Category: Observation

The Winning Purse

Today I bring you an interesting scan from our local Peoria Journal Star.  Admittedly, I have an addiction to reading the local crime page to keep up to date on any hot spots to avoid in the area and to bring closure on 6 months of work on a Grand Jury assignment.  Okay, and to do some research on a future topic for the blog, but more on that when I get closer to publishing it.  Anyway, I came across an entry that made me chuckle out loud.  Among all the drugs and weapons violations was a blurb about a purse being stolen in a local bar.  Reading through it seemed pretty mundane until I came upon a particular line — I’ll let you see if anything peaks your interest:

Purse Snatcher

$8,000 in the purse.  So either the drinks in the place are on the high side, the money was earned there or the pull of a stiff drink was soooo great that she didn’t have time to go to the bank or put it under the mattress. I would love to read the actual story she gave to the police on why that amount of money was in the purse. 

Sniped

I have had an article on my desk since December 21st, 2007 just waiting for me to get time to actually comment on it.  Based on recent follow on stories, this turns out to be a perfect time to do just that.  The subject of the Entertainment Weekly article was Wesley Snipes and his pending fall from grace due to alleged (at the time) legal issues with the Internal Revenue Service.  So with Wesley all dolled up in his heritage clothes he agrees to meet with the article’s author in his “huge stucco estate with postcard views and endless lawns… identical to every other million-dollar house.”  The article points out his fall from $10M/film status down to ONLY $2M, his staff bringing them fresh fruit and the pending trial on eight counts of tax fraud that could net him 16 years in prison.  Apparently he was trying to defraud the IRS of >$11M (or a little more than one of his earlier movies) and get this… not filing a return at all from 99-04 – later in the article he blames his advisors – apparently he never expected this may be wrong – but admits “the [$11M] refunds may have been a bit aggressive” but based on a premise that income from U.S. citizens wasn’t taxable (WHAT?).

The story rambles on a bit but eventually comes to Snipes’ stardom downfall on claims of “color of his skin”, “[s]ystematic racism”, “so few guys who do action and do it well … even fewer who are African-American”, “black man is usually the culprit”.  This from the actor who was star of the movie White Man Can’t Jump and in Passenger 57 had no problem referencing race with “Always bet on black”.  Oh the hardships of a multi-millionaire, mansion living, staff serving actor who doesn’t feel he should pay as much (as in none) taxes as 99% of the rest of the American citizens. 

… but recent jury decisions has brought this into a whole new perspective.  I now have the “rest of the story” thanks to a recent AP article stating that he will serve 3 (hmmm seems someone may have benefited from his fame since it was suppose to be up to 16 years). 

Continue reading Sniped

Thought or No Thought

So I was watching the Deal or No Deal show last week when it became clear to me that someone associated with that show can’t think through a situation very well.  For those who didn’t waste the 1.5 hours that night (yes, I did get sucked into it, but mainly because I was absolutely too lazy to stand up, walk three feet and pickup the remote to change the channel – I’ll blame it on the 4 mile run that night), An Iraqi War veteran was the contestant – actually I’ll describe as he is – an American Hero – three tours of duty (2 voluntary), purple heart and two bronze stars so I can live a safe life in the States – Thank You.  Anyway, he was doing the case picking thingy and getting the various offers from the banker when the show decided to have some fun with the soldier.  Out come the Robert Palmer video ladies carrying a round box about 18″ high with a lid on it.  As they approach the contestant they open the box to reveal….. a wig sitting atop the standard human bust which they also take out of the box.  So after a a night of talking about Iraq and making jokes about insurgents, they bring out a head.  I was taken completely back and stared intently at the crowd and contestant to see their reaction.  Clearly it was subdued and if not a bit stand-offish, but the contestant did make a quick deflected comment about it probably being for Howie but beyond that it was not taken that well.  Did the creative genius that thought this one up ponder, even for a minute, that a severed head image would be a humorous gag in this situation?

 Next time, I’ll leave a little in the tank to make that extra three feet after the nightly run.

A Sense of Accomplishment

The most observing I have done for the last week is the amount of phlegm that one can cough up at any one moment.  It is staggering, but I will go out on a limb here and state that you probably couldn’t care less about the biproducts of my nasty virus. 

However, I was well enough to make it over to our local Panera Bread to pick up some sinus relieving soup.  I had finished ordering and was waiting for my pickup when I glanced over at the soda fountains.   There was a little girl trying to fill up her cup.  This looked like a tremendous hardship because she could barely see over the counter ledge, much less be able to reach up to the dispensers.  Before I had assessed the situation, one of the employees came by and asked her if she needed some assistance.  With confirmation, the employee helped her put the cup in the proper place, asked what flavor and pressed the button.  She then asked the girl to tell her when to stop.  At first I thought this was odd, but as it played out it it became more interesting.  After a little while, the child informed the employee to stop – I thought it was a little premature since there was clearly a good .5 inch left to the top (I don’t generally steal sips, but I make sure I get what I paid for), but the employee stop dispensing and helped the girl take it down from the counter.  The employee asked her if she wanted a lid and then helped her over to the lid area and pointed to the right size for the girl to take.  As the employee watched, the girl struggled for a bit but actually go the lid on herself and then grabbed a straw for herself.  Showing solid parenting, the little girl thanked the employee and walked back to what appeared to be her father with a wide grin on her face.  The she said “Look Daddy, I got my own drink!”  with a very proud expression on her face. 

My thoughts went directly back to the employee.  I would guess that in just about every other scenario I have witnessed (including my own experience) the approach was to take the cup from the child fill it up, put the lid on, stab the straw and hand it back to the kid.  In contrast, the person helped the girl to get “her own drink” and in turn not only did the girl acquire her drink, but also lefther with a sense of accomplishment.  That employee needs to be in our school system where she can use this special trait on more subjects.  Hats off to Panera and their apparent quality applicant review process.  (yes, I am assuming it has improved since my previous post on a Panera observation)

A Day of Irony

Today was a little odd in the sense there were at least two visuals which made me stop and hesitate for a moment to provide time to verify what I was really seeing.  The first of these happened on my way to work.  On the highway ramp next to where I work, there is a huge billboard sign with a picture of a cute little blonde girl on it.  There is a bold caption at the top that states “When smoker’s are nearby, I smoke too”  I actually do not understand the attraction to smoking myself and as long as an individual can read, there is little excuse for not accepting the outcomes that result from that addiction.  However, the visual that caught me offguard as I rounded the ramp, was a small red truck at the bottom with two men and a small blonde girl sitting between them.  As he was yielding for the oncoming traffic, the driver pulls out a pack of cigarettes and starts beating it on his palm to get his cig out.  I find it hard to believe that he didn’t take notice of the billboard as he passed by and if he did, apparently the message didn’t sink in. 

The other image occurred at the exact same intersection where I was almost hit a few posts ago.  As I came upon the location I looked to my right and noticed there was 2 seconds left on that corresponding walk light.  This brought a tad bit of satisfaction since that meant I would not have to wait to cross the street ahead.  I then noticed a police car nearing the intersection from the right – glancing at the walk light, took note the time was up, shifted over to the left to look at the traffic lights and it was turning yellow… but the police car was not slowing down (I am a little more cautious on this per the last incident there).  Sure enough the police car enters into the intersection and begins the turn left at the same time the light goes red.  I stopped in my tracks and stared the the cop as he accelerated past me – no flashing lights, no urgent call… just plain blew the light.    What really made it interesting to me is the fact there was an article in the paper two days ago about how the police department has been cracking down on people who run the red lights downtown.  This enforcement initiative was requiring two officers that they felt could be re-deployed to more important areas if the city installed cameras ….. say cheese 8^)

The Mellow Years

While walking to my car in downtown Peoria today I was nearly ran over by a car.   To provide context, I came to a crosswalk downtown and initiated my crossing under the white lighted stick figure representing all clear.  As I made it one car length across the 4 lane (2 per direction) intersection Mr. Sticky changed to a flashing hand and began couting down from roughly 17 seconds.  I was in a leisurely stroll for a change and made it past the second lane in another 3-4 seconds leaving plenty of time to complete the traversal before the blinking hand turned to the forbidding solid talk to the hand gesture.  3 steps into the 3rd land I noticed out of of the corner of my right eye a silver/white quarter panel nearly hit the ground right next to the back of my right leg.  I completed the turn to see a vehicle essentially slamming on the brakes to keep from taking me out as he turned left through the intersection.  I turned around and started walking backwards while staring back at the car’s driver and taking note I still had 10 seconds to go on the countdown.

I continued walking backward in order to continue observing the driver of the vehicle yelling at me and pointing to the sign.  As soon as I was just clear enough away, he revs the car past me all the time yelling at me and pointing to the sign – now at 7 seconds.  As I completed the rest of the crossing I glanced at the license place but it was partially obscured, mentally checked off the distance to the next intersection, new from walking that intersection that the wait is at least 30 seconds, and took note that the light was going to turn before he made it there and then….. turned away and headed the opposite direction towards my car.  I must say, this was a little startling to me.  Not because of the physical danger that had passed, but my expected reaction to the situation had changed – absolutely no alarm, no change in facial expression, no increase in heartbeat and no adrenaline rush resulting from the plausible run to the other intersection to address the situation further.  I have changed, I mentally assessed the situation in the same manner, but for some reason I chose a different course of action – I decided it wasn’t worth it and instead spent my energy enjoying a nice spring day. 

I still know there is a silver/white vehicle out there with an Illiniois license plate beginning with MRF that owes me an apology, but I don’t really care.  Actually, I do care a little in a curious life observation manner.  I would speculate that being downtown at that specific location around that specific time is a common occurance for that invididual.  I see the same people every night heading to my car and have started noticing the same types of vehicles passing by around the same time. We humans are creatures of habit and it is amazing how common our weekday to weekday lives are.  I’ll keep my eyes open for MRF to see if I can validate this theory -if nothing else, because the idiot can’t drive and apparently doesn’t know anything about pedestrian law. 

Clearly I have mellowed to a degree based on similar events and outcomes experienced previously in my life.  It is somewhat alarming, but to be honest, the rest of the walk to my car was extremely relaxing.

The Longest Walk

I had to drop off our dogs at the groomer yesterday morning which requires me to traverse some additional side streets as opposed to the normal highway path to work.  This has the bad side effect of making me vulnerable to unplanned delays generally brought on by that large yellow vehicle that transports our future (sorry, I had to do it in honor of the crappy/cheesy Foreigner and Whitney Houston songs)  Anyway, generally I have to just fight through the stops every 100 feet to pick up another set of kids.  If this is our future, it looks like we might be in trouble since they are apparently too lazy to actually walk two driveways distance to group up in order to limit the stops the bus has to make.    Resigned to weight out the delays, I started taking notice of the children getting on the bus.  On the second stop, there was not anyone waiting and the bus just sat there…. and sat there… and sat there.   after literally 30 seconds (yes, that is an eternity when you are trying to get to work in the morning).  Then the storm door slowly creaked open and a young girl slowly shuffled out to the stoop, continued that pace down the driveway with her head pointed down, dragged herself to the bus door and reluctantly hauled herself into the bus.  It was a agonizingly long, but extremely depressing.  Obviously she didn’t have any desire to go to school, no thirst to learn, no energy to engage.  I began to think to myself just how sad this was from the perspective of the the state of education in the U.S.  Why can’t school be fun, what does it take to make a day full of learning fun and how much extra effort does it take a teacher to motivate their students.  Okay, there could be a lot of reasons she doesn’t want to go from the depression brought by the cruelties of peer pressure to outside influences like family issues.  But I could probably counter that with the school’s inability to foster a learning environment to the opportunity for children to escape for 7 or so hours from a less than perfect environment to a highly caring classroom.  I am no longer in school and I do not currently have children so I can’t really comment too much on this, but it seems logical to me that learning can be both fun and entertaining with a little bit of extra work.  As I write this I recall that my brother actually devoted time to helping out at an underprivileged school where he lived.  He was able to introduce them to new concepts and exciting math related things in a very creative and encouraging manner.  I know he spent a lot of time on that activity, but he was also working hard at his normal day job.  How hard can this be for someone who works at it full time?

Looking back, I can remember plenty of teachers that actually contributed to my education and prepared me for my adult years – I can only hope this girl comes across at least a few of them in her school career.

Take 2 of These and Buy a Rocking Chair in the Morning

I went to my medical doctor last week for a problem with my wrist.  I should point out that I actually see him fairly infrequently in rough increments of 6 months and if I do go, I either need an x-ray or some antibiotics.  Unfortunately, everytime I go for the x-ray type of visit I have an internal debate to determine if it is worth it which requires me to reassess the extent of the damage.  The reason for this?  … because I am subjected to the same line of reasoning everytime.  
“You know you are 41[simply subtract a year for every other previous visit]?” This occurrs after he reads the nurses notes and again before I get out of the office. 

Yes, snowboarding has brought along with it some interesting injuries (internal bleeding 4 years ago, broken elbow a year ago and this year a badly sprained wrist), and softball has had its shares of concerns (concussion/stitches from the outfield fence, torn rotator, broken finger, pulled hammies and few other oddities), but I find it interesting that a few mishaps overshadow the numerous successes in those activities.  I have been playing Softball for 18 years with very few missed games – by my estimates 16 games/season * 18 seasons * 7 innings/game * 3 outs/inning * 2 batters/out = 12,096 opportunities for batters to take me to the fence and the only thing my doctor can focus on is the fact I hit the fence ONCE.  Translate that to snowboarding – by my estimates 7 seasons (learned at 34) * 3 outings/season * 3 days/outing * 35 black runs/day = 2,205 opportunities to hit the slopes hard enough to push a rib into a kidney producing some internal bleeding… if I translate that to this specific injury thats 7*3*3*10 rails/day = 630 rails to slide off and inadvertantly catch my wrist under my body. 

So, my answer is (and always be) YES, I am [x][x] years old and I know exactly what I can and cannot do.  I will fail, I might be injured, but I will have tried once I have prepared.  I think we tend to focus to much on mistakes – to remember those times and mentally note a given outcome for a given action is important, but to overlook the successes ignores the dedication and commitment to the performance – since I can remember, I have log every mile I run, track the results of weight training, written down my daily body weight, and documented my blood pressure and pulse.   Why – not because my doctor says I should, certainly not because training is fun and I am definitely not being paid to do it… No, because I enjoy the activities it allows me to participate in and provides me a since of accomplishment when I successfully negotiate 629 snowboard rails. 

My recommendation – invest in the rocking chair when YOU want to (but only under the assumption you are willing to make the sacrifice of preparation) – Note, good news this time … nothing broken 8^)

5 Minutes Of Laziness for 25 Years Of Achievement

With eager anticipation, I have just tuned into tonight’s VH1 Rock and Roll Honors Presentation.  I do not necessarily like all of the inductees, but I can clearly see their impact on Rock and Roll and must give credit to their talents within their specific genre.  The head of the Hall of Fame association steps up to the podium to initiated the preceedings, to begin the celebration of accomplishment and to …. uh….. hmm ….. well, to apparently to demonstrate a complete lack of respect for tonight’s guests.  These artists have spent a lifetime honing their craft, defining their talents and MEMORIZING the fruits of their labor.  Instead of spending the hour or two to reciprocate the effort, the presenter pulls out a stack of papers (folded up I might add) and proceeds to read word for word his speech.  Was it that hard to take a little bit of time to become comfortable with the speech, to comprehend the intent of the night, to breathe life into the delivery?  If not, does it take a technology expert to put a prompter off screen so you at least look like you care? 

Time to enjoy the rest of the show…. now that reading time is over   ugh… apparently not, Ben Harper can learn sheet music for a living, but can’t remember the writing on 6 tiny pieces of paper. 

 ADDENDUM:  Oh look, it’s little Billy Joel.  I wonder what words of wisdom he has to part with today… “John Mellencamp asked me to come out and play FarmAid somewhere out in the midwest called Peoria ……. We get out there and look out into the crowd and see 100,000 children of the corn wearing John Deere hats.”  First off Billy we in the midwest would like to congratulate you on getting to the awards show without becoming intoxicated and driving your car into the ditch (yes, we have newspapers and TVs out in the sticks).  Secondly, you get six points for a touchdown, not 3 and thirdly… Peoria is the world headquarters of Caterpillar Inc and there are far more Cat hats here than Deere (who are up the road in Moline IL).  You talked about the death of the music industry – I’ll have to personally apologize for my participation if by that you are implying the end of buying your albums.  Marketing 101: Don’t put down the people who may have previously bought your albums for future investment may be scrutinized.

Out of Touch Marketing

I can already tell I am going to be all over the board on this post.  This is mainly due to the fact the topic today is about commercials/advertisements and I extremely dislike them – normally I would have used the hay8 word but I am trying to narrow the use of that label to special situations (like Sprint) otherwise it tends to get watered down.  I should probably backup and put some perspective on this.  For probably 10 years now, every time I get a magazine, I take 2 minutes to rip out every double page ad in it.  This leaves a muuuuchh thinner magazine with very little distractions, including those ridiculous cologne samples.  Secondly, I rarely listen to any commercial on the radio – there are multiple (non-satellite) stations I listen to in the car and since the controls are now conveniently located behind the steering wheel, it is even easier to skip through the stations.  That is when I choose to listen to the radio instead of podcasts and audio books.  Lastly, I use a computer to PVR all of my TV shows and watch them later in the night or week.  That tiny little button labeled “skip” jumps 30 seconds ahead so a few clicks of that and I am back into the show adding productive hours to my week.  Getting the picture here?  As a note, when Ted Turner claimed I was stealing his money by doing this I swore to  never watch TNT again (and true to my word).

If you are in the marketing creation business, you might want to rethink your approach if you plan to sell me something.  As a suggestion, you might want to consider the in show product approach – if you are selling soda, you might want to push to have an actor drink from a can (with trademark visible) in the middle of a suspenseful moment or have an actress get into a specific SUV and hit the OnStar button before the villain raises up from the back seat — think the movie Demolition Man and Taco Bell (as you can see that worked)

 But I admit, there is a small window in the morning when I choose to sit (actually stand) through commercials.  That time is in the morning getting ready for work.  I need to know what to wear so the TV is generally on to get the latest updates.  Unfortunately, every once in awhile a commercial comes on that freezes me in my tracks – not because it is actually worth watching, but rather in the “What were they thinking” category. 

One of these moments happened yesterday.

Continue reading Out of Touch Marketing