Showing posts with label Thanksgiving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thanksgiving. Show all posts

Thursday, November 28, 2013

3 Chords & the Truth: Save the last wing for me


Happy . . . Thanks . . . giving . . . from . . . W . . . K . . . R . . . P!

Or 3 Chords & the Truth. Whatever.

And as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

And as God is my witness, when the fambly starts to bug the crud out of you this long weekend, you will have a place to escape and chill with some fine music.

That place would be the Big Show. Naturally.

Just stay the hell out of the parking lot when you make your musical escape. The gobblers are hitting the pavement like sacks of wet cement. Oh, the humanity!

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Friday, November 23, 2012

People of Walmart do that thing they do


Look at this.

It must be Black Friday, and this must be the People of Walmart.
 
Yet Walmart management has a problem with its employees who demand a living wage, decent treatment and decent benefits to deal with the kind of mindless, consumerist barbarism the retail giant encourages every Black Friday. No, the retail giant hasn't cornered the market for this kind of mob mayhem, but there's a reason why you see so much of it at Walmart and other stores aspiring to Walmartishness.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., bloody well knows every single thing about its clientele, and management knows everything there is to know about the "downmarket" they target. Plenty of people at corporate know their sociology in addition to their retailing.

And management damned well knows what's likely to happen at "X" number of random locations on Black Friday, and I'd also wager it knows which "doorbusters"  are most likely to provoke the kind of mayhem you see here . . . and where.


NEVERTHELESS, the Bosses of Walmart are perfectly happy to send the Associates of Walmart into the violent maw of the People of Walmart, who were set off by the Marketing Strategy of Walmart . . . and pay them the Crappy Wages of Walmart for the dubious privilege. 
Oh but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free. . . .

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Sunday, November 27, 2011

WWFD (What would Freud do?)


Dear Sigmund,

I hope you will forgive me for going all Jung on you here, but I think these Black Friday ads for the Target discount chain somehow are an expression of one facet of Western civilization's collective unconscious, which, I am happy to report to you, seems to be linked somehow to your observation of our death drive -- our Thanatos syndrome, as it were.

I say these are an expression of our collective unconscious -- again, apologies for the Jungian theorizing -- because they seemingly are presented quite unwittingly by Madison Avenue as an inducement to self-annihilation. Ironically, they urge us into mortal consumerist combat with one another by exposing to us our unified (violent?) subconscious (a super Id, perhaps?) under the guise of humor. Look at what I mean here.



THE ACTRESS in these television commercials urges us on toward consumerist combat -- literal combat, given the statistical probability based upon years of observational data -- thus bringing us closer psychically and physically to the obliteration we unconsciously crave, in the service of wholly materialist objectives which at best serve only as a temporary distraction to our collective sense of alienation and despair.

I sense this may somehow be related to the Oedipus complex, though I am unsure of this.


FINALLY, as the Target advertisements urge us on toward unfulfilling aggression and, re: Durkheim, anomie, the TV spots simultaneously transcend the primary function and become pure metaphor for what we are as a society and what the consumerist imperative demands even more intently of us.

What I am wondering, Sigmund, is this: Do you suppose it may be that Thanatos, as it were, is one and the same as Jung's collective unconscious? Has it always been thus, or is this a new evolutionary stage that inevitably leads to extinction -- one quite random and pointless as the dinosaurs' by asteroid impact?

Can this be true, Sigmund? Alternatively, could the apparent self-destructive goal of evolution be a means of making room for the emergence of yet-higher life forms?


Yours in inquiry,

M. Favog

Saturday, November 26, 2011

It's the most wonderful time of the year


OK, America. Find the crazy people in these videos shot on Black Friday at various Wal-Marts across the country.


Who in these videos presents the real threat to public order?


Which videos show dangerous and disorderly mobs requiring robust police action in defense of life and property?


Who does get forcibly stopped by police in these videos?

Well played, America. We've made our country. Now we have to live in it.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

As God is my witness. . . .


I was going to post this earlier today, but some crazy SOB was throwing live turkeys out of a helicopter while I was in line for Black Friday at Target.

So, accept my apologies, excuse my concussion -- one of the things hit me -- and . . . "Happy . . . Thanks . . . giving . . . from . . . W . . . K . . . R . . . P!"

And from Revolution 21, too.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

If it's Thanksgiving. . . .


Some radio stations play "Alice's Restaurant" every Thanksgiving. Revolution 21's Blog for the People screens the "Turkeys Away" episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.

As God is our witness, we thought turkeys could fly.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Saturday, November 28, 2009

A bitter harvest of hunger


As we emerge from our Thanksgiving food comas and start thinking about throwing away the leftover leftovers. . . .

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy . . . Thanks . . . giving . . .
from . . . W . . . K . . . R . . . P. . . .


Something tells me this has become a Revolution 21 Thanksgiving tradition -- reveling once more in the sublimity that is the "Turkeys Away" episode of "WKRP in Cincinnati."

The show -- about the wacky characters and zany antics at a dysfunctional Top-40 station -- was a wonderful comedy that was wonderful because it was rooted just enough in reality. Back in the '70s and early '80s, we loved 'KRP because it was the Island of Misfit Toys with a microphone and transmitter.

I THINK it useful to reflect on "WKRP in Cincinnati" in light of where radio finds itself 30 years on. Let's ask just one question -- if there were a WKRP and it still was around for Thanksgiving 2009, what would we say about it?

Well, I think in most markets, we'd say it was the best station in town. We give thanks for many things this day, but that's not one of them.

Here's hoping your turkey wasn't one that hit the pavement like a bag of wet cement. Happy Thanksgiving.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

I'm thankful for. . . .

I could be thankful for world peace, financial prosperity, complete joy and happiness and an assured kick-ass future.

But I don't got none of that.

Apart from the usual suspects of what I ought to be thankful for -- which I am -- you have to grab a hold of what you can in the thankfulness department.

So I did.


I'm thankful for WD-40 and its new flip-up "Smart Straw" nozzle.

DO YOU HAVE any idea how many of those damned unattached "dumb straws" I've lost over the past quarter century or so?

Or how many times I've sprayed myself -- and everything else -- trying to insert the little unattached straw into the spray nozzle of a can of WD-40?

So I'm thankful for something as simple as not having to futz with that crap ever again. At least in the WD-40 lubrication universe.

GLORY, GLORY HALLELUJAH!!!

Like I said, you grab a hold of what you can in this age of uncertainty and suckiness.

Friday, November 21, 2008

THIS IS AN EX-TURKEY!!!

Sarah Palin thought "this was neat."

"You need a little bit of levity in this job," she said, after "pardoning" an Alaska turkey before Thanksgiving. "This was fun."

I thought it was fun, too . . . snort, guffaw. Really, do watch the video.

In a dissenting note, all but one of the turkeys saw nothing fun about any of it. And that bird probably now has a hell of a case of "survivor's guilt."

Note well, some Republicans think this woman ought to lead their party and, someday, be president. If that were to happen, also note she would be surrounding herself with staffers just as smart as the one who OK'd her doing a "fun" interview, with gobblers meeting their mechanized end as a backdrop.

In a battle of wits with the governor and her posse, my money's on the expired turkey.

I'm with Rod Dreher at Crunchy Con. If Sarah Palin didn't exist, the Monty Python gang would have had to conjure her up. Better yet, the real one writes her own material.