Liam Sweeny's Blog
December 1, 2013
Black Friday Mayhem
Okay, so I stayed home on Black Friday. I also stayed home on "Grey Thursday" (a.k.a. Thanksgiving) and unfortunately, I'll be online on Cyber Monday (but with the tax office, so I should be okay.)
Whew! Police pepper-sprayin' folks in an Odessa, TX Walmart, some melee in a mall somewhere that involved a Taser... a shopper's taser, not a cop's... And ya know what? No one got arrested in that last incident!
I saw a herd of shoppers running into a store like a tsunami wave, grabbing up white boxes with no labeling on them. They could've put dog-shit in those boxes, and people would wrestle each other over them (If it was my store, I TOTALLY would've done that... guess that's why I can't get a shot at management.)
I wonder if people factor in the hospital bills that come with that 20% off.
If you want to be a Black Friday rodeo rider, fine by me. But this Thanksgiving, "grey Thursday" is crap. Screws with the natural order of things. If you work a chain convenience store, you're boned. But you were always boned. Same with cops, fireman, EMS, boned, but knowingly so. But now basically everybody's boned now that works retail.
So what was I thankful for on Thanksgiving> Not working retail. And my Christmas wish? To get more sales and reviews for my latest book (sorry, writers gotta eat.) But my New Years resolution is to never ever bother people who shouldn't have to work because some marketing geniuses think they can scrape a little extra scratch when people wake up from their turkey comas.
Whew! Police pepper-sprayin' folks in an Odessa, TX Walmart, some melee in a mall somewhere that involved a Taser... a shopper's taser, not a cop's... And ya know what? No one got arrested in that last incident!
I saw a herd of shoppers running into a store like a tsunami wave, grabbing up white boxes with no labeling on them. They could've put dog-shit in those boxes, and people would wrestle each other over them (If it was my store, I TOTALLY would've done that... guess that's why I can't get a shot at management.)
I wonder if people factor in the hospital bills that come with that 20% off.
If you want to be a Black Friday rodeo rider, fine by me. But this Thanksgiving, "grey Thursday" is crap. Screws with the natural order of things. If you work a chain convenience store, you're boned. But you were always boned. Same with cops, fireman, EMS, boned, but knowingly so. But now basically everybody's boned now that works retail.
So what was I thankful for on Thanksgiving> Not working retail. And my Christmas wish? To get more sales and reviews for my latest book (sorry, writers gotta eat.) But my New Years resolution is to never ever bother people who shouldn't have to work because some marketing geniuses think they can scrape a little extra scratch when people wake up from their turkey comas.
November 25, 2013
Can I Borrow Your Cellphone?
Today, while getting my 24 oz. cup of Stewarts's finest dark roast, I leave the store, and as I'm walking to the car, a guy asks me for a favor. Now usually that favor is a cigarette or a lighter, and I'm a good sport about that. But his favor was "Do you have a cellphone I could use?"
Now it was daylight, the guy wasn't a suspicious looking sort, and as it would turn out, I left my cell at home. But I had to think about it. And I realized what a thing that is, lending your cellphone to a stranger. There aren't any payphones anywhere, and sometimes people (like me) leave their phone at home and need to rely on the goodwill of a stranger to make a call.
But whereas a cigarette is an object that loses its tie to me the moment it's out of my hands, my cell, even returned, has one or more numbers, strangers' numbers, now attached to it.
So this post is just a question to anyone that might have their ears on, who may have had that similar queasy feeling in their gut about it:
What's your "cellphone lending policy"?
Now it was daylight, the guy wasn't a suspicious looking sort, and as it would turn out, I left my cell at home. But I had to think about it. And I realized what a thing that is, lending your cellphone to a stranger. There aren't any payphones anywhere, and sometimes people (like me) leave their phone at home and need to rely on the goodwill of a stranger to make a call.
But whereas a cigarette is an object that loses its tie to me the moment it's out of my hands, my cell, even returned, has one or more numbers, strangers' numbers, now attached to it.
So this post is just a question to anyone that might have their ears on, who may have had that similar queasy feeling in their gut about it:
What's your "cellphone lending policy"?
November 22, 2013
JFK and September 11th
As I'm sure everybody knows, today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I wasn't even a seed when this happened, though my parents, like so many others remember where they were when they head the news out of Dallas that day.
The early 1960's was a picturesque time in the American landscape. The American dream was held firmly in place, despite the Bay of Pigs and the terrifying days of the Cuban Missile crisis. The economy was strong, we had good, decent jobs available. But when Kennedy was assassinated, the American culture began a slow progression towards inner conflict, and left a sad trail.
Kennedy's assassination, more than anything, changed us as we saw ourselves. We lost our innocence. It wouldn't be until one Tuesday morning in September of 2001 that we would again change as a nation, that a whole new generation of people would know where they were when they heard the terrible news.
I have to wonder, despite all of the war, enhanced security and blind patriotism in the early period of 9/11, which may be trailing right about now, what we will face fifty years from that day.
No conspiracy theories here, no links save for two days that crushed us as a nation. When looking at Vietnam, the turmoil, revolutions and unrest of the 60s and 70s, the excesses of the 80s and the indifference of the 90s... What will the cultural path of five decades of our (my generation's) "JFK" be?
The early 1960's was a picturesque time in the American landscape. The American dream was held firmly in place, despite the Bay of Pigs and the terrifying days of the Cuban Missile crisis. The economy was strong, we had good, decent jobs available. But when Kennedy was assassinated, the American culture began a slow progression towards inner conflict, and left a sad trail.
Kennedy's assassination, more than anything, changed us as we saw ourselves. We lost our innocence. It wouldn't be until one Tuesday morning in September of 2001 that we would again change as a nation, that a whole new generation of people would know where they were when they heard the terrible news.
I have to wonder, despite all of the war, enhanced security and blind patriotism in the early period of 9/11, which may be trailing right about now, what we will face fifty years from that day.
No conspiracy theories here, no links save for two days that crushed us as a nation. When looking at Vietnam, the turmoil, revolutions and unrest of the 60s and 70s, the excesses of the 80s and the indifference of the 90s... What will the cultural path of five decades of our (my generation's) "JFK" be?
November 19, 2013
This Post Will Be Back (After a quick commercial break...)
My buddy Henry and I have this thing going on a couple of nights. I'm sure some of you have the same thing going. We like shows. The Walking Dead is the biggest one, but we have a couple of others. One last night was the show "Sleepy Hollow." It's basically a supernatural story about...
IF YOU COME IN TODAY THROUGH SUNDAY, WE'LL PUT YOU IN A 120-POINT INSPECTED, QUALITY PRE-OWNED CAR OR SUV. BAD CREDIT? NO CREDIT? NO PROBLEM! JUST COME ON DOWN TO...
... ARE YOU RESTLESS? TIRED? DEPRESSED? WITH HAPPYRIL, YOU CAN SEE UP TO A SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT IN YOUR...
What the fuck just happened? A commercial break? In the middle of a blog post?
So anyways, me and Henry used to call each other on the commercial breaks to shoot bull about the show, what we thought would happen next - we do this all the time. But last night, we might as well just have stayed on the phone. I mean, five minutes of show, three minutes of commercial, on and on.
People talk about "Why read when I can watch TV?" That's why! It was pretty odd when my blog post was interrupted by (fake) commercials. Can you imagine a book that stopped after every scene for three paragraphs of ads? Yeah, it sucks that I have to wait for another person to catch up (or vise-versa) before we can shoot the bull, make our predictions, put a nickel or a twenty on our assumptions... but still, we can point at a page number and say "Meet ya' there!" with no interruptions.
I've learned many great things from books. This is what I've learned from commercials:
* I'm fat.
* I'm depressed because the cartoon character of a black storm cloud won't go away.
* I'm hungry
* Those sandwiches are photo-shopped. No fast-food place makes 'em like that.
* I'm too fat to fit into those clothes.
* The best way to rebel against society is to accessorize.
* Certain beers make me popular with total strangers. Some perform true sorcery.
People rag on readers sometimes (in my neck), call us bookworms, but maybe we just don't want something we're really into to being cut mid-stream by three minutes of useless nonsense. You can only cook popcorn and take a leak so many times in an hour.
So the moral of the story is: Find a buddy. Agree to read the books chapter by chapter, and make bets on what happens next.
Yeah. That's the moral.
IF YOU COME IN TODAY THROUGH SUNDAY, WE'LL PUT YOU IN A 120-POINT INSPECTED, QUALITY PRE-OWNED CAR OR SUV. BAD CREDIT? NO CREDIT? NO PROBLEM! JUST COME ON DOWN TO...
... ARE YOU RESTLESS? TIRED? DEPRESSED? WITH HAPPYRIL, YOU CAN SEE UP TO A SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT IN YOUR...
What the fuck just happened? A commercial break? In the middle of a blog post?
So anyways, me and Henry used to call each other on the commercial breaks to shoot bull about the show, what we thought would happen next - we do this all the time. But last night, we might as well just have stayed on the phone. I mean, five minutes of show, three minutes of commercial, on and on.
People talk about "Why read when I can watch TV?" That's why! It was pretty odd when my blog post was interrupted by (fake) commercials. Can you imagine a book that stopped after every scene for three paragraphs of ads? Yeah, it sucks that I have to wait for another person to catch up (or vise-versa) before we can shoot the bull, make our predictions, put a nickel or a twenty on our assumptions... but still, we can point at a page number and say "Meet ya' there!" with no interruptions.
I've learned many great things from books. This is what I've learned from commercials:
* I'm fat.
* I'm depressed because the cartoon character of a black storm cloud won't go away.
* I'm hungry
* Those sandwiches are photo-shopped. No fast-food place makes 'em like that.
* I'm too fat to fit into those clothes.
* The best way to rebel against society is to accessorize.
* Certain beers make me popular with total strangers. Some perform true sorcery.
People rag on readers sometimes (in my neck), call us bookworms, but maybe we just don't want something we're really into to being cut mid-stream by three minutes of useless nonsense. You can only cook popcorn and take a leak so many times in an hour.
So the moral of the story is: Find a buddy. Agree to read the books chapter by chapter, and make bets on what happens next.
Yeah. That's the moral.
