My wife and I have had the same cell phones since 2000, and she’s recently expressed some embarrassment about her phone—it’s an old style. I don’t really think about my phone; I’m used to it, it does what I need it to do, so I don’t care about the style. But, as I was reassessing our calling plan with Alltel, anyway, I figured I’d look into new phones, too.

I had gone to the Alltel store last week to do all this, but the place was crowded with customers waiting for just two Alltel folk. This time when I went in, there were no customers and four Alltel folk. I was immediately greeted.

The woman who greeted me was all “salesperson.” She was friendly and helpful, but everything she said was to set up for or give a sales suggestion. She was not pushy, but she did know and use the well-known sales tactics, like ask a leading question and mention add ons at every opportunity.

Alltel also sells wireless Internet access, and they had a laptop set up on one wall to let customers test the connection. She told me I could play around on the Web while she went to the back to get my new phones. Nice; get the customer to use the product and it will be easier to sell it. I didn’t say anything, but just left the laptop alone. I have plenty of Internet at home and work, so I don’t need to play around with it on a public computer. They probably track everything that people surf to.

The saleswoman returned with my phones, and proceeded to get them set up. She brought out car chargers just in case I wanted to get them, and she explained the benefits and convenience of having them handy.

When she hooked my old phone and new phone up to transfer the contacts list, I had an idea for the Internet connection. If they track sites people visit, why don’t I go to Total Bullgrit? I could even leave it open so another customer might see it and read it out of curiosity. (Nothing wrong with secret self promotion.)

I got up from my seat and stepped up to the laptop. I left the Alltel main page and brought up this site. Hmm. Unfortunately, the page size was wider than the laptop resolution was set for, so the right side column was cut off. I might have to make adjustments for that. Then I clicked the General link.

The Alltel laptop flashed this page on the screen, but then blocked it. Ha! I backed up to the main page, and it got blocked, too. What the hell? What was the browser picking up on this site to block? I’ve specifically kept this site “family friendly” so anyone can read it. But Alltel found something to dislike about it.

So, you should be ashamed of yourself for reading this trashy Web site. There’s apparently inappropriate material around here.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I’ve just discovered a cool treasure on TV: VH1 Classic. This channel shows all the old music videos I remember watching on MTV in the 80s—when MTV actually showed music videos. I guess VH1 figured from the popularity of the “I Love the 80s” series that its demographic would be interested in seeing the full-length and full list 80s videos.

I’ve only been able to watch it a few times, for only a few minutes (a couple of videos) at a time. I remember most of the videos they’re showing, but they’re mixing the Headbangers Ball stuff in with the regular pop/rock stuff. And they’re playing new (current) Eagle’s stage performance stuff to sell the Eagle’s new album.

I was never a fan of the Headbangers Ball on MTV. I wasn’t a metalhead, so I just didn’t watch the channel during the HB hours. But the weird metal videos (yes, I said “weird”) are now all mixed in with the pop stuff. At least I haven’t seen all the “Yo! MTV Raps” junk mixed in as well. I might not be a fan of the old metal stuff, but I actively dislike the classic rap junk.

While writing this post, I turned on VH1 Classic. The first video I saw was the Eagle’s new stage performance of “Desperado”. Right after, now they are showing a new video of the new song, “How Long”. That’s just wrong—a new performance video of a song that never had a video in the classic days, and a new video of a new song. Not a very classic moment for VH1 Classic.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

My 6 year old son saw my World War II soldier models (read: “action figures” — not dolls) and asked about them. (They had been stored behind the sofa, and I had forgotten about them until moving the sofa away from the wall to unplug a lamp.) The specific question that stumped me on an explanation for a 6 year old was, “Which ones are the good guys, and which ones are the bad guys?”

There are four figures: two Americans, two Germans. I tried to explain that they’re soldiers for two different nations, but I stumbled trying to explain the whole “good guy/bad guy” thing as it regards real-life people and situations. His frame of reference comes from things like comic books, toys, and such.

In comic books, there are good guys and there are bad guys. (Actually, this is not always the case. But that’s a whole other post.) Many toys he’s seen and played with, there are distinct and identifiable goods guys and bad guys: the king’s knights are the good guys, and the dragon barbarians are the bad guys. Playground games he plays have good guys and bad guys: the cops are the good guys, and the robbers are the bad guys.

But in real life, the line between good guys and bad guys is not very well drawn. It’s often not even very well understood. Now, I am a believer in Good and Evil; there are truly Good and truly Evil people in the world. But 99% of the normal people aren’t easily explained with those labels. Someone can be nice without being really good, and someone can be a jackass without being really evil. And most people have a little bit of both nice and jackass in them. And then there’s the whole twist of how an evil person can be nice and a good person can be a jackass.

How to explain this concept to a 6 year old? I think I explained it sufficiently for his question, without going deeper than he would understand or care.

When I was young, a new kid moved into our neighborhood—from Germany. I remember the discussion with my friends about whether this new kid was a “good German” or a “bad German”. In our very limited understanding of the world, West Germany was the good side, full of good people, and East Germany was the bad side, full of bad people.

I don’t want my children to only think in this kind of moral dichotomy. I also don’t want them warped by a relativistic morality, either. Molding young minds and hearts is complicated. This kind of thing probably shouldn’t be left up to just anyone who can procreate. (Especially someone who still owns toy soldiers at 40 years old.)

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

In the grocery store last night, I passed the magazine rack. Two shelves of rags total, the top one apparently for women, the bottom one apparently for men.

The magazines on the top shelf looked all alike: a single female (some celebs, some just models), shown from head to about the knees, in various outfits, from bikinis to wedding dresses. I couldn’t tell one from another—they all looked so much alike that the whole shelf kind of just blended together in one collage of women.

There was one section of the top shelf, about a quarter of the space, for “home and garden” type mags. The only one that caught my eye was Gardens & Guns: 21st Century Southern America. This is the only book I took down and looked through—it’s mostly “garden” and no appreciable “gun,” so I put it back on the shelf. What a piece of false advertising. I’d have bought it if it had advice for shooting garden gnomes—“Rifles or shotguns?”

The magazines on the bottom shelf looked very different from the top shelf, and even from each other—mags about cops, cars, games, music, computers, and women. There were three mags on guitars, three on cars (plus one specifically on just trucks), two on computer games (plus one on computers in the general), and a bunch of gansta and rock idiots with too many tattoos and too little common decency.

Looking over this rack made me think just what kind of shoppers this store has to layout this selection of reading material. But then, this is a store whose head cashier is a young hispanic girl with blonde hair and a name tag that reads, “Barbie.” (No lie!)

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com