Dun HAM (dot com) & The Rare Time My Job Sucks
So, after work yesterday I got to go to Uncle D's new place & join my family for a big family dinner, already in progress. Wow, does Aunt J make the most wonderful sweet potatoes-- sooooo yummy! And, as usual, they were their usual goofy & screw-ball selfs. "Apples to Apples *AND* apple pie! Triple the fun!" declared Cousin E. Except that almost-traditional game of Apples to Apples didn't happen this time. Instead, Uncle D popped in a DVD of ventriloquist Jeff Dunham followed by a second DVD of Jeff Dunham, which it turns is the comedian some of the Karaoke crew guys have been talking about & whose name I could never quite catch. I recognized the bits they most often talked about- the part where the guy in the audience gets up to go to the bathroom & the puppet (Walter) heckles him ("Could you hear us? We could hear you! You didn't wash your hands.") & the bit where Peanut the puppet talks about having a bunch of deaf people at a ventriloquist show. Mom observed later that if Hannah the Exploding Pooch* were to be a ventriloquist's puppet, she'd be exactly like Peanut. Meanwhile, I was amused to hear someone other than myself make the observation that if you can drop-kick it, it's not a dog.
Let me tell you, the things I miss because I don't have cable (or satellite, etc)! If I could just get Comedy Central, Sci-Fi & the Cartoon Network, that's really all I'd need. OK, the Nature Channel's kinda cool, too.
So today I had one of those moments when my job becomes annoying. They're rare & that's largely because bookstore customers tend to be an educated lot. The previous annoying moment was I had a customer ask me for the new screeching harpie Ann Coulter book** & I had to restrain myself from both questioning the customer's intelligence & commenting on the inane title of the book (which is "If Democrats Had Brains, They'd Be Republicans". Yeah, right.)
Anyways, today I was in the Music department & one of my in-store play selections is the new Bruce Springsteen, which is pretty good. A customer comes up & asks if it's the new album & I hand it to him & he starts ranting about how he's not going to buy it because "he doesn't check his facts". All I knew was that Springsteen had made some remarks critical of the President, which is true of about 85% of the media at this point. So I asked the guy what he meant exactly & he said, "He was saying all this stuff about how they're doign away with habeas corpus & all this other stuff. These guys get MoveOn.org behind them & they just start saying all this stuff & they never check the *facts*" And all I could think was, "Um, they have been doing away with habeas corpus- that's even been in the mainstream media." But of course, I can't say stuff like that to customers, so all I could actually say was, "Hmmm." But what I really wanted to say was, "Why are you so sure he hasn't checked his facts?" Admittedly, I haven't kept close tabs on MoveOn.org's site, but the stuff I've seen coming from them has been fairly accurate.
Which brings me to a thought I had the other day. There's a flip side to Far Right's claims about the "Liberal Media". There's the usual claim that the media only attacks them because they've got a "liberal bias". But it also means that they're dismissing the actual opinions of the majority of Americans right now because they don't believe/are ignoring that the media's actually printing the thoughts of most of the country. Yes, you too can be a part of the "liberal bias", even if you're a Libertarian. Maybe other people caught on to that already but I just figured it out a couple of days ago.
*Seriously, she gets so excited when I get home, it's like she's going to explode. Thus, I've decided if I ever start playing with animation, there will be a dog that explodes when it gets excited & then goes back together.
**Despite the fact that I'm professionally supposed to want all books sell well, I'm rather pleased to note that particular volume's sales are not good. Which is probably why she's now saying even more insanely outlandish & stupid things in public- like claiming the Christians are "perfected Jews" (& that Jews should not be offended by that statement)
Let me tell you, the things I miss because I don't have cable (or satellite, etc)! If I could just get Comedy Central, Sci-Fi & the Cartoon Network, that's really all I'd need. OK, the Nature Channel's kinda cool, too.
So today I had one of those moments when my job becomes annoying. They're rare & that's largely because bookstore customers tend to be an educated lot. The previous annoying moment was I had a customer ask me for the new screeching harpie Ann Coulter book** & I had to restrain myself from both questioning the customer's intelligence & commenting on the inane title of the book (which is "If Democrats Had Brains, They'd Be Republicans". Yeah, right.)
Anyways, today I was in the Music department & one of my in-store play selections is the new Bruce Springsteen, which is pretty good. A customer comes up & asks if it's the new album & I hand it to him & he starts ranting about how he's not going to buy it because "he doesn't check his facts". All I knew was that Springsteen had made some remarks critical of the President, which is true of about 85% of the media at this point. So I asked the guy what he meant exactly & he said, "He was saying all this stuff about how they're doign away with habeas corpus & all this other stuff. These guys get MoveOn.org behind them & they just start saying all this stuff & they never check the *facts*" And all I could think was, "Um, they have been doing away with habeas corpus- that's even been in the mainstream media." But of course, I can't say stuff like that to customers, so all I could actually say was, "Hmmm." But what I really wanted to say was, "Why are you so sure he hasn't checked his facts?" Admittedly, I haven't kept close tabs on MoveOn.org's site, but the stuff I've seen coming from them has been fairly accurate.
Which brings me to a thought I had the other day. There's a flip side to Far Right's claims about the "Liberal Media". There's the usual claim that the media only attacks them because they've got a "liberal bias". But it also means that they're dismissing the actual opinions of the majority of Americans right now because they don't believe/are ignoring that the media's actually printing the thoughts of most of the country. Yes, you too can be a part of the "liberal bias", even if you're a Libertarian. Maybe other people caught on to that already but I just figured it out a couple of days ago.
*Seriously, she gets so excited when I get home, it's like she's going to explode. Thus, I've decided if I ever start playing with animation, there will be a dog that explodes when it gets excited & then goes back together.
**Despite the fact that I'm professionally supposed to want all books sell well, I'm rather pleased to note that particular volume's sales are not good. Which is probably why she's now saying even more insanely outlandish & stupid things in public- like claiming the Christians are "perfected Jews" (& that Jews should not be offended by that statement)