I am officially completely morally opposed to going out to shop on Black Friday. It's a sad day when people are so obsessed with consumer culture that they will literally do the most animalistic shit to save $50 on a fucking television set.
Today in Long Island a 34 year old temporary Wal-Mart employee named Jdimypai Damour was trampled to death when they opened their doors at five o'clock this morning. Let's think about this. First of all, why in gods name would you create a situation like this in the first place? Because it's a REALLY smart idea to allow a throng of 2,000 people to press themselves up against the doors and wait to get in. What do you think is going to happen when you open those doors? I already refuse to shop at Wal-Mart because they are notorious for treating their workers like second class citizens but this is ridiculous. As far as I'm concerned they are responsible for placing their employees in harms way. Can you imagine this? Waking up at the crack of dawn to go to a place where you're probably under appreciated in the first place so you can work and pay your bills just like everyone else and you get pushed on the ground by insane deal-obsessed shoppers? None of these people even stopped to help this guy accept for his co-workers. People continued to push and shove EMTs and police officers as they tried to resuscitate him. He was pronounced dead at 6:30 AM. I hope these people think about this when their kids open those discounted action figures and iPods on Christmas morning. I'm truly disgusted.
It's hard for me to find any reason to believe that these deals are even remotely worth this. Are people unaware that you can get the majority of these deals online? Also, most stores have a policy that requires them to refund you the difference if an item goes on sale within two weeks of purchase. The stupidty of people never ceases to amaze me.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
It's been quite a while
It's been quite a long time since I've actually posted anything.
In the span of my last update and now, I have moved into my own apartment and turned 21. Hooray, right? Well, my birthday, from the recollections of it I have, was awesome. However, since I'm the oldest I've had to go to so many 21st birthday parties after this. Bars are expensive! Why is a glass of nice beer five dollars when the whole six pack of it costs eight?! I have avoided this scene for the most part unless I have to. Fortunately, being in college means that I am surrounded by fellow broke students and we don't end up at bars often.
The apartment is great, I love my roommates and we have pretty sweet pad. Moving in wasn't the most pleasant experience of all time. We leased the apartment in the middle of January and it was vacant. When we moved in on September 1st, it hadn't been painted, we didn't have working smoke detectors or a carbon monoxide detector, there were holes in the walls and we found a tampon in Ellie's ceiling. The outlets were uncovered, the garbage disposal didn't work, our toilet ran constantly. This place definitely wasn't up to code. It took us almost a week to get our hot water turned on because our landlord refused to have someone come and unlock the basement door. I have now mastered the art of taking a cold shower, but I'm glad it's not a necessity anymore. Our outlets are still uncovered and there's a bunch of stuff that they didn't do even after we sent a bitch list a mile long. Unfortunately, our landlord owns about 1500 properties and couldn't give a shit about most of these things and actually yells at you on the phone when you ask for something simple unless you threaten to report him to the Housing Authority.
The Ikea desk proved to make me hate Ikea even more. Matty, Corey and I spent about an hour trying to make sense of the charts, pictures arrows and numbers. After this we realized I was missing the most important piece, the actual board that is the desk itself. I had to shove it all back into the boxes and they sat in my room for over a month taunting me until my dad finally came and picked me and said desk up so I could return it. I swear I'm never shopping there again.
The election is less than a week away and I don't think it's any secret that I'm voting for Barack Obama. But lately I've seen so many movies and read so many things about disenfranchised voting that it makes me sick. In my sociology class the other day we read documents about fliers being sent out in poor minority areas stating that if any member of their family has committed a crime, they will be arrested and have their children taken from them if they show up to the polls. I'm disgusted by these scare tactics and I can see us having another stolen election. Please remember to go out and vote!
Tomorrow is Halloween! I am being Punky Brewster.
In the span of my last update and now, I have moved into my own apartment and turned 21. Hooray, right? Well, my birthday, from the recollections of it I have, was awesome. However, since I'm the oldest I've had to go to so many 21st birthday parties after this. Bars are expensive! Why is a glass of nice beer five dollars when the whole six pack of it costs eight?! I have avoided this scene for the most part unless I have to. Fortunately, being in college means that I am surrounded by fellow broke students and we don't end up at bars often.
The apartment is great, I love my roommates and we have pretty sweet pad. Moving in wasn't the most pleasant experience of all time. We leased the apartment in the middle of January and it was vacant. When we moved in on September 1st, it hadn't been painted, we didn't have working smoke detectors or a carbon monoxide detector, there were holes in the walls and we found a tampon in Ellie's ceiling. The outlets were uncovered, the garbage disposal didn't work, our toilet ran constantly. This place definitely wasn't up to code. It took us almost a week to get our hot water turned on because our landlord refused to have someone come and unlock the basement door. I have now mastered the art of taking a cold shower, but I'm glad it's not a necessity anymore. Our outlets are still uncovered and there's a bunch of stuff that they didn't do even after we sent a bitch list a mile long. Unfortunately, our landlord owns about 1500 properties and couldn't give a shit about most of these things and actually yells at you on the phone when you ask for something simple unless you threaten to report him to the Housing Authority.
The Ikea desk proved to make me hate Ikea even more. Matty, Corey and I spent about an hour trying to make sense of the charts, pictures arrows and numbers. After this we realized I was missing the most important piece, the actual board that is the desk itself. I had to shove it all back into the boxes and they sat in my room for over a month taunting me until my dad finally came and picked me and said desk up so I could return it. I swear I'm never shopping there again.
The election is less than a week away and I don't think it's any secret that I'm voting for Barack Obama. But lately I've seen so many movies and read so many things about disenfranchised voting that it makes me sick. In my sociology class the other day we read documents about fliers being sent out in poor minority areas stating that if any member of their family has committed a crime, they will be arrested and have their children taken from them if they show up to the polls. I'm disgusted by these scare tactics and I can see us having another stolen election. Please remember to go out and vote!
Tomorrow is Halloween! I am being Punky Brewster.
Monday, August 18, 2008
START THE CAR
Today I went to IKEA for all of the second time since the one in Massachusetts opened up. I had almost forgotten until I got there how overwhelming the store is. I know that everyone raves about this place because it's so inexpensive but I feel as though you make up for it in other ways. What it doesn't cost you in dollars you pay for in anxiety and anger.
First off, any place that I feel like I need to make a trip to the bathroom before I start going through the store for fear that I will never find one again, is not okay in my book. You basically need a map to get through IKEA if you're going for something specific. Otherwise you're going be wandering through cheap Swedish limbo for all of eternity. All I wanted was a desk! When I finally got to the showroom for them, I saw that the one I had intended on getting was "temporarily oversold" which infuriated me. It was one of the items that I had to go to the store to buy because for whatever reason, you can't order certain things online. I swear this is a ploy to get you into the store because there is so much more there to choose from than there is on the website. I move into my apartment and start classes in two weeks, I don't have time for back orders and yelling at people on the telephone when it never shows up.
Anyway, I finally chose a desk that they had in stock. I assume that anyone reading this knows that when you buy something from IKEA you have to put it together yourself. For the most part this doesn't seem like a big deal. However, I spent a few hours last year putting a kitchen table and chairs together on Becca's living room floor looking at diagrams, trying to discern parts A from B and wondering how the hell the tiny little screwdrivers they give you apply to parts A and B, cursing the diagrams for not having any directions besides pictures and arrows and wondering where the hell the bag of itty bitty screws went to. As awful as this sounds, this is not the worst part. They don't have packages of these desks on the showroom floor at all. You have to remember the asile and bin number that it's placed in in what is basically a warehouse downstairs.
Before you can get to this part of the store you have to walk through an entire other section of cheap homegoods. I ended up with a set of 6 wineglasses for 5 dollars. It seemed stupid of me not to buy. It still wasn't that simple. They keep the glasses in these flimsy cardboard containers with no handles. Since I am probably one of the least graceful people in the world, I opted for the just as flimsy cardboard container with the handles, that I had to put together myself and replace all the glasses into it. Go figure.
Once I got to aisle 11, Bin 0, I obtained my desk, which apparently comes in not one box but two. I didn't realize this until I was in the self checkout line and was informed ever so nicely by one of the employees that I only had half a desk. My friend had me hold our place in line while she ran back and hauled the other box over. When she got back I noticed that none of my wineglasses had barcodes on them meaning I couldn't do self checkout. So I got in the normal checkout line and paid assuming that the ordeal was over.
Actually leaving with the purchases was another problem. They have one of these escalator deals where you can take your cart down them to the parking lot but they have these metal posts in front where you're supposed to fit through. My packages were too large to make it so I had to turn them all right side up. My friend had already made it through the escalator with her things and was looking up at me huffing and puffing and having a general hissy fit. Turning the boxes the other way wasn't the problem so much as the dolly that they give you for these things kept moving and I didn't have anyone to hold it steady for me. When I finally got the boxes back into place after nearly falling on my face ten times, I went to push the dolly through and the handles didn't fit. Some guy came out and said "oh yeah...only the shopping carts fit through" which I responded to buy yelling loudly that IKEA is Swedish for bullshit and stomping off with my cart to find the elevator.
They are very protective of these carts. So much so that you cant take them past the underground entrance from the store to your car. I had to leave the cart and come back my car up into a "loading space" and put everything into the trunk. Which took another few minutes because I had to actually find my car first. I own this now.
Hoo-fucking-ray.
First off, any place that I feel like I need to make a trip to the bathroom before I start going through the store for fear that I will never find one again, is not okay in my book. You basically need a map to get through IKEA if you're going for something specific. Otherwise you're going be wandering through cheap Swedish limbo for all of eternity. All I wanted was a desk! When I finally got to the showroom for them, I saw that the one I had intended on getting was "temporarily oversold" which infuriated me. It was one of the items that I had to go to the store to buy because for whatever reason, you can't order certain things online. I swear this is a ploy to get you into the store because there is so much more there to choose from than there is on the website. I move into my apartment and start classes in two weeks, I don't have time for back orders and yelling at people on the telephone when it never shows up.
Anyway, I finally chose a desk that they had in stock. I assume that anyone reading this knows that when you buy something from IKEA you have to put it together yourself. For the most part this doesn't seem like a big deal. However, I spent a few hours last year putting a kitchen table and chairs together on Becca's living room floor looking at diagrams, trying to discern parts A from B and wondering how the hell the tiny little screwdrivers they give you apply to parts A and B, cursing the diagrams for not having any directions besides pictures and arrows and wondering where the hell the bag of itty bitty screws went to. As awful as this sounds, this is not the worst part. They don't have packages of these desks on the showroom floor at all. You have to remember the asile and bin number that it's placed in in what is basically a warehouse downstairs.
Before you can get to this part of the store you have to walk through an entire other section of cheap homegoods. I ended up with a set of 6 wineglasses for 5 dollars. It seemed stupid of me not to buy. It still wasn't that simple. They keep the glasses in these flimsy cardboard containers with no handles. Since I am probably one of the least graceful people in the world, I opted for the just as flimsy cardboard container with the handles, that I had to put together myself and replace all the glasses into it. Go figure.
Once I got to aisle 11, Bin 0, I obtained my desk, which apparently comes in not one box but two. I didn't realize this until I was in the self checkout line and was informed ever so nicely by one of the employees that I only had half a desk. My friend had me hold our place in line while she ran back and hauled the other box over. When she got back I noticed that none of my wineglasses had barcodes on them meaning I couldn't do self checkout. So I got in the normal checkout line and paid assuming that the ordeal was over.
Actually leaving with the purchases was another problem. They have one of these escalator deals where you can take your cart down them to the parking lot but they have these metal posts in front where you're supposed to fit through. My packages were too large to make it so I had to turn them all right side up. My friend had already made it through the escalator with her things and was looking up at me huffing and puffing and having a general hissy fit. Turning the boxes the other way wasn't the problem so much as the dolly that they give you for these things kept moving and I didn't have anyone to hold it steady for me. When I finally got the boxes back into place after nearly falling on my face ten times, I went to push the dolly through and the handles didn't fit. Some guy came out and said "oh yeah...only the shopping carts fit through" which I responded to buy yelling loudly that IKEA is Swedish for bullshit and stomping off with my cart to find the elevator.
They are very protective of these carts. So much so that you cant take them past the underground entrance from the store to your car. I had to leave the cart and come back my car up into a "loading space" and put everything into the trunk. Which took another few minutes because I had to actually find my car first. I own this now.
Hoo-fucking-ray.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Xie Xie
Tonight I met up with my best friend Becca who I hadn't seen in about a month. We went out to sushi at an adorable place called Sakura on Wickenden Street in Providence. It's the type of place where you go in and take off your shoes and sit on the floor on cushions etc. I guess I should mention that I am a faux sushi lover as I hate fish (with the exception of Mahi Mahi which I was tricked into eating while under the impression it was poultry). I'm also incredibly allergic to shrimp. I only eat the kind of sushi that's made from vegetables or has chicken in it. I realize that neither of these are really sushi, but I also stopped caring about that three years ago. If you wrap something tasty in seaweed and rice, it's fine by me.
That aside, we were having a discussion about my nerd status increasing dramatically after starting this blog and were deciding what today's should be about. At first, I was going to write about language barriers considering I had such a hard time ordering the food and being understood. Also, Becca waitresses at a Chinese food restaurant and has problems with that often. I thought it would make sense to talk about the importance of language and how it affects our daily lives, ya-de-ya-da.
This idea changed about ten seconds later when a girl sitting at the table next to us stood up to leave, leaned all the way back and flashed everyone in the general area her Britney. Perhaps it was meant to be her tip to the waiter? I'm unsure, but at this point in time I decided that I couldn't write about languages barriers when the girl next to me completely threw them out the window by displaying symbols that are universally understood. I am one of the least conservative people you will ever meet, I could care less if you decide not to wear underwear. Be free! I don't care. However, I did not RSVP to that party.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Thomas Edison and George Clooney?
The fact that good ol' Tommy boy here stole most of his ideas from people who worked for him and then released them under his patent is pretty annoying and unjust in itself. To add to this, I learned today that in 1903 Mr. Edison publicly electrocuted a circus elephant named Topsy in front of 1500 people. Apparently, Topsy's owners were going to have her hanged after she killed her trainer, who had fed her a lit cigarette, but there was a public outcry against it. So they called in Tommy who at the time had been on a spree of electrocuting stray cats, dogs and the occasional horse or cow. Electrocuting an elephant is far more humane than hanging it, obviously. Edison thought an elephant would be quite the challenge since he had never shocked an animal of that proportion. After having Topsy strapped into copper sandals he shocked her with 6600 volts of electricity killing her in about ten seconds. The whole thing was captured on film. Apparently Tom was going around doing this to prove that his arch nemesis George Westinghouse's alternating current was dangerous. At least he was trying to prove a point, right? I had the unfortunate opportunity of seeing the video.
I have really mixed opinions about PETA but if this were done today I'd be glad to allow them to throw tomatoes and red paint all over him. When a kid goes around zapping animals now they have them in a shrink's office faster than you can say "Daddy issues". However, 105 years after Edison, I'm not sure how far we've come with learning how to prove our points with words rather than violent action. What with the more recent outcry over the Costa Rican artist Guillermo Habacuc Vargas starving a dog to death in an art exhibit to "prove a point" of social hypocrisy.
On a far less sobering note, yesterday I went out to dinner with my dear friend and former roommate Meredith. We got on the topic of sexy older men and obviously the man above came up. I don't know what it is about him, but I have had a serious celebrity crush on him since I was a kid. He can operate on me or rob my casino any day.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Greetings!
I've decided that since I'm on the brink of becoming a fully legal adult in the eyes of the government, that it's time to say goodbye to the angst filled kingdom of Livejournal and hello to the world of grown up, "serious" blogging. Here you will find the incredibly interesting details of some of the daily happenings of my life, my thoughts on politics (perhaps) and pictures and videos that interest or merely entertain me.
I went out to dinner with my parents on Friday evening to a place they normally go to without me. All the tables in the bar that would seat three were full (obviously) so we ended up sitting in the dinning room in the back. My parents aren't incredibly young but they don't exactly roll with the geriatric ward either. The atmosphere was awful for anyone who doesn't qualify for a Senior Citizen's Discount. First off all the tables were too close together. I don't want to hear about Uncle Earl's colonoscopy while you complain about the butternut squash on the Early Bird Special. I felt like I was an extra in an add for a retirement community in Florida, the state my father refers to as "God's waiting room". Aside from the table that was in the corner, my dad was the only guy in the room who didn't have white hair. We got stuck in the parking lot on the way out because, as I will forever maintain, the elderly cannot drive. I dubbed over all the conversations of the people walking out with, "Come on Dad, time to go back to the home! Next weekend we'll take you to the circus!" and "Kids, say goodbye to grandpa!" My mom did some of her own while my dad just complained that we should have come later so the bar wouldn't have been full. He didn't think it was funny when I responded with "WHAAAT? Speak up sonny! My hearing aid's on the fritz again!"
I never want to get old.
That is however, unless I'm AWESOME old, like this:
I went out to dinner with my parents on Friday evening to a place they normally go to without me. All the tables in the bar that would seat three were full (obviously) so we ended up sitting in the dinning room in the back. My parents aren't incredibly young but they don't exactly roll with the geriatric ward either. The atmosphere was awful for anyone who doesn't qualify for a Senior Citizen's Discount. First off all the tables were too close together. I don't want to hear about Uncle Earl's colonoscopy while you complain about the butternut squash on the Early Bird Special. I felt like I was an extra in an add for a retirement community in Florida, the state my father refers to as "God's waiting room". Aside from the table that was in the corner, my dad was the only guy in the room who didn't have white hair. We got stuck in the parking lot on the way out because, as I will forever maintain, the elderly cannot drive. I dubbed over all the conversations of the people walking out with, "Come on Dad, time to go back to the home! Next weekend we'll take you to the circus!" and "Kids, say goodbye to grandpa!" My mom did some of her own while my dad just complained that we should have come later so the bar wouldn't have been full. He didn't think it was funny when I responded with "WHAAAT? Speak up sonny! My hearing aid's on the fritz again!"
I never want to get old.
That is however, unless I'm AWESOME old, like this:
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