Month: July 2020

Here’s the headline:

Grocery giant bows to 17-year old Twitter mobster

Trader Joe’s liked to have a little fun with branding its culinary offerings from around the world.
For instance, the store sells Mexican food under “Trader José,” Chinese food under “Trader Ming,” Italian food under “Trader Giotto” and so on.
But one teenage tyrant, a 17 year old girl, found this offensive. So she started a petition– once again Change.org helped facilitate this important social reform.
The petition claims that using variations of Joe in branding foreign foods “belies a narrative of exoticism that perpetuates harmful stereotypes…”
“The Trader Joe’s branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures – it presents “Joe” as the default “normal” and the other characters falling outside of it.”
The petition, now signed by a mob of almost 5,000 random internet users, also took issue with the inspiration for the original Trader Joe’s store.
The founder read an apparently racist book, and rode an apparently racist Disney ride, which together gave him the idea for his clearly racist business of selling food products from around the world.
Trader Joe’s quickly yielded to the Twitter mobsters, saying although the names were “rooted in a lighthearted attempt at inclusiveness, we recognize that it may now have the opposite effect.”

I knew the day would come when I would have the opportunity to use my Richardson, TX garage sale experience for a teaching moment.
Today is the day.

It was a warm weekend morning when I decided to take a long walk in an adjacent neighborhood. I took a $20 with me in case I found a garage sale along the way. Specifically, I was looking for some boots and jeans. A bargain hunter and a second-hand Rose am I.

To my delight I did find a garage sale that morning and to my great fortune, it was there that I found the exact boots I was looking for. They fit my feet absolutely perfectly, which is not common as my left foot is 1/2 size bigger than my right one. And bonus – on the way to pay for the boots, I found a lovely collection of Country music on cassette.

Pulling the $20 out of my back-pack, I approached the cashier at the table. She was about 14 or 15 years old with the attitude of a “Girl in Charge”. An adult next to her (father maybe?) was trying to teach her how to count change. The price tag on the boots said 7 and the tapes were 50 cents total. I handed the $20 to the cashier, and she proceeded to attempt to count my change back to me – which she couldn’t do. When the adult next to her attempted to help her – she rejected the help with a ‘big girl’ attitude.

I was stunned and horrified. Ok children. Math time. What is 20.00 minus 7.50? You have one minute to arrive at the correct answer. Is that long enough? Will you need a calculator? A computer? IS THERE AN ADULT IN THE ROOM? Because obviously there’s not a teacher in the room.

Parents. If your children’s institutionalized education is leaving them without the ability to function in normal society, then it should be abundantly obvious to you that the system is broken beyond repair. If your children are getting their education from the social engineers they encounter in the school buildings and on social media sites, then YOU are at fault – not them. You should be teaching them at home.

“But I have to work” you may say. Here’s a suggestion. If you spent 1 hour a day with them at home after work teaching them fundamental things like reading, writing and arithmetic, I guarantee they would be well ahead of their peers attending the social engineering day care facilities called ‘schools’.

Instagram parents. The “90 day simulated war exercise” is scheduled to end around July 27, 2020. Are you really going to allow it to continue into the fall 2020 school year? We shall see.

Trader Joe’s. If you must capitulate to these brain-washed Orwellian juveniles on social media just to shut them up or make them go away, then so be it. But please, please don’t change anything you are doing. Your customers are fans and we love you. Listen to your fan base. This one is wearing Epsilon Bootes. Still looking for those jeans.

UPDATE – I’ve been asked for more suggestions for working parents. So here they are. These are MY suggestions, but if you are a human and not a clone or a robotoID is your imagination limited? Absolutely NOT. Use it.

1. Are you paying a team of illegal aliens with murderous iconography (crucifixes) hanging from their necks and their rear-view mirrors to manage your lawn care? Fire them! I mean it – for more reasons than you want to know, but may learn anyway. Then give 1/3 of the money you were paying them to your children or others in your neighborhood to take care of your yard needs. Have them learn how to plant gardens, mow grass and trim hedges. Take the remaining 2/3 of that money and open a savings account at a local Credit Union or open an Etherium wallet for your children and let them invest it in the digital currency system.
2. Cancel your NETFLIX subscription – and really all of your cable TV subscriptions. Then turn off your internet router for the majority of the day, so the children don’t sit around playing games or watching ‘programming’ while you are at work. Take 1/2 of that money you were spending on cable TV and give it to your local Library. When the libraries re-open send your kids there to pick up reading material or participate in the group programs offered by the Dewey Decimal System. [UPDATE 12-24-2023 I wasn’t aware of the Trans reading events at the time of this writing. If your branch of Dewey Decimal is offering this call HIM out on it. That’s your responsibility too.] If you change your perspective on what education is, this adjustment should be a natural one to make. Then put the other 1/2 of that money into a vacation fund.
3. Let your children learn how to make crafts with their hands. Here’s one of my favorites: dog chew toys from recycled t-shirt yarn from old t-shirts. Send the chew toys to no-kill animal rescues, maybe make a monetary donation to them also. This is very near and dear to my heart.
4. Organize something like Oregon’s SOLVE mission. It’s your children’s world they are inheriting from you. If you haven’t cleaned it up by now, they are going to have to do it anyway. May as well be NOW.