Michael Kindt's Blog, page 149
February 17, 2015
February 16, 2015
Just because Tumblr is, for a large part, its own little world, are you purporting that the values are insignificant and pointless?
No, not exactly. I meant that Tumblr is a tiny insular world, an echo chamber full of parrots parroting back and forth to each other the accepted Tumblr orthodoxy on white males, feminism, terrorism, what have you. Pick a topic, there is an accepted Tumblr orthodox view. I like Tumblr, but it reeks of elitism sometimes. I’m not making any judgments on which values are right or wrong, but it is very obvious that the world “out there” does not share Tumblr orthodoxy. And the world “out there” is much, much bigger than Tumblr, which is striking me more and more as a self-righteous, loud-mouthed tiny little world doing, I think, its pet causes more harm than good.
Not all Tumblrs are SJW types, but many are influenced by them, parroting (reblogging) their views. I like the idea of critical thinking. I like the idea of not everybody believing the same exact things, and then, somehow, being civil to each other. I realize now that who I’m following and who follows and interacts with me makes my Tumblr experience what it is. If I post an opinion about something and someone unfollows me for it, how in the world can that not be a good thing? I don’t want any parrots.
Thanks for playing along!
"I don’t doubt that they care about helping people, but I also don’t doubt that in their heart of..."
- Carly Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard’s first female Chairman and CEO, on American liberals
thetemporaryhitchhiker said about Earth Apple: You should look into making a page where all your...
thetemporaryhitchhiker said about Earth Apple: You should look into making a page where all your prose are compiled, because I’m seriously loving your writing.
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Thanks! I’ve actually thought about it. Or maybe just deleting everything and leaving the prose on this one. I don’t know.
medleymisty said about: I was looking through my archives the other night, and found an old post...
medleymisty said about: I was looking through my archives the other night, and found an old post saying that I’d read some excerpts of 50 Shades, and that I could write better than that while riding on a shark and drunk and high on PCP.
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I don’t doubt it. I’ve thumbed through a copy and it’s pretty ridiculous. One never knows how close the movie is to the book. Usually not very. It was just clunky lit porn from what I remember.
Gotta admire the steely determination of the 37 people in the world boycotting Fifty Shades of Grey.
At the theater last night there were two freezing people holding up signs with opinions on them they thought were absolute facts. Meanwhile, there’s this big long line to get into it. Also, American Sniper was still sold out.
Tumblr really is its own little world, isn’t it?
Anyway, I don’t wanna see Fifty Shades of Grey because I heard it was stupid, plus I don’t much care for romantic comedies. Went to a screening of the original Blues Brothers that was there in honor of the whole SNL turning 40 years old thing. Fantastic. I’ve seen it a dozen times, but never on a big screen.
Definitely my favorite cop movie.
February 15, 2015
I think I mentioned on here, but I used to work produce in a grocery store. Bananas, fyi, are the prima donna divas of the edible plant world.
They can’t get too hot or cold and come off the truck either with little banana fans blowing on them or wrapped in their own special banana blankets, depending on the season. They come in 40 pound boxes with all this special plastic padding, and we were instructed to handle them like eggs, which was difficult to do because they came stacked eight feet high on pallets. Even after our produce muscles grew in, it was still hard to break down a towering pallet of 40 pound boxes, all the while treating the contents like eggs.
Plus, we didn’t like eggs. Eggs were dairy and we were produce, much better than those dairy clowns. Fucking dairy, with their milky white skin and cheesy grins, we hated them.
But this story is about potatoes, so I better talk about them. No one gives a shit about potatoes. They come in 50 pound brown bags and they’re just thrown on the pallets, usually with all the more delicate stuff sitting on top of them. When we break them down, instead of treating them like eggs, we toss them around like the corpses of our enemies, like we would the dead bodies of those dildos who work in the dairy department. Ha.
And speaking of corpses, rotten potatoes REEK. It’s one of the most horrific smells, so unlike the delicate mustiness of moldy grapes, say. And just one potato will stink up a whole 10 or 5 pound bag, a whole display, even.
At the Garden of Eatin’, which was the name of our supermarket, our potatoes were all displayed together on this shallow, peaked table. One side had 5 pounders, the other 10s. We “ribboned” them, which means we did a row of russets, a row of waxy reds, a row golds, and a row of rubies. It was supposed to be eye-catching or something, according to corporate.
One day Paul from grocery comes back and says “I think you got a bad spud out there on the floor. Customer complained and had me go over and, damn, it stinks.”
Oh, great. This meant we had to go through the whole damn display, bag by bag, flipping and turning, until we found the culprit. It was always one of the last fucking bags, too. Never was it the first or or second one you grabbed. Never ever.
So me and Tanner, the guy I worked with that day, took out two carts and started tearing the damn display down, sniffing and sniffing all the while. Ma and Pa Kettle waking by must’ve thought we were serious coke hounds. Either that or they thought we were suffering form devastating hay fever. I was doing the 5 pound side and Tanner was doing the 10s.
There’s something ghost-like about stinky potato. It’s very hard to pinpoint. Most smells you can sniff a time or two and go, “Oh, it’s over here somewhere.” Not stinky potato. It floats and moves around, and it tends to be just as strong far away as it is up close. Quite annoying.
"Um, Mike," Tanner says after about 15 minutes. "I think I found something." His voice was different. Normally, he would’ve said "I found it" and held up the bag with the single black nasty ass potato in it. He would haul it back to the dumpster and we’d set to work rebuilding the display. But, something?
"What?" I walked around to his side and there buried at the very bottom of the 10 pound russets was a plastic Garden of Eatin’ grocery bag, knotted tightly closed. It was about the length of a loaf of bread, but a little wider, and was bloody.
"What the fuck is it?" Tanner asks.
"I don’t know. Hamburger some asshole stuffed into the display?" Using my pinky, I picked it up by one of the loops coming off the knot and blood began to drip out.
"Jesus," Tanner says.
I threw it on the bottom of his cart before a customer could see and we rolled it into the back, where I put it in the sink.
"Open it."
"You open it."
"Maybe we should get Kevin," Tanner says. Kevin was the Garden of Eatin’s manager.
"It’s probably just some rotten burger. Screw Kevin. I don’t want him coming back here."
"Yeah, really."
"So open it."
Tanner took a pair of scissors off his work belt and cut the bag open. It wasn’t just some rotten burger, but a partially smashed newborn baby.
"We better get Kevin."
"I agree."
On Thursday night, I got buzzed on wine and was dancing around, like I'm prone to do, in my kitchen.
I was bopping my head and spinning around a little, cleaning up, wiping counters down, when BOOM I got really dizzy. Like, really really dizzy, to the point of sitting down.
And I stayed dizzy the rest of the night and all day Friday. In the evening, I went to bingo, like I’m prone to do. I was nearly back to my old self when BOOM I got really dizzy again, to the point I couldn’t see my bingo card.
And I stayed dizzy all day Saturday and only now this morning am I somewhat coming out of it. Had a great night’s sleep and a big ol’ bowl of oatmeal and some fruit juice and now a pipeful of tobacco.
Other symptoms have been an earache and a fullness sensation in the achy ear (the right). In still moments, if I pay attention, I can feel my pulse beating in my ear.
The lady is very sick and has been coughing on me all week. I never get sick, but I think I’m sick now. I think she must’ve coughed directly into my ear.
I mean, what in the hell?
