Five Little Words

I have a nagging, low-level headache that's been going on now for the past 2-1/2 days.
Not to mention I just had to sit here and listen to one of my co-workers suck on his teeth while I'm eating lunch, because he's too lazy to go and brush the damn things.

So I have a rant coming on.
Something I've been thinking about for quite some time and I figured since I'm in a foul mood anyway, why not today?
I figured I'd better warn all of you in case you just don't want to bother reading any further.
-----------------------------------------

Please
Thank you
Excuse me

Five words that I don't hear very much anymore but would make a big difference in our day-to-today dealings with people.

I can't tell you how many times I've held the door open for somebody (at a store, movie theater, etc.) and had them blow right by me without even a simple "thank you". As if it's my job to open the door for them.
On almost every occasion I say, loudly, "You're very welcome!" and wait to see if they even look back. Most times they don't, but the few that do I look right at them.

Or people that push past you without ever saying "excuse me". We obviously see each other, but rather then be polite, they just push you out of their way.
I really can't understand the ones that come from behind you and push you out of the way.
I'm more than happy to let someone go by if I knew they were there in the first place. But coming up behind me and pushing me out of the way? That's just a dick move all-around.

Sometimes at ECCC, I like to hand out stuff to people waiting in line to keep them occupied until the doors opened.
I usually take things from the "free table" that are in limited supply and pass them around to a few random attendees.
One year, I grabbed some T-shirts along with a few other things and went outside.
As soon as I got out there, a guy in line saw me holding the T-shirts (mind you, he didn't know what size they were or what was even on them) and said "Give me".
I said, "What?"
"Give me. Gimme the shirt, man", was his reply.
I looked right at him and said, "Yeah, you know what? You get nothing now" and went further down the line to hand out stuff.
If he'd said "Oooh T-shirts! Give me one, please", I'd have had no problem.
But instead, he acted like he deserved it.

Which is the point I'm (finally) getting at.
I'm seeing more and more where people think they are owed something just for breathing air on this planet and I'm really sick of it.

Mostly it's people younger than me, but I'm also noticing it more with people who are my parent's age.

What the hell happened? What happened to saying "please" after you ask for something?
Or "excuse me" when you want by somebody or to enter a conversation?

This lack of manners is not just rude, but seems acceptable by society, and I'm tired of it.
It takes no effort to be nice and in return you get "nice" back.
But instead, they'd rather be a dick and think the world revolves around them and you're just in the way.

And people that are already acting this way are raising their kids up without manners so it's only getting worse. If nobody's teaching them to say "please, thank you, and excuse me" who's going to?

I think we'd all be in a lot better place emotionally if we'd stop and take the time to be nice and use manners with one another.
I'm not talking about just with friends, but with everyone. Your barista. The shoe salesman. The clerk at the DMV.

A little niceness goes a long way, especially if you want something.

Christian Bale Remix

Unless you work with people who curse like sailors at your work, it is NOT recommended that you play this on your speakers.
But aside from that.... please enjoy!







... And thanks to Elwood for bringing the original of this to my attention last week.

Question Answered: It Was The Chicken

It's an age-old question; "Which came first? The chicken or the egg?"

You can't have the one without the other, so you go round and round about which was first.

Well thanks to China and their lax regulations on food safety, it has now been determined that the chicken came first.

After all, you can't feed the egg toxins, you have to feed it to the chicken in order for it to lay contaminated eggs. Therefore the chicken HAD to come first.

I'm not going to go off on too much of a rant here. It's a troubling issue, to be sure.

However, when the U.S. and other nations were receiving contaminated pet food from China, this didn't seem like that big a deal to them. Oh sure, they were sorry and apologized and assured us it "would never happen again" because they were going to institute tighter control in their factories.

But then reports started coming out about melamine-tainted milk in China and the thousands of children who were sick from drinking it.

Then suddenly it became a safety issue they were concerned with.

I recently bought some Del Monte fruit cups to put in our lunches and I noticed that they were manufactured in China.

These were diced peaches, to be exact. The kind of fruit that grows naturally in the United States and what the state of Georgia is famous for.

But these were from China.

I wrote an email to customer affairs at Del Monte and asked; "Why would they import a food product that grows naturally here in the states. One that would keep jobs in the U.S. and wouldn't come from a country with 'suspect' food regulations and manufacturing processes?"

They 'assured' me that they enforce strict control in areas of the manufacturing process to maintain a high quality and safe product.

Blah blah blah... yeah sure. So how come this shit is STILL happening over there?

If everybody is enacting such "strict controls" on manufacturing in China, you'd think it would be the SAFEST place on the planet for products.

Embarrassed By My Species

I was at the grocery store last night picking up some stuff for dinner (chicken enchiladas verde, yum!).

Things were going just fine. I got everything I needed and then found a line that wasn't too long at the checkout.
It turned out that the cashier was new and therefore was still in training. "No big deal, " I thought, "I'm not in a hurry".

So I put my basket in the conveyor and waited my turn.
As I stood there, I started listening to what was taking place at the register in front of me.
A woman and her two kids were shuffling around stuff they had picked up to buy only to find out they didn't have enough money to pay for it.
That in and of itself isn't a big deal. I've done that myself on occasion.

But the problem was this:
She was a large woman (and I know I'm not a skinny fella, but bear with me for a bit) and quite loud.
They had purchased various food-related items (among them; chips, donuts and cookies) and were trying to pay for them with a government-issued debit card.
There wasn't enough money on the card so they were having to put stuff back. But rather than take it back to where they got it or give it to the cashier, they were stuffing it into the magazines and various other shelving located at the register line. At one point she reached across the counter and placed a handful of bagged food at the register drawer... where the money is.

Then the cashier needed a price check and tried to get the cashier next to us to help.
The women in front of me just pushed her face in the other cashier's area and said, "We need some help here!"
When she got her attention, the woman (customer) asked if the cashier wanted her (the customer) to just ring up the groceries.
"No, that'll be okay. We can take care of it," the woman was told.

So now, back to the gov't debit card they were using.
You get one of these when you need assistance from the government to cover basic needs.
I noticed that this woman was wearing as close to fashionable clothing as she could get.
Faux designer sunglasses on her head. Designer capri pants. And she had a tan (fake? real? I don't care to find out)
But here she is buying junk food with government assistance for her and her kids and stuffing what she couldn't afford into the surrounding shelves and encouraging her kids to do so as well.
They had the poor cashier all confused.

Finally, they were finished and on their way.

Sometimes I'm just ashamed to be seen with other members of the human race.

A Downright Shame

Thanks to Geeked who I just found out about this from.

I'm merely re-posting information from another site, as I have a few (yeah, I know you're out there!) readers who come from more than my comic circle of friends and this type of information NEEDS to be presented to everyone so that it can be stopped.

There is no place for sexual or verbal harrassment anywhere at anytime. Period.
____________________________________________________________
From John at "Bully Says":

Overheard at San Diego Comic-Con while I was having lunch on the balcony of the Convention Center on Sunday July 27: a bunch of guys looking at the digital photos on the camera of another, while he narrated: "These were the Ghostbusters girls. That one, I grabbed her ass, 'cause I wanted to see what her reaction was." This was only one example of several instances of harassment, stalking or assault that I saw at San Diego this time.

1. One of my friends was working at a con booth selling books. She was stalked by a man who came to her booth several times, pestering her to get together for a date that night. One of her co-workers chased him off the final time.

2. On Friday, just before the show closed, this same woman was closing up her tables when a group of four men came to her booth, started taking photographs of her, telling her she was the "prettiest girl at the con." They they entered the booth, started hugging and kissing her and taking photographs of themselves doing so. She was confused and scared, but they left quickly after doing that.

3. Another friend of mine, a woman running her own booth: on Friday a man came to her booth and openly criticized her drawing ability and sense of design. Reports from others in the same section of the floor confirmed he'd targeted several women with the same sort of abuse and criticism.

Quite simply, this behavior has got to stop at Comic-Con. It should never be a sort of place where anyone, man or woman, feels unsafe or attacked either verbally or physically in any shape or form. There are those, sadly, who get off on this sort of behavior and assault, whether it's to professional booth models, cosplayers or costumed women, or women who are just there to work. This is not acceptable behavior under any circumstance, no matter what you look like or how you're dressed, whether you are in a Princess Leia slave girl outfit or business casual for running your booth.

On Saturday, the day after the second event I described above, I pulled out my convention book to investigate what you can do and who you can speak to after such an occurrence. On page two of the book there is a large grey box outlining "Convention Policies," which contain rules against smoking, live animals, wheeled handcarts, recording at video presentations, drawing or aiming your replica weapon, and giving your badge to others. There is nothing about attendee-to-attendee personal behavior.

Page three of the book contains a "Where Is It?" guide to specific Comic-Con events and services. There's no general information room or desk listed, nor is there a contact location for security, so I go to the Guest Relations Desk. I speak to a volunteer manning the desk; she's sympathetic to the situation but who doesn't have a clear answer to my question: "What's Comic-Con's policy and method of dealing with complaints about harassment?" She directs me to the nearest security guard, who is also sympathetic listening to my reports, but short of the women wanting to report the incidents with the names of their harassers, there's little that can be done.

"I understand that," I tell them both, "but what I'm asking is more hypothetical and informational: if there is a set Comic-Con policy on harassment and physical and verbal abuse on Con attendees and exhibitors, and if so, what's the specific procedure by which someone should report it, and specifically where should they go?" But this wasn't a question either could answer.

So, according to published con policy, there is no tolerance for smoking, drawn weapons, personal pages or selling bootleg videos on the floor, and these rules are written down in black and white in the con booklet. There is not a word in the written rules about harassment or the like. I would like to see something like "Comic-Con has zero tolerance for harassment or violence against any of our attendees or exhibitors. Please report instances to a security guard or the Con Office in room XXX."

The first step to preventing such harassment is giving its victims the knowledge that they can safely and swiftly report such instances to someone in authority. Having no published guideline, and indeed being unable to give a clear answer to questions about it, gives harassment and violence one more rep-tape loophole to hide behind.

I enjoyed Comic-Con. I'm looking forward to coming back next year. So, in fact, are the two women whose experiences I've retold above. Aside from those instances, they had a good time at the show. But those instances of harassment shouldn't have happened at all, and that they did under no clear-cut instructions about what to do sadly invites the continuation of such behavior, or even worse.

don't understand why there's no such written policy about what is not tolerated and what to do when this happens. Is there anyone at Comic-Con able to explain this? Does a similar written policy exist in the booklets for other conventions (SF, comics or otherwise) that could be used as a model? Can it be adapted or adapted, and enforced, for Comic-Con? As the leading event of the comics and pop culture world, Comic-Con should work to make everyone who attends feel comfortable and safe.
__________________________________________________________


If you go to a convention of any kind and are a victim of harrassment, please report it.
If you witness harrassment, don't stand around like an idiot. Report it.
Unless this is brought to the convention promoter's attention, this type of behavior will continue.
It is unacceptable.

Comments are turned off for this subject.
Actions speak louder than words.

Now It's A "Bumper Crop"?!?

Not long ago (late July in fact) we were being told that so much of America's farming heartland was flooded and crops were destroyed. We were going to face big increases in costs at the grocery store, not only because of higher fuel prices (to transport the food) but because there would be less of it to go around since so many of the crops were damaged.

This would affect meat, as animals would have to be slaughtered so compensate for the increasing food costs to growers. Thus, meat and poultry would go down a little after saturating the market, and then take a sharp increase.

Oh, but wait! Not two weeks later they're telling us that we going to have a bumper crop of soybeans and corn. Food shortage and price increases averted. Yay!
What? Food isn't going to go down now? Oh, because food buyers already based their costs on the 'expected' food shortages and susequent increases, so they are locked in on contracts with higher prices.
In other words, we're going to pay more because they already raised the prices and won't back down now.

So really, where's the good news in this?
We're already getting ass-raped at the gas pump, even though oil producers assure us that "they're doing everything they can to cut costs" while still reporting the biggest quarterly profits in years.
Now food retailers are going to get their fair share because not only is fuel more expensive but they are already paying higher prices based on "ESTIMATED INCREASES" that they got locked into contracts with their suppliers even though those costs aren't going to be as high as expected.

A few years back, the price of butter rose dramatically during the Holiday season. Shoppers were feeling the pinch and the news reported that it was due to "dairy producers not realizing the expected increase of usage, so they had cut back production and now supplies were short".
Really? Butter rose in price at the very peak of when people do most of their baking and the producers didn't plan for it? Are you kidding me?
If you haven't noticed, those prices STILL haven't come down yet. Even though there's been plenty of time to adjust for consumer consumption. Butter is still expensive.

Gas prices were over $4.50/gal and now that they dropped were happy to pay $3.99/gal.
Food prices will rise, even though expected costs won't be as much as they planned for.
Utilities have increased because they had to recover from all the storm damage a year ago, but never re-adjusted afterwards.

Which goes to show you that once a precedent has been set, we're expected to jus deal with it.
Welcome to the new future.

Not Getting Involved

What ever happened to being a Good Samaritan and helping people out when something happens?

A co-worker just showed me this video (it's a little disturbing but nothing graphic, so it's safe for work) about a guy who gets hit by a car while people just watch or drive by and NOBODY helps him.


Granted there have been studies done on this sort of behavior, but that's not an excuse to let it happen or condone it.
That no one stepped up and tried to at least check on the guy until the cops arrived is just appalling!

You want to think that people are inherently good inside, and then you see something like this.

Make It Stop

So everybody's talking about the high cost of living nowadays.
I'm not going to go on a big rant, but I just wanted to get it off my chest.

We've seen the prices climbing at the pump, the grocery store, and pretty much anywhere you buy anything.
Now to add insult to injury, Dow Chemical is increasing prices on all their products up to 20% by next week. Thanks for the warning, fellas.
I hope everyone has enough diapers, detergents, and pretty much everything that we use on a daily basis 'cause this is going to hurt a little.

(Note to self: Better pick up some lube before THAT goes up in price next week!)
But the cost of living isn't going up as much as we seem to think, isn't that what the government is telling us?

And we can't blame the oil executives. After all, they're doing everything they can to rape us blind... er, help us in this time of economic crisis.

It makes this scene from "Network" all that much more appropriate:

Well... I stop complaining now.

Regular posting of funny stuff to follow soon.

Disgusted

I'm so mad I could kick a puppy!
I'm a little behind in my comic reading, so this morning before I left for work, I read a couple of issues to try and get through my ever-growing stack-'o'-comics.
One of them was Amazing Spider-Man # 545, the last part of a 4-part storyline called "One More Day". It came out last month, but I just finally got to it.
Now I wish I hadn't.
Spider-Man, the comic hero I have always been a fan of, has made a deal with the devil to save his 'poor dying aunt'. In the process of which, he destroys his marriage to Mary Jane.

To say I was pissed after reading it is quite an understatement.
This story was bad on so many levels.
There have been A LOT of discussions on the comic online forums about this* so I'm not going to cover what they've been saying. Let's just say, almost everyone is in agreement that this was a bad idea.

Peter Parker (a.k.a. Spider-Man) is trying to find a way to save the life of his aunt May, who was shot by a sniper that was targeting Spider-Man.
Wracked with guilt and unable to find a cure or scientifc doo-hickey or magical spell to help her, he resorts to making a deal with Mephisto.
The catch is... he has to give up his marriage to MJ.
You know... his wife who he once told, “But you’ve never been optional, MJ. Every happy thought I ever had begins and ends with you, and every unhappy thought begins with the realization that you’re not there, because I screwed up. I want to make it right, MJ, and I’ll do anything to make that happen. Anything.” -Peter Parker, Amazing Spider-Man vol. 2 #44

So his unhappy thoughts come from her not being there, yet he wants to end their marriage so his dear sweet aunt Methuselah... er, I mean, aunt May can stay alive?
Yeah, whatever.

Okay, cut to a few panels later and MJ agrees... under one condition *whisper, whisper* (in Mephisto's ear).
So the deal is made.
Aunt May lives.

But...
Peter (Spidey) and Mary Jane are no longer married. In fact it seems like they might've dated at one time but broke up.
Oh well, Peter's secret identity is restored (it was part of the deal) since nobody reconizes him at a party he's going to where... wait, who's that? Harry Osborn?! Isn't he dead?
Oh, Peter has been taken to the past (it seems it's the late 70's now).
Well if he's NOT dead, then where is Gwen Stacy?? She's still dead? But Harry isn't. Riiiight.

Okay, well if he's been transported back in time what about all the stuff that's happened during the years he's left and the years he now lives in?
Did he join the Avengers?
What about his clone?
Didn't he transform and gain "awesome" new powers not long ago? Are they gone now?

Ugh! My brain hurts!
-------------------------------------
This was the bright idea of Marvel Comics Editor-in chief, Joe Quesada.
Joe thought that Spider-Man being married was a bad idea and wanted to find a way to make him a care-free, single guy again. In essence, he wanted to re-boot the whole Spider-Man history and start 'fresh'.
Yeah.... good luck with that.

I've been a Spidey fan for over 25 years.
I've stuck with him through many, many bad story-lines.
The clone saga?
A stupid storyline, but whatever.

The gaining of organic web-shooters? Not once, but TWICE?
I didn't like it, but I didn't freak out about it. Yeah, it was stupid but they were trying to tie the movies in with the comics.

His powers were somehow related to a totem that has been passed down through the centuries?
Which means his powers were not some random accident, but fate actually intervened?
Um... sure whatever. Can we move along please?

His first true love, Gwen Stacy, had children out of wedlock... fathered by his greatest enemy?!?
Okay, yeah. This was bad but I could still accept it and move on.

Speaking of children, didn't him and Mary Jane have a baby that was kidnapped at birth by Norman Osborn? (We saw the baby breifly but they've never brought it back up in regular continuity)
Well, she grows up to become Spider-girl and has her own adventures. Doesn't she? Or does that not really happen because MJ and Peter were 'never really married' to begin with?

And now, Spider-Man makes a deal with the Marvel version of the devil to save the life of his aunt, and wipes out YEARS of back-history of the character!
All right. This is enough. This is an insult to fans world-wide.

Yeah, I know it's a comic book. I know these people and events aren't real. I know this isn't reality. But come on.
Marvel is going to throw away all that just because the EIC didn't think it was cool to have Spider-Man married?
This totally $%*#'s up every other storyline in the Marvel Universe. (read the online forums*, you'll see what I'm talking about)

Not only that, but he didn't even create this character! What right does he have to destroy the history on this just so he can have it the way he likes it? Especially when the fans, you know... the PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY BUY THE COMIC SO HE GETS PAID, are so much against this?

If Mike Mignola wanted to kill off Hellboy, fine. I'm sure there would be a fanboy uproar, but it's his character. He created it and he can do with it whatever he wants. He owns it.

The same for Spawn by Todd McFarlane.
When he started the comic, the character had a limited amount of power available to him, but they worked it out so that he didn't have that liability and could keep on keeping on. It's his creation so he can make the rules.

But Joe Q. didn't create Spider-Man.
Stan Lee & Steve Ditko did. Do you think Stan "The Man" Lee would've copped-out with this deal-with-the-devil plot? Hell no!

I'm am literally millimeters away from dropping Spider-man off of my list and not buying it again.
The only reason I haven't yet is that a new creative team is taking on the book.
I like the writers and the artists they have lined up for this, but I don't know if they can bail the water out of this sinking ship fast enough to keep it afloat and get it on it's feet again.

Spider-man was the comic that first got me interested in them and has been the ONE COMIC that I always buy.
Now after 25 years, I don't think I want to read another one about him.

There's a great article on Newsarama about this whole debacle, but one of the statements made is very poignant:
"You want to make Peter more accessible to a younger readership. Now let's really think this through with some logic here.
Goal: Peter more accessible to younger readers.
Point 1: Marvel, under Joe Quesada, has a no-smoking policy for its heroes. Joe reportedly thinks it glorifies and/or encourages kids to smoke and doesn't want it in his comics.
Point 2: To make Peter Parker more accessible to younger readers, the same Joe Quesada had him make a deal with the devil. This means, to me, that making a deal with the devil is more acceptable for our children than smoking."

Point well made.

Hmmm... sales are down.
I think we hould have all the heroes reveal their secret identities and then fight each other until some of them die.
Okay, now let's kill off Captain America. Nobody likes him anymore, anyway.
And finally, let's have Spider-man trade a his loving marriage with a beautiful wife for his elderly aunt to live a few more years.

It's like Marvel doesn't want us to read their comics anymore.
Okay, maybe that isn't quite true. There are still some really good comics being put out by them, but things like this make me wonder.... how much longer until they screw with those books too?



* Check out these comics forums for reviews and reader responses to the current Spider-Man debate:
Comics Should Be Good
Comics Daily
IGN.com
Silver Bullet Comic Books
Pop Syndicate
Rokk's Comic Book Revolution

Angry White Boys

Yesterday I was the victim of "Road Rage".
The event is still bothering me, so I thought I'd try to get it out of my system by writing about it.

On my way into town yesterday morning, I was being tail-gated by some young punk in a blue car. He was so close to my rear that I couldn't read his license plate.
I stepped on my brake to get him to back off, which sent him weaving and screeching to slow down.
Well, that certainly helped to piss him off, as he then proceeded to follow my exact route in town.
I pulled over at a local coffee shop to let him pass and give me his "angry look" and then be on his way. No such luck. As soon as I pulled to a stop, he pulled in right behind me and started getting out of his car.
"Okay, not cool" I thought, so I pulled back into the road and stopped at the stop light. He followed me and again got out of his car. "Yeah, DEFINITELY not cool now" I said to myself.
So, I ran the red light hoping a cop might see it as he got back in his car and followed me out of town.
By this time I called 911 who then put me through to the Highway Patrol.

To cut this story short, the guy followed me out of town, around a round-about intersection and back into town.
All the while I'm on the phone telling them about him racing up to my bumber and waving his middle finger at me. I also noticed he had a baby car seat in the back. "Great! I've got a crazy idiot driving behind with a kid in the car."

I saw a police car coming in the opposite direction, so the guy on the phone told me to try and get his attention. I flicked my lights, but the offiicer totally didn't catch it and passed me.
Behind the cop was an RV a few car lengths back, so in desperation I made a HARD left-hand turn behind the cop and in front of the RV. The idiot behind couldn't make the turn in time, (thank goodness for a nimble car!) so I managed to get out of the parking lot I turned into, back onto the road and going in the opposite direction of my pursuer.

I didn't see him after that, so I either lost him or he gave up.

The problem is; There's only a couple of main roads from my house to downtown and I live in a heavily redneck-populated area, so my chances of running into him again are fairly certain... especially since I drive a distinctive car.

This event has my stomach in knots, kept me from getting a decent sleep and is bothering me still today.
For him... he probably went home, had a few beers and told his buddies how he scared the pants of some dumb yuppie and has by now forgotten about it.

It makes me wish that enforced sterilization was mandatory in some cases. We don't need any more stupid, young punks in the world like that one.