I know, I know we are a capitalist society.
Our economy is dependent on consumer spending and we need to be open for the consumer when the consumer wants us to be open.
Yeah
OK
I get it
But..............
Can we please have one sacred day out of 365.
With K-Mart announcing a 41 hour blowout sale starting at 6am Thanksgiving morning, it really seems we are on the path to losing a uniquely American holiday.
I love Thanksgiving, wake up to a bit of a chill, grab some coffee or a little hot cider with SC (it's a holiday....what!?!) and start cooking while the house slowly fills with yummy smells and more voices.
The men in the living room watching the Macy Parade and then football and the women in the kitchen worrying over some casserole or if Aunt Jean is bringing more dressing.
SIDEBAR - in the South we serve dressing. It's a wonderful mix of bread crumbs and specialness that is cooked in a glass pyrex pan. It is AMAZING and should be served more often. We DO NOT serve stuffing....why would anyone want to eat something out of a turkeys butt anyway
No one went shopping!
Hell, if God forbid you forgot milk you had to send one of the boys down to the 7-11 right quick because even that closed early.
AND you happily paid the $5 for a quart because it was the only place open!
Thanksgiving is such a unique holiday.
It's about family and taking one day to truly appreciate the good in your life.
It doesn't matter if your religious, if you have a big family or a small family, if you celebrate around a table or on a tv tray, if you serve turkey with all the trimmings or tandoori chicken, every person who calls themselves an American can celebrate Thanksgiving.
It's going to be a sad day when Thanksgiving becomes a national holiday to go to the mall.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Thursday, November 7, 2013
WOW.....those are some big........
Possibly the greatest car advertisement EVER!!!!!
check-balls-texas-mans-craigslist-ad-jeep-wrangler
Unfortunately, the above screen shot, captured by the folks at 102.3 Blake FM, is all that remains of one of the truest macho, testosterone-fueled Craigslist car ads that we’ll see this year. Whether or not the McKinney, Texas man behind it sold his beloved Jeep Wrangler Sahara is only known to him and a potential buyer – it’s a pretty great deal depending on the Jeep’s CarFax – but it’s hard to debate that he didn’t have one of the best sales pitches that you’ll read in any Craigslist ad, short of the infamous Pontiac ad from last year.
Feast your eyes on this poetry, lest you be too un-manly to handle all of its awesomeness. What? He’s a much better writer than I am.
Feast your eyes on this poetry, lest you be too un-manly to handle all of its awesomeness. What? He’s a much better writer than I am.
I should start by saying that if you are looking for a “Pajama party Barbie Jeep” you my friend, should keep looking. If you are looking for a short description of to the beast before you, I can offer you two words “MEAT & POTATOES”. This is the All American chariot of the free world.
You are not dealing with any ordinary, cookie cutter Jeep son. This thing was forged from a single block of all American Tungsten Steel. Real sturdy! From that day forward my life has never been the same. Winch yourself off that couch and see if you can handle this Jeep Wrangler Sahara.
So if you are looking for a rice burning hatch back, a solar powered liberal mobile, or even a Hyundai crossover keep on looking my friend this thing is a piece of red white and blue Americana Machinery.
This baby’s pulse is pumping 4.0 liters of uncensored raw fuel through her straight six nuclear power plant. And rest assured this is no metro feminine automatic. . .you command her to obey, with your calloused hand planted firmly on the shifter. And she will obey, the first time, every time. If you can’t handle your stick shifter, or reach the clutch pedal, you better not ferry skip over here wanting to test drive her. If you stall her out, you can count on getting hit in the face with a piece of re-bar and sent back where you came from.
It has A/C but are you kidding me….Really! If you want to blow the sweat off your brow, you do it the old fashioned way: doors off, top down. “What if it rains?”. . .You whiney bitch! I told you to stop reading. . . Any man who drives this beast doesn’t give a damn about rain. Not even skin melting acid rain, Cause he’s already dripping wet in blood, sweat, dip spit, and fish guts.
If you are looking for the kind of jeep that has to be pansy parked in the garage, so the “carpet doesn’t get wet and soggy” Then you should plant your Obama sticker on some Japanese piece of shit. Cause this thing has drain holes in the floor and rhino lined to let the blood drain out from the buffalo you just killed, with your bare hands. Because you are William Wallace from Braveheart and when you get home you can leave your “sissy sponge glove car wash kit” in the pink bucket it came in. Go ahead and spark up your 6000 psi heated pressure washer on the dually trailer in your man cave, cause you are Tim Gillespie and you can pressure wash your truck on the inside. She’s got rhino lined floors with a full roll cage in case that buffalo comes back to life while you’re doing 80 over some mountain pass or flooded river.
If you’re thinking about Mexican chrome bumpers for her, think again. The bumper bashers come hand forged in a blacksmith shop in Franklin County over a wood burnin fire, out of 4 inch well casing, and railroad tracks and then I welded em to the damn chassis. That way if you get deployed you can piggy back this war wagon on a deuce and a half and chain her down tight from the four corners, so you don’t lose her when your convoy gets hit by a taliband roadside suicide bomber.
And forget about putting one of those “It’s a Jeep Thing. . .You wouldn’t understand” stickers on this machine cause when you’re spotted in this American Classic there will be no questions, no further explanation required, people will understand and get out of your way. . …real quick.
If you think you’re ready to park this panty hauler on your tract of land. If you buy this jeep you better go get your old lady ready for some damn changes around your lair, cause this shit will be happening. What will be Happening? Glad you asked….
1. More chest hair.
2. You’re growing a beard.
3. Meat Only Diet.
4. T-Rex for a pet.
5. You’re taking a job at the lumber mill.
6. Your car carries five kegs.
7. Penis enlargement.
8. Catch more fish.
9. Wire bristled toothbrush.
10. Sex in the yard.
11. Sex in the garage.
12. All male offspring.
13. Chiseled jaw line.
14. Not giving a damn.
15. Flesh turning to steel.
16. Higher salary
17. Promotions.
18. Better looking wives.
19. Better looking mistresses.
20. More golfing
21. More killing stuff.
22. More dead animals in the KITCHEN freezer.
23. More tools in your garage.
24. Bigger TV
25. Wife takes out the trash
26. Four Wheel Drive
27. Wife brings trash can in from road.
28. Wife stops bitching about clothes on floor.
29. Wife stocks fridge with beer.
30. Chuck Norris.
31. John McCain
32. Steaks for dinner.
33. Winning the Lottery.
34. Women on the side.
35. Wrestling with bea
36. Building shit out of stone.
37. Riding Lawn Mower.
38. Bon Fires in cul-de-sac.
39. Bar Fights.
40. Wife picks you up from Thee Gentlemen’s Club.
41. Craftsman Tools.
42. Jay Bisset.
43. Welding stuff.
44. Digging holes.
45. Huge Piece of meat.
Put your GPS back in your purse.All I have to add is *Jeep wave*, brother
Sounds good doesn’t it?
This jeep has carried me through 155,000 miles of battlefield twice as gruesome as the second half of the movie “300″. . ..And just like a trusty steed this juggernaut has never left me stranded. If you think you’ve worn her out you drag this beast back to me in any condition. And Ill handle the rest.
But if you think you’re going to get to whip this mule you better pony up Sixty Five Hundred Dollars. . .American Cash. I’m not selling you this car unless you are clearly a pure blooded American Species, so don’t even think about it.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Russell Brand
is an idiot
robin-lustig/russell-brand-not-only-dangerous
I think perhaps the best way to describe the actor, comedian and writer Russell Brand is as "a Halloween-haired, Sachsgate-enacting, estuary-whining, glitter-lacquered, priapic berk... a tree-hugging, Hindu-tattooed, veggie meditator."
It's the best way, because it happens to be his own description of himself - in a 4,750-word revolutionary rant in this week's issue of the New Statesman, guest-edited by, you guessed, Russell Brand.
The Brand manifesto has caused quite a stir in some circles, not just because of his celebrity and skill in making waves, but because of a probably well-founded suspicion that his anger and contempt directed at the entire political class is widely shared among young people who care about the country they live in but see no way to do anything about it.
I imagine there are a lot of people who can identify with the Brand view of politics: "Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites."
So I propose to take what he says seriously - which may be a mistake, but what the hell. A lot of it will be curiously familiar to anyone who remembers, as I do, the hippies of the 1960s: "Make love, not war... down with the man... Power to the people." Beguiling, attractive slogans, with their wonderful certainty that there are simple answers to complex questions.
What Brand says is not only daft but dangerous. It's dangerous because he is a clever man with influence, and when he says: "Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people", there is a real risk that some people - especially young people - will take him seriously.
The core of his message is: "I will never vote and I don't think you should, either." He presents it as a message of hope, when in fact it is precisely the opposite. It is a message of despair.
Voting doesn't change anything? Tell that to the millions of Americans with no health insurance who, once the Obama administration have sorted out their IT problems, will, for the first time, have access to decent health care. They wouldn't have it if no one had bothered to vote.
Tell all those tens of thousands of British workers on the minimum wage (yes, I know, it's disgracefully inadequate, but it's still better than no minimum wage at all), introduced in the face of fierce opposition by a Labour government after the Blair victory of 1997. And it wouldn't have happened if no one had bothered to vote.
Tell the millions of black South Africans who voted for the ANC in 1994 and elected Nelson Mandela as their president. It wouldn't have happened if they hadn't bothered to vote.
Apathy is cowardice. It's a way of saying "I take no responsibility for what happens in my country." I can understand people being reluctant to vote because they feel a sense of disgust, but the rational reaction to that is not apathy, but to find candidates -- or become a candidate -- in whom one is more prepared to have faith.
Brand brands himself a revolutionary. "Revolt in whatever way we want, with the spontaneity of the London rioters, with the certainty and willingness to die of religious fundamentalists or with the twinkling mischief of the trickster... Take to the streets, together, with the understanding that the feeling that you aren't being heard or seen or represented isn't psychosis; it's government policy."
I wonder if he's noticed what's happening in Egypt, or Tunisia, or Libya, where hundreds of thousands of excited revolutionaries took to the streets to topple hated dictatorships. They achieved their goal - and then what? So far, it's not easy to argue that what has followed is any better than what went before. I would have thought that the lure of the barricades might have taken a bit of a knock - but perhaps careful consideration of other peoples' experiences is not Brand's style.
In a hilarious, but also deeply depressing, interview with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight on Wednesday night, he demonstrated his utter inability to offer any concrete example of what he believes we should do instead of vote. He wants fundamental change but has no idea how to achieve it.
The closest he comes in his New Statesman manifesto is: "To genuinely make a difference, we must become different; make the tiny, longitudinal shift. Meditate, direct our love indiscriminately and our condemnation exclusively at those with power." At which point, I can merely offer another quote from the same piece: "First and foremost I want to have a f***ing laugh."
Indeed. And here's what worries me most. If Russell Brand was content to be a highly successful comedian, a jester with a pig's bladder and bells on his multi-coloured hat, I'd leave him alone with his mashed-up mind and pantechnicon of platitudes. (Oh yes, I too can write as if I've swallowed a thesaurus - it's neither as difficult, nor as impressive, as Brand seems to think.)
But by writing thousands of words of political junk in a respected weekly magazine, he sets himself up as someone with something to contribute to an important debate. The truth is that he has nothing to contribute, other than the self-satisfied smirk of a man who knows he'll never go hungry or be without a home.
If he really wanted to encourage the development of a genuinely revolutionary movement, he would start organising one. He would knuckle down to do really, really boring things, like handing out leaflets on street corners, lanching petitions, holding meetings, just like the early trades unionists and labour activists he professes to admire so much.
But of course that's not what he's about. "First and foremost I want to have a f***ing laugh." Which is fine, as long as no one is tempted, even for a moment, to take him seriously.
Follow Robin Lustig on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@robinlustig
robin-lustig/russell-brand-not-only-dangerous
Russell Brand: Not Only Daft but Dangerous
Posted: 24/10/2013 17:05I think perhaps the best way to describe the actor, comedian and writer Russell Brand is as "a Halloween-haired, Sachsgate-enacting, estuary-whining, glitter-lacquered, priapic berk... a tree-hugging, Hindu-tattooed, veggie meditator."
It's the best way, because it happens to be his own description of himself - in a 4,750-word revolutionary rant in this week's issue of the New Statesman, guest-edited by, you guessed, Russell Brand.
The Brand manifesto has caused quite a stir in some circles, not just because of his celebrity and skill in making waves, but because of a probably well-founded suspicion that his anger and contempt directed at the entire political class is widely shared among young people who care about the country they live in but see no way to do anything about it.
I imagine there are a lot of people who can identify with the Brand view of politics: "Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites."
So I propose to take what he says seriously - which may be a mistake, but what the hell. A lot of it will be curiously familiar to anyone who remembers, as I do, the hippies of the 1960s: "Make love, not war... down with the man... Power to the people." Beguiling, attractive slogans, with their wonderful certainty that there are simple answers to complex questions.
What Brand says is not only daft but dangerous. It's dangerous because he is a clever man with influence, and when he says: "Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people", there is a real risk that some people - especially young people - will take him seriously.
The core of his message is: "I will never vote and I don't think you should, either." He presents it as a message of hope, when in fact it is precisely the opposite. It is a message of despair.
Voting doesn't change anything? Tell that to the millions of Americans with no health insurance who, once the Obama administration have sorted out their IT problems, will, for the first time, have access to decent health care. They wouldn't have it if no one had bothered to vote.
Tell all those tens of thousands of British workers on the minimum wage (yes, I know, it's disgracefully inadequate, but it's still better than no minimum wage at all), introduced in the face of fierce opposition by a Labour government after the Blair victory of 1997. And it wouldn't have happened if no one had bothered to vote.
Tell the millions of black South Africans who voted for the ANC in 1994 and elected Nelson Mandela as their president. It wouldn't have happened if they hadn't bothered to vote.
Apathy is cowardice. It's a way of saying "I take no responsibility for what happens in my country." I can understand people being reluctant to vote because they feel a sense of disgust, but the rational reaction to that is not apathy, but to find candidates -- or become a candidate -- in whom one is more prepared to have faith.
Brand brands himself a revolutionary. "Revolt in whatever way we want, with the spontaneity of the London rioters, with the certainty and willingness to die of religious fundamentalists or with the twinkling mischief of the trickster... Take to the streets, together, with the understanding that the feeling that you aren't being heard or seen or represented isn't psychosis; it's government policy."
I wonder if he's noticed what's happening in Egypt, or Tunisia, or Libya, where hundreds of thousands of excited revolutionaries took to the streets to topple hated dictatorships. They achieved their goal - and then what? So far, it's not easy to argue that what has followed is any better than what went before. I would have thought that the lure of the barricades might have taken a bit of a knock - but perhaps careful consideration of other peoples' experiences is not Brand's style.
In a hilarious, but also deeply depressing, interview with Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight on Wednesday night, he demonstrated his utter inability to offer any concrete example of what he believes we should do instead of vote. He wants fundamental change but has no idea how to achieve it.
The closest he comes in his New Statesman manifesto is: "To genuinely make a difference, we must become different; make the tiny, longitudinal shift. Meditate, direct our love indiscriminately and our condemnation exclusively at those with power." At which point, I can merely offer another quote from the same piece: "First and foremost I want to have a f***ing laugh."
Indeed. And here's what worries me most. If Russell Brand was content to be a highly successful comedian, a jester with a pig's bladder and bells on his multi-coloured hat, I'd leave him alone with his mashed-up mind and pantechnicon of platitudes. (Oh yes, I too can write as if I've swallowed a thesaurus - it's neither as difficult, nor as impressive, as Brand seems to think.)
But by writing thousands of words of political junk in a respected weekly magazine, he sets himself up as someone with something to contribute to an important debate. The truth is that he has nothing to contribute, other than the self-satisfied smirk of a man who knows he'll never go hungry or be without a home.
If he really wanted to encourage the development of a genuinely revolutionary movement, he would start organising one. He would knuckle down to do really, really boring things, like handing out leaflets on street corners, lanching petitions, holding meetings, just like the early trades unionists and labour activists he professes to admire so much.
But of course that's not what he's about. "First and foremost I want to have a f***ing laugh." Which is fine, as long as no one is tempted, even for a moment, to take him seriously.
Follow Robin Lustig on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@robinlustig
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