Timewarner cable is a rip off

Why why why do I have only two choices for cable television in Charlotte? As a sports fan I would like to be able to watch ESPN. Right now I have Basic Service which Timewarner offers at $9.38 a month. The only way these shysters will allow me to have access to ESPN in my home is if I purchase the Standard Cable Service which costs $47.25. I don't want Animal Planet, I'll never watch Oxygen and MTV hasn't shown a music video for ten years. How many of us are shelling out twenty plus extra dollars a month for cable channels they never watch just for a select two or three they consistantly watch? It's a rip off and after contacting TimeWarner more than once I can tell they are pleased as punch with the situation. Give us some choices. It's 2005 and if they aren't giving us more control of our cable choices it's because they don't want to, not because they can't.

Operation: Save the dipstick's ass

You know, Mr. Crappy-ass president, you wouldn't have had to spend the last few days looking like a hands-on in control leader if you had done your job in the first place and made sure the federal government was prepared to respond to an emergency. Jesus, you're a dick.


Look at me! Hey, over here! Look at me! I'm in charge and I'm doing a heck of a job. 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! Terror. Oooooh scary. Terrorism! Look out! Smoking gun...mushroom cloud! Strong country, resolute president. 9/11! 9/11! 9/11!

Opus

If you get a chance buy today's Sunday paper and throw it all away except for the comics section. Read today's Opus comic and then fear for our country and the world after laughing your butt off.

Didja know?

Ranked by: Number of employees.
Remarks: Also notes rank and figures for previous year, human resources officer, whether the officer oversees labor, and primary company business.
Number listed in source: 100


1. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., with 1,484,000 employees
2. McDonald's Corp., 413,000
3. United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS), 360,000
4. General Motors Corp., 350,000
5. Ford Motor Co., 335,000
6. The Home Depot Inc., 315,000
7. International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), 314,000
8. General Electric Co., 312,500
9. Target Corp., 305,000
10. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 300,000



Subject(s) Covered: Employees


Source Citation: "Largest Corporate Employers, 2004." Human Resource Executive, Top 100 (annual), April 2004, p. 34. Business Rankings Annual 2005. Thomson Gale, 2005.
Reproduced in Business and Company Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale Group, June 2002.

Why, with all those employees, does it still take so long to get through a check out line at Wal-Mart?

Candles, me like

Today I spent a couple of hours cleaning the apartment. I like to do that on my day off now and then. After scrubbing the toilet and the sink and doing dishes and locating and deoderizing the spot by the corner table one of my damn kitties has been rogue pissing I decided I needed a present. I went to Michael's over at Park Road Shopping Center and bought about twenty bucks worth of candles. The best part is that they were having a clearance sale on some nice thick scented ones. Since there had been this unpleasant odor permeating the apartment I also bought a scented oil burner. Mmmmm...scented oil. Now the apartment smells like various scented candles, spring sunshine rain forest oil and spring fresh Lysol and rug deoderizer. Sensory overload, to be sure, but at least not cat piss.

What is it with cats now and then that they decided they are going to piss in hard to reach corners of your home? I understand when it happens if you let the litter box go but I've been keeping up with the litter box recently. Rogue pissing, stupid things cats do.

Looking up his own butt

So our crappy president picks one of his employees to find out how he managed to botch the Katrina effort? Since she is part of the whole Katrina thing is there some way we, the tax payers, can somehow pay her less that the prevailing wage? That would save the country some money. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this is coming from the same douche that didn't want to even have a 9/11 comission. That's the kind of leadership you get from people more concerned with politics than governing.

Son of a bitch

It seems like I just got over a cold not that long ago. Last night as I lay in bed trying to sleep the sniffles turned into a full fledged head cold. I must have fell asleep about 4 am. The pisser is I had to work at nine. That didn't happen. I felt bad bailing on a Saturday but at least there were two other people working. If it had been the shift where their was one other person I would have made it in about a half hour late and been worthless and miserable all day so I guess it's good it happened this weekend. Again tonight, I'm up. I tried to sleep a while ago. Didn't work.

Last night I went to see the Aristocrats with a friend. I loved it. No, not because it was foul but because it was a great look at the minds of comedians. In case you don't know the movie is a documentary about a joke that has been in circulation among comedians for a long time. It's a joke about a man who goes to a talent scout describing a vaudevile-style family act. The goal of the joke teller is to improvise an act that is as creatively foul as possible. The name of the act is the punchine of the joke and the name of the film.

I guess it's pretty obvious that a joke like the Aristocrats that has a wide open middle with a mediocre punchline would allow each comedian to put a personal stamp on it. But to see this in action and to listen to people like George Carlin talk about the nature of making people laugh was a great experience. My favorite telling of the joke was by Tommy Smothers. He tells the joke to Dick Smothers who was unfamiliar with it yet played his straight man role to perfection. The interplay between those two is astounding.

One comedian mentioned hearing it first from Bill Hicks. I'd like to have heard Bill's version of that joke.

One observation: some versions of the joke were disgusting yet hilarious (Carlin, Gottgried, Stephen Wright). A couple were just plain disgusting with little humor. (Bob Saget). Carlin made me wince and laugh. Saget just made me wince.

Tongue flap

Yesterday at lunch while eating a salad I self served at Harris Teeter I bit the shit out of my tongue. We've all bitten our tongues and it hurts. Usually it just hurts like hell for a while, you suffer through it and then go on with your day. Not me. I bit my tongue so bad that a piece of it hung there like a fleshy flap and my mouth bled all evening. I was afraid that eventually I would get an upset stomach because I was swallowing blood all night and instead of spitting blood I would end up puking blood which is gross no matter what the cause. I showed William the fleshy hanging flap on my tongue and he called it gnarly. Eveyone else I showed it too was merely grossed out. Today at work I cleared a work area by showing my deformed tongue. I think it's healing because I was able to eat a few potato chips and I didn't experience any pain. I can still rub my tongue over my top teeth and it feels like my tongue has a hatch like a submarine or like the plastic top of a gallon milk jug that is connected by a thin hinge of plastic.

The big issue with the tongue injury is whether or not I should take a picture of it and share it with the world here on the blog. William says yes and I am leaning toward maybe. I'm really not sure. On one hand it would be cool because it would be gross. On the other hand it wouldn't be so cool because it'll be gross (not the wound but the tongue in general. A tongue is kinda gross unless it's licking your privates). I'm not asking for feedback since hardly any of you bastards leaves feedback anyway except when Chris pretends to be a 47 year old Hispanic beisbol player. This is an inner dialogue typed out for your enjoyment.

Please

The prez today: "I want people in America to understand how hard people worked to save lives down there.."

We know how hard people are working, man. Don't you get? You're the problem.

What was life like before the internet?

I don't know what this simulates. Perpetual motion? Free fall? Nothing? Before I linked to this site I never thought I would ever have to type this next sentence: If she gets stuck, click and drag.

Captions

this is:
A) President Bush holding his head in shame for appointing unqualified people to run FEMA
B) President Bush holding his head in shame for exploiting the events of 9/11 for political gain.
C) President Bush praying for the souls of all the people executed in Texas during his time as governor.
D) President Bush using today's 9/11 anniversary for a killer photo op.


The answer: Standing where he was told to stand.

Doesn't Cheney look like a robot that's been powered down?

Fun with fat guys

Last night was poker night. It was the basic maleness in spades with foul language, sexism, jokes about butts and gas and pooping and bestiality and incest and the likelihood of a comet destroying life on earth. I'm proud to say that I said something so foul that I caused beer to come out someone's nose. It was a great moment.

The event was held at Mark's place. James was there and so was Michael. I lost almost all my money and my bossman, who don't have a blog, was way ahead when I left around midnight. Twice I had a killer hand and each time no one else had anything worth betting on and they all bailed on me. I hate when that happens.

Here's a shot from last night.

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President,

Thank you for appointing completely unqualified people to run FEMA. Nothing makes me more confident to see that four years after 9/11 that we, as a nation, are totally unprepared to handle major emergencies. It also helps us see that all your rhetoric for the last four years was really just a way to get re-elected and had nothing at all to do with the safety of the average American. You're doing a heck of a job.

Ed McDonald
Charlotte, NC

From a New York Times article: "The president, long reluctant to fire subordinates, came to a belated recognition that his administration was in trouble for the way it had dealt with the disaster, many of his supporters say. One moment of realization occurred on Thursday of last week when an aide carried a news agency report from New Orleans into the Oval Office for him to see.

The report was about the evacuees at the convention center, some dying and some already dead. Mr. Bush had been briefed that morning by his homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, who was getting much of his information from Mr. Brown and was not aware of what was occurring there. The news account was the first that the president and his top advisers had heard not only of the conditions at the convention center but even that there were people there at all."

Completely fucking incompetent.

Rickey

"Three Decades Of Rickey Because we should always respect our elders, I feel obligated to point out that Rickey Henderson recently completed his 30th season of professional baseball. Henderson, who began his pro career in 1976 with the Boise A's, suited up for the San Diego Surf Dawgs of the independent Golden Baseball League this season. The 46-year-old hit .270, reached base at a .456 clip, stole 16 bases in 18 attempts and hit five homers for the league champs."

New book me read, no can stop

I have to work tomorrow and I should be in bed. Insead I am taking a break from a book that I am near completing and will complete before I hit the sack. I am reading Wrecking Crew by John Albert. It's the story of a group of thirty-something citizens of the streets of LA who form an amateur baseball team/support group. The team made up of recovering junkies, strugglig actors and musicians which, in Hollywood, seems to be the same thing and other assorted freaks of that scene. Amazing to me is that one of the players was the bass player of my favorite early 90's rock band, Junkyard. They were kind of a Guns 'n' Roses/Drive by Truckers/Rolling Stones kinda band. I listened to their first album tonight while reading the book and it's a little dated but "Can't Hold Back" is still a jammin' tune. Also the author of the book was in Christian Death when they first started for a short time and I downloaded a few of their songs tonight from the short era of the first lead singer, Roz Williams. It's pretty good gothy rock. I had heard the name of the band before and had assumed they were some kind of death metal band. I was way off.

Most of the people who read this are readers and you know how it is when a book grabs. This is a brutally honest memoir full of hope, heartbreak and humor. I'm loving it and I'm going to be sad when I finish it.

By the way, the Decemberists is good reading music.

Headline of the day

From CNN: "Bush to lead probe to find 'what went wrong.'" Look in the mirror, monkey boy, you're the problem.

He also said, "One of the things people want us to do here is play the blame game," he said. "We got to solve problems. There will be ample time to figure out what went right and what went wrong." He always says that when he screws up. No time for the blame game. First we got to concentrate on fixing what I helped screw up and then we'll shift over to stem cells or gay marriage.

What the?

It looks like the main requirement to head up homeland security is to have the ability to lie your ass off with a straight face. Perfect storm, my ass. New Orleans got hit with the western side of the hurricane. Think of how bad it would be there if they got the same surge Mississippi got. Hell, even I knew this was going to be a nightmare and I'm nobody.

This hurricane thing

Like everyone I've been watching, reading and thinking about this mess on the gulf coast. I was watching the Jim Lehrer New Hour tonight and he had his usual cast of thoughtful commentators on near the end of the broadcast. I thought Tom Oliphant summed up the situation perfectly when he said this: "I would say the fault lines are much deeper than that. I mean, on the one hand there is no question that we can see now with our own eyes the two Americas of which John Edwards began speaking a year and a half ago.

But deeper than that, I think, is the anger that is going to come from the realization that virtually all public policy -- state, local, federal, where this area is concerned, has been against the public interests for decades. And the realization that government is one of the reasons we have government has been violated by virtually everything government has done for decades."

You can bring that home to you. You can look around Charlotte and watch this nice southern town being destroyed by development. You can look at your Timewarner cable bill and wonder why you can't purchase two or three networks instead of a bundle. You can drive through a shitty part of town and wonder why the richest country in the world has violent slums while the president and his recent opponent are millionaires. You can drive down to Lancaster, SC and see how their beautiful downtown is half deserted while the Wal-Mart down the street is packed. And you can turn on the tube or pull up a news site on the internet and see how the poorest people of New Orleans were left to suffer and die. It's not about George Bush (although he does blow), it's about a system that allowed someone like him to rise to power. Now we are all going to have to pay because of the shortsightedness of the mindset that doing the right thing would be bad for business.

This is my blog and that is my opinion.

R.L. Burnside

R.L. Burnside died yesterday. He was this old blues guy from Mississippi. He was the best. He was nice. He once offered me a drink of whiskey from a bottle he had in the inside pocket of his jean jacket. After a show in Asheville he told me and Wendell dirty jokes for half an hour. When he was onstage singing and he glanced at you it was like he was looking in your soul. He was the best. His shows are the closest I ever came to going to church. I took the following picture at the Double Door in 1998. I was stinking drunk and crawling on the floor in front of him. I'm amazed it's in focus.

Nerd time

It's not a secret that I am a KISS fan. Of course I haven't paid attention to anything they've done since the awesome reunion tour. I saw recently that the former bass player from the Bangles, Kathy Valentine, is putting out a solo album on September 6th. Ace Frehley plays a solo on the last song on the record. Here's what she had to say about Ace: On Ace Frehley: "Ace is very reclusive. That was really one of the first tracks that I did for the album. I met Ace because a friend of mine brought him to my birthday party. We hit it off. We were just hanging out and he was really such a sweetheart. He actually offered to do it. I told him that I was going into the studio in a couple of days and he offered to play on it. How often do you get a rock icon to appear on your record? I really like that he is playing on a track that is not anything like a KISS song — it is more like a BLONDIE song. He really did a great solo that is in a really different context than people are used to. Gilby and I were recording him and when he did this solo he said, 'Let me do another one.' We both said, 'No, that is the one. You got it.'"

Very cool, I think. If I had a band I'd ask Ace Frehley to come into the studio now and then.

Amazing interview with the mayor of New Orleans.

If you are interested Josh Marshall has a lot of good posts about leadership.

Opposite day

Local officials axed people in Charlotte to conserve fuel so what happens? People rush out and gorge on gas and then it runs out. Maybe I'm crazy but if everyone had just filled up when they needed then maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't have run out so quickly.

Idiots

Accidents, arrests reported by CMPD

STAFF REPORTS

The Charlotte Observer

Charlotte Mecklenburg police Thursday morning released an updated list of incidents tied to motorists rushing to gas pumps to buy gas in the face of potential shortages.

Police said that through 4 a.m. Thursday there had been:

# 67 traffic incidents, such as fender benders, due to the lines

# 23 reported disturbances, generally arguments and fights over gas

# 9 arrests, including one for disorderly conduct and the others for fighting.

Officials urged residents to not create traffic hazards and be courteous when buying gas.