The most horrifying thing ever

Amy talked to her dad on the phone yesterday, and she shared with her this story:

Apparently, at the local Wal-Mart, a kitten was left by the owner - just left there, abandoned. Sad, right. Yeah, that sucks. Well, it's a good thing that Amy's dad friend stopped by and decided to take it home, because otherwise the fine people would have PUT THE KITTEN IN THE TRASH COMPACTOR.

Why the compactor? Have they done this sort of thing before? Is it protocol?


This is why Wal-Mart is a horrible employee. They kill kittens.

Completely unrelated

This post has nothing to do with anything, it's just a funny story someone told me a while ago.

So, some of you may be familiar with the Einstein Bagel chain. I'm not sure if this still goes on, and I'm pretty sure this may be a good reason they may not do this anymore, but at the Einstein Bagel stores, they bake all the bagels there in their ovens. If a timer went off for an oven, and there happened to be nothing in that particular oven, it was protocol to yell "Fire in the hole!" to notify coworkers that a hot, empty oven baking nothing is unsafe.

So imagine what happened when a group of World War II veterans stopped by for a little get-together at their local Einstein Bagel restaurant.

Sure enough, one of the employees yelled "Fire in the hole!" and sure enough twenty septuagenarians hit the dirt.

Now, if you have ever worked in a customer service position, you can sympathize with someone who said they just got yelled at by an old guy. Can you imagine, however, getting yelled at, one after the other, by twenty old guys? 20 times in a row hearing, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?! We're veterans!"


I was reminded of this by, of course, Grandpa Simpson. "That all happened in 19-diggity-2. We had to use the word 'diggity' because the kaiser took away our word for twenty! I chased him down to get it back, but I gave up after diggity-6 miles."

I love that line.

Futurist from the past

I was thinking the other day about how, back a long time ago, a lot of people were excited about the future. They looked forward to a time when we had hovering cars, automated homes and cleaner ways of living.

Prime example: I loved those Looney Tunes cartoons about the "house of the future." They were my favorites because they seemed relevant to me at the time. It was, "Wouldn't it be great if I could just press a single button and all of my laundry could be done?" They interested me because, well, how realistic were those Bugs Bunny bits? They're just grim.

Anyways, people looked forward to an easier way of living. The microwave was fucking exciting - full meals done in 3 minutes? You've got to be kidding me. Television was new, and the programs were so few that everyone watched pretty much all of them.


Here's my point. According to all that, we live in the future. And you know what? Where's my goddamn hovering car? We don't really live all that cleaner. We should have had them by now, but for various reasons (oil companies!), we don't have them. In fact, we haven't got a whole lot to look forward to in the future. Sure, there are vast advancements in technology occurring everyday, but mostly all that means to the everyday schmoe is, "Well, in a few years, this brand-new laptop will be outdated and slow, so I'll have to buy a new one..."

And while I have techno-joy - I love newfangled gizmos and computers and so on - I have future-dread because I know I'll have to buy new shit every few years. Not only that, but, everything's been invented by now. A long time ago, people looked forward to new things they haven't even thought of yet, or as a certain bounty hunter would say, "the coming thing" (Name that reference!). As best as I can figure, we've thought of everything, from plasma televisions to little platters that let you cook bacon in the microwave.

So where does that leave us? The only thing I can figure, the only link to our future, lies in transportation. Advance that and advance our society. Get us off oil and we won't have to depend on warring nations. We won't have to stick our noses in other peoples' businesses under the guise of democracy.

I guess what I'm saying is, I am futurist that belongs in 1965.

Son of a bitch!

A few weeks ago, I went into Best Buy looking to buy The Comedians of Comedy on DVD. The website had quoted the price as being $14.99, so I was pretty excited. I saw it on Netflix and it was hilariously funny. Well, I went there and the sticker price was $24.99. This being unacceptable, I asked a floor associate to check the price for me, and he pulled up the Best Buy website on the floor computer, and the page also said $24.99.

"Yeah, the site says $24.99," said the floor guy.
"That's so weird, I just checked it at home earlier today," I replied.
"Hm. Well, I guess they must've changed the price between then and now."

So I put the DVD back, disappointed.

This morning I was looking at the Columbus Underground website, when I came across an article about how Best Buy stores have their own intrastore version of the website, which quotes different prices. They do this to dupe the customers into paying higher prices for the product they want. Apparently, they can choose the public version of the site or the employee-only version as they please.

"Those fuckers!"

So I went back to the Best Buy website and printed off the page for The Comedians of Comedy and went back to the store. I picked up the DVD and sure enough, the sticked still said $24.99. So I took it to the customer service desk and asked the guy to check the price.

"The system says $24.99 here."
"Well, I just checked the price at home, and it said $14.99," I said.
"Ah. Well, let me pull that up."
At this point, the guy asked his co-worker how to pull up the website. Meanwhile, I was thinking, "How do you not know how to pull up the website? Have you never used a computer before?"
Eventually he pulled up the website and kind of hesitated for a minute. "So did you want to pick this up, then?" He said that without telling me what the price was.
"What does the website say?"
"Oh, uh, $14.99."
"Okay, I'll take it."

Now, it didn't happen to me this time around, but I was prepared. Here's my advice if this happens to you.

-First of all, print out the site's page with the proper price on it. Take it with you.
-If they have to do a price check and give you a different price, tell them you just looked it up on the site and that it was whatever price it said it was.
-If they feed you the line about it being changed between the time you checked it and now, don't buy it. Tell them that that doesn't seem likely. They may advise you to go home and print it out and bring it back, but you've already printed it out, haven't you? Show them the paper.
-If this proceeds further, ask to talk to a manager. Tell them that it's a bunch of bull, and that legally, they HAVE to give you the advertised price. Hell, if you want, threaten to call the local news affiliate. I mean, you know about the fake site. I just did a Google news search and there are 30 articles about the fake site. Here are the results of that search.
-Something I also did, which may be of use if you intend to bring up the fact that you know it's a fake site, is I printed off one of the articles.

It may seem like being over-prepared, but fuck it - what they're doing is illegal. I won't stand for it, and neither should you.