My arrival at the hub of all things that are wrong in the commercial world was uneventful: I scored a decent parking space, no one tried to run me over as I crossed the raceway that fronts the store, and there was a nice stack of carry baskets to hand as I entered. My feeling that I might escape undamaged began to fade a bit, however–not long after I located and entered the aisle labeled “beverages.”

Lemonade is a beverage, isn’t it? For that matter, so is soda, beer, bottled water, and tomato juice. You wouldn’t have known it from the contents of this misleadingly-labeled aisle. From what I could see it was stocked with only the weird to-drink stuff nobody wanted–what the hell is a “new age beverage,” anyway?

Okay, I reasoned, this is clearly not meant to be easy. First I need to figure out what KIND of beverage they believe lemonade is, and look for it in an aisle associated with that sort of product. Hmm…it’s mostly water, but there is the “bottled water” aisle and no joy. Juice! It’s mostly lemon juice. Hie, there’s the juice aisle!

Strike two–no, make that strike three, since I already tried the water-that-isn’t-a-beverage aisle. Oh, they had juice of every kind there, make no mistake. They also had two different kinds of “organic” lemonade, but neither variety was on the target list.

This was starting to become puzzling, indeed–then I recalled the few times I’d ever made lemonade it was from a frozen concentrate. Frozen stuff is over there, let’s check it out!

The brands I was supposed to choose from, I soon discovered, don’t come in a frozen version. Strike four, and I had entered unknown realms.

I’d now been on the hunt for a ridiculous length of time–especially for what was supposed to be a side trip–and I should have been home long ago. I decided I wasn’t going to leave empty-handed, and that organic stuff was starting to look pretty good–hey, any lemonade in a storm! The quickest route back to the juice section, conveniently enough, would pass through the aisle of beer-that-isn’t-a-beverage. It was a hard thing to swallow, but I steeled myself for the ordeal. As I strolled happily past the stacks of lovely Saranac and Guinness and other beer-that-isn’t-a-beverage that also isn’t crappy-fizzy-yellow-pisswater-that-passes-for-beer-in-America, I happened to glance to my right.

Orange juice in a refrigerated cabinet. Grapefruit juice, too. Could it possibly be?

YES! There, snuggled up against the cheeses and mocking me for daring think it might have been anywhere else, was the very brand of lemonade I’d been sent to procure! So this was the place for drink-that-is-mostly-juice-that-isn’t-a-beverage-that-needs-refrigeration.

How silly of me not to have known all along.

It took a friend today, and the hurt’s still raw, and there’s nothing really to do about it but get over it. Eventually.

Jerry was a great guy. The harder you broke his balls the better he liked you for it, and he had a million zany stories that you knew he wasn’t making up. He drank like a sailor–which is appropriate because he was one. I don’t know anyone who was more happily politically incorrect, and you had to love him for it–more so the worse his wisecracks got. I had to make him stop including my work e-mail address on his mailing list, some of the stuff he’d send was definitely not safe for work.

He loved golfing, which is how I got to know him. We were league mates and later, when he and his crony Chris broke away from the league and started a group of their own, I showed up to play with them as often as I could. When I missed half a season because of emergency surgery he was the guy I asked to cover for me. He had his great days, and he had his lousy days, and on the latter there was no one more accomplished at sending a duck hook (he was a lefty) farther right than I could send a slice. I can still see him pounding his chest like a drunk Klingon, and threatening to kick his ball’s ass if it didn’t go into the hole.

He was healthy as hell, too, until the cancer took him down. Trim, fit, he used to relax by swimming laps in his pool. He was retired some years back, but still active and vigorous as anyone half his age. Until the cancer got him.

He went peacefully, with his “lovely” beside him. Just closed his eyes and left. Thank goodness for that.

He “may not have been the best, but there ain’t none better!”

I already miss him.

“ATM Trap” theft in progress (PDF)

So, beware! If you use an ATM that sucks in your card, and it appears to be confiscated, follow the steps in the document.

For instance?

Instead of clicky-button controls for things like volume control, CD ejection, media control (what? your laptop doesn’t have play, fast forward and rewind buttons?) and all that other stuff, mine has touch-sensitive capacitance controls. It’s the same idea as the ubiquitous touch pads, taken to another level of fancy-it-up-because-we-can. Well, today mine suddenly stopped working. About the same time, the tap-to-click function on the touch pad also went south–though at the time I didn’t realize the two events were related.

I got on the phone with Dell tech support (well, I’d been told my model Alienware machine had to go through Dell for such things, though in the end that turned out to be a load), and here’s a side rant: I had to run the gauntlet of no fewer than three obsequious functionaries, each one of whom asked me for the same damned information. Why don’t these people type in this stuff and pass it along to the next obstacle on the course?

Anyway, once I finally got to the Alienware guy with the tech-related flow chart to read from instead of the administrivia one, we went through a ritual of remove battery, unplug, hold down the power button, and so on. Reverse, rinse, and Glory Be: that fixed the problem.

Which was?

It seems this laptop, over time, can build up a “residual charge” in the frame. That translates to screw-with-capacitance in how-can-this-annoy-me parlance. By discharging everything, the balance was restored to The Force and all was again well.

So, tell me again why we can’t just have buttons?

Well, my good friend John (who also happens to be a virtuoso guitarist and arranger) put the muse (perfectly IMNSDHO) to words this morning:

“Fox gets good ratings telling ultra right wing people what they want to hear, keeping them angry, afraid and divisive.”

Bravo, John; bravo.

Obligatory disclaimer: I don’t like any of the major “news” outlets, don’t get me wrong. I’m an independent in many ways, including how I try to obtain actual news instead of spin and hype. It just seems to me that FOX is worse than the rest in generating those two brands of misinformation, and the people who eat it up seem louder than is the norm. The bottom line is all the “news” networks suck.

Step right up!

So, is it any good?

Mostly, I’d say no. Yeah, I saw some sweet prices on a few items, but a lot of places (I’m thinking) already have prices pared down to the bone as a result of ruthless internet competition, so how low can they really go? Some places offered to toss in an extra or two, but apart from a couple of notable %50 off sales my personal perception was “weak sauce.”

Did I just not shop the right places? Entirely possible. As is my wont when I’m “shopping,” I went out looking for pretty specific items–not interested in having my focus distracted by flashy ads. Impulse-buying on the internet is a recipe for trouble in my godlike opinion.

All the above being said, I did score a few things. I pointed out the notable sale prices, and since they were for things I was already going to get, I jumped. My weakness? Books. That, and instructional videos on things like golfing and 3D modeling. Oh, and new graphics software; that, too. So okay, yeah, I got stuff, and all my cynical snobbery about Cyber Monday is a load of hooey.

What’d you get?

I donate to the ASPCA, and think people who abuse animals (assuming we can agree on a definition for “abuse”) ought to be prosecuted and thrown in jail. Organizations like the ASPCA do good work, have a good reputation in the national community, and are effective spokespeople for raising public awareness about issues like the Michael Vicks of the world.

Which brings me to PETA. They are everything the ASPCA isn’t: an absolutely ineffective vehicle for supporting “animal rights.” They just got their panties in a twist over a goddamn FLY! A nasty, crawling buzzing vector of disease and filth that was spawned in some festering garbage, or perhaps in the stinking dog feces your neighbor never picked up from his back yard. If ever there were a justifiable killing in human history, President Obama’s swatting of such a creature tops the list. And PETA gets in a lather over it.

Let me offer some unsolicited advice: if ever you form an organization which you hope to become a beacon of inspiration for furthering a cause, start out by not branding yourself a bunch of over-the-top lunatics. Trust me on this one.

Penn takes on PETA (YouTube)