Category Archives: Say What?

Miscellaneous stuff we can’t file anywhere else…

Zombie Nation 2007

Say What?

Here’s a rather disturbing article found in the Detroit News today:

TV shopping carts capture kids’ attention

Shopping during the holidays is stressful enough without tired kids in tow. But this season, colorful plastic carts with TVs screens are the latest incarnation of a trend toward providing entertainment for captive customers, joining TVs at checkout lines, gas station pumps and hair salon stations.

The TV Karts show videos of Bob the Builder, Barney or the Wiggles for as long as parents shop. After rolling the carts out last year, Meijer now has them stocked in most of its 181 Midwestern stores, including nearly every store in Michigan.

So, is anyone as disturbed by this as I am?

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Halloween has passed…and I’m already sick of Xmas

Music, Say What?

Some of my close friends wonder why I’m such a Scrooge McDuck when it comes to the holidays.  Can you imagine why?  You walked into stores a few weeks ago, and the Xmas displays were already shoving aside the Halloween decor.  You tune in the radio, and the stations are already playing holiday songs.  And a few people are already claiming to get their shopping done before December hits.  (And in this economy, one has to ask, “With what money?”)  Putting aside the whole spiritual aspect of Xmas, it used to be a time to get together with friends and family.  True, it has been commercialized for decades (after all, Linus even said it was run by a “big eastern syndicate”), but the whole aspect of “The Holidays” has become annoyingly and helplessly obnoxious in the past dozen or so years.  Personally, I can’t wait for the holidays to pass.  This whole orgy of commercialism, rammed down our throats for more than two months straight, all over one freakin’ day out of the year, just irks me no end.  The only “true meaning of Xmas” in the 21st Century is to take us for everything we’ve got, whether the marketing is crammed down our throat, or we’re guilted into it.  No thanks!  Fast forward me to January 2008, and I’ll be happy.

Anyone Bowling?

Say What?

This is a new topic for Rudy’s Corner:  bowling!   While I’m nowhere near a good bowler, I did have fun on a couple of leagues I joined a few years ago.  With my recent shoulder injury, I’m still unable to bowl, at least until things heal a bit further.

On one of my last bowling trips, though, I had just gotten a ball plugged and drilled.  I picked up a lightly used ball on eBay a few years ago, a Track Dry Heat, a ball that was designed with some extra action for use on dry lanes.  When I’ve gone open bowling in recent years, the lanes have always been on the dry side–with no league play going on, the bowling centers usually will only oil the lanes once a day to keep the lanes from burning up.  I was previously using an Ebonite Nitro/R2 that had gotten a little long in the tooth.  How did the Dry Heat compare?

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