The end of an era...

Most times I go to Boston I get a chance to go to Faneuil Hall and have a drink at J. J. Donovan's Pub. I have been going there since I was old enough to drink, and it was mentioned in a "Spenser for Hire" novel. It was a local joint, a real Irish bar that somehow kept the tourists out and the locals in. The bartender had the heavy Southie accent and you had to have some Boston 'tude to get served. If you were from out of town, you tended to get ignored. I always ordered a Sam Adams Larger and my best friend Mike (who was almost always with me there) got a B-52 on the rocks. We always stopped there.

But not this time. I went to Boston this past week and Donovan's was gone. Judging by the other changes at Quincy Market, I would guess it finally lost out to some big national chain (even the layout was different, so I couldn't tell exactly who took it over). Quincy Market used to be a great place to go to see local merchants selling local goods. Weird, unusual goods that you couldn't really get anywhere else. Then one time we went there and there was a big GAP store there and it went downhill from there. Slowly but surely all the cool stores were replaced by the national stores that exist everywhere. Going there was no different than going to the local mall.

There are still a few places that have been there since I started going, but Donovan's was "my" place. And now it's gone. Crap.

Astro-crap

My "Astro-Graph" horoscope (Virgo) today says there will be unexpected problems and that "If you handle them in stride, they aren't likely to bother you". No kidding. That's what "handle them in stride" means, right? To not let things bother you?

I guess I didn't take the advice. Crap like this drives me nuts.

Degree deodorant lies!

Click the link in the title. Look in the middle of the page. It says "Proven at the highest temperature on earth." That's crap. The highest temperature on earth was 3.6 billion degrees near Albuquerque, New Mexico by the Department of Energy (true to government form, they didn't know how they did it, but could do it over and over; that's crap, too). It seems hard to believe that Degree would "protect me" from sweat at that temperature. Hell, even my oven goes to 500 degrees, will Degree keep me from sweating at that temp, too?

OK, so maybe they meant proven at the hottest place on earth. That would be Al' Aziziyah, Libya. In 1922. Seems unlikely, since I don't think Degree was around back then. The hottest average temperature is in Ethiopia at about 90 degrees. Again, unlikely, although if they did go to Ethiopia then I take back all bad things; that's a country that could use the work.

So, it was not tested at the highest temperature on earth. That's crap. And so is "competitive dryness testing", for that matter, but less so.

I wrote to them to see what their response would be. I bet they won't answer.

The first of many...

I had a blog once before and I had a good time, but of course I got out of the habit and it kind of died away. Then when I went back, I couldn't get back in because Google took it over and it's all f'd up. But I still go back and read it, sometimes. You should too.

So why start up again? Two reasons; first, because Joshua has a really good blog and makes me want to write more, and second, because I went to Las Vegas in May and had a terrible time. And because I was having a terrible time, I was not as willing to tolerate all the crap that city can throw at you. The people there were crappy, the service was crappy and the casinos were crappy. The only good thing was I was hanging out with my best friend from high school. But everything else was crap.

The really weird thing is that when I got home to Washington, I saw a bunch more crap; crap at work, crap in the papers and crap on TV. I lost my ability to ignore all the crap and pretend I wasn't constantly fighting off incessant advertising, manipulation and trickery. I lost my desire to "play along". I could no longer just "let it go".

So now I see all this crap; advertisements that are full of crap, statements by news makers that are crap, and just ... well, CRAP! People saying and doing things that make no sense if you just pay attention.

Now I've noticed this all before, it just didn't bother me as much as it does now, and the part that bothers me the most is how far from reality the crap has gotten. It's gone this far because no one has been calling "them" on their wilder and wilder crap. And now crap is way out there. Now crap becomes reality if you repeat the crap enough. It gets de-crapified each time it gets repeated. But it still smells like crap.

So I figure someone needs to be pointing out all the stupid crap we read, see and hear every day. Now, this has been done in some areas already, so I will mostly skip the crap coming from the White House. But everyone else is fair game.