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During my daily walks over the past few days I couldn’t help but notice that girls are wearing shorts now with printing on the butt.  The most common one seems to be “Cheer”.

I’m not quite sure what to think of this.  I’m not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but it just seems a bit weird.  On the flip side of the coin, if you’re going to wear a billboard on your butt, you might want to consider if you’ve got enough ‘real estate’ for it.  I was initially perplexed by the phrase ‘hee’ until I realized that the ‘C’ and the ‘r’ were around the sides…

I always hate the switch to Daylight Savings Time.  It screws up my internal time sense, which keeps screaming at me that the time on the clock is wrong.

I’m just glad that I’m working from home tomorrow.  My emprical observation from past time switches is that driving seems more dangerous for the first couple of days after the switch.  As a nation we’re already sleep-deprived enough without losing an hour to an arbitrary time switch.  It’d be interesting to compare accident statistics between the week before and the week after the switch.

I think a lot of the anti-smoking laws we’re seeing that regulate private clubs and restaurants comes out of a holier-than-thou desire to “save” other people from their choices, regardless of whether they want to be saved or not.  So it was with amusement that I read an ad in today’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram for a product called Revel (careful, tobacco content on that site!).

Someone once said that the internet regards censorship as damage and routes around it.  I like to think the market is a similar organism when it comes to regulation.  Revel is just smokeless tobacco pouches that can be used without having to light up, but it represents the market routing around the do-gooders.  Good for the market.  I hope it gives the anti-smoking nuts apoplexy.  I can see it now: How dare those ignorant dolts ignore us!  We know what’s best for them!

Note:  I acknowledge that there are a few people who are genuinely allergic to tobacco smoke, but I don’t see how that outweighs the rights of business owners to decide on their own property if people may smoke or not.

Gateway will be closing all of its remaining retail stores (188 of them with approximately 2500 jobs).  I’m not terribly surprised by this.  Last year when I still lived in Denton I went on the hunt for a new laptop.  I drove down to Lewisville and went to Best Buy, the Gateway Store, and Compusa.  I previously wrote about my dislike for Best Buy.  However, the experience at the Gateway Store was also disappointing, but for a different reason.  The store was simply a front for their web/phone order system.  You would go in and most of the equipment wasn’t available in the store.  When I go into a retail store I generally expect to be able to walk out with the product.  It was frustrating to me when they said that the model I wanted had to be ordered and would be shipped.  Since my goal was to have a laptop in hand when I returned home that day I left and went back across I-35 to Compusa.  A few weeks later that Gateway store closed. 

I can understand the need to custom order certain configurations of a system.  In fact, I know that some stores do this.  But a computer store is also expected to have stock on hand for immediate delivery.  If all they’re doing is acting as an order taker and then shipping it to your house, that’s next to useless for most people who go out to buy something that day.

This article in yesterday’s paper caught my attention (link is to the Miami Herald because the stupid Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the article behind a registration page).  It’s definitely a highly-specialized occupation:

Seizo Fukumoto has died 20,000 agonizing deaths. He’s been gored by samurai and gunned down by gangsters. His bloodied body has slammed into trees, tumbled down stairs and crashed through sliding paper-and-wood doors.

As Japan’s top “kirareyaku,” which translates into “sliced-up actor,” Fukumoto dies for a living. When Japanese directors need somebody to kill, he’s the man they call.

While he’s been in so many films over the years, he isn’t known for it since often his name doesn’t even make the credits.  However, he did finally get some recognition in The Last Samauri as the “Silent Samauri” who died to protect Tom Cruise’s character.

On the back cover of this month’s NRA magazine there’s an ad for Kimber tactical pistols.  Kimber recently had a big win when the LAPD SWAT team went to 1911 pistols made by Kimber.  What caught my attention was the disclaimer at the bottom, which said:

LAPD™ is a trade and service mark of the City of Los Angeles.

I did a little digging around and sure enough, here’s their trademark registration.

It just had never occurred to me that a police department would register a trademark.  It turns out that a search on the trademark database for the term “police” turned up a number of other departments with trademarks.

Sometimes it’s possible to forget that Texas is the “buckle of the Bible Belt” until you get slapped upside the head with another reminder.

A CVS pharmacist refused to fill a woman’s birth-control-pill prescription this week, the second time this year that a Metroplex-area druggist has withheld a prescribed contraceptive because of personal beliefs.

Julee Lacey, 32, a Keller district first-grade teacher with two young children, said she was astounded when the pharmacist came to the drive-in window of the CVS on Precinct Line Road on Sunday night and refused to fill what Lacey believed was a routine prescription that she had had filled many times.

“She told me she did not personally believe in birth control and said that’s why she wasn’t going to fill the prescription,” Lacey said. “She told me there was a Walgreens down the street I could go to that could help me. I told her I didn’t have the time to go there and set up a new account, and she said she couldn’t help me.”

It turns out that CVS has a policy in place to deal with this, but the pharmacist in question ignored that policy (she was supposed to hand the prescription off to another pharmacist on duty).

It irks me when I see people going out of their way to impose their personal beliefs on others.  Of course, a private company may choose to sell or not sell any particular item.  However, in this case it wasn’t the company, but the personal beliefs of one of its employees.  If this pharmacist feels so strongly about the issue, then maybe she should go start her own pharmacy instead.

Ms. Lacey also brought up an interesting point concerning the possible detriment that this pharmacist’s actions could have brought about.

“She had no idea why I was getting birth control. There are so many reasons people get it that aren’t even for birth control—cysts on ovaries and even endometriosis. She didn’t know anything about my history.”

It looks like CVS is trying to make it right with the customer by delivering the prescription to Ms. Lacey’s house free of charge.  They also apologized.  However, this is still going to give them something of a publicity black eye.

In today’s Ft. Worth Star Telegram I learned that Cabela’s is interested in building a new store close to my house.

Cabela’s, a top retailer of outdoor equipment and clothing, wants to bring a megastore to the city’s northern edge, but first wants an incentive package worth $40 million over 20 years.

City officials say construction could begin by June on a 200,000-square-foot store at the northeast corner of Texas 170 and Interstate 35W near Alliance Airport. Similar to Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World stores, Cabela’s stores sell hunting and fishing gear and typically include a wildlife museum and aquarium. Because of their size, they attract millions of visitors each year.

I’d really like to have this store nearby, but I am somewhat concerned about their desire for $40 million in “incentives”.  If it was just a set of tax breaks, perhaps I’d not be as concerned.  However, it sounds like they may be funding some of this with taxpayer money.

As usual, the British are getting things backwards when it comes to dealing with crime.  The latest comes from West Midlands, where the police have issued a warning to iPod users: ditch the white headphones or pay the price.

Fashion-conscious music lovers are apparently being targeted by muggers. The Times tells the sorry tale of 22-year-old language student Roland Baskerville, who lost his 20GB model on the mean streets of Birmingham: “I was walking down the road near to my home when a man who was walking the other way pointed at my headphones.”

The thief then asked Baskerville if he was listening to an iPod and, receiving an affirmative answer, he “pulled a knife out and started waving it at me, saying: ‘Well hand it over, then.’ I gave it to him and he ran off. He must have known I was wearing an iPod because of the white headphones.”

I have a novel idea.  How about locking up the bastards who are preying on innocent people instead of telling the people not to have nice things?!

I guarantee you that this kind of crap is much less likely to happen in Texas for one simple reason.  If you pull a deadly weapon on me while I’m walking around with my iPod mini, I’m going to respond in an unfavorable (to you, at least) fashion. 

We get more of what we condone or tolerate.  By meekly submitting to robbers and other thugs we’re sending a message that it’s OK to rob us.  If a few of these bastards ended up dead it’d send a better message.  I’ll take the safety of the streets in states where law-abiding people can carry weapons over the faux-safety of England’s streets any time.

Since I was feeling better I decided to tackle the flower bed that starts at the front of the house and goes down the side as well as to try to do something with the front yard, which is growing a lot of weeds, but not much real grass.  The previous owners had stopped tending the flower bed well before they moved out and I hadn’t done anything with it either, so it was full of weeds and grass.

The first thing I decided was that the metal edging had to go and that I was going to replace it with brick edging.  I also decided that I was going to go for a minimalist approach (which would also simplify upkeep).  Of course, as I’m learning, none of this is cheap and it required multiple trips to Lowe’s.  So far I’ve spent nearly $400 on materials (although alot of it is one-time expenses, like a wheelbarrow, brick edging, hoses, sprinklers, etc).

I spent nearly every free moment outside working on it over the weekend,  as well as some time last night.  A brief summary of my activities:

• Ripped up the metal edging
• Raked out all the wood chips in the flower bed (which were right up against the foundation and seemed to me to provide way too much temptation for termites)
• Trimmed the bottom of the big holly bushes so I could get under them
• Dug up the weeds and grass
• Hauled countless wheelbarrows full of wood chips, dirt, and weeds to the back yard (until I can figure out how to get rid of them)
• Put down weed-stop fabric
• Put down the brick edging
• Ripped up every weed, bush, rose plant, trellis, and other assorted junk along the side of the house (remember, I said minimalist above; in this case I took the “everything must go” approach)
• Spread grass seed and fertilizer
• Put down a 6-inch wide layer of lava rock at the edge of the foundation on top of the weed-stop
• Covered most of the rest of the weed-stop in ‘enviromulch’ (I have to go back today to get a couple more bags to finish the last little area)
• Setup a timer, hoses, and sprinklers
• Complained about my sore back and took lots of Tylenol in the evenings

I had to setup all that sprinkler apparatus because the grass seed has to be watered twice a day until it gets going (at least two weeks).  Of course, my sprinkler setup didn’t work as expected.  I had four sprinklers on two hoses fed from one timer using a splitter (it’s a pretty Rube Goldberg looking setup).  It worked when I tested it, but when the timer started, other people in the neighborhood were also using their sprinklers, which caused a couple of mine to not have enough pressure to cycle.  I’m going to go back today and get a second timer and hook it up so that the timers are on the splitter and only two of the sprinklers are on each timer.  Then I’ll stagger the programs so that only one timer (and its two sprinklers) are running at any one time.

I should look into a payroll deduction going directly to Lowe’s…