Atttention-Addicted President on the Warpath Again

  I am not at all looking forward to Donald Trump's next year in power as our 47th president.  The man seems to be doing everything he possibly can to degrade life for Americans like me and to lower my country's standing and status in the eyes of the world.  He s addicted to grabbing for headlines; there's always a deliberately outrageous announcement in the works from him. Early in 2025, just as I was about to get on my OPM website at the start of my postal retirement, h e had his henchman Elon Musk, cynically playing the DOGE role, suddenly show up in Washington with chainsaw and an insane maniacal expression as he invaded the OPM,sending out emailed threats to arbitrarily fire thousands of federal employees...I stayed away from there and Musk quickly became the most hated name in my country with widespread protests, Tesla boycotts and vandalism. Well, we'll see exactly what it will take before people begin to elect some polititionsfrom my own party this fall.My full expectation is that he will boastfully sell Ukraine down the river as it struggles to maintain its independent existence against invading Russia...

About Elon Musk

I'm not sure what to think about this super-tycoon Elon Musk and his assorted enterprises.  For years I was fervently supporting his SpaceX's efforts to ultimately send humans to Mars, a very ambitious enterprise to eventually to establish permanent facilities there.  I was also on board with his Tesla development of self-driving cars.  Starlink, a network of communications satellites under SpaceX, has transformed global communications. But after the mega-magnate turned hard-Trump with his politics last year, my inclination to support Musk's projects has taken a severe nosedive.  His rockets keep blowing up, and people who don't like him burn up his Teslas.  There's a conspiracy theory going around that Musk somehow used Starlink to steal the 2024 election for Trump, but I think there's a simpler and more obvious solution: the American voter is typically stupid, driven by emotion and susceptible to manipulation.  His recent decision to oppose Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" for increasing the national debt is laudable, as is his stepping back away from the national limelight as the president's right-hand man with a moneybag and chainsaw.  So what does the future hold for Elon...and me?  My plan is to take it all, one Musk action at a time, for better or for worse.  I really do think he is trying hard to do his best for the greater good...and sometimes he royally screws up in that regard.  One thing for certain: he is indeed a figure of history...

Just Pick a Side

Hard Rock, the entertainment/resort company that is prominent in my home state of Florida, has recently been airing a slew of TV commercials, some featuring recording artist Post Malone, that tout their online "service" allowing players to gamble on sports.  I suppose that if you're into that, then good for you...it's just that much easier to put your hard-earned money on the line.  So in this vein I see a company responding to a demand within the population that satisfies them.  I see other companies likewise doing this.  For example, many addicted cigarette smokers welcomed the advent of vaping, which did away with the carcinogenic tobacco elements they would breathe when "lighting up",  but which still provided them that craved nicotine effect.  Again, a demand met by companies' innovations...good for them, again.  Where I have a problem, though, with both of these examples is when the companies go out of their way to create new "needs" among the potential consumer pool that previously did not exist.  Making vaping seem cool to young people who never touched a cigarette in their lives is like this.  Or go back to Hard Rock, expanding the gambling to generally ignorant folks who don't know enough to at least make an educated guess about who will win or lose a sports contest.  With them, their latest pitch is a gimmick they have on their app whereby participants can still lay down their money and bet by simply "picking a side".  It all sounds so fun and inclusive, or at least that's how the ads make it look: come on and join the party!  But here again is a company expanding its consumer base to create a need that simply wasn't there before.  I guess, though, that's the essence of advertising, isn't it, to make the fool targeted potential consumer feel somehow inadequate or less than acceptable if they don't climb aboard with the company's agenda...  

Something Buc-ee's This Way Comes

This article's title is deliberately derivative, doubly so in fact: it comes from a South Park episode titled Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes, a play upon the outstanding Ray Bradbury novel Something Wicked This Way Comes.  Well, Buc-ee's is neither Walmart (South Park's spelling is different) nor wicked...although I imagine that from some people's perspective the comparisons are close.  Buc-ee's is a chain of humongous convenient stores usually located at interstate highway exits, providing very clean bathroom facilities, rows upon rows of gas pumps and an enormous store with fresh-made sandwiches (they tout their beef brisket), salads, fruit, coffee and beverages, and many other items...including the pictured coffee mug and cap featuring the Buc-ee the Beaver logo.  The company was founded in a Texas town in 1982 by Arch "Beaver" Aplin III, but he wouldn't expand it out of that state until 2018, when it grew explosively to many surrounding parts, primarily in the U.S. southeast.  Never having heard of it before our vacation drive to Kentucky last week, we stopped off at Buc-ee's in Georgia during the outing in two different locations, Warner Robins and Calhoun.  It's a bit intimidating going in there as it seems the whole world has descended on the place.  I found the employees...and they hire many people...to be professional, friendly and enthusiastic: the check-out lines went fast and smoothly.  The bathrooms are gigantic and, as advertised, clean, while the number of gas pumps is breathtaking.  Buc-ee's doesn't permit large trucks on their facilities...tough for the drivers but great for the rest of us.  Buc-ee's subscribes to the oft-promoted notion that bigger is better...Walmart would agree...but this tends to bring criticism that such a presence can negatively influence a local economy by unfair competition against smaller businesses in the area.  Right now, the trend seems to be to have these mega-convenient stores out on interstate exits, not in the middle of town...and they do employ a lot of people.  I first heard of the "new wave" of large convenience stores with the advent of Wawa in the Gainesville area just a few years ago, although that company has been in existence since 1804.  But they are nowhere near the size of the crazy Buc-ee's stores I visited.  And apparently, with Buc-ee's already in St. Augustine and Ormond Beach, construction for the third Florida store is set for Exit 358 on I-75 north of Ocala.  In the Calhoun facility I even saw Buc-ee himself walking around...dang it, I missed out on the opportunity to add yet another picture of me standing next to a complete stranger in mascot garb...

Quote of the Week...from Neil Armstrong

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.                                                                     ---Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong, the first human being to stand on the moon's surface, was born this day in 1930...the same year of my mother's birth.  While she passed away in 2002, Armstrong was around until 2012...and had some choice comments about the state of our space program, including the above quote.  I grew up in the sixties and seventies, observing the space race to the moon between America and the Soviets...and then the public disinterest in our space program almost immediately after Armstrong had set foot on the moon. Not only that, but both political wings became cool to the space effort, the Right arguing that it was too expensive and the Left that the money should be spent at home helping the poor. Since the last Apollo moon mission in December 1972, humanity has gone no further than low Earth orbit...that's nearly 50 years!  President George W. Bush presented a plan to return to the moon, establishing a permanent base there...that encouraged me.  Then Barack Obama assumed the presidency and scrapped Bush's ambitious plans, opting to encourage private corporations to develop the primary manned space technology and missions.  Elon Musk's SpaceX corporation took up the challenge and has been launching people into space from U.S. soil after us needing to hitch rides for years off Russian rockets...and he has plans to send people to Mars.  And although private industry, not the government, is providing much of the tab for space exploration now, we're continuing to hear complaints...even from Prince William of England...that those rich people shouldn't be spending their money investing in space exploration but should be using it to help people at home.  Fortunately, I think Musk and other business leaders have the vision to continue with their efforts to expand our frontiers, not only to the moon but also to Mars and the moons of the outer planets.  I wonder what Neil Armstrong would have to say about where we are now. I'm still entertaining hopes of seeing humans reach Mars in my lifetime...

Just Finished Reading The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath is one of those books that I should have been assigned during high school English class...how I missed it is beyond me.  In the ninth grade, I did get assigned The Pearl, another novel by John Steinbeck, one I intensely disliked at the time and which kept me from approaching this great author's other works for many, many years.  But a few years ago I read his Of Mice and Men, a brilliant work, and just now finally tackled what is probably his most famous novel, which came out in 1939 and just the following year was made into a classic movie starring Henry Fonda.  Fonda's character, a young man named Tom Joad, has just been released from prison and is returning home to his family of tenant farmers in rural Oklahoma...only to discover upon arriving that they have had "their" farm seized by the bank after Dust Bowl failures in crop yield had placed them behind in payments.  Many of the Joads' neighbors are likewise pulling up stakes and heading to California, where handbills flooding their area are proclaiming jobs abounding in that state's diverse agricultural community.  It is the ordeal of the Joads...with Tom's blunt, common sense take on the proceedings, that defines this story of greedy exploitation by the wealthy, irrational prejudice by those feeling threatened by the incoming "Okies", and the bonds that develop among the poor families desperately searching for work to feed and shelter themselves.  The Grapes of Wrath is an exposé story of this dark period in our country's history...I haven't yet seen the movie but plan to soon: I've read nothing but good things about it, although I suspect that some of the book's rawness may have been smoothed over for the big screen.  But first I recommend you read the book: Steinbeck makes you feel like you're right there with the Joad family, alternately suffering and rejoicing with them along their troubled journey.  As for other John Steinbeck novels, I'm currently reading his more lighthearted Cannery Row and look forward to East of Eden and a hopefully more mature rereading of The Pearl...

Miscellaneous Thoughts on Starbucks, Howard Schultz, Gators Hoops

Today, after entering my nearest Starbucks and they refused to sell today's Sunday Gainesville Sun newspaper to me at the clearly-stated price of $2, insisting on ripping me off for $3 instead...after which I most diplomatically replied that they could "keep" it, I'm sitting in the same place...possibly for the last time, here with my overpriced iced coffee, which the McDonalds down the road makes tastier and much more cheaply.  No, trying to rip off customers at 50% above stated retail price for something that they didn't even produce may well be the final straw between me and this company that should be nominated for Most Overrated Business of the Universe.  It takes a certain mixture of smug arrogance and outright gall to pull that kind of stunt with their loyal customers, whom Starbucks obviously takes for granted...

Well, now that I've got that little peeve out of my system, on to another one.  It saddens me that a potential centrist presidential candidate like Starbuck's former CEO Howard Schultz, who appeals to me as generally responsible and ideologically a centrist, feels that neither of the two major political parties that run our political system in this country offers a place for him, his views, and his candidacy.  Actually, though, I feel that Schultz might be more welcomed by the Democrats than he imagines, at least by Democratic voters...I certainly would be more receptive to his ideas for America's future.  But he's stated that if he runs, it will be as an independent, and as such will more likely syphon away votes from a Democratic nominee than from Trump in the November 2020 presidential election.  Sure, by running as an independent candidate Schultz will be able to escape the grueling party primary campaigning that has already begun so early, a year and a half before the election.  But were he to run as a Democrat, he would exert a more moderating pull on that party's discussions of the ongoing issues...now it seems the candidates are tripping over each other trying to see how radically leftist they can sound.  I could vote for Howard Schultz as a Democrat...even as a Republican...but never as an independent.  Like it or not, on the presidential election level we have a two-party system: it's binary, stupid!

Unless I and all of the sports pundits I've heard are somehow tragically mistaken, it looks as if the 2018-19 University of Florida men's basketball team will manage to make the 68-school field of the NCAA major college tournament, the brackets for which will be revealed in a few hours.  After a very tough out-of-conference schedule and a very competitive Southeastern Conference regular season, the Gators were 17-14 entering the conference tournament.  They made the semifinal round, winning two games before bowing to Auburn in a 65-62 defeat marred by a controversial officiating "non-call" blunder when the Florida player at the end, while taking a three-point shot to tie the score and send the game into overtime, was clearly fouled as three Auburn players converged on him...reminds me of that "non-call" at the end of the Rams-Saints NFL playoff game a few weeks ago...

The upshot of all this is that I want Starbucks to repent of their arrogance, Schultz to wise up and run as a Democrat, and for the Gators to go all the way to the championship...fat chance of any of that happening, though....

********
Later...Starbucks got back to me about the newspaper, stating that marking up the price wasn't their company's policy and wanting to make amends...I accept...still, it's kind of humiliating to be confronted in public at the counter like that and they deserve some rebuke for their arrogance...

Quote of the Week...from Thom Yorke

Sonic the Hedgehog is a beautiful statement on capitalism. You spend your whole life collecting yellow rings and then hit one spike and lose them all.  And there is a fat man who wants to kill you.
                                                             ---Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke is the lead singer and one of the songwriters of the British alternative rock group Radiohead, and is widely known for his many deliberately shocking quotes.  He's obviously suffering some kind of disconnect about capitalism since he and his band have lived the capitalist dream, deservedly enriching themselves with their great music and providing employment to their supporting staff...yet he puts it down in the above statement.  I'm not sure exactly who the "capitalist" fat man is who is supposedly intent on killing you, but in Sega's popular Sonic the Hedgehog video games from the 1990s he is Dr. Robotnik.  I happen to know this because my son Will, then a little boy, was a big Sonic fan and although I myself didn't play much I enjoyed watching him survive from one scene to the next...and finally complete the games after getting past the evil doctor's traps.  When I did play Sonic, that was my strategy as well...not just to collect yellow rings but instead to focus on progressing through the game.  And maybe that's an important part of the capitalist system we live in: it accords people a choice as to what they will emphasize in life, as opposed to some alternative systems that dictate to its people what they must value...

That all having been said, Yorke is right when he talks about people saving the yellow rings and then suddenly losing them all due to a spike...in our country this usually happens due to medical issues that will eventually afflict virtually every family in some way.  Yes, here in America we have state-of-the-art treatment and that's good, but it's also expensive and some of the prescribed procedures and treatments of chronic illness and organ failure can quickly bankrupt, even with insurance.  Since in Britain they have a state-run system, the Radiohead front man may have been referring instead to how a sudden economic downturn can quickly wipe out people's investments.  And if you're running a company, maybe that "fat man" is the bigger corporation about to swallow you up or undersell you out of business...

Just Finished Reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

I had already long heard of writer Ayn Rand's Objectivism movement, portrayed in novels like Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged, but had never gotten around to reading anything of hers.  I heard that folks like former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, former Congressman Ron Paul, and Rush drummer Neil Peart had each at some point in their lives been followers of Rand's...but it wasn't until I saw an episode of the satirical cartoon series South Park of all things that I finally relented and read her so-called "masterpiece", the gargantuan 1957 Atlas Shrugged...

It was the episode in which police officer Barbrady comes out and admits that he can't read...he then goes back to elementary school to catch up.  At the end, he's literate and is given a copy of Atlas Shrugged.  His reaction? In Barbrady's words, "Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read.  It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  I read every last word of this garbage and because of this piece of s--t, I am never reading again."  My reaction upon finishing it was a little more positive, but I have my own criticisms...

The setting of Atlas Shrugged...at least at its beginning...is an America of the mid-twentieth century that initially, at least on the surface, roughly corresponds to what it was really like.  The protagonists are visionary industrialists steel producer Hank Rearden and railway magnate Dagny Taggart. They exemplify the author's ideology of realism and objective reasoning as opposed to the social engineers and mystics around them who try to sabotage their efforts at success.  The political tide turns against "creators" like Rearden and Taggart as "second-handers" and "looters"...neither of which contribute anything real to the economy...take over.  While this is all going on, innovators, rationalist thinkers, and industrial leaders are subtly disappearing...where are they all going?  And who is this John Galt we keep hearing about throughout the narrative?  Mr. Galt finally makes his appearance late in the story...and delivers a monstrously long televised discourse explaining his worldview and why the moochers are doomed to failure...

I'm going to stick to my general pattern of book reviews and avoid telling how it all ends.  I will say, though, that unlike the fictional and hysterically funny Officer Barbrady from South Park, I knew in advance to read Atlas Shrugged more as a treatise of Ayn Rand's ideology than as a traditional novel.  That's a good thing, because the characters came across more as stick figures, with the "good guys" all sounding pretty much like the same person and the villains so similar to each other that they were often only distinguishable by name...and the dialogue was so contrived and unnatural that I found myself laughing at it.  The bottom line is this: Rand believed that pursuing one's own self-interests, especially economic self-interests, is the highest form of morality and that an unrestricted and unregulated economy...based on the gold standard...is the greatest social system ever devised.  Conversely, those who seek to use taxation to fund the government, form labor unions to collectively bargain working conditions and wages, spread any religious or ethical doctrine promoting altruism or social justice, or impose any sort of government regulation are operating from a moral framework of evil...in the author's clearly enounced opinion.  Yeah, I've got lots of problems with the message in this book.  Yet...

I did pick up on a couple of important points that I think Ayn Rand was trying to convey.  There is a blatant degree of hypocrisy in our society as so many openly criticize materialism and those who enjoy the material fruits of their labor while expecting to be handed those same material benefits without having played any substantial role in bringing them about.  Also, on a more personal level, from childhood I have often felt isolated and even shunned whenever I demonstrated special skill, intelligence, and accomplishments in a social setting...the default attitude in this society that outwardly pretends to reward initiative and success but vilifies those responsible for it seems to be that it's okay to achieve or be smart as long as you keep it hidden from others.  That folks would rather seek to be seen as one of the "people" instead of rising above others is a surefire sign of a stagnant, if not sinking, society that exalts mediocrity and conformity over excellence and ambition...

Viacom Forces MTV Awards Show on Its Many Channels

I don't suppose that, in the grand scheme of things, it really matters all that much to me as a TV viewer...but it does give me some pause when a major media corporation decides to flex its muscles and demonstrate the control it has over my television dial.  Last night I happened to be toggling my remote back and forth between MLS soccer and the NFL preseason game between the Jaguars and Bengals.  I checked out the lineup for the different channels and noted that MTV was holding its annual Video Music Awards program.  Good for them, I said to myself...I had long given up on MTV after it had abandoned showing music videos in favor of those horrible "reality" TV shows that continue to this day.  But hey, they're still giving out awards for music videos...they must be showing them on another channel.  But back to what I was saying...

I was perusing the schedule and began to notice that not just MTV was showing the VMAs...so was VH1, VH1 Classics, CMT, and BET.  Okay, I said to myself, these channels tend to be music-oriented and the company running MTV probably also runs them as well.  But still, I wondered: why prevent these other stations from offering viewers a choice in their programming when MTV is almost universally available anyway?  But then it got worse...

It wasn't just the aforementioned channels showing the MTV Video Music Awards...it was also Spike, Comedy Central, and...of all channels...TVLand!  People go to watch TVLand for the expressed purpose of avoiding crap like MTV!  But I'm not finished...there used to be a channel called Palladia that featured live musical performances.  Last year it was changed to MTV-Live, but the programming seemed to remain unchanged.  I checked that channel: it wasn't showing the VMA show...it wasn't showing anything! Not until the MTV awards show was over did it go back to its regular programming.  So what gives here?

Viacom Media Groups is the umbrella commercial organization controlling MTV, VH1, BET, Spike, Comedy Central, CMT, and TVLand.  They essentially pulled a power play on the American viewer last night, dictating that we could watch their lousy awards program (and it is very, very lousy) or else.  Well, I chose "else".  But today I read that this overhyped ceremony, dominated by clique-insider acts who always seem to win the awards despite their substandard music, never once paid tribute to either Prince or David Bowie.  These two artists, both of whom passed away a few months ago this year, were giants in the industry.  Both of them made appearances in the past on the MTV VMAs shows and won awards for their videos.  But they were spurned this year.  I am resisting a strong urge to say something really profane here...

You may think that you have a great diversity of television programming to choose from, but events like last night's should remind all of us of the concentrated power that a small number of corporate entities have to dictate what we actually get to see.  No wonder so many people are choosing to reject cable television programming in favor of alternatives...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "X" Mystery Novel

As I've repeatedly mentioned on this blog, I am in the process of reading through mystery writer Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series, with the titles progressively featuring a letter of the alphabet...starting with "A" is for Alibi, "B" is for Burglar, and so on.  I just finished reading her latest, simply titled "X".  It may have been hard for Grafton to come up with a word to accompany this letter, but she managed to make it relevant anyway...a couple of new characters in the novel have the Greek surname Xanakis...

"X" weaves three subplots together...one concerning Kinsey's troublesome new neighbors, one involving a violent, malevolent psychopathic stalker, and one about that aforementioned couple...formerly married but now estranged...with a valuable painting in the ex-husband's possession, surreptitiously sought after by the ex-wife.  Kinsey gets dragged into all the stories, although as a professional private investigator she stands to gain little or nothing with these three "cases"...and may well lose everything.  Although I won't give away the ending, I will hint that one of these stories, not having as yet been satisfactorily resolved by book's end, may well continue into one of the final two volumes in the series...

And I am looking forward to the last two books in this wonderful "alphabet" series by Sue Grafton...only now I'll have to just sit and wait until they come out.  Let me guess: the next one will feature the letter "Y"...

Companies Getting Too Political Against "Obamacare"

I have expressed my views before about the Affordable Care Act, President Obama's signature piece of legislative accomplishment during his first term in office.  Although I felt that health insurance reform was necessary and that everyone needed access to affordable health care in order to have preventive screenings and regular physician visits while not being denied service due to pre-existing conditions, I was disappointed with the final, signed bill for being too burdensome on businesses.  Other countries have a marked competitive advantage over us because they have lifted the burden of providing health insurance off the backs of business and put it in the proper place of a government-run operation, funded by (the taboo word) taxes.  But since we're not allowed to utter that awful word anymore in the good ol' U.S.A., except immediately following the word "lower",  the lawmakers had to mandate that the business community expand its obligations in this area.  So I sympathize a bit with the business owners and management.  But what has been going on recently in the media, this close following the 2012 presidential election results, is another matter entirely...

I am a little taken aback at the very highly politicized and publicized outcry against Obama by different businesses that depend on positive advertising and the general public's goodwill for their survival.  Companies like Papa John's, Dairy Queen, Applebee's, and Denny's, either through their centralized command structure or franchisees in various locations, are strongly coming out against "Obamacare", and in a very hurtful manner.  These companies apparently were gaining a competitive advantage over others for years by exploiting their own work force with poor benefits.  Now they have to own up and don't want to.  The Denny's franchisee in Palm Beach County, Florida has declared that his restaurants will add an "Obamacare surcharge" to be printed on every bill.  H-m-m...wasn't it Denny's who has suffered public scandal in different places for not serving blacks who came into their places for a meal?  I have an idea: let's just make it easy on Denny's and the other aggrieved companies:

FLAT-OUT BOYCOTT THEM!

I don't care whether the whiners are local franchise owners or not: they are benefiting from the parent company's name and product.  So the parent company needs to step up and assert themselves.

No more Applebee's, Papa John's, Dairy Queen, or Denny's for me.  Not that I've ever cared that much for Papa John's or Dairy Queen, but I have been a pretty good customer for the other two (especially Applebee's). No longer. Any other businesses want to join the list?  I'm ready to sign them up and spread the word against them...

Sixty-two million Americans just reaffirmed the presidency of Barack Obama, the first term of whom was marked by his Affordable Care Act, and these business people can't handle it.  I don't have a problem with price hikes; new laws often dictate such a necessary course of action.  But I will not play along with the political manipulation here.  I've had to put up with enough during the past election campaign!  So these people lost their precious election and didn't get their boy Romney in there to coddle them and suck up to their interests.  Ironically, had the business community wised up and supported the government-run single payer system being proposed a few years ago, they could have been relieved of health insurance burdens for their employees.  I say give all these babies pacifiers and put them on extended quiet time!

Apple's Steve Jobs Will Be Missed

Computer innovator and entrepreneur Steve Jobs has died at age 56, presumably from complications arising from his pancreatic cancer of several years. Being an original founder of Apple Computer and seeing the introduction of the graphics-friendly, user-friendly Macintosh personal computer in the early 1980's, he then left the company in 1985 after a conflict with others in high management. Later he returned in the late 1990's and revitalized the then-floundering company, introducing the "i" line of products with which we are so familiar today.

Many today are paying tribute to how Jobs changed the information and communications industry. Others see him as a shining example of a creative entrepreneur, someone on whom Americans and others worldwide can model themselves to create their own new companies and products that that can, in turn, revitalize the flagging economies we see all around us today.

Steve Jobs will be sorely missed, but his example will endure for a long, long time...

To Coffee Shops: Close Up AFTER You Close, Not Before

Here is a little peeve of mine that I would like to get off my chest...

I get off from work a little early, around 10 at night. I go over to a nearby coffee shop that stays open until 11. So I get there and sit down to study and write. And enjoy my coffee. But during most of the time I'm there, the employees are sweeping and mopping the floor, taking out boxes to restock their shelves for the next morning, and carrying in tables and chairs from the outside. Often, if I had wanted to sit outside, there are no longer any available seats or tables. And inside, sections of the seating area are often closed off, the floor wet from mopping. Meanwhile, other tables are off-limits because of inventory stacked up on them. Maybe this shouldn't bother me, but it does.

I get the vibes from places such as I just described (and there are way too many of them) that, sure, they are "technically" open until their stated closing time, but hey...

The workers eager to close up in advance of the actual "closing" convey the impression that, by coming in to do business with them in their final hour, I am being an impediment to their agenda: they want to get off the clock and the hell out of there as soon as possible after closing. To this end, they want to get ahead of the game by doing things in front of the (paying) customers that are distractions and nuisances. I just think it's damned tacky, and is a violation of the unspoken contract I (possibly delusionally) agreed to when I walked through their doors, spent my money there, and expected a certain type of ambiance in the surroundings as I sat in their establishment, final hour of the day or not.

To put it in a more general context, if I had guests visiting me in my home, I sure as all wouldn't then get out and use my vacuum cleaner or fold up my laundry in front of them! Then again, maybe the old virtues of etiquette and hospitality have become buried in the past, increasingly distant memories never to be revived...

Self-Service Grocery Scanning

I noticed something unsettling during my visit to Lexington, Kentucky a couple of weeks ago. There was a Meijers superstore conveniently located right across the street from our hotel, so we decided to go there and stock up on our groceries for the stay. When we finished loading up our cart and walked up to the check-out lines, we noticed that most of them were self-service, with no cashier. The customers in these lines simply did pretty much what the paid cashiers do, which was to scan their own items and pass them down the conveyor belt for bagging (which more often than not the customer also had to do). There was a menu on the screen for items without scanning codes such as produce or bakery items, instructing the customers to key in special codes or click on designated places on the screen. Once I learned the system, it was much easier and faster for me to "self-scan". The few lines remaining with human cashiers were always hopelessly long and I learned to avoid them, which was probably the intent of the corporate bigwigs who also probably want to eventually eliminate the remaining cashier jobs as well.

I discussed this phenomenon with others and found out that this do-it-yourself scanning is pervasive in Lexington stores. I know that it is going on in Gainesville as well, but on a much smaller scale in places like Home Depot, which offers a self-service checkout option. But so far Publix, the predominant grocer in north Florida, has yet to institute it, preferring instead the friendly interaction of cashiers and baggers with the paying customers. But I suppose it is only a matter of time before "self-scanning" takes over Gainesville retail stores too, much in the same way that self-service gasoline pumping replaced the (sometimes) friendly service station attendant in the early 1970's.

Although I liked the speed at which I could go through the check-out line while scanning my purchases myself, I also noticed on a couple of trips to Meijers that I completed the entire process through the store without talking to anyone. That's just a little too creepy to somebody like me who is used to being doted upon by the fine employees at Publix.

I am sure that Meijers could have chosen to employ more cashiers and open up more lines, which would have made them more attractive for me to go through. But they might argue that this would force them to raise their prices. Besides, they were apparently just following the general practice of pushing self-service checkout that seems to rule this part of the country. But I decry this trend that seems to involve saving expense by eliminating jobs that REAL PEOPLE had made a living from. This sort of thing, though, is going on everywhere and has been for a long, long time actually. I remember my mother talking to me about her job back in the 1940's as an operator for the phone company, a very common job back then. Find me an operator now, but also tell me how bringing them back would improve the telephone industry or my service. And the US Postal Service has gone through stages over the years with its mail processing, going from manual sorting to mechanized sorting to barcode and optical character reading by scanning. This has drastically reduced the number of people needed to sort the nation's mail.

I read or heard somewhere that good jobs in America are plentiful but aren't being filled because the people themselves are either unqualified or incapable of filling them. Personally, I think that there is a bigger underlying problem involving the relative lack of employment these days: the glaring need to reinstitute the concept of apprenticing in all of the fields and businesses employing skilled labor and adapt it to the modern world. Because unskilled labor seems to be going, going, gone and, frankly, colleges don't seem to be adequately filling the need for training skilled labor to meet the marketplace's demands...

You WILL Do Business Downtown!

There is a controversy of sorts lately in Gainesville about the plan to eliminate all free public parking in the downtown area. The city government wants visitors to the area to shell out money to use the public parking garages specially built for them. This plan is in addition to decisions made in the past to limit road lanes of the main thoroughfares of University Avenue and Main Street to one going each way, in order to somehow make the area more attractive to potential paying customers of its businesses.

None of these decisions has any impact on what I do, as I have long forgone any hope of successfully going downtown to do business there. For one, there isn't any place I would want to go other than the library's main branch and a couple of coffee shops. And I can get whatever I want from that library by placing a hold online and having it delivered to my nearby, albeit smaller Millhopper branch. As for the coffee, well, one place (Maude's) is easy to get in and out of with a private parking lot, but their fare is overpriced and I resent the snooty unfriendliness I have repeatedly encountered behind the counter. The Starbucks across the street from it is O.K., I suppose, assuming I can find a parking spot (which I hardly ever can). But why bother anyway, with all of the Starbucks stores available elsewhere in town. The other businesses downtown tend to gravitate toward highbrow, expensive restaurants and night clubs, neither of which I care much about.

I, personally, am nobody special regarding my business preferences, which is actually the whole point: I think others are like me in that they see very little downtown that would draw them there to spend their money. In other words, regarding the local government's failed efforts to stimulate business by restricting access to traffic and parking: it's the businesses, stupid!

Of course, they could pass a law similar to the new national health care law: an individual mandate decreeing that anyone living in Gainesville spend X amount of dollars annually on its cruddy downtown businesses or face a fine! But, y'know, although I wrote the above suggestion tongue-in-cheek, I wonder whether some of my local politicos might not think it would actually be a good idea. Scary, but it would fit with the mindset behind the restricted traffic lanes and the elimination of free parking...

A Beef About Business Today

I would like to register a complaint.

When I walk into a restaurant, store, coffee shop, or any other business establishment, I have certain standards as to how I want to be treated by the staff there. As part of the unspoken contract that I want honored, I expect the employees to focus their attention and behavior on treating me with respect, showing a friendly attitude attuned to my interests regarding their business. I don't want to have to deal with an individual who wears their personal narrative and feelings out on their sleeve. It is not my "job" to sympathize with how bad a day an employee is having, nor to I have a responsibility to make an employee personally approve of me in order to be treated with dignity as a paying customer. I enter a business establishment with a friendly, respectful attitude toward those working there and with the intention of spending my money on goods, and expect reciprocal treatment. It is not my job to enhance the personal lives of employees there by making myself interesting to them or providing them a source of entertainment.

There is a basic standard of public behavior in businesses nowadays that I very rarely see practiced anymore. Sure, I get a lot of perfunctory "politeness", but it is often quashed by facial and body language that says "I don't want to be here and your presence annoys me". Also, I am sick to death of sitting in a restaurant or coffee shop and hearing the employees there loudly talk about their personal lives, or even worse, customers that they like or dislike.

I understand that good help is sometimes hard to come by these days, but is the state of general social behavior so bad in my country that we are forced with having to put up with disrespectful and unprofessional behavior in the places where we most want to be treated with respect? That's poor business!

Free Tanning: Oh Yeah?

On the way to work, I regularly pass a large complex of townhouse apartments geared primarily for University of Florida students. On the roadside as I pass, I see a small sign that says "$799/Month"; this obviously refers to the rental rate. A few feet past that sign is another: "Free Tanning". Hmmm...

Unless someone just decided to donate their tanning services out of the goodness of their heart, I don't think that the advertised "free tanning" is all that free. Most likely, the "services" are included in the $799/month rent that EVERYONE has to pay, whether they want the tanning or not. So instead of there being "free tanning", instead there is "not-free non-tanning" at these apartments for the majority of (level-headed) residents who choose to forgo this unnecessary and potentially dangerous abuse of their skin. To be sure, those who do use the tanning facilities there will enjoy the effect of reduced rates as the costs are spread over everyone, users and non-users alike. But that still isn't "free tanning".

Speaking of tanning, I cannot fathom why deliberately exposing oneself to harmful ultraviolet radiation is still considered to be a healthful activity in some quarters. I think people should instead enjoy being whatever shade of brown they already are (and we are all, except for albinos, various shades of brown) and get on with more substantial aspects of self-presentation (e.g. personal hygiene, smiling more, speaking positively). While preserving their skin (and life) in the process. Besides, haven't these "tanners" ever heard of cosmetics, which can change skin tone without the harmful and often permanent side effects of tanning? Oh well, to each his own, I suppose.

Big Business, the Government, & the Two Parties

I have noticed an interesting trend when following floor speeches in the US Senate and House of Representatives. The conservatives, mainly on the Republican side, rail against the threat of expanding big government and its concomitant abuses, with the hopes for our future depending on benevolent big business. While the liberals, mainly on the Democratic side, rail against the threat and abuses of big corporations, and how the government stands in the way of them completely overrunning the people. But where do small businesses stand in this?

Both sides claim to be the advocate of small business. I think there is a kind of mentality that small business operators have (not just those under 5') whereby they tend to identify themselves as smaller, aspiring versions of the big corporations, and hence a tendency to affiliate themselves with the conservatives and the GOP. But although every once and a while a small business will expand and grow into a large one, the overwhelming number of them will remain small and very, very different in design and scope from the "big boys". In fact it could be argued that the greatest threat to small businesses comes not from overburdening government regulation, but rather from inequitable competition with these major corporations. When a "super" Target or Wal-Mart sets up shop in town, especially a small town, you can almost hear a collective shudder running through the surrounding small business community.

From the standpoint of an individual such as myself, both major corporations and government are gargantuan powers which have to be checked in some way in order to prevent them from completely engulfing my life and freedoms. So it's slightly comforting to see the two main political parties tee off against one another, in effect checking the power of one institution with the other. The only problem with this is when big government teams up with big business to the detriment of the people. To me, this may be happening with the health care reform bill recently approved by the Senate and sent to conference. And was sadly the case in Iraq where the government awarded no-bid contracts with various corporations, most notably Dick Cheney's Halliburton.

Of course, there are times when conservatives like to evoke and exalt the power of the state. In social issues like abortion or gay rights, conservatives have no qualms at all with using big government to impose their social mores on everyone else. And also, they are very gung ho with taxpayers' money regarding the military and the prosecution of wars. Unfortunately, this adulation of the military often fades away when addressing the concerns of veterans.

Back to small business, if the Democrats with this health care bill can ease the enormous burdens that they are incurring with rising costs and preexisting condition exclusions, then we might just see a political realignment occurring in a few years. I for one never thought that employers should ever have been saddled with the obligation to provide health insurance for their employees anyway, the whole process having evolved from businesses using it as a benefit inventive to prospective hires.

Subway Artist "Works"

I like Subway, although I was spoiled back in the 1980s by Gordies Subs, which was a five-minute walk from my apartment (they had the best turkey salad sub sandwiches) here in Gainesville. The prices at Subway are reasonable, the line moves fast, the food is fresh, and there are plenty of choices. I usually order for myself one of the less expensive sub sandwiches, with lots of vegetables loaded into them.

Subway has its own system of custom-made sandwiches. First, I choose the type of bread for my sandwich and give the "sandwich artist" (as they call themselves) my order, including what cheese type I want and whether I want the bread toasted. At the final stage of the line, just before paying for my order, another "artist" puts on the vegetable toppings as I dictate. Subway has something called "the works": this consists of a standard group of vegetable toppings like lettuce, tomato, onions, cucumber, and black olive. Explicitly excluded from "the works" are hot peppers and banana peppers. These have to be asked for separately, for obvious reasons. Which leads me to a funny ongoing thing that they do.

If I say I want "the works", they invariably start adding the hot peppers anyway, although they aren't supposed to. But if I say I want "the works, but no hot peppers or banana peppers", the "artist" on duty invariably begins to condescendingly lecture me on how those aren't included in "the works" anyway and I didn't need to have said that.

So Wednesday I went to Subway, ordered my sub sandwich, and at the end, simply said "the works". And then stood back and watched bemusedly as my "artist" once again began to reach for the hot peppers!