Sign of the Times

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:      Super-decal-ofragilistic
Date:                        09/12/14
Official Location:           My Parking Lot
                             Troy, MI

 

I got tired of our vans getting jacked while working in the ghetto, so I made some modifications.

 

The screens and the alarms really worked.

 

Sadly, however, it was decided that I'm not allowed to order the decals anymore.  Something about professionalism and company image and whatnot.

 

m.karvinen

Because I'm like 12

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:      Homonym & M's
Date:                        07/31/14
Official Location:           North of Midtown
                             Detroit

...at least something in Detroit does.

m. karvinen

Cat with a Gat

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:      Detroit Inst of Art
Date:                        07/03/14
Official Location:           Brush & Piquette
                             Detroit

I just don't understand why they hate cats so much.

m. karvinen

HoJo Sucks

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:      Mason Dixon
Date:                        04/15/14
Official Location:           Kentucky & Tennessee


About two months ago, the wife and I decided to take a little "us" time and drive down I-75 until we got to some warmer climes. It had been a brutal winter, and I have to confess, it was the kind of season that makes you want to consider moving to a place like, well, Tennessee.  It's warmer now, and I have returned to my Midwestern sensibilities.  Anyway, here's a picture or two to illustrate how we vacation and how my persistent immaturity apparently does not.

Our first nature walk in Tennessee.

Didn't Walt Disney freeze his head? 

Wouldn't that make this the most authentic Disneyworld?

 

I suspect this is a side effect of enjoying too much Frozen Head.

 

After being forced off the highway by detours, we stayed in a real classy Howard Johnson's in Nicholasville, Kentucky.  This was wedged in the missing peephole.  It was one of the nicer amenities.

 

They also made it very easy to identify which part of the carpet was the best place to store the iron.

(Sadly, someone had already stolen the iron.)

 

I suspect the Nicholasville/Lexington Howard Johnson's is well known to a number of these.

 

 

This is where the mother-in-law is from in Tennessee.  Their football team is the fighting Wartburg Bulldogs.  Really?  No one considered Wartburg Warthogs?  Isn't it just better to embrace your weirdness?

 

 

m. karvinen

 

 

 

Depressed all over Again

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:   Munday Moanin'
Date:                     03/16/2012 (Yeah, 2 years ago)
Location:                 My Last Teaching Job
Official Location:        Could have been anywhere

I stumbled across this in my briefcase the other day. It's from my last teaching gig. I really loved teaching!

People ask me why I don't teach college courses anymore.  I can tell you that it wasn't because of all the "meatings."

Simple fact is, not every person is college material.  Unfortunately, we still loan them boatloads of money to pretend they are, and then we are shocked when they are unable to graduate and pay it back. 

There is so much blame to go around, I doubt we'll ever "fined" a solution.

m. karvinen

Wrecking Ball

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:   That's Smiley, not Miley
Date:                     04/29/2014
Location:                 Big Three Automaker Facility
Official Location:        Classified

So last week we're working at a moth-balled industrial site that I'm not at liberty to name. Suddenly, my partner spots this little guy casually hanging out by the dumpster. He'd obviously been around since the plant was open.  Now painting a smiley face on a big yellow wrecking ball isn't exactly the epitome of on-the-job creativity, but I gotta give mad shout-outs to the employee that went the extra mile and welded an industrial ceiling fan to the top to create the beanie propeller.

Small wonder cars are so expensive.

m. karvinen

Book Alert - Finale

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Weird L'il SIS

to bring you this...

 

Book Alert 5 - The Last One!

 

Well, it's official.  The book has been published!  No more book alerts.  I promise.

 

I'd be more excited, but it was basically like giving birth toward the end.

And, no, it wasn't a pain you forget.

 

Anyway, it came out way cool, and you should promptly go out and buy several copies for you and several hundred of your closest friends.

 

Buy a physical copy here

or

Buy the Kindle/Amazon version here

or

Go to the official book website and download a free preview here.

 

So many choices...

 

m karvinen

Rant & Roll

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:      Segue-itis
Date:                        03/26/2014
Official Location:           Nowhere, and that's
                             the problem



"Despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a Cage." - Smashing Pumpkins

 

Lately, for whatever reason, I haven’t been travelling around metro-Detroit as much as I usually do.  I feel like a rat in a cage.  As a result, the Weird L’il S**t I See is little more than what appears before me in my office, during my commute, or what I see at lunch.  It’s not exactly photo-worthy, and being cooped up has got me a little agitated.  I guess that might explain why I am in the mood to rant about everything and nothing in particular.  So without further ado...

 

·         If your driver’s side window does not function, you are not allowed to use the  fast-food drive-thru.  Period. There are no exceptions to this.  You look ridiculous, and you’re holding up the line.  Park your piece of shit.  Go inside.  Use the counter.  Yes, it’s not as convenient, but perhaps that very same corner-cutting, drive-thru mentality of yours is probably why your broke-ass can’t afford a car with working windows in the first place.  Maybe while you’re in there, fill out an application.  Just sayin'.

·         And speaking of drive-thru’s—McDonald’s, I’m talking to you—what are you trying to accomplish by installing double drive-thru speaker lanes that merge into one pick-up window?  It causes nothing but utter Mc-confusion when trying to match orders with customers.  This is ten levels of difficulty beyond “making correct change,” and your staff routinely has enough difficulty with that concept.  But even more disturbingly, have you seen the way your customers aggressively jockey for position and cut-off one another in an effort to be the first to merge into the single pick-up lane after placing their orders?  I would venture a guess that there’s less intentional cutting going on at a group home for teenage girls.  Who needs that kind of pressure before an extra value meal?  If I have a heart attack after eating a double quarter pounder with cheese and large fry, that’s on me.  I know the risks.  But to die of a road rage induced embolism while navigating your damn drive-thru?  That’s all on you.  Shame.

 

·         And speaking of driving etiquette, commuters, when we are all driving smoothly on a busy freeway in a continuous line of traffic, and your car eventually comes up and over a hill and you are granted your first panoramic view of all the cars that are actually in front of you (and always have been), don’t hit your brakes, not even for a second or two.  I know it’s just a tap, but it is completely unnecessary, and you are just being slave to your amygdala, the primitive, reptilian portion of your brain that dictates your flight or fight response (and also makes you a racist).  Just because you can suddenly see those cars that were always there, it doesn’t mean that they are now a threat to you.  And even if they were, slowing down for two seconds won’t make you any safer.  Quite the opposite.  I am right behind right you.  I am doing 70 mph, and I am looking down at my smartphone while I check my NCAA brackets.  I promise I won’t notice you’ve tapped your brakes until I’ve lodged my Honda Odyssey well into your backseat.

·         And speaking of being plowed into from behind, what the hell is going on with Michigan and gay marriage?  Do we allow it now or don’t we?  I’m having a hard time following just what the law is now that our bi-polar legislators have gone back and forth so many times.  Apparently it’s perfectly OK for them to be bi.  And why is a court in Ohio now making the final decision? Don’t we all agree that Ohio is just an unfortunate span of real estate separating Michigan from useful places?  Why are they even involved in this debate?  And what’s the debate?  I just assumed that after eight successful seasons of Will & Grace, we realized that all gay people are witty and attractive, and they should finally have the rights of everyone else.  Seriously though, I just don’t understand the opposition to gay marriage. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m a happily married man.  In my heart, I know that that institution is made sacred by the commitment shared, not by how the genitalia differ.

·         And, finally, speaking of genitalia, I am recently reminded of something my great uncle told me.  Right before he died, when he was 87, I had the extreme pleasure of driving cross country with him, and, as a residual bonus, getting a decidedly different perspective on my family, our history, and growing old.  Funny guy, my great uncle.  At one point during the trip, while we were yammering about this and that, he says, “You know, Mark, getting old is horrible, but it’s not the aches and pains or even the dying part.  The worst thing is what they don’t even have the decency to tell ya, no one, not even the doctors.  They absolutely don’t warn ya how much your Johnson just shrinks right up.  By the time you get my age, your pecker is hardly even there anymore!”  While he said that last part, he held up his thumb and index finger with nary an inch separating them.  I damn near drove off the road laughing.  But it might not be as funny now, though.  I passed the half-way mark to 87 a few years ago, and so I'm naturally beginning to wonder whether the prophetic shrinkage is experienced as a straight-line graph or more of an undetectable-at-first-but-dramatically-falling-off-at-the-end, parabolic type affair.  Shit!  Like I really needed something else to stress over.

 

Since I can't sink much lower, I'll stop for now.

 

m. karvinen

Horseplay

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:      Bad Mare Day  
Date:                        02-23-2014
Official Location:           Northbound I-75
Actual Location:             Oakland County

Didn't know what this was at first...

Then I realized it was just a guy out 

taking his horse for a ride.

Adorable!

 

m. karvinen

DragonNeed

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:      Dragonmead Pub Date:                        01-31-14
Official Location:           14600 E. Eleven Mile Road
Actual Location:             696 service drive at the
                             Groesbeck Exit
                             Warren, MI

When you and your friends were real young, did you ever get the crazy notion to put on a neighborhood play? No, me neither, but I remember my oldest sister once did. She was (of course) the self-anointed director/producer/head writer, and we were all “voluntarily recruited” as actors, set builders, gaffs or best boys (I don’t know what gaffs and best boys are, but they seem to be in a lot of movie credits, so I added them to round out the sentence).  Anyway, if memory serves, the play was an amateur production (to say the least) of a Gilligan’s Island meets Lost in Space episode, and it pretty much sucked ass.  No big surprise there.

Anyway, when I went to the Dragonmead Brewery in Warren the other day, I was kinda’ reminded of that amateur production of my youth.  Don’t get me wrong, unlike my sister's play, I ultimately really took a liking to the Dragonmead, but at first blush, it seemed like it could use some help from grown-ups.
 
For instance, the location is just plain bizarre to me.  Much like the play, which we held in our friend’s living room simply because it was available, the Dragonmead is located in an industrial strip center, surrounded by warehouses and a junkyard, in the asphalted cluster f**k that is the 696 service drive/Eleven Mile Road/Groesbeck eternal construction nexus.  I have to believe the founders of Dragonmead only chose that site because it, too, was available.  I’ll go further and guess that one of their father’s was still paying the lease on his out-of-business tool & die shop there and said, “Sure, you kids wanna’ run a little lemonade stand?  You can use it until April.  Just don’t put any nail holes in the walls.”

The sign out front also reminded me of the hand made flyers for our adolescent production.  I’m not going to completely bash another person’s honest attempt at production art, but let’s just say the picture above actually does it a considerable amount of justice, and you rarely see that level of quality on anything other than velvet.  And considering its unexpected location, bigger would indeed be better.

So, with all that time and money being saved on the location and the signage (and website updates, and the food menu), I had to wonder if it is was being better used elsewhere.  I am so happy to report that it was.  First, the inside was a pleasant surprise.  It was clean, always smoke-free, tastefully decorated and had a spirited mix of patrons even in the middle of a workday afternoon.  The staff was friendly, and there was a surprising amount of quality, stained-glass artwork.  Granted, stained glass has never been a bar attraction for me in the past, but remember, this is in an industrial complex.  It really gave it that odd, single-red-rose-growing-on-the-moon kinda’ aesthetic.

But all that doesn’t really mean squat unless the beer is good.  And, damn, is that beer good!  They have dozens and dozens of their award winning beers on tap, and unlike the trendy new brew pubs that want to make beer out of everything from acorn squash to coconuts, Dragonmead organizes their offerings in real categories like English Ales, Scotch Ales, Stouts, IPA’s, etc.  Thank you!

With the exception of the IPA’s (which universally taste to me like someone burnt an orange in an old tire and put it out with a Bud Light), I’ve pretty much tried them all.  The stouts are amazing and the Porters are a pleasant surprise.  If you want to know about the others, just go there.

m. karvinen

:)

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:  Mood Decay
Date:                    01-24-2014
Location:                Michigan, my mouth, etc.

I’m grumpy lately, and I’ve been trying to figure out why.  Granted, my typical disposition is not exactly Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms, but I wouldn’t call it grumpy.  I’m generally more of a monotone, detached-bemusement kind of guy.  So this is new.

At first I thought it might be the weather.  It’s the midst of winter, and this one has been particularly testicle shrinking with sub-zero temps, seemingly constant snow and my vocabulary being raped with the unwanted insertion of the term “Polar Vortex.” 

As a matter of fact, I just heard on the radio this morning that if we get another 1.5 inches of snow, this will be the snowiest January in, like, the history of forever.  Of course the forecast for tonight is another 4 or 5 inches.  Hello, new record!  And although that sucks, honestly, the weather really doesn’t affect my mood too much.  And since I work outside a lot, it’s not like it’s keeping me prisoner.  Granted, it’s bitch-slapping me with its current extremes, but definitely not keeping me cooped up.
                     
Another possibility is that I stopped working out regularly.  That wasn’t by choice, mind you, just schedule and circumstance.  If I get to the gym once a week now, it’s
either a miracle or I stumbled in there drunk by mistake.  There’s definitely a valid case to be made for exercise induced serotonin and endorphins, but I’m pretty sure I’ve
been successfully offsetting that deficiency with increased alcohol consumption.  I never studied a lot of chemistry, but that’s gotta’ be how that works.  It’s gotta’ be.

Of course there are other things that might be sabotaging my mood lately: The Detroit Lion’s déjà vu season, Justin Bieber’s very existence, my sucky Netflix selection,
Olive Garden, et cetera, et cetera.  Yep, lots of potential bummers out there, but I think I may have finally nailed down the real cause this morning.   

The wife and I started using battery powered toothbrushes many years ago.  Love ‘em.  So does our dentist.  The original German ones we bought, however, were getting a
little long in the tooth (yeah, I said that on purpose; I’m not proud) and the failing, rechargeable batteries weren’t replaceable (and Europeans are supposed to be so all about recycling).  Anyway, last month I marched off to Costco to buy some replacements, and I picked up the latest and greatest version of the very ones we had owned for so many years.  Of course they were “new and improved” with better battery life, lighter weight, anti-lock brakes and what have you.  Whatever. 

For the most part, they are better. However, there is one subtle difference.  Our old Oral B’s had a little LCD display on the handle that used to countdown a timer and then generate a smiley face if I brushed for an amount of time that the Germans deemed satisfactory.  It was incredibly childish, and yet, I used to seek solace in that little, digital positive reinforcing smile every damn morning.  I’m starting to believe that it set the tone for my whole day, and its absence is now having a similar effect but in the wrong direction.

I don’t think they make those toothbrushes anymore, so going back is probably not an option.  However, if I could just get one of those LCD's retro-fitted to my martini glass, well, I'm sure there'd be a lot more earned smiles to help shake this funk.

m. karvinen

Clean up in Aisle 7

Today's Weird Li’l SIS:  The Kroger Check Out
Date:                    01-03-2014
Location:                Aisle 7
                         Troy, MI

I really don’t want to hate people.  Really.  And I’m not talking about a specific person, either.  I mean people in general.  But sometimes I just hate them.  Today is one of those times. 

I was at Kroger today, needed to pick up two things for the office.  The self-checkouts were all down, so I’m standing in line waiting to have my goods tallied up the trusted, old-fashioned way: by a union employee with a bad attitude and advanced scanner training. Anyway, I’m next in line, so I’m thinking it’s only gonna’ be a moment or two.  No big deal. 

Sometimes my optimistic stupidity even amazes me.

The woman checking out in front of me, who appeared to be somewhere between the ages of eighty-seven and one-hundred-and-dead was having a broken English dispute with the cashier.  The broken English wasn’t even a nationality issue.  I simply believe she was born before English was invented and, therefore, had to learn it as a second language.  The dispute was over the price of okra.  (I’ve tasted okra.  I wouldn’t buy it, let alone fight for it.) The shopper was convinced that the sign back at the okra display clearly said $1.00 and the $1.39 ringing up at the register was obviously a bait and switch tactic that Kroger had cleverly engineered to derail her personal economy.  She didn’t understand why the Kroger Company would go to such great lengths to attack her personal household.  Regime change, I’m guessing.

Anyway, fast forward about thirty seven hours, and I’m still one-deep in line as Little Okra Annie, the cashier, and now the assistant to the assistant manager determine that the $1.00 sign she was sure she saw may not have been there today but maybe there a couple of weeks ago when she came in to buy strawberries for her grand niece’s birthday, who just turned nineteen and is studying to be a paralegal secretary, which is a good job to have because lawyers are always busy suing people so she’ll probably never get laid off, not like her brother, Randy, who had a real good job working with furnaces and air-conditioners, they were even willing to put him through school they liked him so much, but he got caught up in the drugs and they fired him, and now he just lays around playing those little “tickity-tickity” games on the television at his poor mother’s house, who also really likes her strawberry shortcake, and that’s why she remembered coming in and the okra sign said only $1, and she thought to herself that that was a really good price and…

AHHHH, SOMEBODY PLEASE JUST FUCKING SHOOT ME!!!

What makes this nightmare scenario even worse is that during the entire time that I was being subjected to the matinee showing of white trash theatre, I was also being periodically blasted by phantom bad breath from the next aisle over.  It was so ungodly intense that my eyes would water as soon as the dark green cloud would come wafting over the Bic lighters and the US Weekly magazines.  I don’t think I have ever experienced breath so foul in all of my life. Until now, I didn’t even think it was possible.  And although morbidly curious, I honestly couldn’t even figure out which person in the neighboring line had been apparently eating road kill rolled in diapers all morning, because by the time my eyes cleared, everyone in the next aisle would be conveniently facing the other way. 

People sometimes ask me why I don’t get a concealed weapons permit. 

Because I would use it. 

A lot.

m. karvinen