January 26th, 2009: "Carcasses and Brotherly Love"

[Citi]

I based "Pam" off of Kitty from "That 70's Show" simply because the way Pam goes around the bend with excitement over her promotion reminded me of her. Plus that lady always cracks me up whenever I catch the show in repeats. Something in me tells me that if she were a real person she'd be just as likely to hack her family to bits one morning as she would be to cook them breakfast... just this side of coo coo land.

So my little sister, who has been very nice to me these last few months (but still talks to me like I'm one of her 2-4 year old children despite the fact that I'm 3 years older than her) was mad that I outed her love of crappy Disney Channel shows on Twitter the other day. Sorry kiddo. Get your own public pulpit and you can tell people about how I used to cry when our mother made us go to Grandma's house.

Personally I think it's the moral responsibility of older siblings everywhere to torture their younger brothers and sisters. Everyone knows that the first child is the one saddled with all the responsibility, all the restrictive bed times and curfews and lord knows we get saddled with all the crappy "health food" our parents read about or saw on TV. Once the second, third and whatever number child comes along the parents are letting them stay up half the night and eat bugs off the floor if they want to. I don't think it's that they care any less, it's just that one kid is exhausting. Add more and your exhaustion increases exponentially.

When you start budgeting your battles in life and you consider the fact that your middle child wants to start dating two years before the older one was allowed to; well most parents consider it and decide that after 15 years or so they would really like a night off to themselves, and if that means your daughter has to play tonsil hockey with the Neidermeyer boy from down the street well then we've all sacrificed quite a bit to get to where we are and she can just take one for the team.

Older siblings blaze the trails that make life oh so much more pleasurable for those that follow. The lifelong pain and humiliation that we inflict upon them is simply the toll we exact to travel on our roads. It's pricey but it still beats 4X4-ing it through the woods on your own.

It seems Circuit City is going out of business. Shoppers (vultures) determined to make a meal of the slowly dying retailer are finding the deals hard to believe. In that no one can believe that they are trying to charge this much and still claim to be discounting.

I've had a low opinion of the store for a long time, and I see them going out of business as a foregone conclusion. They simply tried to charge too much for everything. You could always get better deals elsewhere and they tried to set themselves up as this high class version of a discount electronics dealer and it just didn't fly. Bad customer service; confused or ignorant staff, I never had a positive shopping experience in the store and I'm sad to say I tried more times than they deserved. At least Best Buy doesn't try and pass off the ditzy teenagers they employ as electronics experts. Those kids are as lost as I am when I walk in there and I like that better than having a slightly older fellow giving me advice as if he were the Confucius of electronics in order to sell me the most expensive version of whatever the heck it is he thinks I'll buy when in reality he doesn't even fully understand what it is I'm looking for.

So good riddance to bad rubbish. I'm no Best Buy fan boy. I tend to be suspicious of any big chains that run smaller businesses into the ground simply because they can buy in bulk and have billionaire investors. I think it offends the very idea of a fair market through competition. But you have to give them credit that they have found the sweet spot in their particular market and business model.

In other economic news, "Hey Man, You Got A Second So I Can Fire You?" Man The Onion cracks me up.

I hope you had a great weekend. Glad to see you back. I'm going to mention this a few more times, but just to let everyone know, some of us from Remedial Comics will be wandering around NY Comic Con next month (Feb 6-8) and I hope to see you there. We aren't selling anything but we'll be giving out some small stuff, mostly just checking out the scene. It should be a good time.

Have a great day and I'll see you on Wednesday.

They were all impressed with your halston dress
And the people that you knew at Elaine's
And the story of your latest success
Kept 'em so entertained

Big Shot by Billy Joel off of the album 52nd Street