The Learning Channel - really?

I saw on the news yesterday where Lowe's pulled their ads from the TLC show "All-American Muslim" after pressure from a Florida-based evangelical Christian association. I don't know what irritates me more - pulling the ad because a fringe hate group signed petitions or that the show exists to begin with. TLC used to mean The Learning Channel but it should be renamed "WTF Channel". If you look at their past and current show lineup, you have to wonder what they are trying to teach us. They are the ones who brought us "Jon and Kate plus 8" and "19 Kids and Counting". These are two of the most dysfunctional families ever. Throw in the extreme stuff like hoarding, tattoos, couponing, and food addictions and you have something a little more than legitimate learning. TLC seems to focus on every different, oddball, or downright freaky human condition. If you want to learn about dwarfism, being pregnant while not knowing it for the whole 9 months, or how not to dress shitty, this channel is for you. I, for one, have never met a pregnant woman who didn't know she was pregnant. I have to admit that I have been sucked into a few of these shows. It's like slowing down and gawking at a car wreck. It's the morbid curiosity we are wired with. All of the "human interest" channels like A&E and The History Channel have more informative shows than TLC, although a few weirdos do sneak in like "Lady Hoggers", "Billy the Exterminator", or the biggest freak of them all, "Dog the Bounty Hunter". I wish someone would beat the crap out of him! One good thing about all of these cable channels is that it gives us something else to watch instead of the network garbage about dancing with stars, singing with criminals, dancing with criminals, or break-dancing on national TV with your drinking beer in the garage buddies.

Why I disagree with CUEE

As anyone from Valdosta and Lowndes County already knows, the CUEE is an organization started by the local Chamber of Commerce and various interested parties to get a referendum on the November 8, 2011 ballot to consolidate the city and county school systems. They claim that, by combining the school systems, that the new school system will produce smarter students more prepared "to compete on a global level to achieve success". Basically what they are looking for is a smarter student for their minimum wage jobs. They don't have any specific details on exactly how to produce smarter students. Their plan is to force everyone together to come up with a better plan than what there is now. There are numerous reasons why this stinks like dead fish.

First, the underlying motive is as I said. The CUEE isn't necessarily looking to increase test scores and graduation rates. They want a more highly educated worker bee. They say they want to be able to attract more higher paying jobs to the area. The problem is two-fold. Jobs have come to the area. Unfortunately, most of them are low paying warehouse jobs. These companies relocated to Valdosta because of the ability to pay lower wages. There also is no guarantee that our students would get those jobs. Valdosta is a Metropolitan Statistical Area. That means that the labor pool around here consists of several cities and counties. That gives us less control over the education of our worker bees. Some of the board members of the CUEE don't even have kids in public schools. Several of them are retired and don't work anyway. One even sold his company, subsequently putting his former employees out of work. How's that for loyalty?

Second, what the CUEE is proposing is basically to force the city and county together as one school system. Simply put, the city school system would disappear and be absorbed into the county school system. Now, the city schools are against it. The county schools are against it. The mayor and city council are against it. As a matter of fact, I haven't talked to anyone who is for it. I can't figure out where they got 7,100 signatures on a petition. That's roughly 25% of the registered voters. One would think that 25% of the time, I would bump into a consolidation supporter. But I haven't. Consolidation would not save any money. You can't cut duplicate positions because you are doubling the total number of students. Classes are already at very high per capita levels, thanks to budget cuts. It would take years to sort out the confusion over who was in charge of what. Don't think for a minute that it would be all warm and fuzzy. When HB 489 required the city and county to combine their Parks and Recreation departments, it took a state mandated mediator to force them to come to a consensus! This is way bigger than that. What do you suppose the more than 17,000 students are going to do while the fight rages on? Consolidation will affect them the most, with the confusion over which teaching methods are best and who is in charge. These kids do good to get along at the annual football clash. Not that they're bad. but this rivalry has been around for 45 years. The inevitable desire by some city dwellers to get their kids into predominantly white schools will create a nightmare in paperwork. There is this misconception that that city schools are bad because they are predominantly black. That's not necessarily true. It's just a stigma. An interesting note is that while Lowndes schools have a higher graduation percent, they also have a higher dropout rate. What really pisses me off is that recently the CUEE decided to make it a racial issue. Their claim now is a vote against consolidation is a vote for segregation. That crap stopped in the 1960's. Quit trying to make it a race thing.

I think, if you want to fix the schools, Get rid of No Child Left Behind! NCLB has teachers teaching for CRCT testing and not for the 3 R's. I know that the learning atmosphere is different now but 2 plus 2 still equals 4. Unfortunately, the attention deficit disorder brought on by video games and cartoons has caused teachers to need to come up with alternate methods of teaching to capture that fleeting attention span. Some teachers are successful, some aren't.


By the way, I registered to vote just to be able to vote against consolidation.

Immigration in Georgia

I think our new governor is a complete idiot! Pushing through an immigration law that mimics several others that have been blocked by federal judges is stupid. Shooting yourself in the foot is one thing, but he is shooting all of us in the foot, too. Between the farm workers and the construction crews, Nathan Deal has managed to force 60% of them to flee the state. Yes, there is still some construction going on, but this law will more than double framing costs, which is opposite of what the construction industry needs. I do need to point out that the construction industry is a victim of the recession, not an instigator. You can blame the big mortgage companies. On the farm front, between ripe produce rotting in the field and the drought, farmers are getting a double kick in the nuts. The survey being done by the Georgia Department of Agriculture has found that there are about 11,000 positions that need to be filled. Nathan Deal's solution? Georgia has 100,000 people on probation. 8000 of them live in farm country. 2000 of them are unemployed. Let them work the fields! Now, I don't know about you but, usually those who are on probation and unemployed are typically not motivated too much to work anywhere, much less a tomato field in 115° heat. How about homeless people? Are they next? There are over 20,000 homeless in Georgia. Maybe Deal will round them up to go work the fields! Some of them would make more money sitting on a street corner holding a cardboard sign. I know we need to come up with a solution to the immigration issue, but the patchwork approach by our state and federal government isn't working. The first line of defense is at those states bordering Mexico. That's where the federal focus should be. Maybe we could get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, where we accomplished our main goals, and start taking out the Mexican cartels, which are basically taking over Mexico.

Extreme couponing is nuts!!

I've been sucked into watching the "Extreme Couponing" show a few times which, by the way, usually is on before or after one of those hoarding shows. Most of the people featured started couponing after some sort of financial distress (Thank you, recession!). They go buy hundreds of dollars worth of groceries and pay eight bucks for it. After seeing a few of these shows, all sorts of questions pop in my head. Usually, they have a basement or garage full of these groceries and some have shelf units scattered throughout the house in every available spot. It kind of looks like the hoarding shows, only neater and cleaner. Why would you need 123 bottles of mustard? The first indicator of erratic behavior is the lengths they go to in getting the coupons. Sitting around the table clipping coupons is one thing, but digging through dumpsters or getting the leftover Sunday paper inserts from the newspaper office is extreme. Some actually pay to have boxes of coupons shipped to them from companies who specialize in collecting them. It seems that the average time spent each week accumulating these coupons is 35 to 40 hours. Maybe having a job would be better use of their time. 400 bottles of Wisk in your closet won't pay the electric bill unless you sell them on Craigslist! Couponers take advantage of stores doubling and tripling coupons to get the item cost down to near nothing. What irritates me is that they will clear a shelf of an item on sale whether they need it or not because it works out to being free. I guess it's just too bad for someone else who wanted to buy the sale item. Some of the stuff the cameras show in their houses have expiration dates. How will you eat 100 boxes of cereal before they go bad? One or two of the people featured did take their excess and donate it to food banks. One guy bought a whole pallet of Total cereal on sale. I don't know how he got the store to order it ahead of time. Usually the sale is for whatever they have in stock and when it's gone, that's it. He kept a few boxes and gave the rest to the food bank, but he was one of the few. Most of them keep all they get. The show doesn't really explain whether or not they continue buying a particular item after they just bought 100 of them but that's TV for you. Kind of like Yahoo! news articles. Let's leave out part of the story. Anyway, there has to be an underlying psychological problem driving this. It's more than the thrill of the chase. Since there are hoarding shows adjacent to these shows, when you watch one, you can see the similarities of dysfunction.

Watching HGTV

We like watching HGTV just so we can sit there criticizing other people's behavior, opinion, and sense of style. Some of them crack me up. They will walk through a bedroom and comment on how small it is when it is already bigger than what they currently live in. Another sticking point is the whole "2 sinks in the bathroom" deal. I don't think I have ever lived in a house with 2 sinks in 1 bathroom. Whirlpool bathtubs or "spa tubs" as they are called, apparently are another big wish list item. Never had one. I would think it would take forever to fill up and just be a big waste. The last one I saw was being used to store excess clothing! People complain about traffic noise, wallpaper, size of yard, and amount of renovation needed all the time. The one that gets me the most is the guy having to fix or renovate something and complaining about it. Now, in all fairness, I think remodeling is a hobby. I don't know what these guys would be doing if they didn't have to paint, replace, or otherwise change something in the house. What would you do? Watch TV? Play golf? Xbox? I guess everyone has their own take on this.

We watched a "House Hunters" episode last night where the couple was downsizing because the guy had lost his job in banking. Judging by some of his comments, he must have been in construction at some time because he was always commenting on how he would have to re-do something. They had 4 kids. They were looking for a 5 bedroom house with a budget of $400k. That doesn't sound much like downsizing to me! They were looking at 4000 sq ft houses with granite counter tops and all the bells and whistles. I did find out that they were moving out of a 7500 sq ft house so I guess you could call it downsizing.

The House Hunter Internationals shows are even more irritating. It amazes me how someone would want to buy a house 6000 miles away that you would have to fly to in order to get there. How much does it cost to fly 4 people from Dublin, Ireland to Rio once a month? I can't believe how small some of the houses and apartments are in Europe. No wonder they are always sitting outside a cafe somewhere! They can't fit in the house. We apparently have it made in the US with big rooms and actual yards. (disclaimer: I never lived in a densely populated urban area - you know - like big cities)

I think HGTV played a large role in the housing crash. They had all these shows about flipping houses and appraising houses to see how much equity one could borrow against for renovations, additions, or new boats. Even after the crash, they still have people buying houses with no money down. The ones that piss me off the most are those who consistently low-ball houses and then can't understand why they didn't get the house. I had someone low-ball me once and I told my realtor that the guy could kiss my ass and that I wouldn't sell him the house, no matter what. Since selling the house was in my realtor's best interest, he smoothed things over and I did sell the guy the house but he was still an asshole!

As seen on TV ....

Shake weights are weird. I wonder if the inventor is laughing his ass off when watching the commercials. It's an odd motion unless you spank the monkey regularly. Saturday Night Live has spoofed it but if you want to know the real reason for Shake Weights, watch the Southpark episode about them.


Charlie Sheen has finally gone officially crazy! I guess years of alcohol and hooker/strippers will do that to you. His rants on various talk shows have revealed just how crazy he is. He is so delusional about his importance and I get the impression that he actually believes all the bullshit he spouts. The talk shows are just having him on as a guest to see if he steps in more crap. I can't believe there are college students wanting him to do their graduation speech. Doesn't say much for college, does it? I'm glad to see that Warner fired him, although it sure took them about a week longer than it would have taken me!


Gas prices are starting to piss me off. The current runup in prices is being blamed on Libya. The rumors of $4 gas by Memorial Day are circulating. The news media seems to forget that, about a month ago, there was a report of $4 gas because the Saudi oil production volume had peaked and would continually go down as they deplete their resources. Our government is debating on releasing some of the Strategic Oil Reserve product to stabilize prices. The numbers I saw were that we have about 730 million barrels in reserve, but we use 20 million barrels a day. Our whole reserve would only last 36 days or so. That wouldn't do much good and we would just have to replace it with higher priced oil, which would bite us on the ass at a later date. Too bad we as consumers can't add a fuel surcharge like everyone else does!

Who wants to keep their job?

I was going to write a blog about employment opportunities ( or the lack thereof) last year, but decided not to at the time. Recent events and news have changed my mind for me. I read an article yesterday dealing with the fact that our wages have actually gone down in the past 20 years when you factor in inflation and loss of benefits and job security. Employers are in the catbird seat when it comes to hiring decisions and payroll amounts. It seems their whole attitude is one of " be glad you have a job and oh yeah, let me shit on you some more". Unless you have some serious parchment on the wall and the skills most sought after in a particular business, you are shit out of luck. There is always someone younger and hungrier than you these days. In my case, with no college and only 30 years experience in my field, it is tough to find anything better because employers know that I know more than they do so they wouldn't be able to bullshit me like a more inexperienced younger person. Also, with so much reliance on computers to solve their business problems, experience and intuition are not as important anymore. That's a scary thought in the years to come! Maybe nothing will fall down! I watched the recent events in Wisconsin, which amounts to union-busting and at first, I thought "Who needs unions now?" I have since realized that maybe we still need them since employers seem to be hell-bent on taking away most worker rights in the name of budget cutting. Of course, that only pertains to the jobs they are keeping in the US, not those going to India. A little more than 2 years ago, I took a big cut in pay and hours. Things continue to get worse. In the name of "tightening the proverbial belt", my sidekick worked his last day today. Now, I have to do his job and mine for the same pay. As slow as it is, it isn't a problem yet, but any bump in orders will change that. I will be curious to see how well this works out as there is no more room to cut. A one employee company doesn't have many options. It's interesting that production is up, even though the working population is down. Apparently, everyone is working harder for less, just to keep from being replaced by the burgeoning unemployed. I hope that things turn around to the point that we as employees can, at some point, do our own arm-twisting!