me & fred
Like my friend, Mr. Flintstone, my feet are moving at lightning speed, but I’m really not going anywhere. There’s simply too much blah blah blah going on here today…
bah humbug!
The holiday season is rapidly approaching and I am officially the world’s worst shopper. This year, Christmas doesn’t seem the same to me — I didn’t decorate the way I normally do, my tree didn’t go up on Thanksgiving evening, my Mom and Carl won’t be leaving Florida, and this is the first year that my Grandmother won’t be eating Christmas dinner and opening gifts — at least not with me.
When my brother, Scott, and I were kids, Christmas was a big deal. We simply didn’t get “stuff” all year long the way that my son, Ben, did. Birthdays were never celebrated to any great extent, but Christmas was a different story…
Owning a grocery store kept our parents busy working long hours, and Mom normally put the tree up a day or 2 before Christmas (which is probably why I want mine up early). We always celebrated with our immediate family on Christmas Eve. I wonder how many years we had that metallic thing with the spinning tri-light that turned the tree green, then red, and then blue.
Mom could seriously hide stuff better than anyone I know — many times, she couldn’t find the purchases when the bulk of the gifts would appear under the tree, so last minute goodies were pretty much expected. My Mom invented the gift bag. FOR REAL! Our gift bags were brown paper sacks from the grocery store with a bow stuck on the side. The really cool thing about that was…our family spent Christmas Day with Nanny’s sister, our Great Aunt Kak, in Indianapolis. She started making fancy bows in March, and the gifts looked incredibly awesome.
Chili was the holiday tradition at the McKain ranch — I remember the grocery store didn’t close until around 8:00 PM on Christmas Eve, and chili was quick and easy. Scott and I couldn’t wait for the adults to snarf down the grub so we could attack those paper sacks, and Mom would notoriously drag her meal on and on and on. Even our Pap-pa would get frustrated, and once said, “Eat the damn chili so these kids can open their presents!” We still say that sometimes.
As kids, our gifts were always the most awesome things. Yes, we were recipients of all those cool toys that should’ve killed us but didn’t that Mike Hall of the Pines talked about in his blog post. I remember one year, Scott got a chemistry set that I wasn’t allowed to play with. Bummer. I remember that he also got GI Joe’s and Pap-pa didn’t like it — boys weren’t supposed to play with dolls. Girls played with dolls, and I remember I would get at least one every Christmas.
This year, the gathering at my house will be smaller. Still, I’m sure it will be wonderful and it’s less than 2 weeks away. I have GOT to shop!
Lucille’s
The burg has a new restaurant! They even post their daily specials on FaceBook.
Perry and I met with friends, Alisa and Ric, to try it out on Friday night. Alisa mentioned our evening on her BLOG, so I don’t need to post the details here. Perry took 3 photos of my buddy and I, but I will only share two of them. In photo #3, we were making a face for the camera, and even I wouldn’t put it online for the world to see. My ugly face was just me sticking out my tongue, but Alisa was really hamming it up for the iPhone shot. Yes, I’m known for posting pics that have been processed with the best Photoshop magic known to man — but I would NEVER share anything that would make my friends look bad or ugly. I might put your head on a body with muscles, and I might put a dunce hat on your head — but I wouldn’t purposely throw something out that is totally unflattering on purpose. Funny is ok — ugly is not ok. Seriously, I wouldn’t put something online of someone else that I wouldn’t share of ME the same way. The photo below, for example, would be fair game…
So here are the two photos I will share — good food and wonderful friends…
best left to the professionals
There are some things that are best left to the professionals. Take highlighting hair for example. If you’re a regular reader, you probably already know where this is going. Seriously folks, don’t try it at home.
And one little link to the Blockbuster Employee of the Month. You have to read the correspondence and replies — it will be the best 5 minutes you waste today.
so that’s news?
The burg got its first snow of the season, but it isn’t much. Enough to delay school a couple hours — that’s why I was able to snap the shot above just before daybreak. All those years of getting up early for school die hard, and I still get alerts sent to my phone. With someone dear to me in the hospital, I bolted wide awake thinking the worst when the text message came to my phone this morning. Then the mother in me kicked in, and thinking about my son driving home after working 3rd shift has me still up. I’ll nap later, but right now I have something on my mind that I want to share.
I doubt there are many people that love the Internet more than I do, but I have to tell you that certain events have really opened my eyes to the negative aspects of the way it has changed all of our lives as well. Without some sort of rules in place, there is no accountability, no RESPONSIBILITY for what is projected to the masses.
It’s no secret that I own the crothersville.net domain, or that a message board is provided on that site where those who are interested in the community can share ideas and opinions. I have help from three fabulous friends, and we monitor posts and delete offensive comments. It’s easy online to be John Doe and espouse vitriol words not caring who gets hurt, and we do our very best to make certain that doesn’t happen. Other online entities do not have that same set of ethics.
Take for example the post I made earlier about a missing Austin (formerly from the burg) man. I do a Google search for newsy information and the first link goes to topix.com. After reading for 5 minutes, I figure any second God is going to nuke the planet. There are too many evil people living on earth, and I swear every single one of them have an Internet connection! The dude is MISSING, and there are anonymous posts that provide NAMES of people they feel are responsible for his death. Of course they don’t use their real name, so they can say anything no matter how it might hurt the family of the missing man, or the family of the person they are accusing. Who monitors this garbage? Evidently no one.
But it goes much deeper than that! Even so-called reputable news publishing entities allow similar vile and slanderous comments to be included after the articles they publish. You can read an article, say you’re me, provide a bogus email address, and claim anything you want — you can even state lies as facts and ruin reputations. So what — no one knows it was really you.
Shouldn’t there be some form of accountability — especially for news reporting entities? I think that it’s gotten to the point in the industry that ANYTHING provided to draw readers or subscribers is considered ok.