July 2016 – Midwestern Meditations

MMeM, Vol.12 Issue 27 – Rocks & a Hard Case

Talk about ROCKS and HARD case!

Look, I come from a long line of stubborn folk. It’s in my blood. Whether it comes from the Irish side or German and English heritage I don’t know. But, what I do know is that the combination has produced stubbornness like none other the likes of which have never been known. If my current family had a crest it would center around a donkey for its hard headedness without a doubt.

That said, I believe I may have just found a long-lost relative in this story from The Birmingham Mail in the UK. It seems that 70 year old disabled retiree, Linda Mills, just didn’t approve of the tarmac project that workers were laying next to the curb by her housing community.

After many attempts, complaints, and requests she took matters into her own hands, or wheels, and just decided to park it. So naturally, the workers just went about paving AROUND her anyway.

Talk about ROCKS and a HARD case!

MMeM, Vol.12 Issue 26 – Who can read that?

…I’m an OLD Pretty much…

Look, I’ll be the first to admit, I’m getting older. I’m an Old. Pretty much, through and through there’s not really any getting around it. I get bent out of shape about kids shooting off fireworks the entire WEEK of the Fourth of July for goodness sake!

So, along that same vein, the other night I broke down and watched a movie that I thought I wouldn’t because I had heard bad reviews about it. It turns out that I really liked the movie “Black Mass” with Johnny Depp. The bad stuff I had heard about it was that it was just another run-of-the-mill glorified gangster movie, blah blah blah, etc. Of course, everyone also knows it’s about Whitey Bulger and the fact he evaded the FBI for years after his escape from the Boston area after essentially giving them just enough on the Italian mafia at the time he basically ran his own version of the Irish mafia at the same time while being an “informant”. That, was a long sentence, but this movie did a really good job of explaining and showing that whole debacle.

Moreover, the refreshing thing about it was that I usually really like Johnny Depp, but it was refreshing to see him in a role where you couldn’t even tell it was him. It was almost like he wasn’t in it because he didn’t have his trademark teenager failed mustache or pirate garb this time. Anyway, it was all well done. Nice.

Until, the end. See in a movie such as this one, you always want to know how things ended up for all of the major characters. So, this movies HAS to have the obligatory closing shots with WORDS and PARAGRAPHS telling you the closing stories. But, this movie, like SO MANY ANY MORE apparently didn’t have any quality checking WHATSOEVER BECAUSE YOU CAN’T READ WHITE LETTERS ON WHITE BACKGROUND SCENERY OR 4 LINES IN 3 SECONDS!

What are these idiots thinking? I’ll tell you what, NOTHING! No one checks this stuff out at all!

Ok, I’ll get off my porch now. I’m in my robe with black socks on anyway and it’s dusk out now. Good night.

MMeM, Vol.12 Issue 25 – Enough Already!

In fact, everyone hates this …honest.

For me, the only thing more annoying than an updated, new, have-to-upgrade-to new cell phone that comes out, is the incessant non-news during the ramp up year after year after year. I mean, come ON! I get it. Some tech bloggers and magazine writers need content. We all struggle with this issue from time to time. But for the love of! This is NON STOP!

After a while, you think that manufacturers and mobile phone providers are “leaking” information and pictures of rumored upcoming new phones like the iPhone 7 to these nonNews outlets. Here’s a tip. They’re not. Because, they don’t have to. See, these bloggers, magazines, and industry hopeful types HAVE to manufacture this supposed hype in order to maintain the fallacy that they can still stay in some fantasy of “business”. No. One. Cares. In fact, everyone hates this to be honest. Everyone hates the fact that the mobile phone they can barely afford to have currently is technically already out-of-date and that blogs and “reporters” such as these folks are publishing stories about the next coming like a sighting of Jesus on a grilled cheese sandwich.

Every freaking day, someone is posting crappy pictures of rumored iPhone 7 glimpses that supposedly show it NOT having a mute button or NOT having a headphone jack or whatever. This goes on for MONTHS and MONTHS. Look, we get it. We know that our phones that we JUST GOT are out of date before we wrestle them out of the over done tamper proof packaging. Just stop talking about the next thing. We don’t care. What you should be talking about is NOTHING. Because, in truth, there really isn’t any reason for you to be bugging anyone and the sad, sad, sad truth is that media outlets will suck up your content because they still believe that EVERYONE wants to learn about a shiny new iPhone.