Things that are grinding my gears

The stress of many years has finally gotten to me. As I dealt with slow traffic and an ultra-shitty commute due to flooding I received a barely decipherable call from my old lady. All I could hear was her bawling and the child screaming. I can't make traffic move any faster, I barely slept last night due to my old lady being sick and me being home wasn't going to happen any time soon.

Then, as I pulled in to my driveway, I heard the telltale low growl signaling that my rear brakes had finally met their maker. It was the frothy shit icing on my shit cake week.

But my sister-in-law, with three young kids of her own, called me too during my commute from hell and knew what was going on and graciously offered to pick up my kid and take her for a bit so we could regain our composure.

So, in the end, there was someone there ready and willing to help. She said that she owes us for all the times we've helped her. Maybe Minnesota nice, even after all those times I've claimed it was a huge lie does exist. Maybe it comes out during the truly worst of times. And maybe, just maybe, things will slowly fall back in to place with my work, my commute, my old lady's job and her commute and everything will begin to balance out once again.

Until then, MinnPics is a calm and compelling respite from the stress of the day. Check out the stunning photos of Minnesota and tell a friend about the site too!

Drama, Dancing with the Stars and Twitter

The American workplace is a clusterfuck. There, I said it. Over the years it moved from casual conversations about last night's episode of Knot's Landing around the water cooler to people endlessly shopping on ebay. Then it moved on to people dicking around on their MySpace page (which is now officially the Detroit of the internet). Those same people have now all moved to Facebook where they post results to mind-numbingly stupid quizzes about what kind of fruit they are and are always buying me a drink. Sorry bub, but I can't drink my 24 inch Dell LCD monitor.

The cool kids drop tweets all day long. You can tell the ones who spend too much time tweeting because their Twitter page consists of updates about what they are eating, have eaten or plan to eat. If you're gonna tweet, make it something at least mildly interesting or so strange that I'm compelled to know more. (My latest Facebook status update stated that I "feel like a cowboy" - I'll let you figure that one out.) My Twitter account is for business but even that is kept at least moderately interesting (my grandma, if she was still around, would probably be sobbing into her Pringles can of knitting needles with Reader's Digest filing chapter 11 today).

It's all good in moderation. I can even tolerate discussions about the performances on last night's Dancing with the Stars (that's a hot topic - I can't wait to see Kelly Osbourne's pasty skin shoved into a dancing outfit). But my biggest pet peeve is drama. Especially if it interferes with your job and, in turn, fucks up mine. Keep that shit at home and I don't care if I put my foot down and, in a roundabout way, make you feel bad for dropping the ball - especially when you straight-up say "I have a lot of drama in my life right now, not that you care". Bingo. I don't care. We are at work, not your latest counseling session. Now get off the phone with me and go make me some money. Daddy needs a new entertainment center.

MinnPics is far more controlled and free of celebrity gossip, rants and drama. Check out the killer pics!

Hot scoop: the Jon and Kate plus 8 announcement

For an entire week, cable channel TLC has kept tens of millions of Americans on the edge of their collective seats by constantly airing this teaser about tonight's Jon and Kate Plus Eight announcement:



What could it be? They've made decisions to bring peace to their lives. But what are those decisions?

We all know that the real decision is that Jon Gosselin finally grew some balls and decided to divorce his gold-digging, child-exploiting wife in favor of a twenty-something teacher. Well, actually Kate decided to divorce him because she is the one who makes every decision in this off-kilter family but it was fun to speculate that Jon decided on the divorce.

Even more fun is to speculate on some far-flung ideas about what this huge announcement and decision could be. Maybe Kate Gosselin has decided to join the church of Scientology. Maybe she has opted for sexual reassignment surgery because after being the one with the theoretical balls in the relationship, she wanted some actual balls. Or maybe Kate has decided that Jon is going to get neutered - he already is to a certain degree but she wants to make it official. Or maybe, and this is a huge maybe, Kate Gosselin has decided to announce that she is a robot from the planet Bitch.

On a cheerier note, check out MinnPics. It's a photo project of sorts chronicling all things Minnesota.

Kate Gosselin in a bikini!

Why is this in the top news searches on Google? Kate Gosselin in a bikini. So. What.

Wow. America is officially completely fucked when we care this much about an essentially single mom on vacation with her brood of medical miracle kids. We get it, you guys have your own show on TLC - a cable channel which should have its letters repossessed because when, in the last decade, has anyone gleaned one damn shred of intelligence and learning from this channel? Why not call it TMLC - The Manufactured Life Channel because it has become - with the help of the Gosselin family and their brood of whiny misfits - an 18/5 freakshow with every freakishly gargantuan family having their own show. There's the Duggards (sp?) and their cult-sized family of 18 kids and then Table for 12 whose family could field an entire baseball team - but none of them would be anything without the odd success of a woman who is today famous because her marriage is a total trainwreck and she wore a bikini - to the BEACH. Wow. Scandalous. And she isn't exactly smokin' hot in her bikini but if I was asked by her if I wanted to hit that , I'd probably say yes (with low lighting being a prerequisite) and quietly slip out the door before the inevitable crazy came out to say good morning in its own crazy way.

The Gosselins won't go away

Are Jon and Kate Gosselin (of TLC's Jon & Kate Plus Eight) getting divorced? Are they together? Or is this whole circus surrounding them a huge, elaborate, sprawling promotional stunt?

The timing of Jon Gosselin's supposed cheating surfacing is rather convenient. The rather forced drama surrounding the premiere episode (last night) seemed to be beyond contrived. All of the controversy surrounding the family of 10 seems a bit too convenient to me. I don't know about the few people reading this but I am sick of seeing them. That damn Gosselin family is everywhere. They are plastered across the Discovery Television Channels on cable, salacious headlines regarding Kate's past, her attitude, her behavior, Jon's behavior, his past, their tumultuous marriage, separation and now their supposed divorce are on the cover of every celebrity-obsessed waste of paper at every damn checkout stand in America. They need to go away. But they won't.

The Gosselin family is a product of their own making. A mom who saw a way to fund her life, sold the soul of her children to a television channel and is at their mercy and she loves it. Oh, so what if it ruins the lives of everyone who is a part of it outside of her? I find her over-the-top behavior nauseating and if the whole thing is a publicity stunt coordinated by some faceless person behind tshe show, kudos to them for basically bringing the entire country to a screeching halt over the aupposed antics of a couple of non-celebrities from Pissant-Nowhere, Pennsylvania and actually making casual fans of the show turn in to rabid, frothing jackals who are starting flame wars and opposing blogs online.

If TLC pulled the plug on this show tomorrow, America would forget about the fmae whore known as Kate Gosselin and they'd all slip in to obscurity by summer's end - and I'd be happier for it happening. They are a product of manufactured fame and with the youngest six kids going off to school in the fall (they turned five in last night's premiere) that fame is about to end. Hopefully TLC has someone with half of a brain running things and realizes that filming a show that revolves around the fabulous and exciting adventures of a brood of pre-schoolers will lose something when they have homework to do and begin to become actual people who are less and less influenced by their power-hungry mommy.

They are essentially singing their swan song for the next couple months and if a divorce is actually in the works for Jon and Kate Gosselin, her desire for more fame will ultimately be their own undoing.

MinnPics isn't about fame and glory. It's about quality photographs from across Minnesota. Click and see what's new today.

All about Kate Gosselin's fake blog

It's a well-kept secret that I write both a celebrity gossip blog and a TV blog for my employer so it's often hard to truly express myself within the language limitations placed on me. That's why I've become increasingly random here but the one thing I am intensely focused on is Jon & Kate Plus Eight on TLC. That show is truly shit. Kate Gosselin basically has neutered her husband and if he is tip-toeing through the tulips with another woman, kudos to him because the dude's wife if a self-centered, celebrity-obsessed bitch who only cares about her appearance and sees her kids (but only the youngest six) as dollar signs. If you want to see how truly crazy it is that this family has a television show because - gasp - they're a unique family - check out "Kate Gosselin's" blog at TLC.com for two reasons. First off, I sincerely doubt that she actually sits down at a computer and types that drivel that seems to be written by one of the show's pee-ons or a fifth grader with a severe learning disability. The second reason is that I've begun commenting there (under the obvious name "Sornie") to see how many comments of mine the producers will actually post as I get increasingly over-the-top in my congratulating of this God-like woman.

There's actually a third reason too. They moderate the fuck out of the comments. So much so that an unfettered blog, Gosselins Without Pity, has popped up so people can freely voice themselves over the fake TLC blog posts where only positivity is allowed in the comments.

But back to the shrew known as Kate Gosselin. It's widely known (now) that she began plotting and scheming on how to turn a buck after she insisted on fertility treatments for her second pregnancy. She saw, from day one, sextuplets as tiny cash machines. Dress them all alike and the money will pour in. And thanks to our braindead society willing to gobble up even the lowest shit, because it's neatly packaged, she has won. But I think the relative collapse over the past month of her perfect little fairytale life of having a bunch of nannies, nurses, aides and staff around to essentially raise your little troop of hellions will finally bring to an end her reign of terror. Maybe this will be the end of America making somebody out of nobody. Maybe it's finally the damn end of the bullshit we, as a society, gobble up because we're too fucking lazy to read a book, magazine, listen to some music, go for a walk or watch PBS (which had a killer two hour Nova on Tuesday night about Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design") because all we want to do after our mundane jobs is to shut our brains off.

Well, I can dream.

If you want to stimulate your brain, check out the photos at MinnPics.

The stupidity of beauty pageants

Is she really as stupid as she seemed? Does Miss California give beauty pageants (yes, Miss USA is a beauty, not scholarship, pageant) a bad name. Does she give the USA a bad name as she could have been the U.S. representative in the pageant nobody watches - the Miss Universe pageant.

It's for reasons like this that I hate pageants. These women/girls/brain-dead bimbos lack basic conversational skills that will eventually lead them down a road to acting in b-movies or cheap porn. And on that note, who the hell buys porn any more? Isn't that why the internet was invented? Communicating and sharing knowledge was just sort of an accident.

Oh well, at least the whole topic of gay marriage has given Perez Hilton a second fifteen minutes of undeserved fame.

Wow, it's snowing in MInnesota, everyone panic

Why in the holy hell do Minnesotans rustle themselves up into shear panic when snow starts magically falling from the sky. You'd swear that God himself were shitting cement blocks on us and that hunkering down in the basement was your only safe course of action. Alas, it's just snow.

But then there's the media, as MPR's Bob Collins pointed out, whipping everyone - not just in Minnesota but in the entire country - in to a frenzy. It's a bit of a mystery why The Weather Channel would have a live reporter in St. Paul chronicling what he must view as the end of the world but to the rest of the country let me just say that it is February and this is Minnesota. The temperature is below freezing once again and liquid precipitation turns to a solid state when that happens and the result is SNOW.

Now snow in Minnesota is a rather rare occurence. We only receive 4-5 feet of snow during an average winter. It sucks to clear from driveways, sidewalks, streets, road and even roofs but we're used to it because, well, we get 4-5 feet of snow each year.

Never, though, will I figure out why a typical late-winter snow storm in Minnesota packing - gasp - snow coupled with wind would warrant wall to wall news coverage.

One thing is sure, if I lose sight of the pine tree three feet outside my office window we're all screwed but until then I think we'll be safe. Slow down when driving because it's better to arrive a little bit late than a little bit dead.

Will MinnPics showcase the aftermath of The Storm? You'll just have to check it out to be sure.

How to I.Q. profile retail employees

This entry, from last summer, ties in nicely with yesterday's Walmart rant. I recommend reading it and elaborating about how you shop...

Forgive me, but I was at the local Wal-Mart late yesterday afternoon. Yes, after years of vowing that I wouldn't become a Wal-Mart shopper, I have done just that because the grocery selection in Shakopee sucks. Ever since losing our Rainbow Foods Fresh Store, the only alternative is Cub which contrary to popular belief isn't actually cheap but only presents itself as such.

So, there I was, after 20 minutes of barreling through aisles crowded with the bottom rung of society I had found my way to the checkouts. Yes, it only took me twenty minutes to shop because I actually know what I need when I go grocery shopping unlike these indecisive types who also failed their class in Shopping Cart Etiquette 101 (hug the shelves with your cart and keep moving, fuckers).

The checkouts at Wal-Mart are an adventure. There is always at least one of the Shakopee store's eight express lanes open but these are reserved for folks with less than twenty items. Never mind the fact that the 15 or so people waiting might have a collective I.Q. of 12 based on their overflowing shopping carts containing hundreds of items each.

Another popular choice is the long lines at the self-checkouts. These are not even an option for me because the people ahead of me in the queue line can never manage to successfully scan and bag two items in succession, much less their entire cart-o-crap and then there's the whole matter of a paycheck. They don't pay me to scan and bag my own crap so it's a no go Wally.

That leaves me with the standard checkouts. I believe that the Shakopee Super Wal-Mart is home to no less than 36 checkouts. At peak times, such as 5:10 PM on a Wednesday afternoon, six of them can be found open. Of course this 1:6 ratio isn't entirely pathetic. It could be a 1:12 ratio. The big problem here is that these shoppers, as inbred as the outwardly appear, know how to fan out. They migrate to the "hard goods" side of the checkouts with their carts full of ice cream and juice boxes and stack up eight people deep.

That leaves me scoping out the situation. This is where my patented "checkout employee I.Q. profiling method" is trotted out.

If said checker is sloppily dressed, I pass. If said checker breathing heavily, wedged precariously in the checker cubicle and can be smelled from a distance of ten-plus yards, I pass. What I truly seek out is that one checker who is a fucking machine. The person who is faster than the electronic beeps coming from their register.

Even entering a longer line here will net you a shorter wait time. If Sally the SUV driving Soccer Mom has four screaming children in tow and a cart full of everything from Golden Delicious Apples to zip-up diapers, you still stand to win.

And win I did. This girl running her checkout with the utmost precision and speed rocketed through my purchases. She dragged things across the scanner with fluid precision and bagged them effortlessly. She conversed with me, asked about my day, mentioned her child and husband and I think she even told me her blood type. This girl was good.

Sadly, this interaction at the checkout stand was the high point of my day to that point. And it was at Wal-Mart to boot. I feel dirty having confessed this experience. I still loathe the local shopping 'scene' but has Wal-Mart stepped up their game?

Speaking of stepping up the game, check out the ever-increasing quality of photos from across Minnesota at MinnPics.

New logos that annoy me

I've designed plenty of logos that I flat out will not claim as my work. I've been practically sickened by the amount of changes some customers want and angered by how poorly thought out the changes they demanded were. On the other hand, I've done work that was just crap from the get go.

I have to wonder which bucket this newest pair of abominations from PepsiCo falls in to.

Since its launch, Sierra Mist has been straight up shit. For some reason, Pepsi thought they needed a clear, citrusy soda. Well, at least they got the clear part down but the citrus side of things is strangely missing. The first time I had a drink of Sierra Mist, soon after its debut, I thought someone had slipped me a glass of carbonated toilet water. In fact, carbonated toilet water would have been an improvement. This shit lacks any citrusy undertones, overtones, dulcet tones or dial tones.

Then came their new logo.

Apparently Sierra Mist causes blurred vision. A logo is supposed to convey an image of the brand but the only image of the Sierra Mist brand I see is that you'd only drink it if you couldn't see straight. Fail.

Next up is the flagship brand from PepsiCo, Pepsi.

They have this annoying habit of totally reinventing their branding every three years and each time they do so, it looks totally trendy and in tune with the times but the old logos look terribly dated. They each fail to stand the test of time. Not to mention that their brand of cola tastes overly molasses-y and downright sludgy. The newest logo will last about three years before being reinvented, for the princely price of a few million bucks, and traded for a new uber-trendy logo. The Pepsi brand seems almost afraid of becoming iconic and would rather be trendy for a few months every few years. That's what happens when you're playing second fiddle in the cola wars.

The last logo is Butterfinger.

I don't pay lot of attention to the logos of candy bars because I'm out of the candy bar demographic. I don't have the luxury of slipping a few dozen candy bars into mom's grocery cart while waiting in the checkout line at Hy-Vee. Hell, there aren't even any Hy-Vee stores around here. However, I did drop a whopping forty cents on a Butterfinger this past weekend and became flustered when I got back to the car and opened my crispety, crunchety treat.

That fucking candy bar had not one but two logos on it. See...

Why does Nestle, who seems to own about half of the food world, feel the need to plaster their corporate logo on everything they produce? I don't care if Bin Laden Confectionary Company makes Butterfingers. If something tastes good, I'll eat it. A corporate logo on the wrapper won't sway me. In fact, it's been known to make me consider an alternative. And before you think that Nestle is alone in this, Kraft seems to be an even greater offender in this arena. The plaster their logo on every damned thing in grocery stores. It's not a carefully integrated logo, it's exactly the opposite. It's blatantly front and center and it doesn't need to be. Nestle and Kraft, I'm watching you.

If you're looking for something happy and calming, not to mention artistic, check out MinnPics. It's brimming with the greatest photos taken in Minnesota of Minnesota.

Is McDonald's catering to the stupids?

Here is a fairly decent analysis of McDonald's McCafe commercials. You know them, the guys discussing how they are only wearing glasses to be smart and the one still airing with women admitting that they like watching reality TV and one not knowing where the fuck Paraguay is (hint: it's next to Uruguay).

Watch them. I'll wait.





Done? Good.

Alright.

To the casual observer, they seem fairly straight-forward. Drink our fancy coffee because we cater to the everyday American with our everyday prices. Then watch them, particularly the one with the women, and it does start to become overtly offensive. And not just to women.

Apparently, McDonald's wants to further the stereotype that being smart is a bad thing and that being dumb as a fencepost is very American. On the other hand, being smart doesn't mean that you have to listen to jazz and give up wearing heels. Fuck you McDonald's, your food makes my clothes stink and makes my car smell like a garbage can. Factor in that I don't even like coffee and that you have made America a bunch of sloppy fatties and you single-handedly belong inside every damn Wal-Mart store in this crumbling country.

Merry Christmas and enjoy your McDonald's gift cards!