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The terrorists have won. A long while ago, I had to block comments on my blogs due to one individual who was trolling me. I always snicker a bit when I hear a statement like "If we do that, then the terrorists have won." It seems silly to me as our problems were always so minor compared to the lot of the great masses of people in the world who endure real suffering. It is pure luck that we are still alive to endure whatever thing we must endure because of the terrorists.

The silliness is that if comments have to be screened, I don't want them. And I enjoy them not being there far more than I enjoyed dealing with the troll, although he was kind of a hoot. Anyway, it is one more thing I don't have to bother with. I actually know who he is, though he thought himself anonymous, but, alas, I dare not say. :)

What I can say is that there was a point in my life when I started to avoid people who bothered me. And then there was another point in which I was not bothered by my act of avoidance. No guilt was attached any more and the final step towards Nirvana is when you move on and forget the thing happened within minutes.

There are still places where I cannot avoid the bothersome folks in the world. Work with the public is one such place, but, it is all so minor in the grand scheme. I think the ultimate strategy to deal with bothersome people is to laugh. One: because it might just bother them back and make them think when argumentation probably would not. And two: when you think about it, after a period of time on earth makes you a little wiser, they honestly are quite funny.

Plausible Deniability

Great day today. Feeling better every day, health-wise. I still have little appetite for food, but, that is probably a good thing. And I challenged myself, threw all caution to the wind, and succeeded more than I thought at all possible on a project. It was a more abstract economic meme, but low concept. I wondered if there might be an audience that had read up on this subject and wondered if my meme was good enough...and I was right on both counts, I think. I hope I can come up with similar triumphs, but one was enough to push me forward for a while. I don't expect gangbuster numbers of shares but... what I got was fulfilling.

Also, I focused on quality. I think I have a new perspective on memes. And, as long as I am welcome in MemeGOP, I will forge ahead with my new ideas.

It has been a long time since I have written a more personal entry in the Sandwich. Work is excellent. More and more, every day, our new director seems like the perfect guy for the job. Work has turned from being a bit tedious to being hopeful. I am motivated. I'm still a bit cagey from the past, but highly motivated to do what I do best, because what I do seems to be what is now more appreciated.

As always, I am reorganizing projects. I have completely handed over the Wagon Wheel facebook page to someone else. I built that page from nothing, in a way, less than nothing. I will be free now to spend this time on other projects, knowing that I left it in good hands.

I will focus on the Meme thing for a while until I get some kind of confidence that my efforts are running smoothly. I have not given up on other projects in the least. I am even pleasure reading more.

I'm sure a lot of that was cryptic, but hey... plausible deniability.

The Rodeo People Are Different

 

At first, the lady from New York, who always comes in to use the computers like clockwork in the mornings, seemed slightly wrong in her morning soliloquy. She always finds some cute way of characterizing the south but is always ever so slightly wrong. So when she told me about the rodeo in town and how the all the girls were dressed alike in short pants, I took it with a grain of salt. Then they started coming in to print their rodeo tickets. One guy, one girl. Always the same. The guys were dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, etc. I must admit I paid less attention to them. The girls were dressed exactly alike, exactly. Six different couples. The second couple actually fooled me. I thought they were the first couple coming back. I let them talk about what they needed for a moment before I realized for sure, this was a different couple and they were not putting me on.

 

The picture I posted here does not do it justice. It has all the elements, but not quite. "The look" as I have noticed is really mostly short women (though, one was tall and the guy was extra tall as well)  and they are very thin. Their tops were more dressy than the tops above but were really more revealing in the uper area and less around the midriff. Well, the tops varied but... not all that much. Really I noticed the variation only after I started noticing (I was going to say, "looking closely" but that is probably not the best term.)

 

Then it hit me. The guy in the truck this morning who jumped out in front of me. The rodeo, of course. For this guy I had to slam on my brakes and the stuff in my front seat hit the floorboard, but the odd thing about it was the "Romney - Ryan" sticker on the back window (where the gun rack should be.) These are rare, very rare, around here. I pulled up to the side of the truck to have a look inside. The guy was looking back at me and waved inanely at me. I guessed it was a dig at me, informing me he did not care what he had done, but there was this odd smile with it. I broke into laughter. I admit, if you want to jump in front of me and cause my bag of electronics to hit the floor, just wave inanely and smile. That does the trick. Forgiven.

 

Oh, yeah, the girls did the computer work. :)

 

 

 

 

Walmart, last night.

I was in Walmart last night. I have pretty much boycotted Walmart and learned a new way of shopping. There is not the everything in one place convenience but, hey, it's fun to shop at a variety of other places where the staff are friendly and happy. At Walmart no employee seems happy.

I was walking by the back where the employees come out. I was just casually walking down the back aisle when this employee comes out and steps right in front of me. She did not even acknowledge my existence. She reminded me of a Zombie. I had to stop short to keep from colliding. She worked her way slowly down the middle of the aisle in front of me. I finally decided to stop and just wait because it was hard to walk that slow. :)  Now I don't blame the employee, nor should one really blame Zombies in general. Someone caused their condition.

Because this was so spectacularly unlike any other store I had been in, I started remembering the articles I had read about Walmart staff problems. It was wild that the lady did not even acknowledge a customer's existence, especially when she had just stepped into my personal space. I am used to being invisible by everyone EXCEPT employees. I'm an old guy. But employees tend to treat me the same as I used to be treated by everyone when I was younger.

Following this incident, I decided to take a closer look at Walmart. I have heard that staffing has been a major problem to inventory control. And indeed, empty spaces for items were everywhere. Sometimes an entire brand was gone. When was the last time in your supermarket that you came across vast amounts of empty freezer space. Freezer space is probably the most expensive space in the store. One shelf had no prices on the edge, completely empty. Nothing was even scheduled for this shelf.

On top of the lack of products was a terrifyingly awful shelving of the products. I am relating things that were throughout the store. items were mixed together on the shelfs and variations of items were hidden behind other variations. Almost 50 percent of items were not fronted (that is placing the item at the front of the shelf) and on top shelfs this was almost a given.  The top shelf is actually the most important place to have fronted. Shorter people cannot see what item is on the shelf because the shelf itself is blocking their view.  But the top shelf takes an extra effort to put straight. There were no extra efforts here. When we finally got to checkout, nothing was better. Here was the only place I had seen employees doing nothing.

I have only one word for our local Walmart, pathetic.

Oh, and when did "Ready to Cook" become the opposite of "Cooked?"  What things, that are uncooked, are not "Ready to Cook?"