An open letter to grocery store patrons

Understand, the complaints I have about folks at the grocery store are not fundamentally different than the complaints I have about people in general. Some of the specifics are unique to my weekly sojourn to the cramped aisles, but in general, there's nothing that happens here that doesn't happen anywhere else. The thing is, at least in my case, the annoyance I experience at the grocery store in the most consistent. It's every week. It's not uncommon for me to drive to or from work and not encounter some total jackass driver along my route. It's not uncommon for me to go through a work day without getting some question, request, whatever, that makes me shake my head and wonder if some people ever think. It's not uncommon for me to go through the day and not encounter some person displaying complete selfishness and a total disregard for how his/her own actions affect others. But I can not make my weekly trip to the grocery store without some of you exhibiting some of the stupidity I'm about to describe.

First of all, let me get to a parking spot. I understand that, in order for you to tote your South Beach Diet pizzas and fat free ranch dressing to your car, you need to walk in generally the same space in which I drive. Here's the thing, though - you don't need to walk down the middle of the path. Cars do not jump out and bite. I promise you, you will not find a single documented case of anyone being injured in such a manner. When you walk down the middle, I'm stuck driving at the speed you're moving. Or, more accurately, the speed of your slow-ass kid who, by this point, is invariably pouting and dragging because the register-side tantrum did not produce the candy bar (s)he was begging (...and crying... and screaming) for --- if I'm not having to dodge the little freakin' pinball, due to the sugar rush because you gave in and ponied up for a Zagnut. I know this is a tough concept for you all to grasp, but we are sharing this space. More on that later.

OK, it's later. I'm inside the store now, and though you were outside filling up durn near 15% of the cargo space in your Expedition in the last paragraph, you're now magically inside the store with me. I know you can't comprehend such a thing. Don't forget, I'm the one who pointed out that you don't grasp the much simpler concept of sharing space just a handful of sentences ago. (And yes, I know that you already forgot.) Notice how, when you're walking down the aisle, there's stuff on both the right and the left that's pretty close to you? That's because the aisles are not extremely wide. So, when you park your cart right smack dab in the middle, you're not leaving room for anyone to get past you. There are other people here, you know. (Do you?) And some of us would like to go about our task without having to work around the meeting of your family's Permanent Sub-Committee on Rotelle vs. Farfalle. And if, by some miracle, some other shopper does manage to stop a cart over to one side of the aisle, do you think you could manage to stop your cart somewhere other than right freaking next to it?!? I realize that may require something along the lines of 5 extra steps to stop your cart, a like number to return to the product of your choice, then 5 extra yet again to return to your cart. You can count it as a workout. It's really not a very difficult concept that I'm trying to put across here. Leave room for people to move.

Here's the other thing (and again, it's not like this only happens at the grocery store, but I find it to be a particular annoyance there): your children are idiots. That, in and of itself, is not your fault. It's standard. All children are idiots. I was, you were, even Stephen Hawking was for at least the first decade (of his life, not the first ten years after the Big Bang). What is your fault is when you don't take that fact into account and act appropriately. Or, to put it more simply, pay some goddamn attention to your kids. In fact, not only should you pay some attention, you should exert some control. I realize this is a completely foreign concept to many of you, but I have done some extensive research on the subject, and I am able, from an authoritative standing, to assure you that throughout history and across cultures, it has not been out of the ordinary for parents to set and maintain appropriate boundaries for their children's behavior. Some folks have been blessed with such parental dexterity, they have managed multiple sets of boundaries - a more liberal one instituted amongst family and close friends, and a stricter one in place when one is in public. I can also speak from a standpoint of knowledge when I tell you that, left to their own devices, your idiot kids will be a complete nuisance: getting in the way of people's carts, getting in the way of people trying to get items off the shelves, running, yelling, dropping (or throwing) things, and for crying out glaven, I don't even want to think about what happens when they get around the free sample display unattended. We're not at a playground, and we're not at your house. We are out in public at a place of business, and it is not at all appropriate for you to let your little howler monkeys and screech owls behave as if they were in one of the aforementioned locations.

I realize that this is a lost cause. I almost said that I'm fighting a losing battle, but I'm not really fighting. It's pointless. The vast majority of you are too far gone. I've said my piece, and gotten it off my chest, which is all I really wanted. And you know what? I feel a little better for having done so.




Until Saturday.

Forget "Am I my brother's keeper?"

How 'bout, "Am I my brother?" The good folks at Experian seemed to think so.

I got my free copy of my credit report from each of the 3 bureaus, like I do every year. I should have known right away there'd be trouble. When you request them online, for each bureau, one of the security features - to ensure you're who you say you are and are requesting your own report - is to ask you to correctly provide the monthly payment from one of the items on your report. The item Experian asked me about was a mortgage from some bank or other, opened in 2003, I think it was. It was not my mortgage bank. I didn't have a mortgage till 2006. Not good. If you don't give the right answers online, they make you request a paper report, which I got some time later.

It listed all of my information. It also listed what appeared to be all of my brother's information. Our first names are similar. I can kind of, sort of see what happened. Sort of. Every item on the report has a name and an address attached to it. You would think... at least I would think... that their information system would be able to recognize that there could be a definite line of demarcation, on one side of which would be a group of items with all of his name variations, all of his address history and his SSN, and on the other side of which would be a group of items with all of my name variations, all of my address history and my SSN. It took me just a couple of minutes to figure out manually, having to flip through 14 or so pages of their report.

I would have hoped that an organization that can have so much influence over our lives, dictating what credit is available to us and at what price, would have an information system that would allow them to be a little more careful than that. I told them as much, not in those exact words, in my letter to them in which I disputed the items on the report that were not mine. I also advised my brother that he should pull his report and dispute any items that weren't his (I was assuming all of my information would be on his report as well). I figured if there were 2 disputes - mine saying all of his stuff was wrong, and his saying all of my stuff was wrong - maybe they'd get the hint.

Fortunately, with or without his input, they figured it out in short order. They deleted all of his items from my report. I'll be interested to see what shows up next year.

I'm also quite disturbed by the whole thing. These bureaus have quite a bit of control over our lives. I fortunately had no difficulty in fixing my problem, but what if they hadn't done it so quickly or easily? We bought a car recently, with a loan. Fortunately, the lending bank pulled a report that didn't have all the errors (tho another bank shortly afterward sent us a letter saying they couldn't extend us a car loan because I have too much outstanding credit). I can't help but wonder how many people don't look at all 3 reports every year, and what errors might be on some of their reports. How many are denied credit, or pay more in interest than the otherwise would, because of those errors?

Beyond the Palin

I don't quite get it.

As best as I can figure, I can come up with 3 scenarios that would lead to John McCain picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, and none of the really make sense.

I've thought for a long time that he would pick a woman. Pretty much as soon as it was clear that Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee, I figured McCain would pick a woman. While a lot of people were caught up in the notion that Obama might pick Hillary as his running mate, I knew that wouldn't happen. Despite that fact that her more vocal supports contended (for some other reason that I can't fathom) that the rules that have governed primary campaigns since there have been primary campaigns, and that - despite losing the contest - she had somehow earned and deserved to be named the VP nominee, I was well aware that she would not be the pick. And those vocal supporters went out of their way to make sure we'd all know that they weren't happy about it. Clearly they were ready to be wooed away from voting for Obama. It wasn't like I was particularly psychic in guessing he would pick a woman to that precise end. Here's where it breaks down. Is Sarah Palin the woman you pick to woo disaffected Hillary voters? Did he really think these people would flock to vote for a ticket with an unqualified, untested, anti-choice, anti-equal-pay, pro-drill-every-damn-where candidate who was touted as someone who would appease the social conservatives who are leery of McCain? Is his campaign really that inept? One must admit that quite possibly the answer is a resounding yes. Let's not forget that, on the same day that Barack Obama gave a speech in front of 200,000 cheering, American-flag-waving (and when's the last time we saw that overseas... I mean, without said flags being on fire) people in a public square in Berlin, John McCain held a campaign event in front of what may well have been dozens of people at a sausage restaurant in the German neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio. (I am not kidding.)

I suppose it's possible that he thinks she's the best choice for the role. From what I've heard, it appears that he only ever met with her a couple of times before offering her the position last Thursday. She or he apparently said that, at first meeting, they were "soulmates." (That was the word that the radio people kept using today, it seemed like it was a direct quote.) Anyone else have memories of Dubya telling us he looked into Vlad Putin's eyes and saw his soul, saw that he was a good man? Anyone else concerned about having another President who, from all appearances, makes important decisions without the employment of any sort of thought process?

Lastly, I think it might well be the case that he was told by the G.O.P.owers That Be that they know he's not going to win the election, and they didn't want him to "waste" a strong candidate on a losing campaign. The line they're using is that her brief experience as a governor is better preparation than either Obama's or Biden's strictly legislative experience. (If that's true, then she's more qualified than her running mate, though I haven't yet heard a Republican mouthpiece mention that yet.) Now, if that's true, then some of the other people we were hearing about as possible running mates - Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty for example - are much better-qualified than the one-time Miss Alaska Runner-Up. I think it would make sense, if the party powers want to protect either or both for 2012, that they would not want them to be part of what they might be seeing as the inevitable debacle. One thing that would seem to go against that is the fact that, in all the polls I'm hearing about, the race is very close - usually right around 5 percentage points. It doesn't seem like a situation where the Republicans would be throwing in the towel.

So I'm back to where I started. It doesn't make any sense to me. He can't think this is going to help him win.

Can he?