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Gooood morning, Thursday throttle jockeys! Thanks for tuning in—or clicking on—for your daily dose o’ ‘dog!
Roads are low-perspiration today… hell, they’re no sweat at all.
Today is National 7-Eleven day… this means that you can go to 7-Eleven and get a free Slurpee. Now, the free one is a small-sized one. However, as I understand it, if you join the 7-Eleven rewards club, and download the free app, when you get your free Slurpee, you will then get a coupon for another free Slurpee—of any size!—to be used on another day. Now, I’m only telling you what I’ve read… if for some reason this doesn’t work out, don’t come slurping to me for a free Slurpee.
Hopefully, you can find a 7-Eleven… I mean, there are only 68,268 of them! Really! Man… if I had a nickel for every 7-Eleven out there… I’d be able to pay for my own Slurpee!
Make sure you go to a legit 7-Eleven, though… don’t fall for the knock-off, “7-Even.” The closest thing they even have to a Slurpee is the drunk clerk whose name is “Slurree.”
Be advised, though: Today I learned that “ice cream licking” is apparently now a “thing.” I know, it’s always been a thing, but NOW it’s a thing with its own hashtag (whatever that means) and its own challenge. It’s now a thing to lick the ice cream… AND THEN PUT IT BACK IN THE COOLER AT THE STORE, so somebody else gets to take the nasty home, and feed it to their family. That girl who did it to the Blue Bell ice cream in Texas is even being “credited” with “pioneering” this totally hilarious thing. (I guess it’s “totally hilarious” because it took such clever wit to invent such a cerebral prank.) Really… I am not making this up. It’s actually become a, uhhh, ‘viral’ challenge on the Internet: To lick the ice cream, put it back… and make sure it’s on video for the world to see. So, see, unless an ice cream carton is sealed with a plastic collar or some such thing, it’s not going in my shopping cart. Hell, I’m not sure if any food product that can be accessed by others will be on my list, unless I can scrub it when I get home. Apples, oranges… produce… sure, those can be scrubbed, and they should be anyhow. But ice cream? Donuts? Bin food? Fresh bakery items? I just now put those on my “never-buy-again” list, thanks to a-holes who see this behavior as good fun. I don’t want what’s in THEIR mouth, to go inside of MY mouth. I see them as sick, nasty jackwads. Oh, and thanks again, Internet!
We lost Rip Torn… he passed away on Tuesday. I’ll bet you did not know that he served in the United States Army!
You may recall, though, that in 2010, he was arrested for breaking into a bank in Connecticut. It turns out that he was exceedingly intoxicated and thought the bank was his home. He was just trying to get home but picked the wrong place. Oops. Talk about Ripped on rum… Torn up on tequila.
The other day in the car, one of our teenage charges was sullenly lamenting the prediction that at the house we were headed to, she’d be asked the “usual” barrage of boring questions about how she’s been, what she’s been up to, how’s school, and so forth. She was quite bugged before we even arrived. I told her not to worry: she was just being pre annoyed.
Megan Rapinoe is that soccer player who is outraged at everything. I mean, that dude is MAD… I’ve compiled a list of the things Mega-mad is currently crusading against, angry at, throwing shade at, taking a bold and brave stand against:
Wait, hold the phone: that list is too long. Instead, here’s a list of things Raging Rap’s NOT raving lunatic mad over:
—A pair of wool socks
—Wooden nickels
—AOC… duh
—Ice cream licking
—Three species of birds
—Gender-neutral, non-dominant-hand-specific coffee cups
Other than that, expect to see demonstrations, tantrums, calls to action, boycotts, and super-angry Tweets about anything not on that list.
I recently held a yard sale. By “sale,” I can describe it as surely offering the very best prices any yard saler will find: FREE! Yup… that’s how I roll. Oh, it’s not because I’m a philanthropist, or that I’m generous… it stems from chronic laziness, and from my disdain (and related weak skills) at the art of negotiation, or haggling, or whatever you’d like to call the miserable experience of arguing with a perfect stranger in order to rip him off as much as possible. I don’t want to bother with tending the store all day, price-tagging things, NEGOTIATING… and the prospect of somebody returning later with a defective item is a weird phobia I have. Hell, I’d probably give ’em three times their money back: It’s highly possible, nay LIKELY, that if I were to sell items for money, I could end up having less money than I started with. However, with items priced at “free,” I feel confident that even IF somebody were to return the item, even if I offered them TEN times what they’d paid for it, I would still remain only as broke as I was that very morning.
Nope… for me, it’s easier to set out the goods and place a big sign out in front that reads, “FREE.” Simple enough, easy enough. By the end of the day, I typically have very little merchandise remaining, and that can usually fit in my trash cans. Heck, it’s the most worthless 10% of the stuff I was already giving away for free… it’s not worth much.
But, dang it… it turns out, even a FREE yard sale has difficulties.
Last weekend, one item I set out there was a child’s bedroom set… really, this was a flagship item, the nicest thing I had to offer. It included a “princess” bed set, in multiple components. I dutifully set all of the components out there, and while I didn’t actually assemble the bed, it was all there, and even arranged to display the full set, all of the components, even the hardware required for assembly. Until somebody came along and took ONE component of the bed set. ONE. Of course, this renders the entire rest of the set essentially worthless… ’cause who wants a bedroom set that cannot be assembled because it’s missing ONE critical piece? So… the entire rest of the set found no takers.
Another issue I face is the damn sign. You see, I’ve held these sales a number of times over the years, and have had to replace the “FREE” sign a number of times. Apparently, there are quite a few people out there who (A) can’t find much stuff that they really want, but (B) take the “FREE” sign quite literally, and thus, quite literally take the “FREE” sign. I guess my rectangular piece of plywood with a single spray-painted word is just the one thing they really want.
All’s well that ends well, I suppose. I got a lot of house back and a bunch of people out there got free stuff that they might need and want. Now, I am free to peruse QVC and Amazon and other yard sales and fill my garage up with DIFFERENT stuff!
That’s it for today’s random incarnation of thoughts and comments about today. Friday will soon avail itself for this same treatment in less time than it takes to make a U.S. Women’s Soccer player angry!