It seems like a while since I've posted a Wal-mart Experience update, so I thought I'd take a moment and explain.  Since the baby's arrived, I think I've only been to Wal-mart twice.  I wrote about one of them, and I was so tired I completely forgot about the second one.  To be fair, it was pretty uneventful with relatively short lines and only a few stinky people.  I did walk down to Wal-mart today to pick up some low-carb lunch stuff and discovered something terribly interesting about a North Raleigh Walmart...

Since I was on the grocery side, I was looking for a lane in that section to go through.  Every lane was backed up into the main aisle, so Jim (my co-worker) and I headed down towards the other entrance to check out the lanes there.  We were able to walk straight up to a self-checkout and we were out in less than 5 minutes (including the walk to the far side and back).

I'm not sure this had anything to do with Wal-mart at all, since they obviously had enough open lanes to support the amount of customer traffic for that time of day.  It does point to my previous points about how much people are like sheep.  As always, follow this general rule:  If you see a large congregation of people, head in the opposite direction.

That advice would probably save your life in a zombie uprising.

Craig 6, Walmart Experience 1

I haven't had a lot of time to watch much TV lately – but when I do, I notice some alarming trends.  It seems like everyone is using the same advertising agency and all the agency is doing is saying "we've got a great tampon commercial – we'll sell your tomato juice using that format".

Remember when advertising was entertaining?  I can remember when catch-phrases like "Where's the Beef" and "I've fallen and I can't get up" were embedded in the national pop-culture – in fact, I bet if you're close to my age you STILL remember those phrases and probably got a little half-smile when you read those lines.  Now, all the advertising is the same.  It's boring, it's annoying, and in some cases downright subversive.  For those of you who don't see this alarming pattern let me lay it out for you:

Side-effects may include projectile leprosy

Everyone knows about this commercial.  It's the one that paints a pretty picture of landscapes, walks through parks, people wearing light happy colors and directs me to ask my doctor if "Damitol" is right for me, even though they haven't told me what it actually does or in what circumstances asking my doctor about it would be appropriate.  I don't want to be sitting in the office and say "so, Doc, you say I've got terrible hemorrhoids, so is Cialis right for me?"  They are kind enough to rapidly slam my face with a list of side effects that almost always include some kind of oily discharge erupting from my rectum or a boner that could last most of my waking day - like I need another one of those.

I love having my STD

I always imagined once you had herpes or one of those other untreatable lifelong STDs, you just went off and joined a colony of like-genitaled individuals.  Then I saw this commercial, and discovered women who have herpes like to ride bicycles, go for long walks in the park, and have unprotected sex with dirty people.  I'm so glad they're not letting the funk get them down, or stop them from continuing to spread their legs and the funk.  I'm sure they're proud, but I don't want to think about infected pubic areas while I'm trying to have dinner.

Children are smarter than parents

I first noticed this one when the little girl told her mom in that stupid garble text message speech that "OMG NBD", and the mom just acted like she didn't quite know what to do.  I have a suggestion…take the child's cell phone, beat her with it, and cancel the plan – taking the termination fee out of the savings you'll gain by not buying her anymore trendy clothes and gadgets, and by not letting her out of the house.  Heck, teach her to cook so you can enjoy an afternoon nap while she gets dinner ready.

They kicked it up a notch with the seven year old who told his dad instead of checking out the tree house his dad just built, he'd rather sit in the van and let the air conditioner run so he and his little buddy could watch the built in DVD player WHILE THEY'RE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME.  To make matters worse, the dad just closes the door and lets the kid have his way. 
I'm afraid this commercial makes me angry because it's a little too close to the truth.  Children run all over the top of their parents, and it does seem like the kids are smarter than the parents…but that's only because the parents are stupid and too lazy to straighten out that little misconception. 

It's a simple equation folks:  1 hand + 1 bottom = a kid others don't mind being around

Get a bigger wang and have sex whenever you want it

I'm blown away by the long reaching implications that a sizeable part of the population needs medication or supplements to get a handle on their manhood.  I'm sure polling would show a large majority of men are insecure about certain areas of their lives, but diving deeper would demonstrate how overblown those fears are.  Maybe I'm just not getting something, but long and the short of it is, no medicine or supplement is going to get your more action - there's this other limiting factor called "women".

And no, just taking a pill is not going to make me the talk of the town, unless it makes me do strange things like go through the drive thru without a car and pants.  I'm guessing that would probably get me noticed.

Oh yeah, and if I'm taking medicine so I can have a moment with my wife, should we be in separate bathtubs and outdoors?  What is this, some kind of hippie commune?

Regular birth control is anti-American, but STD vaccinations are totally cool

I'd never thought of it this way, but I'm so glad someone finally set the record straight for me.  I had no idea that while the original birth control was liberating, it still wasn't fair because instead of worrying about not having rampant sex, now you have to worry about taking a little pill everyday.

Thank God someone came up with a way for a woman to manipulate her body making it so she doesn't have to take a daily whore pill.  This new birth control makes it so a woman only has 4 periods a year, instead of the normal 12 to 13 God gave them naturally.  Never mind that birth control wreaks havoc on hormonal systems and increases the risk of stroke (good lord). 

I wonder if the rise in HPV (genital warts) has coincided with the increase in use of birth control.  See, they can spin it any way they'd like, but women can also avoid pregnancy by just not having sex.  It turns out to be a pretty good way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases as well. 

I just don't want to hear someone bitching about having to take a pill every day so they don't get preggers when they probably shouldn't be ho-ing around to begin with.  And for the love of all that's good, if you are going to ho around, at least have the dude wear a raincoat.  Otherwise, you'll love having your STD too.

Basically, it boils down to keeping your mouth closed and your legs shut.

I Sure don't want to see your armpits - ever

This one's quick.  If I was a taxi driver and you hailed me, and then got in my face to tell me smugly "I'd rather walk"…I'd run your skinny butt over.  I bet this girl probably thinks she's smarter than her parents.  She's probably got HPV, Herpes, and doesn't give her boyfriend any play so he's on Cialis and Enzyte.  I bet she gripes endlessly about how unfair birth control is.  I'm Sure I'd like to slap her senseless along with ad exec who thought this commercial was a good idea.

...has been awesome.  I can't believe it has been so long since I made an entry.  A lot has happened since my last post but the main thing is I'M A DAD, so hopefully you can forgive the absense of posts.  I've only had a couple of sleepless nights and we've mostly offset that by sleeping during the day.  I've been off work since the July 14th and won't have to return until August 4th thanks to my very awesome boss.

We were in the hospital for almost a week and for two days of that stay or so, I was taking care of my wife and baby instead of just helping with the baby.  While it shouldn't come as a surprise, it never fails how things don't work out the way we expect them to.  We got home and I went back out for Elizabeth's pain medications, and fell asleep twice on the way home.  That's when I decided I had to either crash in bed or I'd wind up crashing into something.

I went to walmart yesterday.  I can't believe it but I've only had 1 bad experience with walmart out of 5 trips.  This is starting to confirm my suspicion that I'm letting a few bad experiences (plus my time employed with them) ruin my feelings about walmart.  Maybe they've taken steps to improve their customer service in this economic downturn.  I'm calling it Craig 4, Walmart Experience 1.

My son will be 2 weeks old on Sunday.  Wow time is flying.

I went to wal-mart this evening for groceries.  For the most part it was very uneventful, but I got lucky because the cashier closed her line after I'd already unloaded my groceries on the belt so everyone else behind me had to find another line.  That's at least 5 for the Walmart Experience, but that's also 5 for me since I didn't get screwed in the process.  That's a wash for a total of +0.

One minor thing that did annoy me a little but really wasn't such a big deal is they started restocking efforts at about 8:00 pm.  That means they drag all the pallets to the big aisles and work off the pallets to deliver food to the shelves.  This had the unfortunate effect of trapping customers along the wall of meat with no way to get back to the regular food aisles - since they blocked every single opening.

Now, I fully understand the need to have adequately stocked shelves.  I also realize Wal-mart is a 24 hour store, and never has a "closed" timeframe to restock like other grocery stores.  What I can't figure out is why they wouldn't shift restocking to hours when there are fewer customers in the store - say between midnight and 6:00 am.  I mean, if you've got to be open anyway, why not take advantage of the lull in the crowd and do your stocking when you won't inconvenience customers.

Again, it's just poor management.  My wife was with me and that helped make it not so annoying that it ruined my trip - it was just an observation.  Craig 3, Walmart 1.