Over the last week, I’ve gotten a strangely large volume of wrong number calls. At least one a day, sometimes two. On Friday, I got a misdirected text message from a number I didn’t recognize asking me to engage in some criminal activity. Note to readers: if you’re going to request drugs via text message, make sure it’s a known number in your address book.
About 2:30 this morning, the phone rang but I didn’t get to it in time. It was an Arkansas area code. On the voice mail, a guy with a thick foreign accent and little English skill, kept calling me “James” and said that I needed to come pick up my friend at some place, but I couldn’t understand the place he named. Then in the background, some drunk guy with an Arkansas accent started explaining that he was waiting on me and he was going to get arrested for public intoxication (he called it “PI,” so I think he’s familiar with the charge) if I didn’t come pick him up.
Considering the circumstances, I called back to explain that I wasn’t James and probably wouldn’t be coming to pick that drunk guy up, but the guy with the foreign accent couldn’t understand what I was saying, and the drunk guy was just muttering incoherently and didn’t seem able to use the phone properly. Eventually I got tired of shouting “Wrong number!” and just hung up. They didn’t call back, so I presume things resolved themselves. Best of luck, drunk Arkansan.
Apollo posted this at 10:21 AM EST on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 as Ourselves, Grumblin Mumblins
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Well, the economy’s bad, so not only are people turning to Spam, they’re also turning to pot pies. Thirty-dollar pot pies, that is. We’re not talking about the cheap 3-for-a-$1 Banquet stuff, but these:
Twin Hens(TM) has experienced a record 300% growth since 2005. Their delicious Pot Pies are available in Dean & Deluca, Whole Foods, Wild Oats, QFC, Rice’s Epicurean Fairway and over 300 independent stores across the country.
Twin Hens sells 4-serving chicken pot pies for $28 and 4-serving beef pot pies for $30.
Hard times, folks.
Dorothy posted this at 11:39 PM EST on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 as Grumblin Mumblins, It's Economics - Stupid!
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In all honesty, why do Spam sales increase during economic downturns? The New York Times makes it sound like it’s the only thing poor people can afford that “resembles meat.” I’ll grant that I don’t do much grocery shopping in New York, but here in Texas Spam is $4 a pound. Flippin’ pork tenderloin is $2.88/lb at Sam’s Club, and $4/lb at a normal grocery store. Other meats that are less no more expensive than Spam: pork chops ($2/lb), ground beef (lean ground chuck should go for $3/lb; fattier varieties go for $2/lb or less), fresh fish ($1/lb for tilapia if you know where to shop, $4/lb if you don’t), sirloin steak (regularly goes on sale for $4/lb), ham (Smithfield hams are never more than $3/lb), turkey ($.49/lb this time of year; never more than $2/lb), and chicken ($3/lb should buy you boneless, skinless breasts not on sale; everything else is cheaper, and I buy my chickens whole for no more than $1/lb, normally getting a whole chicken for less than a pound of Spam costs - a whole frickin’ chicken!).
I’m not a Spam basher; I like a Spamburger every once in a while, though I don’t get adventurous in cooking with it. But it’s not the case that Spam is cheap. Ramen is cheap. That crappy ground beef in the freezer section that sells for $.79/lb, that’s cheap. Mac and cheese and instant potatoes, the other foods mentioned in the story as increasing in sales, are both cheap.
What would explain it is if people are not just poor, but poor and some combination of lazy, bad cooks, and/or bad shoppers. If you’ve got $3 and you can either salt and pepper a pork tenderloin and cook it to the correct doneness, or you can open a can of Spam, slice is, and put it in a skillet until you feel like taking it out, the latter is somewhat easier and requires no cooking skill whatsoever. Spam also has the advantage of never going bad, unlike fresh meat. Though if people are broke and jobless and moping around without hope because it’s the worst economy since the Great Depression, maybe they could make a little time to buy fresh food regularly instead of buying 100 pounds of Spam twice per annum.
And those other meats are probably healthier (Spam is loaded with calories), reducing the amount the plebs will have to gripe about being fat and not having health insurance. And they all taste better as part of a well-rounded, healthy, and inexpensive diet.
I think we need to force high school kids to take home economics. The thought that people are turning to Spam as poor food upsets me. There’s so much better and cheaper food out there, even if Spam’s not bad from time to time.
Update: I just saw a commercial for a whole, cooked chicken from Boston Market for $1.99. Can’t say I particularly like Boston Market, but that’s cheaper than a can of Spam, and it’s significantly more food. And it’s significantly healthier.
Apollo posted this at 3:01 PM EST on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 as Grumblin Mumblins, It's Economics - Stupid!
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We’ve seen many “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” bumper stickers in the past several years, misquoting Thomas Jefferson to slam Bush. James Lileks (H/T) thinks along the same lines I do:
I’m off to the Mall to sell razor blades so people can scrape off their “Question Authority” bumper stickers. Just remember: Dissent is still the highest form of patriotism. Except now it will be practiced by the lowest form of people.
Seriously, though: congratulations to President-elect Obama. Right or wrong — and I hope for more of the former, obviously — he’s my President now, dammit, and I’m not going to spend four years treating him with the contempt the Kos side heaped on Chimpy McPretzelchoker. He could turn out to be a horrible President. He could turn out to be a great one. History pushes people in unexpected directions.
More to come, of course, but let’s not spoil the moment.
We’ll have lots of snark coming towards Obama, but it looks like it’s time to retire our Audacity of Hype category, while our George Bush Rules! and George Bush Sucks! categories are also on retirement track. Any thoughts on what our new ones should be?
One more thing: Why did Alaska reelect Ted Stevens? Could we give that state back to the Russians?
Hubbard posted this at 9:44 AM EST on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 as Grumblin Mumblins
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In 1984, after serving time for armed robbery, Troy Chapman murdered Scott Chandler. He’s serving a 60 to 90 year sentence. Chapman has been busy trying to atone, but his attempts to do so lead to him equating evil with insanity [emphasis added]: Read the rest of this entry »
Hubbard posted this at 11:01 AM EDT on Monday, September 29th, 2008 as Grace, Grumblin Mumblins
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From Rich Lowry:
There’s no indication that Huckabee is being considered, so consider this idle speculation like the Hillary chatter prior to Obama’s pick. But wouldn’t Huckabee make a lot of sense given the things we’ve learned the last two weeks?
1) McCain might have a “wealth problem,” and certainly Democrats are going to try to hit his wealth for all its worth in their play for working-class voters; Huckabee doesn’t have a problem on this front, and has lots of working-class cred.
2) The pro-choice trial balloon hasn’t been well received, and it’s clear that a pro-choice nominee would create a major disruption; Huckabee is pro-life.
3) Obama picked Biden who is going to a vivid presence (for better or worse) on the stump and could be formidable in debate; Huckabee is a great campaigner and might be just the guy to puncture Biden in a debate.
4) (This is a less important point.) The McCain folks have made a huge deal about differences between Obama and Biden during the primaries; McCain and Huckabee didn’t have much in the way of differences and went out of their way to praise each other. The other upsides are the press likes Huckabee (for now), he’s a different kind of Republican, and his selection would be such a shock, it might even be considered bold. The downsides are—as I’ve noted many times before—he doesn’t have much in the way of national security credentials and has a big seriousness gap, obviously not trifling matters. But if McCain can’t do Lieberman, and isn’t thrilled by Pawlenty or Romney, Huckabee might be worth a last-minute second look.
Huckabee is essentially a socially conservative socialist, fond of tax increases and hostile to free markets. When the Massacusetts Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, he argued that Romney should ignore the court. It seems to me that the head of the executive branch is supposed to abide by the rules of the judicial branch, and Huckabee clearly disagrees. Bad idea. Memo to McCain: Don’t Huck around.
Hubbard posted this at 10:26 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 as Grumblin Mumblins, Audacity of Hype
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