I frequent a little urban grocery store around the corner from the office where I pick up lunch or snack items throughout the week. It's small but has just about all the essentials. Today I passed through the beer section (no, I was not buying beer at lunch... my flask was already full) where I noticed all of the six packs were wrapped in clear packaging tape. Confused, I noticed a sign declaring the tape necessary to cut down on shoplifting. Shoplifting? My first thought was, "what on earth is the world coming to? I realize the economy is in the shitter and The Bush That Cried Wolf is at it again, but people are shoplifting individual bottles from six packs??? Good lord!" My second thought was, "why on earth didn't I think of that when I was in college when I was without a fake ID/poor?" It would have been far easier to heist a few 12-ounce bottles than a huge 40-ouncer. My buddy and I each only had one pair of pants and one sweatshirt big enough to conceal a shoplifted 40. It got really suspicious really fast when we hit the one grocery store in town every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday night wearing the same clothes every time. We tried to get creative once by switching outfits but that was even worse, primarily because I was 6-foot tall and he was like 5'-2". We would have been better off just going to all the parties dressed like girls; then we could have had all the beer we wanted. For free. Ah, man, if only I knew then what I know now.
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We went to see a concert at the Ryman Auditorium the other night, which is THE music venue here in Nashville. The show was amazing, not least of all because of the venue. At one point between songs the singer was like, "for this next song I'd like to bring out my good friend Andy Miller to help us out."
I was really excited that some famous local guitarist or banjoist or fiddlerist was going to come out and blow the roof off the place. Instead, the most awkward teenage-looking stoner kid came ambling out onto the stage holding a tambourine in his hand. A tambourine! He spent the duration of the song just shaking the fucking tambourine with this look on his face like, "I can't believe they talked me into this shit. No one can even hear this goddamn thing. I look like such a douche bag up here. This was so not worth that shitty pot they gave me backstage." When the song was over he just walked off stage never to return.
This whole thing has really been bothering me the past few days because I can’t figure out if the band brought the kid out on stage ironically, in which case I would find that hilarious, or if they truly brought the kid out to contribute his tambourining skills to the song. If it was the latter, how did that come about? Were they sitting in rehearsal when their stoner-fast-food-gopher-buddy idly picked up a tambourine and started banging it against his leg and the singer was like, “Hold up! Hold up! Is that a tambourine? Fuck yeah man, that’s exactly what we need! Hey, Billy! Start shaking that thing after the fourth bar and then just shake the shit out of it til you can’t shake no more! Let’s ROCK!!!”
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The most important thing you need to take away from this post is this:
Stop what you’re doing right now and please check to make sure your voter registration is current. If you’re not registered, get registered; you have little more than a week to get your application in. If you are currently registered, I strongly encourage you to request an absentee ballot, especially you folks up there in the swing state of Ohio. You can avoid the long lines on election day and you don’t have to worry that your vote won’t get counted because the electronic voting machine that was made by the same company that contributes thousands of dollars to one of the political parties is going to mess it up.
Here are the websites for both the Franklin and Davidson county Boards of Election:
http://vote.franklincountyohio.gov/
Not surprisingly I have very strong opinions about this election but I won’t subject you to those opinions here, except in the most passive-aggressive and cynical snippets here and there, but I will say that my strongest opinion is that everyone needs to vote. If you’re unsure about what to do to get registered, where to go to vote, how to vote, or want to know more about any of the issues, just send me an e-mail and I’ll be more than happy to help out.
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