7 March 2007

WAL-MART WEDNESDAY

1000 by Jeff Hess

It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman, Peter Sayles and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

AFL-CIO CHASES CEO PAY… In the Late 18th century the economic gap between the aristocrats of France and the peasantry grew so disparate that a desperate people rose up, beheaded their king and queen, and precipitated one of the longest running political nightmares in human history. Keep reading…

I LEARN MORE THAN I TEACH… My day job is tutoring. Typically I work one-on-one with students in grades 7 and higher. But recently I started working with a 1st grader. Yesterday, on his break, he asked me to read him The Lorax. It”s been a while, but this really jumped out at me. Keep reading…

WHICH CLASS DO YOU FIT INTO…? Are you: (A) A brand aspirational; (B) a price-sensitive affluent; or (C) a value-price shoppers? After a year of research, Wal-Mart has decided that it”s shopper base breaks down into these three categories. And with this knowledge, the company can now rule the world. Keep reading…

AT THE WALLY PLEX… There are sound stages on Hollywood”s back lots smaller than Bentonvile”s behemoths, so it”s no surprise that budding video talent has been sneaking cameras in at odd hours. And now for the midnight show at the Wally Plex featuring crzyblonde77. Keep reading…

LAP DANCING AT WAL-MART…? It”s only a rumor. I couldn”t find any corroboration and there”s nothing official from Wal-Mart or writer Erika Schickel. But Galleycat speculates that, in an Oprah moment, Wal-Mart has chosen You”re Not The Boss Of Me as it”s next Latest And Greatest book promotion. Keep reading…

NOW THIS IS A DRUG PLAN… [Update – 4 March, 0820 – Someone let”s us know in the comments that while I missed the story he didn”t. Gawd, I love the bloggosphere. Thank you Someone.] I don”t know how we missed this back in October, but remember all those press conferences about Wal-Mart”s snoozer $4-generic-drugs program? (Did they ever get around to rolling it out in all 50 states, or did the PR benefit tank before then?) Keep reading…

WAL-MART UNITES OBAMA AND CLINTON… Despite the nasty little David Geffen tiff two weeks ago, senators Barak Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) agree with 28 of their congressional colleagues (7 senators and 21 members of the House) that it”s time for Homeland Security to grow up. Keep reading…

SECOND EMPLOYEE FIRED IN EAVESDROPPING…
Wal-Mart has fired the supervisor of the technician responsible, over a four-month period, of eaves-dropping on both voice and text-message communications between Wal-Mart employees and, among others, a New York Times reporter. Keep reading…

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7 March 2007

FROM MY DAD…

0800 by Jeff Hess

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

To All The Kids Who Survived the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank koolade made with sugar, but we weren’t overweight because We were always outside playing. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were OK.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms. We had friends and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

If you are one of them, congratulations.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?

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7 March 2007

FROM MY CHAPBOOK…

0400 by Jeff Hess

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from A Strategy For Daily Living by Ari Kiev.

“No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It”s when tomorrow”s burden is added to the burden of today that the road is more than a man can bear,” George McDonald.

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6 March 2007

JONESING FOR A FIX…

1655 by Jeff Hess

People in this town drink too much
coffee. They’re jumpy all the time. You
see them drinking out of their big plastic
mugs while they’re driving. They cut in
front of you, they steal your parking places.
Teenagers in the cemeteries knocking over
tombstones are slurping café au lait.
Recycling men hanging onto their trucks are
sipping espresso….

…They’re so
serious about their coffee, it’s all they
can think about, nothing else matters.
Everyone’s wide awake but looks incredibly
tired.

From A New Lifestyle by James Tate.

Posted in Coffee Adventure, Poetry | No Comments »

6 March 2007

MY COMMENTS…

1626 by Jeff Hess

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

1623 LIBBY FOUND GUILTY
1438 How to starve an attention seeker like Ann Coulter

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6 March 2007

GET YOUR FAIR AND BALANCED…!

1615 by Jeff Hess

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6 March 2007

MUCKING OUT THE BLOGPILE…

1400 by Jeff Hess

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Traditional Oblique Values

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6 March 2007

FROM THE SANDBOX…

1200 by Jeff Hess

CAPT Lee Kelley: The weather’s been moody out here in this vast desert. This morning began with a family of thunderclouds, distant cousins to the serrated zeppelins that have obscured the sun for days now. Between 0900 and 1600, it rained maybe three times. Each shower turned the world into mud, and each stretch of dry instant heat absorbed large amounts of it. I am…

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6 March 2007

FROM MY DAD…

0800 by Jeff Hess

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

When I got back from Montana last week I had a bunch of Canadian dollars I needed to exchange, so I went to the currency exchange window at the local bank. It was a short line with just one guy in front of me… an Asian guy who was trying to exchange yen for dollars and he was a little irritated!

He asked the teller, “Why it change? Yestoday, I get two huna dolla fo yen. Today I get huna eighty? Why it change?”

The teller shrugged her shoulders and said, “Fluctuations”.

The Asian guy says, ” Fluc you white people too!”

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6 March 2007

FROM MY CHAPBOOK…

0400 by Jeff Hess

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from A Strategy For Daily Living by Ari Kiev.

The more I look for my own solutions, relying on my own assessments, the stronger I will become.

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5 March 2007

MUCKING OUT THE BLOGPILE…

1400 by Jeff Hess

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Ricky Gervais on Creationsim

Posted in Blogpile | 2 Comments »

5 March 2007

FROM THE SANDBOX…

1200 by Jeff Hess

Eric Coulson: War here in Iraq has generated an entire set of sounds that are unique, whether in origin or presentation. They come from both the mundane and the deadly, and each has its own particular flavor. The most common sound we all share is the drone of the generator. Every building has its electrical power provided by generators. In Falluja, large banks of huge…

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5 March 2007

IRAQ AS WWF CAGE MATCH…

0822 by Jeff Hess

President Harry Truman had a slightly different idea when he articulated the Truman Doctrine of containment for Communism, but the thinking in Washington appears to be ready to take the idea and run (away) with it in Iraq. The idea? Seal the borders and let the civil war we’ve created burn iteself out. From The Washington Post:

Most options involve partial or complete U.S. redeployment from Baghdad and other violent urban centers, followed by containment of the civil war within Iraq’s borders — keeping out meddlesome neighbors such as Iran and preventing a wider, regional conflict. Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, a former chief of Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East, said Congress is “drifting toward containment” and predicted that option will soon begin gaining popularity.

And the last man standing wins?

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5 March 2007

THE PROTO-NEO/THEOCON BLINKS… OR NOT…

0809 by Jeff Hess

Posted in Michael J. Fox | 2 Comments »

5 March 2007

MONA’S MONDAY…

0800 by Jeff Hess

My dad isn’t the only one who sends me fun stuff via email. A good friend and educational mentor also routinely passes along her share of chuckles — intermixed with not a few requests for veracity on things viral and outragious. Don’t worry, there still plenty of stuff to come From My Dad but occassionally I’ll toss a few of Mona’s finds in as well.

A teacher was giving a lesson on the circulation of the blood. Trying to make the matter clearer, she said, “Now, class, if I stood on my head, the blood, as you know, would run into it, and I would turn red in the face.”

“Yes,” the class said.

“Then why is it that while I am standing upright in the ordinary position the blood doesn’t run into my feet?”

A little fellow shouted, “Cause your feet ain’t empty.”

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5 March 2007

FROM MY CHAPBOOK…

0400 by Jeff Hess

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from A Strategy For Daily Living by Ari Kiev.

“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely,” Auguste Rodin.

Posted in Chapbook | No Comments »

4 March 2007

MUCKING OUT THE BLOGPILE…

1400 by Jeff Hess

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is One U.S. publisher rolls the dice on a debut novel.

Posted in Blogpile | No Comments »

4 March 2007

FROM MY DAD…

0800 by Jeff Hess

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

From A Farm Kid (Now at Marine Corps Recruit Training, San Diego)

Dear Ma and Pa,

I am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before all of the places are filled.

I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m. but I am getting so I like to sleep late. Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot, and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing.

Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there’s warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc., but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food, but tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the two city boys that live on coffee.

Their food, plus yours, holds you till noon when you get fed again.

It’s no wonder these city boys can’t walk much. We go on “route marches,” which the platoon Sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it’s not my place to tell him different. A “route march” is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks.

The country is nice but awful flat. The Sergeant is like a school teacher. He nags a lot. The Captain is like the school board. Majors and Colonels just ride around and frown. They don’t bother you none.

This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting, I don’t know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don’t move, and it ain’t shooting at you like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don’t even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes.

Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain’t like fighting with that ole bull at home.

I’m about the best they got in this place except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake. I only beat him once. He joined up the same time as me, but I’m only 5’6″ and 130 pounds and he’s 6’8″ and near 300 pounds dry.

Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,

Lisa

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4 March 2007

FROM MY CHAPBOOK…

0400 by Jeff Hess

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from A Strategy For Daily Living by Ari Kiev.

Failure as a result of effort yields information that can be applied the next time.

Posted in Chapbook | No Comments »

3 March 2007

MUCKING OUT THE BLOGPILE…

1400 by Jeff Hess

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Create Your Own Jackson Pollack

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