why you make things so hard, mr stop & shop?

OK, trust me ... this one's really no big deal ... but what's the deal with newspaper placement in grocery stores?

At my local Stop & Shop, they put all the newspapers OUTSIDE the check out lanes and almost exactly half way between the two possible entrances into the store. So, unless you remember to make a special trip half way across the store on the wrong side of the registers (and then back again or continuing on to get to the rest of the shoppables), you're (or at least I am) likely to forget to go through the registers to get the newspaper before you check out. I often find myself walking by the newspapers with a cartful of bagged groceries, thinking "gee, I should've gotten the local paper - oh well, too late".

I can see why you might not want newspapers right inside the entrance, since some yahoos would probably just grab a paper and run, but it sure seems to me as if sales would be better if they were at least on the "shopping" side of the cash registers! Just a suggestion, but perhaps with the other periodicals?

Oh, and MySpace won't let me put "listening to the radio" in the "tell us what you're reading, viewing, or listening to" section ... so I'll tell you here ... I'm listening to the Cubs/Giants ballgame on XM radio .. it's 4-1 San Francisco going into the bottom of the 8th.

[copied of my original MySpace blog post, hence the reference above to MySpace features]

HFS ... it’s the SKATALITES!!!!

Sometimes so called "living legends" come around, and I figure I have to see them, even if they end up being crap late in their careers ... I wasn't sure what to expect when I heard that the Skatalites were going to play tonight at the Beachcomber, after the regular Incredible Casuals early evening show.

I guess I expected good, but not great. I definitely expected to be too tired after the earlier show to make through the entire evening.

Well, I'll admit it: I ... was ... most definitely ... *wrong* in my expectations. I don't know, maybe they weren't as great as I think they were, but all I know is that I had a smile on my face a mile wide for the entire night, starting with opening band Indiscretion, and I stayed there until the club made the band stop (my pal Chris had to be the bearer of bad news and tell the band they had to stop).

Actually, I think they were just as great as I thought they were ... it was a wonderful evening.

1994 Cheney video re: Invading Iraq

I've seen lots of examples of doublespeak from the current US Executive Branch, but I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen this one before:



For once, the guy made a reasonable argument.