal bases. The new carts are sleek and gray and red and just... wrong. It's kind of like shopping with the Jetsons, too streamlined and too modern.
I don't know why this change affects me. I mean, really, who cares? They changed the shopping carts, life goes on. But there's something else. They've made this Target the kind that sells groceries too. And I knew nothing about it. They didn't run the approval past me like they should have. Time was I went to this Target all the time, I worked across the street, but it's been months since I've been in, and in that time they've changed the layout of the store, and they now sell groceries, and they've changed the shopping carts.
Enough already. I thought I declared a moratorium on change a while back. Why is no one paying attention?
Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna close my eyes and count to twenty, which should be more than enough time for everybody to find out what they've changed in the past year and then change it back. Okay?
Here we go. One... Two... Three... Four... Five...
Are you changing things back? Good.
Six... Seven... Eight...
They'd changed the shopping carts.
For as long as I can remember they've had the same carts, metal bases with plastic bodies that also lock up when you try to take them off premises. Which is why homeless people use carts from the 99cent store, they're easier to steal. But Target no longer has the old kind, the familiar kind, the kind I remember.
Now they have all-plastic carts, no more metal bases. The new carts are sleek and gray and red and just... wrong. It's kind of like shopping with the Jetsons, too streamlined and too modern.
I don't know why this change affects me. I mean, really, who cares? They changed the shopping carts, life goes on. But there's something else. They've made this Target the kind that sells groceries too. And I knew nothing about it. They didn't run the approval past me like they should have. Time was I went to this Target all the time, I worked across the street, but it's been months since I've been in, and in that time they've changed the layout of the store, and they now sell groceries, and they've changed the shopping carts.
Enough already. I thought I declared a moratorium on change a while back. Why is no one paying attention?
Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna close my eyes and count to twenty, which should be more than enough time for everybody to find out what they've changed in the past year and then change it back. Okay?
Here we go. One... Two... Three... Four... Five...
Are you changing things back? Good.
Six... Seven... Eight...
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Yeah, That's Pretty F-in' Big...
I'm still in Texas, and I took a look at the local Super Wal-Mar today. Really took a look. From the inside. No, I didn't get a job there, not that kind of 'inside,' I was grocery shopping with my mother. I noticed how much wider the aisles were than in the stores I visit in SoCal, and yet how people just as easily managed to get in one anothers' way. I kind of idly wondered just how many customers would fit inside. So I looked at one wall, then squinted across the store, past the curve of the Earth, to see the far wall. The far, far, far wall, off in distance, lost in the mists of the store's microclimate.
Holy crap, that place is huge. Ungodly huge. Ridiculously huge. Unnecessarily huge. Obscenely huge.
It looked to me that, wall-to-wall, the store stretched at least 100 yards across. As big as football field; and I mean real football, American football, not 'futbol.' But I thought to myself 'self, you must be losing your ability to estimate distances, it can't be THAT big.' So I looked it up on Wikipedia. The average Super Wal-Mart is 197,000 ft sq. Which, if you assume a square footprint, comes out to 443 feet on a side. I was wrong, a football field is 100 yards across, or 300 feet, 360 if you include both end zones. The Super Wal-Mart would be 147 yards across, on average, or 47% longer than the Cowboys' home field. That's 136 meters if you prefer to measure things like Europeans do.
Hokey smoke, that's just insane. I know things are bigger in Texas, but Texas isn't the only place that has Super Wal-Marts. Chances are good the biggest one isn't even in Texas. How much electricity does that place use? How much water? How much gasoline do all those people burn getting to and from that immense building every day? How many people surreptitiously cut a fart while walking down one of those fifteen-foot-wide aisles? That's greenhouse gas right there.
I'm not into granola and I don't wear hemp clothes. I'm not a green fanatic by any measure. But just thinking about the simple statistics for what it takes to keep this one Super Wal-Mart open is enough to turn me into a tree-hugging, polar bear-loving hippie. And then when you think about all the other Super Wal-Marts across the country... man, I'm starting to long for a Volkswagen Microbus that I can take into the forest and get away from it all. Jeez, how much do we need, and how big a store do we need to put it all in? Enough, already.
Where's my tie-dye? I need to make some clothes.
Holy crap, that place is huge. Ungodly huge. Ridiculously huge. Unnecessarily huge. Obscenely huge.
It looked to me that, wall-to-wall, the store stretched at least 100 yards across. As big as football field; and I mean real football, American football, not 'futbol.' But I thought to myself 'self, you must be losing your ability to estimate distances, it can't be THAT big.' So I looked it up on Wikipedia. The average Super Wal-Mart is 197,000 ft sq. Which, if you assume a square footprint, comes out to 443 feet on a side. I was wrong, a football field is 100 yards across, or 300 feet, 360 if you include both end zones. The Super Wal-Mart would be 147 yards across, on average, or 47% longer than the Cowboys' home field. That's 136 meters if you prefer to measure things like Europeans do.
Hokey smoke, that's just insane. I know things are bigger in Texas, but Texas isn't the only place that has Super Wal-Marts. Chances are good the biggest one isn't even in Texas. How much electricity does that place use? How much water? How much gasoline do all those people burn getting to and from that immense building every day? How many people surreptitiously cut a fart while walking down one of those fifteen-foot-wide aisles? That's greenhouse gas right there.
I'm not into granola and I don't wear hemp clothes. I'm not a green fanatic by any measure. But just thinking about the simple statistics for what it takes to keep this one Super Wal-Mart open is enough to turn me into a tree-hugging, polar bear-loving hippie. And then when you think about all the other Super Wal-Marts across the country... man, I'm starting to long for a Volkswagen Microbus that I can take into the forest and get away from it all. Jeez, how much do we need, and how big a store do we need to put it all in? Enough, already.
Where's my tie-dye? I need to make some clothes.
Friday, September 25, 2009
In Action
I've been thinking about the best way to go about becoming gainfully employed. Yup, it's time to start hitting it pretty hard, time to leave this life of leisure and get back on the job track. It's not that I want to, it's that I need to. But all of us currently 'between assignments' know that the entire recruiting process these days is designed so that you can't actually talk to a person, they don't want to be bothered. Kind of cowardly, if you ask me, and just about the worst way you could find someone to do a job, but that's the way it is. So I've been trying to think of ways to avoid the resume black hole and get myself noticed, and I finally got it.
I need my own action figure.
I grew up with the Mego superhero figures, I had Batman, Superman, and Aquaman (really), and, of course, the real GI Joe, the big one, not the horrible little one. I still have, somewhere, the first set of Star Wars action figures, all well-worn and thoroughly played with, as toys should be. And right now, atop my bookshelf, sit two modern action figures, The Dude and Walter. I know from action figures, is what I'm saying, and today the collector's action figure market is huge.
I figure my action figure would be the size of the real GI Joe, a foot tall, and I'd have my own 'Living Room Playset,' complete with couch, big TV, and remote control. He could have something to paint on a beard - since I shave infrequently now - and you'd strip him down to his underwear to watch broadcast TV, since he canceled cable. He'd have a wide variety of work clothes gathering dust in his closet, and he'd try to eat healthy but fall off the wagon more times than not. It could be the first in a line of 'real world' action figures, designed to prepare little kids for the harsh realities of life.
I think I'm on to something here...
I need my own action figure.
I grew up with the Mego superhero figures, I had Batman, Superman, and Aquaman (really), and, of course, the real GI Joe, the big one, not the horrible little one. I still have, somewhere, the first set of Star Wars action figures, all well-worn and thoroughly played with, as toys should be. And right now, atop my bookshelf, sit two modern action figures, The Dude and Walter. I know from action figures, is what I'm saying, and today the collector's action figure market is huge.
I figure my action figure would be the size of the real GI Joe, a foot tall, and I'd have my own 'Living Room Playset,' complete with couch, big TV, and remote control. He could have something to paint on a beard - since I shave infrequently now - and you'd strip him down to his underwear to watch broadcast TV, since he canceled cable. He'd have a wide variety of work clothes gathering dust in his closet, and he'd try to eat healthy but fall off the wagon more times than not. It could be the first in a line of 'real world' action figures, designed to prepare little kids for the harsh realities of life.
I think I'm on to something here...
Friday, August 28, 2009
Shirtless Ambition
I want to be on COPS.
I've been a fan the show for years now, watching the junkies, speeders, thieves, drunks, and liars who - inexplicably - sign the production release form to allow their shame to be broadcast on television. And I gotta say, it looks like fun. Substance abuse aside, it seems that the people on COPS always get a good workout, with their pulse racing either from a high-speed chase, a foot pursuit, or a good brawl. So I want in.
Now I gotta figure out how to make my debut. I know the COPS crew goes out with officers for days at a time, and only the cream of the crop makes it on the show. Here's what I figure I need:
1. Sub-standard housing. COPS is never in Coral Gables or Beverly Hills, but they are regularly in West Pam Beach and Riverside.
2. A poorly-considered criminal plan. I'm thinking I need to heist 1,000 baby blankets from Wal-Mart, that's both funny and sadly desperate at the same time.
3. Lots of malt liquor. Most criminal enterprises run on alcohol, people wouldn't try this stuff if they weren't drunk.
4. Room to run. There's gotta be a chase, long enough that the camera guy can't keep up, so he arrives when the officers have me down in the dirt, knees in my back, roughly handcuffing me.
5. No shirt. The best encounters on COPS are with the shirtless.
It looks like I have my road map. Detailed enough to act on, but not thought out well enough to realize it's a bad idea. Perfect.
The only problem I can see is tasers. Going shirtless leaves me particularly vulnerable to tasering, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like that. Oh well, it's the price of redneck fame.
I've been a fan the show for years now, watching the junkies, speeders, thieves, drunks, and liars who - inexplicably - sign the production release form to allow their shame to be broadcast on television. And I gotta say, it looks like fun. Substance abuse aside, it seems that the people on COPS always get a good workout, with their pulse racing either from a high-speed chase, a foot pursuit, or a good brawl. So I want in.
Now I gotta figure out how to make my debut. I know the COPS crew goes out with officers for days at a time, and only the cream of the crop makes it on the show. Here's what I figure I need:
1. Sub-standard housing. COPS is never in Coral Gables or Beverly Hills, but they are regularly in West Pam Beach and Riverside.
2. A poorly-considered criminal plan. I'm thinking I need to heist 1,000 baby blankets from Wal-Mart, that's both funny and sadly desperate at the same time.
3. Lots of malt liquor. Most criminal enterprises run on alcohol, people wouldn't try this stuff if they weren't drunk.
4. Room to run. There's gotta be a chase, long enough that the camera guy can't keep up, so he arrives when the officers have me down in the dirt, knees in my back, roughly handcuffing me.
5. No shirt. The best encounters on COPS are with the shirtless.
It looks like I have my road map. Detailed enough to act on, but not thought out well enough to realize it's a bad idea. Perfect.
The only problem I can see is tasers. Going shirtless leaves me particularly vulnerable to tasering, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like that. Oh well, it's the price of redneck fame.
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