This is What We've Been Waiting For

Graphic courtesy/via FoxNews.com

Today is the most exciting day I have ever experienced as a political junkie - and as an American.

Not that John McCain really excites me himself...

But I've been waiting for the day when I've been hit with political chills of excitement. It just happened.

John McCain picked THE BEST candidate for the job of Vice President. He picked THE BEST choice.

Sarah Palin.

We've got this in the bag now. Had he gone with Romney or Pawlenty, I would have moved to Australia.

Sarah Palin.

I am so, so excited about this.

Oh, and to lead in to McCain's introduction today with Van Halen's "Right Now"..... Sweet.

(more to come later....)

The Land Where Manners Stand Still

So the wife and I are sitting in a CVS, waiting on a prescription a few evenings ago. Some guy is walking to the back of the store and I hear him talking. As he rounds the corner at the end of the aisle and starts coming towards us, I notice he's got a Bluetooth device in his ear.

You know, one of those little "Hey look at me, I think I look cool but I really look like a geek from Star Trek" devices.....

He's not keeping his conversation very private. He was talking to someone named Lee, who at first I thought was a woman.

At first, the conversation went something like ".... I think we need to talk more about this .... Lee, this is a tough decision for me... there are some issues that I don't think are getting resolved..."

Oh man, dude is breaking up with his girlfriend in a CVS over a Bluetooth. How lame.

Then we hear "Lee, I think you're a great father.... Your son has some serious issues .... He needs help ... I want to be there to support you, but I don't think I can anymore ... Your son needs to talk to someone."

While all of this is being said, he's making a purchase at the prescription counter and conversing with the cashier also. I was just baffled at the complete lack of respect he was showing for the person he was talking to over the phone AND for the cashier by having this conversation out in the open, at a pharmacy counter nonetheless.

I don't get people like that.

I don't get why people think other people need to hear their what should be private conversations.

Why do people think the world needs to hear them yak on their cell phone all the time?

I think the cell phone is helping lead us down a path from which there is looking to be less and less of a return -- to The Land Where Manners Stand Still.

If I have something that I don't want other people to hear, I won't talk on my cell phone in public. I try to avoid talking on my cell phone in public in the first place. I'm really not a big phone person anyway. There are a lot of times when I'm with a group of friends or in a situation where I think it is really inappropriate to be taking phone calls -- and I'll just press the ignore button on the phone and let it go to voice mail.

If it is someone important, I will call them back when it is a more convenient time.

I see a ton of people that are totally the opposite of this. I know several people who I think have Cellphone Attachment Disorder, where they can't live unless they're on their phone talking to someone. It doesn't matter where they are, when they are, or who they're with, they always have to be on the phone. That I truly don't understand and think is completely rude.

Then there are the people who think they, themselves, are just the end all be all. This gets back to the "Gimme" attitude.

"Gimme a hamburger and fries. Oh, and gimme a coke too" ---- or "gimme that pen. I need to write you a check"

Well, gimme ain't never got me nothin'....

Whatever happened to "May I please have.." or "Would you mind if I borrow your ...." ?

I went through my adventures in paying car taxes and getting a new license plate today. All in all, not a bad experience. Didn't take as long as I expected. As always, there were a fair share of totally ignorant people at the tax office and at the DMV who have no clue how the process of paying taxes or getting a vehicle registered go. I'm amazed that some of these people know how to get out of bed and put their clothes on in the morning.

But there was this one lady whose number was a few before mine and made it up to the counter several minutes ahead of me whose conversation I happened to hear vividly.

She goes up to the counter, baby in a diaper and t-shirt in tow (being carried notheless) -- and slaps both her paperwork down on the counter and the baby.

"Gimme one of the new license plates - I just paid my money to the county taxman," she says rudley as her baby leans over and starts playing with this and that on the counter which all belong to the DMV rep.

I thinking, "Lady, I would love to give you a one-way ticket back to Kindergarten so you can learn some manners."

Why do people think they can just go from day to day thinking that they're so entitled to this or that and get away with telling people to give them this or that, rather than politely asking for something?

I am big on manners in public. I admit there are times when I'm irritated or frustrated or just in a bad mood and I get a little short with people. I always feel bad about that afterwards. Unless they just had it coming to them for whatever reason they were being difficult in the first place....

But so many people are setting bad examples of how to act in public. So many people are raising rude children (If I ever find my future son or daughter on a bluetooth phone in public telling someone to give them something... well let's just say that's not going to happen in the first place)

And society in general isn't doing anything to address rudness in general. Mostly, anyway.

I was in the post office recently, waiting in line, and this woman goes up to the counter yakking away on her cell phone,. Before she's able to say anything to the worker behind the counter, said worker says, "Ma'm, we have a policy that we will not help customers who are on their cell phone. I guess you may have missed the sign right there (and she points to one) --- So if you would please step to the side and finish your phone conversation, we'll let you get back in line when you're done."

I came about half an inch from clapping. Instead I just grinned.

"Well that's just rude," the woman on the cell phone said as she walked away from the counter to continue her conversation.

Lady, do you want to be the pot or the kettle today?

What has happened? --- are the cell phone makers to blame? Is Ray Kroc to blame for allowing fast food service to serve as a catlyst for rudeness? We're going downhill in a way which it's getting more and more apparent that we're going to have to have a miracle to come back from.

And This All Has What in Common? Umm....

I've had a crazy summer. I finally got the magazine done that I've been working on. But I've still got a hundred other things to do this week before our students come back to campus. There's been a lot of stuff keeping me busy at work; and during most of our weekends this summer my wife and I haven't really had a whole lot of spare time to just relax. To top it all off, I've wanted to blog this past week - but haven't really been inspired by any particular topics of interest.

So I'll kind of hit a few random topics:

• The Olympics. Our swimming team is on a tear. Michael Phelps and the crew definitely went in with their game on. Of our 21 athletes so far to receive medals, 17 are on our swimming team. But I'm really not too into the Olympics this year for some reason. I tend to like the Winter Olympics more -- ice hockey, luge, bobsled, snowboarding, snow skiing, and especially ice skating.
• Election 2008. Is anyone else just sick of this election season? It's been going on for nearly 2 years now. And neither one of the candidates are at all exciting. I'm truly at a loss for words with these clowns. Not that I would want Paris Hilton in office, but at least she'd keep things interesting. I'm about at the point where I think I'm going to write Ted Nugent in as who I want to be elected president. Seriously.
• On sort of that note .... John Edwards. Okay, so it is now five days now since he admitted he had an affair. As of right now, he is currently in the 7th headline on MSNBC.com, below the 4 featured articles; he is not even in the headlines on CNN.com. However, he is the 2nd featured article currently on FoxNews.com. So what does this say? If the situation were to be reversed and, say, Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee admitted that they had an affair, conversely, their placement in the annoying over-liberal general media would be higher most eveywhere, most likely in that No. 2 slot on nearly every news Web site, and you'd find the article buried on the FoxNews Web site (arguably, the best news outlet in the world).
  
  • A. That just goes to show you that there is no such thing as unbiased journalism. I should know. I've been the reporter and I've written the articles.
  • B. Liberal media let their people slide. So what if a democratic Senator had an affair? So what if he had an affair on his wife who was going through an ordeal with cancer? No biggie. WRONG. That is a big deal. For anyone. No matter what your political affiliation. However, I can't help wonder if this had happened with a former Republican candidate for president that the media would crucify them and this would be the story of the day for three weeks.
• Russia Invades Georgia ... I'm not really sure where I am on this. That last thing we need is another civil war going on in this world and another conflict to keep from spewing over into other countries. The Security Council needs to act quickly on this. We don't want another situation like what happened when Yugoslavia broke apart and drove the entire region into war for a decade.
  
• Barbecue ... We watched a show on the food network last night about the "three big barbecue states" in the U.S., those 'supposedly' being North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Not to deny those states' influences on one of the best foods on Earth, but South Carolinians know how to smoke some good pig too. I've been to too many barbecue restaurants and pig pickins around this area to put up with people denying South Carolina its rightful place on the barbecue map. By the way, if anyone is looking for some dang good barbecue, try Just More Barbecue in Pendleton, SC.
  
• Facebook ... I've been on Facebook for about a year now. I like it. It's fun - and provides a good tool for catching up with people you haven't talked to in a while or just as something fun to do with your friends. Facebook is implementing a redesign right now. I don't like it. Most people don't like change. I don't really care for it myself in a lot of cases. But when it totally confuses people and doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, why do it? The new design is very confusing. The old one was pretty straightforward. There are a lot of websites that use a redesign as an excuse to make things overcomplicated. Case in point, a company I used to work for manages I think upwards of 100 television stations' websites now - when they redesigned a few years ago from the initial designs, it was just really ugly. Still is. This all gets back to if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
  
  

So goes my ramblings for the time being. I may expand on any one or more of these posts in the near future. So until then, stay tuned.

Person John Edwards

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Brilliant...But A Little Evil Too

Everyone gets songs stuck in their head from time to time. I have one stuck in mine right now that I really didn't want in there in the first place.

My wife and I went this evening to a pizza buffet place not far from our house, called Stevi B's. They have some really unique, creative pizzas - it's one of our favorite pizza places.

Right now, after the fact, it's not - but after I get this stinking song out of my head, we'll definitely go back there sometime soon.

After we got out of the car in the Stevi B's parking lot we heard what sounded like techno music. It had a sort of dance beat to it, but nothing like club music -- more like something you'd hear on a Kidz Bop CD.

Then we heard the singing. A chorus of children singing "I like pizza, I like pizza. I like pizza all day long. Pizza in the morning. Pizza in the evening. Pizza all day long. I like pizza. I eat pizza. I dig pizza. I'll eat pizza anytime of the day"..... I'm sure you kinda get the jist.

I looked around and thought "What on Earth?" .. There was a Stevi B's van parked near the restaurant, with speakers on the top blaring this childly hypnotic groove about pizza.

Talk about your shameless advertising.

All through our time in the restaurant we heard it. I even heard a little kid as he was walking by singing along with it.

Unfortunately and admittedly, I even started singing it without quite realizing it as I went up to the buffet, got some more pizza, and sat down still humming it. My wife gave me this look. It was that look she gets when she really doesn't understand something I'm doing. It was one of those "You weirdo" looks.

We stopped by a bookstore three stores down after eating, hearing the music playing as we walked along. Then again as we headed back to the car.

Now, nearly two and half hours later, this stupid song is still in my head.

I like pizza. I really do. I think it's one of the best foods of all time. Whoever came up with it was a genius. But whoever came up with that song was a genius too.

I'm sure hundreds of children in this town go home each night after leaving Stevi B's singing "I like pizza" over and over in their car. Get it engrained in their mind; that's the hook. I'm sure their parents just love that. Brainwash them with techno music about the wonders of pepperoni and cheese. Yeah, brilliant marketing. But evil too.