Sunday Song.

Get In The Car.

I'm Feeling Old.

I've been busy the last week trying to get some stuff together to sell at a flea market Saturday. I have too much stuff and I'm trying to simplify things a little. We will see how this works out.

Today I went to Rome and experienced something that I never had happened to me before. I stopped off for lunch at CiCi's Pizza and was given a senior citizens discount. This gave my inner Jack Benny a major conflict. While it is good to save money wherever you can, you don't want to acknowledge the fact that age is creeping upon you. To top that off, I was given the discount without even asking for it. My birthday is in about 10 days, at which time I will turn 55. I will just take this as an early birthday present from CiCi's.

I am on vacation until Monday. I do this every year to get a little break before the Christmas madness begins. Last Sunday morning, I revisited my old stomping grounds and worked a couple of hours in dairy. The guy who works it was falling behind and needed a little help to get the job done. Of course I couldn't resist needling him a little bit and I told him that they had called in a professional to show him how to get the job done. This was the first time since I moved to electronics that I had been sent over to grocery to help out. I have no problem doing that once in a while but there is no way that I could do it on a regular basis. 

Sunday Songs.

I am posting two videos today. On his Facebook page my friend Don Collett mentioned he had programmed the song Baker Street by the Foo Fighters on his internet radio station, Project 42. The original by Gerry Rafferty is one of my favorites, but the Foo Fighters version is interesting. Here are both videos.

Now on DVD And A Retail Story.

Green Lantern was released today on DVD. It is one of the movies that I saw and my review of it is here. As I mentioned then, I was rather disappointed with it. It was not a bad movie, I just wanted to see more than what they showed us. It was a box office disappointment, bringing in $116,601,172. It brought in almost that much overseas, but considering they spent $200 million making it, it was not very successful. It is rated a 6.1 on the IMDB. I will be buying a copy of it when it gets down to around $10.

I made a customer mad the other night but I really don't feel bad about it. A man tried to return a cell phone, claiming his phone didn't work and he wanted to exchange it for another one. Normally that is not a problem, however, he did not have the original packaging that it came in. I don't want to go into great detail about everything that I check out during a return, just in case somebody stumbles across this post and tries to figure out a way around what we do. Let's just say what I saw from this phone gave me reason to believe the man was being as truthful as a politician. He claimed he had talked to somebody "up front", and they had told him that exchanging the phone was no problem. Not having the original box was a major problem, and he also was missing the charger that went with the phone. He did have a receipt, but I refused to make an exchange for him. When I told him I was in a do anything for him the man went storming towards the front of the store and said, "Something will be done about this phone tonight." There is no doubt in my mind that the phone was either stolen or just an old phone that he was trying to exchange for a new one. After he left, I called one of the managers and told her what had happened. She told me not to worry about it, and that she would back me all the way. If there's something legitimately wrong I will do everything that I possibly can to make it right for a customer, however, I'm not going to let anybody rip me off. I've been doing this long enough to know the tricks that people can come up with. Incidentally, the man has not come back yet. Some other store may have had to deal with things, but we haven't.

So Clown. We Meet At Last.

Now on DVD.

We have another week where there will be two movie release days. Green Lantern will be coming out Friday and I will talk about that on that day. For this week the movie that did the best in the box office was Horrible Bosses, the tale of three men who decide to help each other eliminate their bosses. The IMDB rates the movie a 7.2 and it brought in $117,338,069.

Zookeeper was somewhat of a disappointment at the box office but made up for it overseas. It actually did a little better there than it did here in the United States. People on the IMDB were not overly impressed with the movie as it is rated a 4.6. They spent $80 million making it and in the United States it brought in $80,112,560. Since it brought in $84 million overseas it was a profitable movie. I would say there is a possibility we might see a sequel to it. That is only based on my opinion not anything that I have read.

The final new release was a major disappointment for the studio. Based on a series of books by Megan McDonald I think they were hoping for a new franchise. Unfortunately this was not the way to get started. The IMDB rates it a 3.0, and it only brought in $15,013,650, which is not good for a movie that cost $20 million to make. They titled the movie the Not Bummer Summer, but unfortunately it turned into the bummer summer.

Halloween Slug.

Ready For Battle.

Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition.

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, will be hearing arguments today concerning a Georgia state law that forbids carrying guns into places of worship. An organization called Georgia Carry is claiming that that law is illegal. To support their case they have used three examples were there were shootings in churches. None of their examples occurred in the state of Georgia. Also mentioned is the fact that some churches have large amounts of cash. They are claiming that it should be up to the individual churches and not the state to make that decision. Personally, I don't have a problem with the law. I am not against people carrying guns as long as they have applied for and been granted the proper permits. However, I do not feel church is a place that they need to be armed. Yes, it was tragic where those shooting incidents happened, but one point that they are missing is had the people in those churches been armed, the body count might've been even higher. Friendly fire anyone? It does happen, especially in a situation that moves as fast as shootings do.

Before today I had never heard about Georgia Carry. After spending a little bit of time on their website. I am almost scared of them as I am the armed criminals. One of their members protested about having his carry permit checked at a national park. He was clearly carrying a handgun and the Park Ranger wanted to see his permit. According to him, that was a violation of his rights and he protested and actually received a ruling in his favor. Now anyone carrying in one of the parks will not be stopped, which basically means all a criminal has to do is not conceal his weapon and he won't have to worry about it. This organization is so worried about tragedy happening in churches that they are stopping to consider the tragedies that could happen in national parks. I hope that the court rules in favor of the state and the ban on guns in churches is not lifted. The odds of guns being needed is very slim, and having people carry guns in their legally will not make them any safer.

For the record, I do not own a gun, nor do I plan on changing that. Growing up I never went hunting, although my dad and both my brothers would from time to time. I never saw any sense of getting out of a warm bed to go stand out in the cold woods.

Staying Focused.

Normally, staying focused on the job is a great thing. That way you can get the job done and not make any mistakes. However, when your job is robbing a convenience store, not paying attention to your surroundings can have consequences, as a young man in Snellville, Georgia found out the hard way. He walked up to the counter of a QT convenience store and demanded all their money. What he failed to notice was the police officer who was in the store. The store manager complied and put all his bills in a bag and handed it to the young man. Had he not been so focused on getting the money he might've noticed the manager was smiling the whole time he was putting the money in the bag. That should've been a tip off that things were not going to go well for him. While he was getting the money the officer moved to the door, where he greeted the young man upon completion of his task. Hopefully now the young man will have plenty of time to contemplate the error of his ways an try and honest profession when he gets out. You can watch the robbery here:

Now on DVD.

 There were three big new releases this week. Actually, calling the one that leads off a new release is misleading, since technically it is a re-release. There is a 3-D version, which is brand-new. That is the version that has been in theaters the last couple of weeks. The Lion King has brought in more money than Disney was anticipating and it probably will be in the theaters for another couple of weeks. The IMDB rates it an 8.3, which places it number 112 out of the top 250 movies rated. On its initial run the Lion King brought in $312,855,561. It has been re-released several times and now its total box office draw is $407,751,570. I have no plans of buying this since I already own it.

 Fast 5 is the fifth entry in the Fast and the Furious franchise. Personally I have never seen any of them, even though I am a fan of Vin Diesel. This movie also has the added attraction of another one of my favorite actors, Dwayne Johnson, but I just don't care for movies that are basically one long car chase. I know more than that happens in these, but I'll still pass. It is fairly popular, as shown by the 7.4 rating on the IMDB and it brought in $209,837,675 at the box office. I would say the odds are good of a sixth movie being made.

The other new release was Scream 4, another movie that I have no intention of seeing. I consider all the movies like the Scream saga nothing more then gruesome death movies. I don't mind scary movies. I just don't care for gory ones. The IMDB rates this a 6.5 and at the box office it brought in a somewhat disappointing $38,180,928. That was disappointing, considering they spent $40 million making it. Don't cry for them because it brought in more than that overseas so they did show a profit on it.

We are now hitting the time when the big summer blockbusters will be coming out on DVD. It was a little crazy last night at midnight, and I look for that to get worse as the weeks go by. I did buy one DVD this morning.

"Weird Al" Yankovic had a special on Comedy Central Saturday night which was titled Weird Al Yankovic Live: the Alpocalypse Tour. It is a concert film of one of his shows, and I really enjoyed it. If you are a "Weird Al" fan, I strongly recommend this.

Go Shop Somewhere Else.

 

I have worked retail for over 20 years. I know there are those customers that you are not going be able to please no matter what you do. The saying," the customer is always right" is not true. Even then, I would not knowingly go out of my way to insult a customer. A clothing store in Australia feels otherwise. The clothing chain GASP has decided to defend an employee who insulted a customer.

A young lady went there recently to look at bridesmaid dresses. When it became obvious that she wasn't going to buy anything the clerk told her, "Have fun shopping at Supre... I knew you were a joke the minute you walked in." Supre is an Australian clothing store known to carry larger size clothing. Of course, the young lady was outraged and wrote a letter to GASP. Imagine her surprise when she received a response to her letter basically telling her not to come back. You can read the full article here, which also contains both her letter and the companies response.

GASP seems to be unrepentant. In fact, they are reveling in the publicity and seem to think that they have done a great thing. They claim that sales are up tremendously. In one sense, that doesn't surprise me, but I believe it will turn out to be a very short-term success for them. I think more people will be outraged then will support them and that will turn into their down fall. There have been several customers that I would have to love to have told off, but that kind of behavior does not solve anything. That would have been reaching down to their level and I refuse to stoop that low. Another day, I will do a post on the theme the customer is not always right. Regardless of how I have felt in the past I would never have insulted a customer the way that that they did. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.