Happy Thanksgiving All

That'll do piggy, that'll do...

And so it begins...

With the delivery of the all important Port-O-Potty, Best Buy completes its holiday preparations.  Wednesday at lunch and already six tents set up.  I'm just not that serious of a shopper I guess.

Black Friday Again, Or Is It Black Thursday???

I hope everyone had a great weekend.  As we all get ready for the Thanksgiving holiday this week, I thought it necessary to address / re-address an issue that we discussed last year this time that has now apparently gotten even worse.  That issue of course is the annual retail extravaganza that has become Black Friday.

 

Kids, I'm not going to even try to sugar coat this one.  Black Friday has become a staggering load of wankalicious bullshit and somebody has got to do something about it!

 

Now before you immediately write me off as someone who's getting all butthurt because his wife works for the almighty Wally World and is directly affected by their Thanksgiving policies this year, let's take a step back.  Folks, I am all for business and the ability to make the all mighty dollar.  My entire professional career has been in retail management and executive management.  Believe me, I get it.  But since when did the pursuit of Ben Franklin and company take total precedence over the ability of your employees to enjoy their families? 

 

For those of you unfamiliar with the whole brew-ha-ha, this year Wal-Mart and Target are both opening on Thanksgiving Day instead of the usual Black Friday sales to kick off the holiday buying season.  Target I believe is opening at 9pm, while Wal-Mart is opening at 8 but requiring their employees to be in as early as 2pm!!  Now believe me I understand that not everyone keeps the Thanksgiving holiday in their family.  We live in an incredibly diverse society so it's completely counter-intuitive to expect everyone to find import in every single calendar-mandated social activity, but for chrissakes people whatever happened to a good ol' fashioned day off just because everyone else gets one?  Let's get real for a second here people.  I'm all about the Christmas season and all it represents since I was raised as a good little Southern Baptist.  However, I'm also all about the right of those who don't keep that holiday for whatever reason to get Chinese food and chillax with their family, pet, or favorite inflatable companion. 

 

The next thing out of most people's mouth when it comes to this discussion is usually either "well they're going to be open anyway" and "that's when the best deals will be on sale."  Kids, I don't know if you realize it or listen to the news all that much but as I type this there are large scale walkouts and protests scheduled in over 1500 Wal-Marts across the nation by employees' groups and unions and in over 1000 Target stores by family groups.  Now, and again remember that I do have unfortunately first hand experience with this because of my wife's job, Wal-Mart is notorious for using bullying tactics on employees who try to take part in their family life such as cut hours and even termination.  Look, I've been in retail for over 20 years now (oh dear God) and I get that crazy hours and schedules come with the gig but come the fuck on people!  I have no problem with the two or three city mad dash we usually have to make on Thanksgiving Day to get to see our families, or even having Thanksgiving early or late to accommodate ye olde job, but to flat out force your workers to give up their private time for increased incremental sales opportunities is just asinine!

 

The sad thing is that there is abso-friggin-lutely nothing that any amount of protests and walkouts and even large scale quitting will do to discourage these companies behavior.  There is only one thing that will get anything done about it and force them to realize this might just be a really shitty idea:  DON'T SHOP THERE ON THANKSGIVING DAY!  I know this concept is going to get a lot of you all up in arms because you're going to miss the $150 32" Emerson piece of shit LCD television that Wally World is selling at 8pm Thanksgiving night, but come on people.  I swear to you Old Navy is giving away free Nintendo Wii U Mario games when they open at midnight.  It will be okay! Don't you think it might just be worth it to express your support for the families of those that have to work throughout what should be a family holiday by waiting a few extra hours to spend your hard charged money?  It's a simple concept people: if we don't spend money at a business on Thanksgiving, they may not be willing to open for the day next year.

But then again, that's also the same reason I get gas the day before major holidays.  I don't think those poor folks should have to work on a holiday either. 

As always, this is all just my humble opinion.  I sincerely wish that more of you shared it.  Look back in your memories and in your heart of hearts.  I'm not wrong.

Happy Anniversary: One Year of The Cynical Sarcastic

Happy Friday and Happy Anniversary Kids!!  It was one year ago that yours truly decided to open the front door on The Cynical Sarcastic, thus beginning the deluge of ranting and raving you've all come to know, love, revile, ridicule, heckle, deify, and what not. 

I started this blog a year ago simply with the idea that I would toss maybe an article a week out and see if there was any feedback and potentially a market for my writing.  Well, now a full year and 41,131 page views later, apparently something good is going on somewhere. Here's some quick stats for you. As of November 1, 2012, the average post is viewed 432 times within a seven day period from date of publication and some have even reached the 1300 mark!  I know we're receiving new readers all the time as our RSS feed numbers continue to grow and traffic on older posts continues to increase monthly.  Guest bloggers have a great return for their efforts as well: the average guest blog is viewed roughly 1000 times in its first two weeks.  Not a bad start at all!

 To all of you that have been guest bloggers, grammar police, frequent commenters, and even the handful of you that have chosen to share your truly unique points of view with me via email, I'd like to take a second to convey my appreciation. Your participation has lead to 125 posts, two books published successfully, and three more in various stages of development: absolutely none of which would have been accomplished without your support.

I'd like to take a second to specifically thank my guest bloggers who have contributed in the past year and are going to do so in the near future.  All of you have made awesome contributions to the blog, whether through humor, moving personal experiences, or just taking the time to share your true feelings on a subject you care about.  Your efforts have not only made this project feel like more of a community but they have also truly inspired me to push that much harder to see it thrive and continue.

Several of you have asked what happened to the planned collection of posts that was going to be put together in time for the holidays this year.  Well, it was initially conceived of as a charitable project.  After closely examining the production costs versus expected sales and what could realistically be expected to donated at the end of the year, I made the decision to postpone it at minimum another six months to possibly the 2013 holiday season.  In the end, a book with 200 articles will simply produce more revenue than one with 80, and as this is a charitable endeavor I'm going to hold off just a bit longer to garner more pieces to use and do as much good as possible.

Well, I'm looking forward to 2013 being a great year, both on The Cynical Sarcastic and on our new sister blog, The Big Fella's Guide.  There are a lot of great things coming up on the horizon: new guest blogs, book launches, continued weekly email responses, and most likely a whole lot more of me running off at the mouth about whatever random topic tweaks me that worst that morning.

Thanks again for continuing to tune in and here's looking forward to the future!
- Brian Pittman


Dealing with Crap Pt 2: Towel Throwing

Happy Day After Veteran's Day to everyone.  I sincerely hope all of you bank employees enjoy your day off.  You seem to be the only ones still unilaterally observing Federal Holidays.

 

A week or so ago I published a response to an email question about what to do with material that you, as the author, just can't stand or think is horrible.  Well, due to a nagging back injury and a lot of quality time over the weekend with a heating pad, I've had some time to consider it and I feel like I may have left out something that I personally found applicable over the weekend.

 

To begin, let me paraphrase my earlier response.  I advised the person that wrote in to keep everything, no matter how crappy they may believe it to be.  I have a very bad habit of wanting to discard stuff I create that I don't care for at that moment for some odd reason.  I've learned to write it and file it and move on if necessary.  Dropbox is my friend dear reader, as in my less than humble opinion it should be for all writers.  Just make sure you don't post anything in the public folders!

 

Moving on, I feel like I erred in omitting one major component of this issue.  Once you've got a little experience under your belt as a writer, a little seasoning if you will, you will (hopefully) begin to develop an audience. You will probably publish at some point.  You may even develop a few fans (still the hardest part of this entire enterprise for me).  Then one day you're going to write something that has an awesome premise.  Your story plan seems dead on the money, your characters seem interesting and real enough to carry the story, and the best part of it is that in your head it's clever and sheer genius. 

 

And then you write it.

 

And you've seen more interesting piles of dog vomit.

 

On your shoes.

 

My Halloween short story "Tell Me Everything" has become one of those piles o'puke.  I really liked the idea, everything seemed to work and it was ready to publish.  Blogger had a minor technical issue for a few days and I couldn't get the file to post correctly, so I took that time to read and reread to check for issues, errors, and the like.  About halfway through the first read something started to nag at me.  By the time I'd finished the second read I realized what it was.

 

THE STORY FLAT OUT SUCKED. 

 

Now make sure you don't misunderstand me here.  I'm no Hemingway by any means and I'm fully comfortable with that.  However, I do feel like I have a degree of standards when it comes to what I put out there for my audience.  There's no faster way to lose readers and fans than to follow up something they enjoyed with gar-bage. 

 

In the end, meaning last Sunday, I finally made the decision that no amount of rework was going to fix this beast.  It was time to pull the plug, throw in the towel and drop it in the file for later. Maybe it will show up someday.  Maybe it just wasn't the right genre for me or the right time or something.  Maybe it was just in exercise in completing a project even after you lose faith in it.  Maybe, just maybe, it was a lesson learned to stick with what I do best.

 

All in all though, I'm not publishing the story and I'm satisfied it's for the right reason.

 

Well, back to the mines kiddies. More to come later this week.

Perspective, And Being Mindful Thereof

As our political season in this country draws to a close and we can all celebrate the end of the endless chicanery of campaign commercials, I feel like I need to step to the side for just a minute and fuss a bit.

 

Kids, some of us have seriously got to grow the hell up already.

 

I mentioned my recent culling of my Facebook friends list last week and I swear I'm just about ready for round two.  Folks, I tend to wear my opinion on my sleeve and tell others to deal with it but I have never, ever seen the kind of juvenile, nonsensical claptrap spewing from otherwise rational human beings as I have since this election entered the metaphorical short rows.  I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone finds it necessary to ridicule or slander someone else over a political difference of opinion.  I actually saw a post this morning in which someone I used to have a lot of respect for accused a Romney supporter of being a racist and anti-woman just because they chose to vote Republican straight ticket.  Really people?  Has it gotten that simple minded out there?  Or is it really true that all Democrats support government oversight of the smallest detail of my life and hate white guys?  Silly, ain't it?

 

Instead of verbally lambasting these narrow minded mental midgets until their charred remains look like something out of a Walking Dead episode, I would instead like to remind everyone of a little notion called perspective.  Perspective can be a bit tricky to keep in line sometimes, but let's try nonetheless.  Everyone sees the world their own way, attempting to comprehend existence through a filter of their opinions and life experience. No two people will experience an event the same way, even though sometimes their perspectives line up enough that they feel they agree on the topic.  However, perspective can also refer to keeping things in their proper place or degree of importance compared to others.  I think what has occurred lately in the minds of a large number of people is a complete loss of perspective when it comes to this election.  It seems that folks are forgetting that there is still a life to live after 11/6/2012 and regardless of who wins and who loses you still have to deal with the carnage you and your overactive mouth may have wrought.

 

Now, I will be the first to admit that losing perspective and going balls out on a topic is far too easy to do.  Take the gym as an example.  I work out with and around a lot of large folk.  It's far too easy sometimes to either overdo it to keep up or feel like I'm behind just because I'm not tossing 405 in the air on a bench press like it's made of nerf.  The only way I keep perspective there is to remember that I took about 7 years off from doing anything serious in a gym and that I'm still lifting twice what the "average guy" in our country can.  In other words, sometimes I have to take a step back and look at the real world as a whole and not that little subset. 

 

Sounds like some almost usable advice, doesn't it?  (After a year of writing this blog, I guess it had to happen eventually, huh?)

 

Folks, my point is simply this: I'm thrilled that this election seems to be inspiring some many people to be passionate about politics but for the love of whatever you deem holy try keep it in at least a bit of proper perspective.  Morons will be morons, that's a given, but can we try to not take the bait and jump all over each other in an unbridled effort to join their ranks?

 

Just a reminder: if you haven't voted yet, make sure you do tomorrow.  Remember, you can't bitch if you don't participate!!

 

 

Guest Blog by Eric Jones: Being A Father

POST TEMPORARILY REMOVED AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST

APPARENTLY THE BROTHER HAD MORE TO SAY

SHOULD BE REPOSTED BY TUESDAY AT THE LATEST

Halloween Apologies

Okay, just a quick note in response to those of you kind enough to have been anticipating the Halloween short story I teased about a week back:

 

Unfortunately, Blogger is having some difficulty with larger uploads for the last several days.  I contacted tech support and it seems that only a small number of accounts were affected so OF COURSE mine is going to be one of them. Thank you Uncle Murphy.

 

So, while I await the dissipation of the wrath of the tech gods, I'll just apologize and say that I'll have it posted for you all as soon as possible.  Yes, I could just retype the whole thing but honestly, 40 pages is a LONG NIGHT'S WORK boys and girls!!

 

More to come...