Now, for my whole purpose in posting this.  Hardcore Pawn is about, as I am sure you can gather from the name, a pawn shop.  In this case it’s a rather large pawn shop in Detroit called American Jewelry and Loan.  I just saw something that amazed me, and it’s not the first time I have seen it either, but it’s the first time I decided to post something about it.  The way the pawn shop works is, you take whatever it is that you want to pawn (get a loan on) or just outright sell, to the shop.  Once you take it inside the shop, one of the people who work there will take a look at it, basically appraise it (figuring out what it might be worth and if they thing they can make any money on it) and then will tell you what your options are.  By options I mean what they will give you for it.

Usually, they will give you two numbers, the amount of money they will loan you if you are looking to get it back, and the amount of money they will pay you outright if you are wanting to sell it.  From what I have seen, and this only applies to American Jewelry and Loan since they are the ones in the TV show, those numbers are pretty much solid and there is little room for negotiation.  Sometimes people come in and tell them what they want out of something, and if it’s too high the staff will then negotiate, but they don’t hesitate to say no if someone wants too much.

Such was the case that got me typing this article.  A young woman wanted to pawn a pair of earrings and the clerk informed her that the “diamonds” on the earrings were false and that they were not interested in paying anything for them.  This is where it gets a bit crazy.  The customer tells the clerk that she “don’t wanna hear that” and that the clerk is in fact gonna pay for her earrings.  The clerk says again that they are not interested while the customer repeats her mantra “just pawn my earrings”.  What I find funny and crazy about this is that the store has said no, and the customer tells the clerk that they are going to do it anyway.  Like the clerk should then say something like “Oh, you are right, what was I thinking”.

Do these customers (remember, this isn’t the first time I have seen this happen) really think that their tantrums are going to change someones mind?  I mean, come on, you don’t go to a restaurant and eat your meal and then when the check comes tell them that they are going to charge you $2.00 for that stake instead of $8.00 like it says on the menu.  It boggles my mind, I cannot comprehend what these people are thinking.  “No, we don’t want to buy your item.” – “Yes you do, you are going to buy it and right now.”  Maybe they don’t realize that Jedi mind tricks aren’t real?  These aren’t the droids you are looking for!

Anyway, I had to express something about this because I have seen it over and over and it blows my mind. Just like you can’t push a rope, you can’t use mind control to get better deals at a pawn shop!  Hey, anyone out there, drop a comment or pop into the forums (I am setting them up now, should be operational soon!) and tell me what you think.

I still don’t know what the hell I did that made him so mad, I was trucking on Interstate 81, three lanes, left lane for fast runners, middle lane for normal I guess because the right lane was for slow moving vehicles.  I wasn’t going fast or slow, so I was in the middle.  This jerk decides to come up behind me fast, right on my ass, and then hit the left lane.  Keep in mind that the left and right lanes are clear, I’m in the middle.  He hits the left lane, comes up about halfway past me and then comes on over into my lane.  At first I thought it was just a mistake, it happens, nobody’s perfect, right?  Wrong, he proceeds to move all the way over to the right lane to hit the exit ramp.  Now, he could have just hit the right lane in the first place, but no, he had to get beside me on the left and run my ass off the road.  I got out of his way so he didn’t succeed, but  it wasn’t any damn fun.

And that’s one thing I have noticed about the big rig truck drivers, a profession that used to be honorable that is now rife with wage cutting mexican job stealing wheel monkeys that have to care for the craft.  I have noticed that since they are driving the big vehicles on the road, they pretty much don’t give a shit about the rest of us.  They have some kind of king of the road ooh boy look how much I can compensate with this big thing complex and all the little four wheelers be damned.  There are some good drivers out there sure, but unfortunately they are in the vast minority anymore.  All this just gets me circled right back around to my point that people are self centered jerks.  Here’s a tip, try not to be one, maybe life will be better for all of us.

“First of all, Criss, can I call you Chris? If you’re going to take a pseudonym, why don’t you not spell it like a jackass? I mean, I understand if you’re one of those people whose parents thought they were being original and decided to spell your name with all kinds of crazy extra vowels, misplaced consonants and the letter Y. But you, you CHOSE this name and that’s the route you went? Interesting.

Anyway, I don’t know if any of you have ever seen the show “Mindfreak” on A&E – but it’s terrible. It’s got “acting” and a production quality on par with porn and is generally pretty uninspiring. In addition to dressing like a model from the Hot Topic catalog CA’s deep self love and constant chest pounding/finger kissing/pointing at the sky routine wears thin pretty quickly.”

Check out the rest of it here …

That’s really funny to me since I have yet to hear anything out of his pie hole of a mouth that isn’t a lie.  From his fake documentaries funded by George Soros that spread misconceptions and half-truths just to stir the political pot and provide fodder for the biased as hell media outlets, to his phony speeches and rigged awards.  The guy is a useless factory of misinformation and now it seems, a hypocrite as well.  I guess we see why he and our so called President are on the same side, they both lie, cheat and steal better than most of the crooks in prison.  They haven’t been caught after all.

I know, I know, you are all thinking that I shouldn’t hide my feelings and I should tell you how I really feel about him!  LOL

I am not saying that Hussein Obama was right or wrong in vetoing extensions for more negotiation time, only time will tell on that one, but in all the rush, fuss, mess and turmoil, what got missed or shoved through without enough forethought?  The figure has come in at something like $38 billion dollars[1] they cut from the budget, to expand to $500 billion over the next few years.  Does anyone outside of those few politicians, who were no doubt serving their own self interest, actually know what all those cuts mean?  There is absolutely no way that our so called president could have gotten a handle on what all was in there that fast, no way in hell.

Top that off with Nancy Pelosi, Grand Witch of the Democrats claiming that despite legislation that cuts FCC rules and powers, they will continue to operate in the same way regardless[2].  Tell me, how does that work?  Can some people just ignore the law and just do what they want despite it being illegal, just because they are a politician?  I know, dumb question.  This is ridiculous, and is just another example of how broken and corrupt our government is.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my country and it’s still the best that I have seen compared to most anything else out there, but it is blatantly obvious that it’s not about we the people anymore.  Today’s government is about the pockets of the politicians, and how they can get them lined even more than before.

I don’t mind if you ask me, give me a choice, but not every damn program out there needs to put one or more items into my system tray to load there every time the computer starts and slow down my startup time, eating away at memory and CPU power.  Normally this is under the guise of “speeding up the application”.  Well, I say that if you need all of those pre-loaders to make your application function acceptably, maybe you should go back to Fortran 101 and learn to write good code in the first place!

What’s worse, are the damn services that get installed and started that we don’t even know about.  Why does a simple media player need a web server?  Why does my GPS management app want or need to check out my hard drive at night?  Have all developers taken refuge at the throne of Bill Gates and Lenovo or something?

“We have a right to look at the user’s private information because they bought our crap.”  or “We don’t need to worry about writing tight, efficient bug free code, we’ll just tell the customer to by a new computer and get more kick backs from Intel.”

Not to mention the shift away from ownership to leasing.  Now when you “buy” software, you really are only “buying” a license that allows you to use it for a period of time.  Screw that noise, man.  If I am interested in a certain product and see that kind of license, ffft it’s gone and I am looking at something else.

This is just one reason why Open Source software is so damn good and popular.  Microsoft and the other behemoths of the commercial software industry want to come out and tell everyone that free software isn’t really free, it costs you more than the expensive slop that they sell.  The thing is, they don’t get it.  We don’t mean free as in dollars, we mean free as in spirit and ethics.  You get some open source code and you may spend a few bucks to implement it or get some support, or you may not, either way it is completely open.  All of the source code is there so you can make damn sure no one is spying on you or stealing information from you.  You can make a change to the app if you feel like it so that it fits better to your needs, instead of only getting “good enough”.  It’s free like the wind and water cascading down the mountain, and brothers and sisters, that’s a great place to be.

So, naturally Glenn Beck apologized, and appeared to be every bit sincere and remorseful that he made a comparison that upset folk.  I mean, the guy expresses his opinion (which, last time I check, we were free to do in this country), people complain about it because basically they are going to complain about anything that isn’t glowing praise about their agenda they are pushing, and Beck basically comes back to say he was sorry, he didn’t mean to offend anyone.  Seems like a pretty normal exchange, I think we have all had something similar happen.  You say something and someone gets pissed, and you put your hands up like “Hey, didn’t mean anything man, sorry about what I said about your sister, my bad”.  After that you have another couple beers and all is good.

Not so with these guys, they came back from Beck’s apology and have said that “Anything short” of ending “Mr. Beck’s tenure at Fox News” by Rupert Murdoch “reflects an unwillingness to take seriously the harm Mr. Beck causes to many in our community and beyond”.

Wow.

No, really.  Wow.

These guys need some Prozac in a bad way.  Nice turning of the other cheek there.  Way to get along with your fellow man and all that.  The guy apologizes for not really doing anything wrong from what I can tell, and you want to pull an Imus on him.  Get a life and get a grip on reality you moonbat.  The folks ultimately behind all of this the “Jewish Funds for Justice” league need to re-evaluate the word justice.  You can read the whole article here if you like, it’s just as ludicrous.

I am speaking of people who have lost touch with humility, compassion and really anything that tethers them to the human race, to still actually being able to be called a human being.  So far removed from humanity they have become, they are able to stand idly by, not doing something (like their jobs, their duty, whatever) while someone else gets the shaft, dies, or something similar.

In this example of course, I am speaking of South Fulton in Northwest Tennessee in Obion County where firefighters responded to a house on fire call, a house owned by Gene and Paulette Cranick, only to stand idly by and watch, letting it burn to the ground, killing three dogs and a cat.  Not one firefighter lifted a finger to save the Cranick home.  Why, you ask?  Because Gene Cranick is human, and forgot to mail in the $75 fee that pays for Fire Department services.  Videos of firefighters sitting in their fully equipped fire trucks indolently watching the house go up in flames as Gene Cranick pleaded that he would pay “anything they want” if they would just put out the fire can be found on the net (like here, and here to name a couple). The fire chief has the power to make on-the-spot exemptions, but he refused.  When asked by reporters, Mayor David Crocker reportedly said “If homeowners don’t pay, they’re out of luck.”  Well, no shit, way to win voter support ding-dong.  So, all that stood between Gene Cranick’s home standing tall or being reduced to a pile of charred ashes and debris? Seventy-five dollars ($75).  That’s it.

I still find it hard to believe that a firefighter could stand by and watch the home of another fellow human being burn to the ground.  Even when attempting to use the weak and over parlayed “just following orders” justification.  It didn’t work for the Nazis, it ain’t gonna work for firefighters, not in my book anyway.  I can say with certainty that I would not have been able to stand idly by and watch this family’s home, possessions and pets get destroyed like that.  I might get fired afterwards, but I am the one that has to live with myself in the end.  Besides, how often have one of us forgotten something?  How great does it feel when someone helps us out and gives us the benefit of the doubt, letting us slide that payment in a little late, or get that damage covered anyway even though they shouldn’t?  As long as we pay the bill then of course.  I am not saying the Cranick’s should get a free ride, but he admitted that he forgot to send the payment and offered to pay it right there, and more even.  He even went so far as to offer to pay “whatever they wanted”, just to get some help.  But still, the fire department, firefighters, fire chief, the town and all involved let the house burn to the ground.  Now, aside from Gene and Paulette’s pets dying, they have nothing left.  All of their possessions, memories, and belongings were destroyed in the fire, just like their home.  It’s going to cost them a lot more than $75 to recover from the selfish incompetence of the fire fighters, the fire chief and the mayor (lack of capitals on purpose).

Gee, I sure am glad all of you are perfect and I sure hope you never need help yourself some day.