This blog entry had me chuckling:
http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/05/208-christianizing-your-facebook.html
The rest of this blog is pretty consistently funny as well.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Monday, October 06, 2008
Coffee Shops
El Dorado Springs has a bit of an odd tradition. For decades the elderly gentlemen of the town (and the surrounding area) used to meet every morning at a ridiculously early hour to drink coffee, read the newspaper, and express opinions on all manner of topics at a place colloquially known as Clem's, or just "the coffee shop." The official name of the place was Casey's Honeybee Restaurant, but nobody called it that. The coffee was cheap and good, and the regulars and semi-regulars could count on reliable service and Clem Casey, the proprietor, keeping the flow of conversation going. Then Clem retired and sold his restaurant to a couple rumored to have moved to town from California. Within two months, the place had closed its doors, and has now sat vacant for more than two years.
The odd thing is that since Casey's sat next to the local McDonald's, and since McDonald's offers decent prices on a cup of coffee for senior citizens, the older gentlemen have unofficially shifted their early-morning custom to McDonald's. And now, when you hear one of these pillars of the community talk about going to "the coffee shop" in the mornings, they are actually talking about McDonald's. But McDonald's is only called "the coffee shop" in the early mornings. After about 9 am, they refer to it as McDonald's again like the rest of the world.
I have mixed feelings about this phenomenon. On the one hand, I am in favor of any tradition like this where people can gather and share a sense of community. On the other hand, something in me rebels against a major national chain serving as a host to this kind of thing. I even typically eschew Starbuck's or Caribou coffee in favor of local establishments. Clem's was never a coffee shop to fit the modern definition - their idea of innovative variety was to brew both regular and decaf - but I respected the culture and local flavor of the place. And there are other local establishments in town that could serve as "the coffee shop." I wish McD's weren't getting that revenue.
The McDonald's corporation has absolutely no idea what great fodder for advertising they have here. They're trying to introduce the coffee-shop vibe into their restaurants in several test markets, including ours. They're redecorating, including in several cases constructing separate rooms with couches and coffee tables to promote the atmosphere. If they realized what is going on with the elderly gentlemen in our town, I'm convinced some advertising wheeze at the corporate level would just turn backflips of yuppie glee.
The odd thing is that since Casey's sat next to the local McDonald's, and since McDonald's offers decent prices on a cup of coffee for senior citizens, the older gentlemen have unofficially shifted their early-morning custom to McDonald's. And now, when you hear one of these pillars of the community talk about going to "the coffee shop" in the mornings, they are actually talking about McDonald's. But McDonald's is only called "the coffee shop" in the early mornings. After about 9 am, they refer to it as McDonald's again like the rest of the world.
I have mixed feelings about this phenomenon. On the one hand, I am in favor of any tradition like this where people can gather and share a sense of community. On the other hand, something in me rebels against a major national chain serving as a host to this kind of thing. I even typically eschew Starbuck's or Caribou coffee in favor of local establishments. Clem's was never a coffee shop to fit the modern definition - their idea of innovative variety was to brew both regular and decaf - but I respected the culture and local flavor of the place. And there are other local establishments in town that could serve as "the coffee shop." I wish McD's weren't getting that revenue.
The McDonald's corporation has absolutely no idea what great fodder for advertising they have here. They're trying to introduce the coffee-shop vibe into their restaurants in several test markets, including ours. They're redecorating, including in several cases constructing separate rooms with couches and coffee tables to promote the atmosphere. If they realized what is going on with the elderly gentlemen in our town, I'm convinced some advertising wheeze at the corporate level would just turn backflips of yuppie glee.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Still Lazy After All These Years
When I was small, my mom told me over and over again that if I just sat around reading and daydreaming and if I just spent all my time riding my bike and pretending to be the Lone Ranger or Michael Knight or a secret agent or a sea captain, I would never get my homework done. She was a cruel, cruel mother who forced me to practice my piano lesson - sometimes up to an hour per day! She consistently squelched my creativity and crushed my spirit by regularly assigning such drudgery as putting away the dishes from the dishwasher, mowing the lawn, folding laundry, vacuuming the carpet, and (horrors!) putting my toys away!
I remember one incident in particular where I was lounging in the recliner and reading an Important Book, probably from the Sugar Creek Gang series. There were various items of dubious origin scattered across the living room floor, and my mom told me to come and pick up my things. I said "Okay," and of course returned to my Important Book. By the time thirty seconds or so had elapsed, I could no longer even remember the conversation, except for a vague nagging sensation that I needed to remember something when I finished the book. When she returned after a few minutes and saw me unmoved from my literary repose, she let me know that the time was now. "Come and put away your things RIGHT NOW." I decided to take the obvious blame-shifting maneuver. "But, Moooom!" I wailed, "NONE of this stuff is MINE!" My mother's response to that brilliant bit of rhetoric will shock you. The Dorothy Purtle that most people know and love have never seen the side of her that so despises Important Books that she would resort to what Stuart Scott so insightfully diagnoses as "playa-hatin'." She began walking around the room, picking up all the things that actually did belong to me. Some of these things were very important to me, like Woofy the stuffed dog, my lever-action Daisy toy rifle that sounded and kicked almost like a real gun when fired, and others. My mother took all these items into her room and put them on the top shelf of her closet. She told me that I would get them back the day I turned 65 (or some other date equally distant in the mind of a ten-year-old - it may possibly have just been a week). A heartless woman, my mother.
She even went so far as to tell me that if I developed the habit of being lazy, I would be lazy when I grew up, and it would be difficult to cope in the "real world." Well, most of the "real world" I've experienced has been much kinder than the one for which I was prepared. You don't get fired from your minimum-wage job if you show up a couple of minutes late. You don't even get fired if you just don't show up one day, as long as you only do that once a year or so. But my mom was right about one thing: I am still lazy. I turned thirty on Tuesday, and I now officially have no excuses for not behaving as an adult should. But I'm still lazy. I have to pretty much zap myself with 110-volt current to get myself to wash dishes or vacuum floors. But I am pretty energetic and motivated when it comes to my job, and that's something only a small percentage of the global work force can claim.
I haven't really gotten much teasing about starting my fourth decade. This one is probably not as annoying as the big four-oh. The most depressing thing about my age is that I can no longer hear the "teacher-proof ring tone." The typical teacher-proof ring tone is about 17 kHz, and my hearing now tops out about 14.5 kHz. As recently as two years ago, I could still hear it. Where does your hearing top out? Check here. (Remember that if you have cheap computer speakers you probably won't be able to hear anything above 15k or so. Try a good set of headphones.)
In other news, my hot wife had Governor Matt Blunt visit her Calculus class on Tuesday. He was coming to observe Cindy teaching using her new SmartBoard, which his METS education initiative helped to fund. Cindy was very nervous, but when the governor showed up, she just coolly taught Calculus and used the SmartBoard to its best advantage. The governor stayed for about fifteen minutes and made the class nervous. Then he and his entourage left. Everyone laughed, because they were relieved and because of how silly it was to pretend that it was just another normal Calculus class with The Governor standing there and a dozen cameras in the back of the room. Cindy gets extra kudos for putting up the giant "Don't Panic" sign, printed in large friendly letters on the wall over the SmartBoard.
Tonight, we're planting flowers, the kind that you plant in the fall. I have no idea about that kind of thing - I'm just going to dig where Cindy tells me to dig. I dig flowers.
I remember one incident in particular where I was lounging in the recliner and reading an Important Book, probably from the Sugar Creek Gang series. There were various items of dubious origin scattered across the living room floor, and my mom told me to come and pick up my things. I said "Okay," and of course returned to my Important Book. By the time thirty seconds or so had elapsed, I could no longer even remember the conversation, except for a vague nagging sensation that I needed to remember something when I finished the book. When she returned after a few minutes and saw me unmoved from my literary repose, she let me know that the time was now. "Come and put away your things RIGHT NOW." I decided to take the obvious blame-shifting maneuver. "But, Moooom!" I wailed, "NONE of this stuff is MINE!" My mother's response to that brilliant bit of rhetoric will shock you. The Dorothy Purtle that most people know and love have never seen the side of her that so despises Important Books that she would resort to what Stuart Scott so insightfully diagnoses as "playa-hatin'." She began walking around the room, picking up all the things that actually did belong to me. Some of these things were very important to me, like Woofy the stuffed dog, my lever-action Daisy toy rifle that sounded and kicked almost like a real gun when fired, and others. My mother took all these items into her room and put them on the top shelf of her closet. She told me that I would get them back the day I turned 65 (or some other date equally distant in the mind of a ten-year-old - it may possibly have just been a week). A heartless woman, my mother.
She even went so far as to tell me that if I developed the habit of being lazy, I would be lazy when I grew up, and it would be difficult to cope in the "real world." Well, most of the "real world" I've experienced has been much kinder than the one for which I was prepared. You don't get fired from your minimum-wage job if you show up a couple of minutes late. You don't even get fired if you just don't show up one day, as long as you only do that once a year or so. But my mom was right about one thing: I am still lazy. I turned thirty on Tuesday, and I now officially have no excuses for not behaving as an adult should. But I'm still lazy. I have to pretty much zap myself with 110-volt current to get myself to wash dishes or vacuum floors. But I am pretty energetic and motivated when it comes to my job, and that's something only a small percentage of the global work force can claim.
I haven't really gotten much teasing about starting my fourth decade. This one is probably not as annoying as the big four-oh. The most depressing thing about my age is that I can no longer hear the "teacher-proof ring tone." The typical teacher-proof ring tone is about 17 kHz, and my hearing now tops out about 14.5 kHz. As recently as two years ago, I could still hear it. Where does your hearing top out? Check here. (Remember that if you have cheap computer speakers you probably won't be able to hear anything above 15k or so. Try a good set of headphones.)
In other news, my hot wife had Governor Matt Blunt visit her Calculus class on Tuesday. He was coming to observe Cindy teaching using her new SmartBoard, which his METS education initiative helped to fund. Cindy was very nervous, but when the governor showed up, she just coolly taught Calculus and used the SmartBoard to its best advantage. The governor stayed for about fifteen minutes and made the class nervous. Then he and his entourage left. Everyone laughed, because they were relieved and because of how silly it was to pretend that it was just another normal Calculus class with The Governor standing there and a dozen cameras in the back of the room. Cindy gets extra kudos for putting up the giant "Don't Panic" sign, printed in large friendly letters on the wall over the SmartBoard.
Tonight, we're planting flowers, the kind that you plant in the fall. I have no idea about that kind of thing - I'm just going to dig where Cindy tells me to dig. I dig flowers.
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