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Reading List 04
That Woman; The Life of Wallis Simpson Duchess of Windsor by Anne Sebba
After reading the third book, I went back to the library to return it and also to continue teaching an adult student ESL, something I’ve been doing for a couple of years now and as I waited for him to show up I was rummaging through the new arrivals and I found my next book. A biography of Wallis Simpson written by Anne Sebba, Simpson was an American women, twice divorced who almost became the Queen of England. However the government and the citizens once they found out where against the King’s wishes of marriage to Wallis so he chooses to give up the crown. To be fair Wallis and Edward were both mentioned in my last book, as it seems he preferred to have male sexual encounters from time to time and she the opposite and then they would share, giving a new meaning to a marriage with equal partnership. It is an interesting story of how Wallis who was born poor went on to becoming one of the most talked about females in modern history.
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Reading list 03
Full Service; My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars by Scotty Bowers – So for my next book I choose something a just a bit irrelevant, I mean who really cares about who has sex with whom, what, or tied up? What made me want to read this book was the picture of Katharine Hepburn who I think was a great actress and I just had no idea that she batted for the same team. There is a lot juicy tidbits in this book some interesting some not, it’s a quick read that is fun, entertaining, and completely meaningless.
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Racism
I remember reading once that the amount of time necessary for racism to completely be erased between two tribes or warring factions of people is five generations so roughly 160 years. Left unanswered in this article was the start date for this process to begin, I think because history is so fluid in interpretation that defining a starting date is somewhat impossible.
I think that if we try to define the start date you would get two different answers from each tribe. In this case European vs. African, Europeans I think would say 1865 is the starting date; after all that is the year the civil war ended. However, Africans I believe would say the starting date is 2012 that is when the lynching of Trayvon Martin happened.
Personally, I believe that the African interpretation is closer to the proper starting date. It’s been 147 years since the end of the civil war and while race relations have gotten better I still meet way too many people younger than I who believe that “those” people just don’t belong here. And people of my generation who barricade themselves within the walls of ignorance who seem to think that the problems will just go away without their involvement.
Technically, my use of the word “lynching” is wrong in describing the incident between Zimmerman and Martin because they were only two people at the killing site and legally a lynching is a mob action. However, look at how this crime has divided the tribes, don’t try and tell me is not a mob reaction.
No matter how you view this, one thing is for sure, two mothers are grieving over the lost of her son.
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Reading list
This will be a post that will be updated as I finish reading…BOOKS, those old fashioned paper things.
The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - this is a wonderful book about science, cells, and theft, hard to put down and walk away from it without being amazed, angry, and inspired.
We’re With Nobody by Alan Huffman & Michael Rejebian - This is a book about two political opposition researchers, the book brings to light the history, reasons, and adventures the two authors do what they do and why it’s a necessary evil in our democracy. It’s and easy quick read that every high school history teacher should study and teach. 15April12
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Occupy your mind
I’ve been trying for a while now to figure out how to explain to someone who doesn’t understand what the occupy wall street movement is all about. At first it was easy, my standard reply was “you don’t understand it because you accept the current convenient lies which are racist and white power dominated” of course this just inflamed the republican base to no end stopping any serious debate on a dime.
But now I think I’ve found a better way, ‘OWS is like a piece of art’! When I look at a Jason Pollack or Andy Warhol painting I find myself think what the fuck is this? To me a Pollack looks like a bunch of spilled paint left to dry by a lazy painter and Warhol looks like my first year printing class project. However, stick me in front of a Monet and I’ll sit quietly for hours absorbing the beauty in front of me. I don’t know why I think of these three artists in this way but I do. I’m not saying that Pollack and Warhol don’t have merit, they do, and I’m only saying that I don’t see the merit in their work.
So when you can’t see the merit in the OWS movement then perhaps the problem isn’t them but rather you. If several people in different cities all join together and occupy something then there must be something you are missing perhaps you cannot make the connection that Wall Street controls Congress or that banks are to blame for the current depression. Maybe you think it’s just Congress or worse, that this is just Obama’s fault. If it was just two, three, or five people trying to take over Wall Street then you can say it’s just crazy people but when there are hundreds of thousand occupying then you can no longer say its crazy people without merit. And you should start to look elsewhere for answers since becoming informed is part of your civil duty in a democracy.
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Mall Hell
I need a new pair of reading glasses so I find myself at the worst place I want to be, a mall that is trying to hang on to whatever life capitalism hasn’t destroyed yet. I don’t like malls, to many people running around, way too much noise, and far too much walking to go to the one store that I want to visit. It’s not that I despise shopping it’s just that a mall is not shopping it’s more like a consumerism zoo for lazy people. I’d prefer to walk down Lincoln Avenue in Chicago and visit resale shops while watching people walk by who are dressed in the same Gap commercial style.
This mall is running at twenty-four percent occupancy and its food court is not much of a court more like four vendors all trying to get that one customer to stop by when they walk past. On this particular day the mall was hosting the Cub Scouts Pine wood derby contest and the same time in another location there was a dance competition that featured incomplete songs and organized routines it was more like a tryout camp for a cheerleading squad. So of course the store I want to visit is directly between the two, hundreds of screaming bored cub scouts and shitty music turned up to eleven. Thank God I only have to put up with this for an hour which is fifty nine minutes to long.
So I managed to walk around the mall, both levels, and get something to eat at a Japanese sushi place and still have forty five minutes left to find something to do. So I started writing out a couple of future blogs when I notice a kardashian dressed female walk in the mall, except she was too old to be wearing this outfit it which made her look not younger but just out of place. I really couldn’t tell if she was pretty or not because her face was covered by these huge sunglasses so I couldn’t see her eyes which is necessary for me to complete the picture.
Anyway it was time for me to collect my glasses and get out of here so I did and as I was leaving the mall I found myself behind the fake kardashian as we both left the mall and I noticed where she parked her Cadillac it was in the fire lane for the mall. I thought to myself, wtf, who are you to think that you’re “entitled” to park there and pretend to be someone you’re not.
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Liquidation endings
So the liquidation of my former employer’s hardware store is over and I have to say that it is a job I will miss! It was a fun 14 weeks of work that was not hard but interesting, exciting, and sometimes mentally draining. It was mentally draining for three reasons, one the customers who have been conditioned to believe that they are always right, which I’ve already written about. The second is because the employees seemed to have no concept of what was expected of them. And the third reason was customer theft which got worse as the discount increased.
A few employees could not stay off their cell phones no matter how often they were told to stop texting during work; I ended up taking the phone away from one of them as soon as they punched in. To another employee I simply walked up to him and in a quiet voice said “are you fucking kidding me, the boss is right there, you know he hates to see people standing around texting, and you’re doing it right in front of him, how fucking stupid are you?”
Retail employees are conditioned to bend over backwards to please the customer and in this job you didn’t need to do that you just needed to be able to point the customer in the right direction and continue whatever job you were given. But some just could not understand this concept and would walk the customer to whatever they were looking for and then help them choose. No matter what I or any of the other key holders told these employees they just could not stop hand holding these customers.
By week twelve all that was left in the store was old paint, unusual screws, and shit nobody would stock up on. But customers were still coming in and asking for the most basic items that we sold out of weeks ago, soap, power tools, mulch, grills, and keys, you would have thought that we just opened. One customer who came in often asked for incandescent light bulbs which were all gone by week five, as I told her we were out she asked if we were going to be getting any more in. Seriously? WTF do you think this is?
But what surprised me the most was the theft, one guy we caught was paying with his American Express card and he had shoved merchandise in between two garbage cans he was buying. He claimed he didn’t know which we laughed at him because we watched him do it. So we gave him a choice buy the merchandise at full price or we call the cops, he paid.
There was a bag of dies in the tool aisle and by the fourth week I no longer saw them so I assumed they were sold, then they showed up five weeks later when the nuts and bolts hardware went to 80 percent off the original price and this guy brings them up to the counter when the most naive cashier is working and he tells her they are nuts at fifty cents apiece. There is like 70 dies in the bag which range in price from six to 15 dollars each. And he tells me that they are nuts not dies, so I look at him and say I know what a die is and if you don’t that’s your fault not mine and I tell the cashier to change him nine dollars for each one. He didn’t purchase them.
In the 14 weeks I worked I think that there was only one day that I didn’t find an empty package laying about semi hidden and on most days I found three, four, or more. I’m pretty sure that we are not alone in this and that the rest of the world is just as bad but please don’t tell me that we are a “Christian” nation. We are far far way from being anything remotely close to Christian.
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Job searching
So I’ll be entering the looking for a job club once again and I stumbled across this article; “20 Craziest Job Interview Questions and the Right Answers”! (the link is at the end of this posting) The first thing I noticed was that there are only 19 questions and worse there are no answers. Seriously, who was the editor that approved this headline? I know some of the questions can’t be answered like the first one but questions 2, 8, 16, and 19 can be. The headline implies that there are 20 questions and answers not 20 questions and why they are asked.
This is why I can’t stand the main stream media which I call the war and entertainment media because if the news is anything other than war or entertainment they can’t handle it or ask any hard questions.
Anyway enjoy my answers.
Sell me an invisible pen. I’ll sell you an invisible pen but then I’ll have to kill you…
Twenty five racehorses, no stopwatch, five tracks. Figure out the top three fastest horses in the fewest number of races. You can have 2 to 20 horses in a race so I’d answer 2.
What is your strategy at table tennis? Never play table tennis.
You are climbing a staircase. Each time you can either take one step or two. The staircase has n steps. In how many distinct ways can you climb the staircase? One at a time I have bad knees and want to keep them.
How do you evaluate Subway’s five-foot long sub policy? Shitty food at shitty prices.
How many cocktail umbrellas are there in a given time in the United States? One to many!
Would you be okay hearing “no” from seven out of 10 customers. I’m about to hear no from you so yes.
Suppose you had eight identical balls. One of them is slightly heavier and you are given a balance scale. What’s the fewest number of times you have to use the scale to find the heavier ball? Four
Estimate how many planes are there in the sky. All of them, you didn’t say they needed to be flying.
If you could describe Hershey, Godiva and Dove chocolate as people, how would you describe them? Hershey is the girl next door, Dove is the girl you want to end up with, and Godiva is the girl you lust for but cannot have.
If I was a genie and could give you your dream job, what and where would it be? Teacher in Argentina
What did you play with as a child? An invisible pen.
How would you market a telescope in 1750 when no one knows about orbits, moons etc. Suppose one of your goats goes out on the lamb, with this you could search for it without tracking it.
If you walk into a liquor store to count the unsold bottles, but the clerk is screaming at you to leave, what do you do? I’d leave no sense in pissing off the clerk.
How would you rate your life on a scale of 1 to 10? I turned it up to 11.
What is the smallest number divisible by 225 that consists of all 1’s and 0’s? Really? Ok, 11111111100, doesn’t everyone know that?
If we were playing Russian roulette and had one bullet, I randomly spun the chamber and fired but nothing was fired. Would you rather fire the gun again or respin the chamber and then fire on your turn? What are you nuts? There is no way I’d be playing such a game
Tell me about your life from kindergarten onwards. A constant search for sweet sweet pussy.
Five guys, all of different ages, enter a bar and take a seat at a round table. What is the probability that they are seated in ascending order of age? Two out of five.
Link: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37245561/20-craziest-job-interview-questions-and-the-right-answers/
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Abortion, Cancer, Santorum, & Lies
When the press allows our potential leaders to say stupid shit without calling them out on it, I get pissed off. This weekend on “fox news Sunday” presidential candidate Rick Santorum said “I don’t believe breast cancer research is advanced by funding an organization that does abortions where you’ve seen ties to cancer and abortions.” Did you catch that? Ricky fecal matter believes that there is a direct link between having an abortion and getting cancer but medically there is no link except the one in Ricky’s mind. And this alone should be enough to remove him from the presidential ballot.
But back to our news organizations, a very quick check of the three major papers in my life and not one of them had this as a major or minor headline. In fact on the websites they offer Santorum didn’t even make the front page or the main politics page for that matter. And people wonder why newspaper readership is declining, so here is a clue, when you stop separating the bull from the shit you become useless to society. On the flip side of this when you allow the bullshit to be printed without the fact checking you become a propaganda shell for whosever in power.
Of course I should also respond to fox news and how they allowed the idiot to say this without calling bullshit on this I’m pretty sure that none of the hosts even cared enough to recognize the statement as false. After all fox news is the best republican propaganda machine out there and Mr. fecal matter is a candidate for that party. Fox is not a news organization it is a propaganda organization it doesn’t care about truth or honesty it only cares about republican power.
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To my followers
Greetings & Salutations,
First things first, thank you for following me it’s something this I never expected. I never had the intention of writing a blog for you or anyone for that matter it was and is something that I just do with no real time limit or plan.
It’s just a way of getting the Mike Royko in me out. If you don’t know who Mike Royko is then you have some homework to do, I suggest you start with his columns on the VA and the Vietnam Vet they racistly ignored until a President got involved.
I know that racistly is not really a word however what the VA did was racist and you can always add ly to a word just for fun.
