There once was a shampoo that had a conditioner built in. It was the perfect product for a person on the go. Someone who needed to wash their hair and not worry about leaving the conditioner to set in. It was my fathers brand of shampoo.

Pert has since decided, that having both shampoo and conditioner in one bottle wasn’t good enough, so now you can buy Pert Shampoo and Pert Conditioner as separate entities.

Why?

Why on earth would you split the two up? They were fine before, and they didn’t need to be tampered with. Who uses Pert shampoos and says…

“you know what? This ease of use of one bottle is just not working for me, I wish there was a way of making me spend more time and more money, using a shitty hair care product like Pert.”

It doesn’t make sense.

PERT PLUS HAIKU
I wash my hair once
It does no good because they
reformulated.

I’m not a go on business trips kind of guy. I’m not really in a go on business trips kind of industry. When I visit this sorted underworld of greying, slightly overweight white men who have shitty management jobs from Tacoma, I feel like an anthropologist discovering a new tribe in the congo, the tribe all require coffee in polite little thermoses and spreads of assorted danishes.

When did America become the playground of the mediocre?

These guys aren’t rich, but with their companies’ corporate credit cards in hand they stroll down restaurant rows everywhere spending the little guys christmas bonuses, like it was monopoly money. I have never seen such a disregard for money as when I visited Syracuse on my last visit. Groups of men, exchanging handshakes and employing small talk like it was going out of style.

INTERIOR of ‘Lemongrass’ Tai restaurant. The decor is a bland mixture of Shiva statues, iron gongs, and ceremonial Tai god masks. Three people stand around the cash register waiting for their table to become ready, as a Tai waitress politely ignores them.

WHITE MAN “Hello Bob, great to see you, how was the trip? This is my assistant Sue.”
OTHER WHITE MAN “Hello Phil, great flight, love those reclining chairs. Hello Sue.”
WHITE WOMAN “Hello Mr. Pekkus, great to meet you.”
WHITE MAN “Great.”
OTHER WHITE MAN “Very Great.”
WHITE WOMAN “Great.”

There is a culture in america of people who work for big corporations and companies alike, who through frugality out the window when it isn’t their money.

It’s the I’ll have the duck mentality that is bringing this country down.

If some companies behaved them selves when their out on the town they might not go Enron-up and have the decency to spend their money with more reserve. Who pays for the indiscretion of the business man on the business trip? Who pays for the bottles of wine that, supposedly, lubricate the deal?

Not I, say the lower rung, not I.

I’m off on a business trip to Syracuse. I’m a little nervous about the whole flying thing, especially after Columbia just crashed… then again, there is a big difference between an airplane and a space shuttle.

“I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again.”

Well, Wednesday actually, but it sound better if it’s “don’t know when I’ll be back again”

I don’t think the song would have did as well if it had been

“I’m leaving on a jet plane, I’ll be back on Wednesday.”

It just doesn’t have the same ring.
Wish me luck.

It seems that if you write a blog, you are more apt for something terrible to happen to you. Or at least report it to strangers. Whenever I turn on the blog, somebody is closing down shop because of something they said that hurt somebody’s feelings, something “happened” in their personal life, or because they are just plain exhausted from writing. Even I, Funtime Ben, have had a previous life on a previous blog that I chose to leave because of a past relationship. It seems that this blog idea is a double-edged sword. With your ability to affect people, you are also responsible for affecting them and yourself.

As I travel around the blog universe each morning, I follow links, and once every so often, a writer has gone missing. Their blog is the shell of what it once was. What happened? I wish there were a way to take a blog to a forensic laboratory to explain to us blog causes of death. “Oops, she talked about her husband’s skid marks. He couldn’t handle it, and she had to put the blog down.”

Where is the weblog graveyard?

I remember reading letters from people in the olden days and remembering lines months after. Reading letters was a far more powerful medium than spoken language. With the advent of e-mail, letters disappeared, and “snail mail” became a novelty reserved for birthday cards and bills. “Snail Mail” was permanent. You had the letter. Blogs feel like they will be there forever, and then (poof!) they’re gone.

Is it any wonder why the book is always better than the movie?

In blog land, Dooce lost her job and recently got stuck with a $1,926.10 bill for her 25GB throughput if that wasn’t enough. I can’t really comprehend how she could have used 25GB, but I don’t doubt that she did. Yet she hasn’t stopped. She continues to write and provide people with her writing. She has succeeded as a blog author. When she gets herself into a jam, her readers help her out. Now that is a community if I’ve ever heard of one.

As I continue to read Rebecca Blood’s book The Weblog Handbook, I am struck by the power these weblogs have. With seemingly minimal effort, you can publish your thoughts, feelings, rants, diary entries, questions, ideas, political views, findings, and history all with the press of a button. It is the most potent medium when considering the cost-to-influence ratio.

So, I would like to take this time to say that this website is an expression. It is a place where I can voice my ideas, concerns, opinions, fears, poems, photographs, essays, ramblings, political views, humor, stupidity, questions, love letters, grocery lists, and fortune cookie messages. I don’t mean to offend you, and if I do, I apologize, but I will continue to write this blog because I want to. I urge you to talk through my comment box and e-mail address. Disagree with me, tell me I’m wrong, and show me the light, but by all means, don’t read me and get upset without telling me publicly or privately that I offended you. I am a crass bastard who often bumbles over the line of decency… Please pardon my behavior.

“Democracy and violence can ill go together.
Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side.”
-Mohandas K. Gandhi

I don’t believe in war. I don’t think it ever makes anything better. Hate will only breed more hate. I know there are people in this country who are angry, I know there are people in this country who have lost loved ones, but that does not make killing people in other countries alright.

FACT We [the CIA] trained Osama Bin Laden to kill.

FACT We [the United States Government] gave weapons to Iraq.

We have tried over and over to fix the problems in the middle east with violence, and all it does is bring us more violence. What if we, instead of waging war, listened to the people of the middle east and heard there complaints with our foreign policy. What if for once we put down our arms and fought a battle with love and compassion?

“Hatred ever kills, love never dies; such is the vast difference between the two.
What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.”
-Mohandas K. Gandhi

I ask you, please do not support this administration and it’s continued policy of intolerance of people throughout the world, if you don’t agree with it. Let’s show the world that we are better than the terrorists. We don’t need to kill others to show our strength. We are a county of progressive minded citizens, now let’s start acting like it.

Please take out a moment of your day to read over Not In Our Name.
True Majority