little scottsdale

When I first moved to the Valley of the Sun and landed in Gilbert, a southeastern suburb of Phoenix, I was told that I had moved to "little Scottsdale". Upscale. The article copied below is about McDonald's. You ought to see our Denny's! What a fucking parody of the "high life". I am ROFL!

Gilbert McDonald's features plasma TVs, leather chairs

David van den Berg
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 31, 2008 01:10 PM

A McDonald's restaurant opening in Gilbert Friday will be one the first to follow the company's new design strategy.
Interior features include plasma screen televisions, wireless internet access, leather chairs, a play area designed specifically for toddlers and booths with high leather backs.
"This is a symbol of what people want," said Keenan Strand, a part owner and director of operations of the restaurant and eight others around the Valley.
Maintenance costs aren't likely to be a problem, Strand said.
"I don't know that maintenance is going to be any greater than any other store," he said.
The restaurant's exterior got a facelift too. The new design incorporates glass and metal, striped awnings, and a double-lane drive-through ordering system. Customers in the drive-through lane will be able to look through a window into the kitchen before reaching the pick-up window.
The restaurant is near the intersection of Val Vista Drive and Pecos Road, close to the five-story Rome Towers retail and office building. It is expected to serve between 1,200 and 1,500 customers a day, Strand said.

bulldozers and dirt

(drive-by truckers)
As I run through the jobs and projects with my current company a reoccurring theme is the south. Ocala, Mobile, Montgomery, Baton Rouge, Columbia, Asheville, Southaven, Nashville, Memphis, Kansas City and St. Louis. Not to mention Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Albuequerque, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Riverside and to the north Sacramento and Bakersfield. I get as far north as Denver and Billings. Lakefield and Marshfield. Ankeny and Cleveland.
If we were to extend the south all the way up to Anchorage, it would still be south to me. And that's a good thing because with my recent promotion, the south now includes Alaska.
Now sit back and listen to some southern music ...

rilo kiley - portions for foxes

(jenny lewis)

hillcrest

Vernice and I get back to Hillcrest every couple years or so. We don't have a timetable. We don't pick the season. We just up and go. The sign is still there from when the Highway ran by this part of town. Before it moved south spawning competing gas stations with conveniences. Now the former thoroughfare is called the Wall Dump Road. You can't even get to Quinn on it anymore. Not that a lot of folks need to get to Quinn so much as past it these days.
The Hillcrest Motel survives, barely. It's the same as it ever was. Home to itinerants and the local poor. A few tourists in the summer. They don't typically stay more than one night. Maybe it's the abandoned vehicles or the boarded up buildings. At one time an area of industry and commerce, now in disrepair and decrepit. The weeds grow unchecked. The town's people complain, but the owners live far away and could care less.
Vernice and I don't care either. Hillcrest is where we started our life together. We raised a toddler in the shotgun duplex across the lot from the 'showers'. The 'showers' was a place for truckers and others on their way someplace else stopping just long enough to wash the dust off. See, this was a dusty road before cars had air conditioning. The biggest fortunes in town would be made on the cooling principle.
Vernice and I made do with swamp cooler and a propane gas stove. The swamp cooler was the size of a refrigerator and moistened but hardly cooled the air. The gas stove had to be re-lit each time it was used and this could be a dangerous endeavor.

In the summer of that year, we got ourselves a dog. You can just make him out in this old picture. With a baby on the way and the 'showers' full of travelers, the dog beat out a gun in Vernice's thinking. I got my way part-way by naming the dog 'Shotgun". He became a true son of a gun just to spite me.
Shotgun was a well-named dog if only for his outhouse habits. Perfecting a well-timed scatter-gun approach to all things offensive, eaten or expelled, Shotgun was moved to a corner of the duplex that had once served as the home of an alcoholic octogenarian who finally wandered into the Badlands and fell into the sewer pond.While it was of course a tragedy, it did free up some room for an equally vile and unhealthy dog. The dog's propensities as well as his love for Vernice and hate for me nearly led me to kill him with a coal shovel one late winter's evening. But I missed my first shot and Vernice caught me mid-swat on the second. It was a long cold winter punctuated with weekly dog-poo-removal exercises while a beagle-sized canine barks incessantly in my ear.

But the good times outshine these trivial incidents. Vernice blooms into a young mother and I get a job with Boeing building Minuteman Missile Silos.

To be continued?

The 'How Kola Glove'

Hey kids! You too can learn to speak Lakota with the new "How Kola Glove" from Hasbro! Lingualism meets space-age technology! The glove works by sending a small stream of electricity through the wearer's arm at a modulation that affects only the pitch of the users vocal chords. Just slip the glove over your left hand, activate the patented lead-cadmium, battery-belt pack and raise the glove in greeting to friends, family and intelligent pets (try a talking bird, for example, or even a monkey). Developed by Venezuelan activist and son of dictator Hugo Chavez, Tito (The Glove) Chavez, early versions of "How Kola Glove" were used primarily by Venezuelan oil company Citgo to deliver oil and gas subsidies to US reservations in North and South Dakota.
But Tito Chavez had bigger dreams. A mass market for lingual gloves. So he retrofitted the glove to say hello in Navaho, Iroquois and Assiniboine and when equipped with the patented American Negro 'ghetto chip-set', can say things like, "Hey bro, you holdin?", "Hey boss, can a brother get a quarter for a pack of chips?" and "Now and den, I likes a little gravy on my biskit." or helpful bathroom banter like, "Wanna buy dis here cologne?" A sure cure for stage-fright and other awkward moments! There's no mistaking the usefulness of these pre-programmed ghetto phrases and they're applicable year round!
So why be the last in your neighborhood to own this versatile lingual tool? Easter is coming. Prime your parents now! Just say it. Mom, Dad. I want the "How Kola Glove" in my basket!

free

sorry folks - i quit - talk to each other

bastards of young

Of course, I subject you to the best rock music video ever made.

checking this list

I'm checking this list to see if you're still on it. I'm using a special phone to check all electronic connections. It's hands free.
Most of you have gone. Some, and only the best I expect, to the space travel programs. Others, I suppose, to the kitchen or the cellar. All are valid means of escape from rising gas prices, global warming and the downturn in the breakfast cereal market. Before long, we will be out of domestically produced yogurt and our reliance on the Mongolians will increase proportionally. I personally have already placed an advance order with Eddie Bauer for an "American Yurt". The Yurt/Home/Circular Asian Yak-Skin Hut of the future.

over and over and over

No truer words as I return to Hootenanny after a long, much needed hiatus. Sorry to have left you, but the good thing is that so many have lost the habit of reading this weblog, I'm back to ground zero so to speak and can do whatever I want when I want without regard to what I might think you want. That's key.
I hate to sound really selfish but I do this as a hobby, for me and my amusement. Everything else is secondary. As it should be. I guess.
Regarding the last post. We got our birds. Wasn't very hard and took under an hour total if I recall correctly. The boss went home with some stories and I kept the birds. Got three left. One went to a friend across the street and one each to a couple of North Dakotans living nearby.
I took the bird to Peter on a Sunday. It was a warm day and the door was open. Still, I knocked and Peter's wife Bobbie came to the door and ushered me in. Peter was conducting a religious service and there were folks there I had never seen before. I didn't stay, being a bit leery about such things especially on a Sunday when I was watching NFL Football and drinking or about to begin drinking beer.
Giving a bird to Jim was a lot easier. He lives next door and was the first, along with his wife Tammy, to welcome me to the neighborhood. He's downed a few birds along the way and was happy to have one for the fridge. Also, he has a big-ass boat he pulls with a Chevy Sierra. Jim is alright.
The third bird was a hen the dog found in the field. Wing-shot but still a good runner. I gave it to my assistant at work. She can't decide whether she's from ND or Minnesota. She has attributes of both. Most of all just a mother hen. Mean but very protective of her brood. Keeps the troops in order but has the May butchering season coming.
Well. Here we are. Send your comments as I rearrange the site. I've looked into some alternatives but haven't located a keeper so this'll do just fine.
And hey, if you make it to RC say HI to Bobbie and Pat.