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?"

except Brooksley Born

Everything...

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act of 1974 created the CFTC as the new regulator of commodity exchanges. It also expanded the scope of the Commodity Exchange Act to cover the previously listed agricultural products and "all other goods and articles, except onions, and all services, rights, and interests in which contracts for future delivery are presently or in the future dealt in." - Wikipedia Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 [1]

I am researching a bit of stuff to find out just why Brooksley Born has not been canonized yet. She really seems to deserve it but you would not believe the number of hits that one of my really elementary articles on Brooksley Born gets. She seems to be such a key figure in the lead up to the biggest worldwide economic downturn since the great depression. So how much is out there if I am some kind of authority based on number of hits? Not much. When I try to find meetings or transcripts of her, it is as if she is as unimportant as .... say, onions in commodity futures.

 

I grew up in a time when history was made up of personalities. Perhaps that was before modern public relations really created an overabundance of personalities. People like Thomas Edison, but not Nikola Tesla, were held up as key elements that formed the molecules of history. It was all the history I was ever going to know unless I studied on my own or watched some educational program. Even knowing that Edison "invented" things really did not adequately state the incredible impact of his most important invention, the first industrial research laboratory. Think of the importance of turning science into practical use on an industrial scale. That is impressive but then flash forward to today’s Pharmaceutical Laboratories. Bill Gates said this about today's pharmaceutical industry "research laboratories."

 

“The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need, but it gets virtually no funding. If you are working on male baldness or other things you get an order of magnitude more research funding because of the voice in the marketplace than something like malaria.” - Bill Gates [2]

 

Bill Gates himself is probably one of those personalities that are regarded as (what did I say?) key elements of the molecules of history.  His comment is about capitalism rather than just science.  

 

Steve Jobs, a Bill Gate's rival, once said "Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology." Steve Jobs is partly right, but, as I often find, the quote is probably truer about Steve Jobs than about the person he is criticizing. (Well, except for the philanthropy part. Jobs was one capitalist nightmare with no happy ending. He was insufferable before the end.) One learns critiquing best by being the object of criticism, I have found.

 

The really important figures in the history of computing were before either one of them. Did either invent the mouse? No. Who did? If that person doesn’t come immediately to mind, I rest my case. By Gates’ and Jobs’ time, both were putting together past discoveries to make things profitable, similar to Thomas Edison. There is definitely creativity in that.

 

Thomas Edison is the one of the key figures in that trend towards profitability as the measure of what is good or bad in science. However, I learned that he invented the light bulb, which he did not really. He looked at filaments with a great tenacity to create a light bulb that was marketable, but he did not really invent them. That is not to say that his significance in history isn’t astounding. It is.

 

Brooksley Born, though, I believe, may be buried intentionally at this point in time. I am interested because she seems heroic, like Thomas Edison seemed to me as a young boy, deserving of a place in history. Possibly she is heroic, possibly not. Oh she is important alright, vastly important. I just want to know if she is a hero. Can I meme her? Can I find that key moment when she stated the obvious and was ignored.

 

But, I must say, it does not help any when I am looking up the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act of 1974 that gave her legitimacy and find the phrase "except onions." I mean, that is just plain weird. I did not expect my research to be like peeling back layers of an onion but… wow, a pun for Tomato Sandwich of Truth blog.  Thus… my entry. 

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000&oldid=543425672

[2]  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bill-gates-why-do-we-care-more-about-baldness-than-malaria-8536988.html

E-limitation

When I started this blog (a rotten way to start a blog entry, oddly) I filled it with one-off random thoughts that came to mind and attempted at every opportunity to turn a pun on sandwiches and sandwich shops. “Limiting?” you might ask, with tongue in cheek. Well, sandwiches are less limiting than you would guess but more than I was happy with. Limits are always helpful in art and life. They are… more helpful… than you would guess.

(I probably have blogged the heck out of this concept too, because: A. I have a short memory and B. I have few genuine moments that would light a bulb over my head and even when that happens they are such energy efficient affairs that they are rarely illuminating. But if I may…)  I find limits to be truly constructive.

 Politically, you would think the party that is conservative would have the most limits. Therefore, given the limitations of my own liberal views, I must by necessity think limits to be as evil as the party that has them. However, in real life I find this supposition that conservatives have more limits to be absolutely untrue. When one comes from a background of accepting whatever one has learned in the past to be true, or accepting particular types of people as authority figures and knowers of absolute truth beyond reasoning, it is not as limiting…. as you might guess.

 (And stop guessing. My plots are as hard to figure out as JJ Abrams’ “Lost!” crossed with his “Alias” and Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Look thou be true; do not give dalliance
Too ... much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw
To the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious,
Or else, good night your vow! [1]
                                               - William Shakespeare

Actually that doesn’t look so bad in print and gone over a few times, yet ‘pon the fast paced stage: probably utter madness to the audience.)

If one accepts a randomly placed parent’s words to be true beyond all experience to the contrary, then one would be conservative.  That sounds rather limiting BUT somehow, it is limitless in its ignorance. There are limitless arguments one does not have to consider. One is free to let one’s mind wonder to more important things than “Who is God?” for God is exactly what your parents or some other authority told you. But surely this must limit your understanding of God. Well, yes, but you have an unlimited amount of freedom. As long as you limit your understanding of what is right and what is wrong, your behavior can be boundless. Add to this the idea that whatever you do wrong can be forgiven and you are truly blessed with freedom. There is no pondering over small issues like unfairness. Your behavior is automatically sanctioned because you, well, have accepted the truth and there is no need for further investigation.

And yes, it looks as if I am playing with the word “limit” but I really am not.

I find abstract art to be as crazy as anyone who is limited in their thinking. To me the limits placed on art started to fizzle just after the impressionist movement and anything became art. Putting paint on your nether regions and rubbing them on the canvas would be entirely acceptable as art. Some things were accepted as art that humans had nothing to do with. Limitless art! Everything is art!

However I do see a parallel here with conservatism even though by all means a conservative would scream at the idea of defecation on a representation of Jesus (preferring deification, as it were.) You see, the limitations make the art. As an artist I would work within the limits I have to create something that went beyond those limits. Ignorance is in the lack of limits. If I just splash in a puddle and say “That is art!” I have only limited the impact of art by having no limits on the definition of art.

Similarly, (I think, because I am really too lazy right now to logically figure out the analogy because of all that work below on the Shakespeare quote) if I am a conservative, and so, by consequence, ignorant of a wide range of argumentative theories, then I can say that an aborted fetus is murdered but the civilians who die in carpet bombing are not murdered. Or I can say that those judged and put to death by capital punishment are not murdered. While my authority says “Thou shalt not kill” and my authority says “Judge not” I can do both out of ignorance caused by my reliance on whatever authority I have chosen (an unlimited choice, really. My parents could have been anyone and I don’t know that they weren’t.)

Having said all this, I apologize for not posting more in “The Sandwich.” I have now done some penance. Limits and lack of limits: mix responsibly.

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[1]  My explanation of what seems to be nonsense, or was listed as nonsense on the Internet, taking it totally out of context as a paragraph in itself: Be true to your vow, do not dally around, but stick with your vow. If you have too much rein (length of a dogs rein gives the dog much play) your vow or oath becomes meaningless. Similarly, emotions or fire in the blood may lead you astray from your vowed path, so be abstemious or lacking in emotion. Or else, your vow will be saying “good night” and be gone.  Why people find that confusing, I do not know.  wink

Wealth Inequality in America

Surround Sound Separation

Somewhere on one of my blogs is an entry about exclusivity. Carl Sandburg thought "exclusive" to be the ugliest word in the English language. After a visit to Carl Sandburg's birthplace, this was the moment I remembered, this quote.

I have been accused of having an exclusive club on Facebook, and I have been accused of not wanting to listen to opposing opinions of others. That is not the first time I have been criticized for this on Facebook. I know the specific traits I do not like in a Facebook "friend" and I now unfriend quickly without much regret.

I want to say that Facebook is not a club. And I want to say that I have never turned down a "friend" request. But somehow those justifications do not seem strong enough to counter the Carl Sandburg attack.

I have decided that I am definitely correct in limiting harmful influences from my life. There is only so much stress I want to expose myself to. And I have a very public job.

Facebook was wonderful tonight. I have such a great group of "friends." It really made me feel good to see the community of like minded folks interrelate and express themselves, if only for a short while. Everything is so interconnected that I cannot really think that my slightly exclusive page makes a dime's worth of difference in this dynamic atmosphere. I am but a tiny aspect of a greater whole. I might influence a small amount, which is all I do in real life.

When I was younger I thought I could change the world. I now see how wide the world actually is. Yet I also at times have marveled at my ability to affect things in some small way by joining others in action or thought. I am relatively new to Facebook and I see such potential in social media. I started less than a year ago to think that world changing events could result from the community resulting from the Internet and I have found nothing better than Facebook that represents this open social movement.

And further, I enjoy my life so much more surrounded by kindred spirits. Carl, when I think the accusations of exclusivity are truly warranted, I promise to try harder. But time and age are large parts of the reason I have less of an ability to withstand the stress of seemingly mindless disagreement. I have a role to play and it is a different role than it was in my younger years. Carl, I guess I just want to make a distinction between being exclusive and being reclusive, which I know you can relate to.

My Memory Again

There is little doubt about it. With my memory fading, changing schedules from a Monday - Friday routine has played major havoc with me. I forget what day it is on a constant basis. I forget vacation times. I forget to do things that need to be done.

I was, of course, having these problems before but an upheaval in schedule has just made things worse. It is like I have less ability to adapt. When I worked in Montgomery, I often had schedules that changed on a weekly basis. I did forget my schedule a lot but it was understandable.

My schedule now is just as steady as it was before but different days are involved. I hate it when people get perturbed with me about forgetting things now. I actually had an argument on Facebook again. It was with someone who blamed Whitney Houston for her death. Somehow this struck home personally. It is not like I take drugs. :)  But blaming the victim is really not a part of a civilized society. It is all contained in the metaphor of trying to get people to stand in line and be shot at in the Civil War. Red Badge of Courage is one of the great American novels. Who can blame someone for running and not wanting to be shot, but if everyone ran, then this side (the more civilized side that treated its soldiers like human beings) would lose. Similarly, people make a choice to take drugs. We tell them not to. In this unfair world, celebrities  must bear the full brunt of the type of people who we all know who troll around on Facebook bullying. They get criticized for everything and the meanest form of criticism to me is that found in criticizing celebrities for losing the magic, for being out of touch, for being Barry Manilowesque. Drugs, well, I can see that. It happens so commonly among celebrities one would have to wonder if there is a commonality rather than simply blaming the celebrity.

So, I feel this way when someone blames me for my memory. It is what it is. If there is some major thing I have done on account of my memory being bad, well, in a sense, I am just a victim of the deterioration we all have as we age. I get over things easily these days, also because of age and wisdom. But, it still niggles me just a bit. And what is the sandwich of truth for but to relate those little frustrations.

My answer to the person who was so intent on calling Whitney Houston names and excoriating her? Block. It works wonders on Facebook. Not so easy in real life, but it would be nice.

Two things God forgot to give us that the Internet has invented. The "block" button on Facebook, and the "undo" button in Microsoft Word. These two devices would be handy in real life.