Apparently we can’t drive in the rain, either

I don’t know if people have gotten worse at driving in the rain here in Arkansas over the past couple of decades or I’ve just become impatient over the years.

It’s a well established fact that we Arkansans are absolutely clueless when it comes to driving in the snow. Folks who move down here from up north tend to marvel at our complete inability to drive on snow but that’s not totally our fault. We can’t help the way we slide around on frozen roads for a couple of reasons – we haven’t had the practice and we don’t have the equipment.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say a foot of snow falls on a town in Iowa. What do they do? City workers get up early, plow the streets and then drive around like nothing happened.

Here in Benton, Ark., a snow flake hitting the street and sticking might be enough to shut down the town. Yes, schools let out and a lot of us just stay home until the snow melts.

It doesn’t snow here that often so we haven’t had much practice driving on it. Also, we don’t have a lot of the equipment necessary to clear the streets when we get snow or ice. That actually makes sense – that equipment is expensive, so why buy it if you’ll use it (at most) about a week a year?

At any rate, I noticed today that a lot of us stink when it comes to driving in the rain, too. I headed off to work this morning in what I’d describe as moderate rainfall (i.e., it was raining too hard to get by with using the “mist” setting on my windshield wipers) and my 25-minute commute took about 45 minutes.

Why? Well, a wreck on I-30 slowed things down quite a bit. I noticed  the wreck, really, when I ran over a piece of Oldsmobile on the interstate.

That’s right. A piece of Oldsmobile. I ran right over it. It was a rubbery chunk of that stuff that covers bumpers or something like that.

I assume it was a piece of Oldsmobile I hit, however, because it was sitting near an Oldsmobile that was in terrible, terrible shape. The front in was bashed in and the hood had that accordion look to it that’s typically reserved for Saturday morning cartoons.

A wreck that’s severe enough to cause pieces of one of the cars involved to back up traffic is something that delays things quite a bit. From the looks of things, the Olds clearly skidded into an SUV (that vehicle didn’t have pieces falling off of it) and one can only guess that the rain caused that wreck.

In fact, the rain caused wrecks all over central Arkansas today – according to the traffic reports on the radio, at least. I came across the battered Oldsmobile and saw another truck that had went into the median on I-430, too.

The truck one was interesting in that the vehicle was clearly bogged down in the median and it was being connected via a tow strap to another truck that looked like it was on its way to getting stuck in the mud. So, yeah, there was another delay – people had to drive by it slowly and look at it.

So we can’t drive on snow or ice. We can’t drive in the rain. People are getting in wrecks during rush hour constantly because they’re chatting on cell phones rather than paying attention to what’s going on around them. I’m amazed I haven’t yet been in a wreck during my commute.

Some other neighborly reminders from your old friend, The Hawg

For my Wordless Wednesday post yesterday, I put up a picture of the nifty sign over to the left.

That’s one of the more disturbing signs I’ve seen in some time. My wife and I were out shopping in Little Rock on Saturday and stopped by a Cracker Barrel to grab some lunch.

Oddly, I didn’t feel too secure when we stepped out of our minivan and were advised to lock our vehicle and remove our valuables from it. Oh, what could be more neighborly than that? I know Little Rock has a crime problem but are thieves really lurking around a Cracker Barrel in one of the safer parts of town?

Now I – your old friend The Hawg – am the helpful sort. I was inspired to come up with a few more signs to be posted around Little Rock (the last one should be posted in every city in the country, but that goes without saying). Y’all enjoy and be sure to read the plug for Tell Me Thursday after you look at the dandy signs.

This is my submission to the fantastic Tell Me Thursday event. If you participate in the weekly Wordless Wednesday thing, you really should give Tell Me Thursday a look.

A neighborly reminder?

This post is part of the famed Wordless Wednesday event. Head on over to see other entries or submit something of your own.

First United Church of Dude?

Folks, I knew it would happen – I turned 40-years-old in June and became, like, old almost overnight.

I became aware of that last Wednesday afternoon. My 12-year-old son was wearing a pair of gym shorts and a tee shirt.

“G’bye,” the boy said.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Church. With my friend blah-blah.”

“Dressed like that?”

“Yeah, that’s how everyone dresses there.”

“Where? The First United Church of Dude?”

Apparently, things are very casual at that church on Wednesday nights and I suppose that’s fine. However, I was raised to observe at least a bit of formality when it comes to church. The big hubbub when I was a kid was whether people ought to show up in Wednesdays in jeans.

Apparently, that issue was resolved years ago and people are now wandering off to church dressed like they’re ready to mow the lawn. Perhaps that’s OK, but I could just imagine the sermon.

“Dudes and dudettes,” the pastor might say. “That Jesus cat was gnarly, man. I mean, like, way gnarly. Whoa!”

That image has plagued me for a week now.

Music Monday – Revolution

One of my favorite Beatles songs…

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. One simple rule, leave ONLY the actual post link here. You can grab this code at LJL Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.

It’s just a shame about the Dreamcast…

One of the game consoles I still enjoy as much today as the day I got it is the Sega Dreamcast.

Why? That system was years ahead of its time in 1999 and the games still look great on my HDTV thanks to the innovative (though odd) VGA box I bought for the system. You’ve got games to satisfy just about anyone there ranging from arcade hits (Hydro Thunder is particularly great) to a couple of outstanding role playing games (Pirates of Arcadia is so good it makes owning the system worthwhile) to sports titles (anything from the NFL 2K series compares well to the famed Madden lineup) to innovative titles that used fishing rods, etc.

By the way, you can get Skies of Arcadia for the Nintendo GameCube and it’s every bit as good as the original. Heck, it is almost the same as the original save for a few more wrinkles thrown in and a soundtrack that was compressed too much for my liking. If you own a GameCube (or a Wii and a GameCube controller), Skies of Arcadia is a title you absolutely need. I still prefer the Dreamcast version because the soundtrack is noticeably clearer, but the GameCube port is certainly worthwhile.

When the Dreamcast hit the streets in September 1999, it simply blew the Nintendo 64 and Sony Playstation out of the water in terms of technological sophistication. By 2001, Sega pulled the plug on the system in the U.S. and got out of the console hardware business completely.

So, what the heck happened? Why did such a great system just up and die? The answer is two-fold at least.

For one thing, Sega had a rotten reputation when the company released the Dreamcast. This was the same company that released the Sega CD add-on for the Genesis and then discontinued support of it in a hurry. This is the same company that released the 32X add-on for the Genesis and cut that one loose shortly after it was released. By the time the Sega Saturn was released, the company had a terrible image problem and that plagued the poor Saturn.

That horrible reputation spilled over to the Dreamcast. Sega worked hard to earn it’s reputation as a company that would dump hardware on the market then not support it well enough. Gamers, apparently, didn’t want to get burned again.

In 2000, the Playstation 2 was released and gamers tended to flock to that console rather than the Dreamcast. Why? The Playstation 1 was a major hit and people expected even greater things with the PS2 (they weren’t disappointed). Furthermore, the Playstation 2 was backward compatible with those great PS1 games and it had a DVD player.

Yes, oddly, that was a big deal back in 2000. The Playstation had a DVD player and the Dreamcast didn’t. That lack of a DVD player, believe it or not, had an impact on sales.

At any rate, the Playstation 2 clearly dominated that generation of consoles to such an extent that Sega simply took its ball and went home.

That is a true shame on a number of levels. The Dreamcast is a great system that had a lot to offer, but Sega had lost the trust of consumers and people were upset that a blasted GD-ROM drive didn’t play DVDs.

The saddest part of the Sega story, perhaps, is that its absence from the market left a bit of a power vacuum. With only Nintendo and Sony left standing in the console business, that left room for Microsoft to slither in and introduce the Xbox.

God. Microsoft. Haven’t they ruined enough already?

At any rate, I still play the heck out of my Dreamcast. For people who love emulation, you’ll find plenty of support for the Dreamcast. People have written emulators that run everything from Atari 2600 to Neo Geo titles on the Dreamcast. Fortunately, the old Sega system has life in it yet.

Ace is back (almost)

Yeah, I know -- I ramble on about Ace Frehley around here far too much.

However, I just had to post the above commercial for Ace’s new album, Anomaly. The album is due out on Sept. 15, and Ace was absolutely brilliant for tapping into his 1970s roots and putting out a wonderfully cheesy commercial that is reminiscent of the time.

And, by God, why shouldn’t I be excited about a new Ace album? He wrote some of KISS’ finest songs (“Parasite,” “Shock Me,” “Cold Gin” and “Rocket Ride,” to name but a few) and hasn’t released anything in a couple of decades.

So, enjoy the commercial. Appreciate Ace’s snide reference to that Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park movie and get ready to pick up an album from a true legend.

Oh, yeah. KISS is recording something new, too. Oddly, I just don’t care.

Remember, kids -- “It’s OK, Uncle Lumpy. Ace won’t let us down.”

A great, Arkansas-based moving company

Moving stinks.

When we moved back home to God’s country (Benton, Ark.) back in 2004, we rented a couple of moving vans, loaded them up and drove them down here. It was awful, but it was a cheap way to go.

When we moved to our new home across town a couple of years ago, we hired a full-fledged moving company to pack up everything and move it. That was a good way to go, but it was expensive. I also noticed that I still did a heck of a lot of packing.

I wish I would have known about something that takes the pressure of driving an unwieldy moving truck off of me but didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Sort of a middle ground, as it were.

That’s where ABF U-Pack Moving comes into play. Instead of going through the whole truck rental process, you get a cube from ABF that you load at your leisure. The trucking company then shows up, picks up the cube and hauls it to your knew home.

The cost is very nice, too, and you're dealing with a trucking company with a great reputation. ABF is based in Fort Smith, Ark., and is one of the premier less-than-truckload carriers in the nation.

The U-Pack service is a great one for people who want to economize a little bit but aren’t opposed to doing a little packing and loading. Click here and see for yourself how favorably U-Pack’s prices stack up against traditional truck rental. It’s a great program, folks.

The best of The Hawg…

Just the other day, I posted a little something acknowledging the one year anniversary of the Natural State Hawg.

I was content to leave well enough alone with that post, but that wacky Steve from The Axis of Stevil suggested I post some highlights from my one whole year of blogging.

I have decided to go ahead and do just that for at least three reasons – I’m a bit vain; I’ve got a devastating head cold right now and am medicated enough to make questionable decisions; and I’m lazy.

Yes, remember how all those sitcoms would air a “best of” episode every year? Whenever I saw those I believed them to be the result of writers who are very lazy and not afraid to admit it.

“Well, we’re under contract to do another episode, but we’re just not feeling it,” I imagined the writers saying. “Let’s go ahead and repackage some old clips and present them as something new!”

So that’s exactly what I’m doing here. You can blame that Steve fellow. Here are the very few highlights I can find, presented in no particular order:

1. That whole thing with Jeff Foxworthy. I sent Foxworthy a redneck joke last year and got mad when I heard no reply from him after pestering him through email. I got mad and posted a tantrum. Not too long after that, I received a letter and autographed photo from him.

The photo is hanging up in my living room in a cheap frame I got from Wal-Mart (and, yes, I do realize how funny that sounds). I also learned a valuable lesson about blogging – if you do something idiotic and then write passionately about it, people will visit your site.

2. Proving to the world how great rat terriers are. After this post,  who could argue against the notion that the rat terrier is the finest breed of dog on the planet? That post was – and still is – dedicated to my dog, Cobb.

3. International The Hawgmania! I learned another lesson about blogging from this post – bragging about how great you are is very funny, particularly if people think you’re serious.

4. Presidential Candidates. This post gets better with age because I was totally right. McCain and Obama both sucked as candidates – you had an old wishy-washy fellow and a man who stole his “yes we can” slogan from Bob the Builder. We’d be better off with the likes of Alton Brown, Patricia Heaton, John Elway, Mr. T or George Lopez in the White House right now.

Political posts are always great fun because I – by and large – hate the people who are running (ruining?) the country. We haven’t had a great president in this nation since Ronald Reagan and I get a kick out of mentioning that as often as possible. For extra double good fun, check out my “Hillary Clinton is a filthy, stinking liar” post. Beating up on Clintons is always fun as we Arkansans aren’t as sleazy as those rascals. Seriously.

5. Colonel The Hawg? ‘Nuff said.

6. The Benton Panthers won and I met two great bloggers. While at a Benton Panthers game, I met two Conway, Ark., residents and fellow bloggers – Paul and Laura Eilers. Nice folks, those Eilers.

7. My own holiday. Since the UN recognizes a holiday for about every damned day of the year, what’s wrong with establishing Universal Send Cash to The Hawg Day? It would give everyone the chance to dig deep and send some money and that would bring me closer to my dream of quitting my job and watching television all day.

8. How to make soccer popular in the U.S. My brother and I discussed soccer and we came up with the plan to make the sport catch on in the U.S. The key to the whole thing revolves around random and indiscriminate violence. Part 1 of our plan is here and Part 2 is here. Read them both and you, too, will be a believer.

9. Where is my boysenberry? IHOP doesn’t sell boysenberry syrup in central Arkansas. What? I’m understandably upset. So I sent the company an email and even got a response.

10. My cell phone was garbage. The thing broke because it was too flimsy to survive being thrown a few times, kicked and stomped. I hate cell phones. Absolutely hate them.

11. Avoid this shampoo. The Hawg gets a new shampoo. The Kitten goes nuts for it.

12. The Christmas Wrench. What would you do if you had to repair a sink on Christmas eve. Would you do the smart thing and borrow a wrench from a neighbor or sneak past a Wal-Mart employee trying to keep people from entering the store right before it closed? Sneaking around is fun, kids…

13. The end of Twitter? Like Twitter? Get ready for something even more obnoxious – Pretty Pink Pony! Why? Because sending tweets just isn’t sissified enough.

14. Why is Fox News hiding the truth? I love this post primarily because someone got very, very upset over it and made an idiot of himself in my comments section. Here’s the thing about politics – neither party gives a damn about folks like you and me, so going out of your way to defend any bastard politician is generally a waste of time.

15. What the hell is going on here? Sick of all those “LOL cats” photos? I am.

That’s about it. Thanks for a great year, folks. I’ll get the hang of this one of these days. I promise!

I was always rotten at algebra…

Back in school math was never my strongest subject (and that’s putting it mildly).

Over the years, I’ve learned to master the evil number through sheer focus. I lacked that focus in school, of course, and it seems to me it would have been a very good idea to have had a little help in that regard.

Some algebra 2 help would have – in retrospect – been particularly useful. Thanks to the wild, wonderful world of the Internet, finding some algebra help is much easier now that it was once upon a time.

For some free algebra help, TutorVista.com is a good place to start. The convenience of it all is sure to be much appreciated by struggling (or lazy) students and their parents. Pay the site a visit, folks.

Are you ready for Sept. 15?

So, what happens on Sept. 15? The famed Ace Frehley’s new album, Anomaly, will be released. Read this Rolling Stone interview with Ace Frehley and click the video below to see a vintage performance of “Rip it Out” (a song from the man’s first solo album). Get ready, folks!

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. One simple rule, leave ONLY the actual post link here. You can grab this code at LJL Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.

Oh, Lappy – I hardly knew ye…

Just this weekend, my work laptop – a Toshiba (hereinafter “Trashshiba”) Satellite A215 dropped dead.

Yes, the thing won’t boot at all. Our technology cat at work tells me that it’s probably a hard drive issue meaning that a lot of the data I had stored on that thing is gone. Yes, another cheap, piece of crap hard drive is all I need to get it up and running again.

Ah, that’s a shame but it’s no surprise. As I’ve ranted about before I’d prefer to have a Macintosh. However, my employers love Windows PCs and my wife has blocked my attempts to purchase one for the house (she claims they’re too expensive).

The thing I hate about Windows is this – there are an awful lot of cheap Windows PCs and notebooks out there. There are some expensive ones, too, but Microsoft has spent a lot of time and money convincing everyone that cheap hardware is just great.

That’s the entire premise of Microsoft’s latest advertising campaign, isn’t it. “Don’t get a Macintosh! This cheap piece of crap has everything you need and it runs Windows! Don’t be a sucker!”

So people get suckered into buying substandard hardware because they’re convinced it’s just dandy. Take that Trashiba of mine. I asked for a Macintosh a couple of years ago and got a cheap Windows notebook instead.

“Look at what you get for the money,” I was told. “A Macintosh is just unreasonably expensive.”

So, instead of a durable Mac I wound up with something that dropped dead after a couple of years because I had the audacity to use it regularly. Hell, I even carried the laptop around and used it as a portable computer – certainly it wasn’t designed to be mobile, was it? That's awful hard on a computer -- you know, carrying it around and all.

There’s a reason some Windows boxes are dirt cheap – they’re built with the shoddiest, crappiest components on the planet and fail in a hurry.

The truth of the matter is this – you can get certainly get a durable PC made with top notch components but it will cost about as much as a comparable Mac. Don’t think a $500 laptop can hold a candle to one that costs $2,000 one that’s running either Mac OS X or whatever flavor of Windows is popular this week.

Yes, Windows can be a good operating system – but you’ve got to be willing to buy some decent hardware and that costs money. You don’t hear Microsoft talking much about that, do you? If you take the “this computer is great because it’s cheap” argument from the company, what does Microsoft really have left?

An entire year of worthless nonsense!

One year ago I opened the Natural State Hawg so that I might be able to bore and confuse people around the world.

Folks, it’s been a heck of a good time. I’ve met some fantastic bloggers and genuinely nice people through this little blog of mine – probably my favorite things about this project, actually.

Frankly, I am almost amazed that I’ve lasted a year. Who can prattle on about virtually nothing for almost 12 months straight? Apparently, I can do just that. Why? Because this world produces no shortage of things that amuse me, intrigue me or just plain piss me off.

Also, I make my living as a writer. I’m a public relations guy by trade (I still prefer the term “media cat”) and once made my living as a newspaper reporter. Evidently, there’s a lot of truth to the old adage suggesting that writers run around writing stuff at random because they can’t help themselves.

I figure I’ve got at least another year in me on this blog. I would like to thank my regular visitors – you cats are the best.

SEO Results – because it’s all about traffic

A few weeks ago we started a blog at my office. We use it to get our message out to the media, the public and our members (I handle public relations for a trade group representing Realtors).

Before we bothered with the blog, I did my research and found all kinds of advice about achieving what we wanted – a lot of traffic. Getting traffic has a lot to do with promotion.

If your site is promoted properly, then your ranking in Google will increase and you’ll find all sorts of traffic. Why? Because sites that are promoted well wind up on the “first page” of a Google search for terms related to the site.

When you do get to the point where you wind up on the first page of search results, you get a scad of organic traffic – the best kind of traffic there is if run a commercial site. Organic traffic, see, is made up of people who are very interested in your site because they have located it through their chosen search terms.

There are many ways to get that organic traffic, of course. An established method involves making sure a blog is search engine optimized (SEO) – to make sure the blog is full of keywords that search engines will grab.

ThinkBIG is a company that promises to help step customers through the confusing SEO world by helping site owners set up those keywords that will attract traffic. Is ThinkBIG a reputable company? Read some testimonials from people who have achieved solid SEO Results through the company and decide for yourself.

What the hell is the government up to now?

I ran across a little fact the other day that has just bugged the hell out of me since then.

I was writing a story about interest rates for a small newspaper in Little Rock. It seems they’ve popped up over 5 percent and that has slowed down both sales and refinances. My task, of course, was to find out why mortgage rates are rising.

I should point out that it’s ridiculous to claim that any interest rate below 6 percent is high on a 30-year, fixed mortgage. Still, rates hovered between 4 and 5 percent for so many months that people got used to it.

Here’s the thing about those low interest rates – they are primarily the result of the Federal Reserve buying up mortgage backed securities on the secondary market. Now, mortgage backed securities are exactly what they sound like – you take a bunch of mortgages, package up that debt and sell it to investors. They behave rather like bonds.

On the day after Thanksgiving, the Federal Reserve announced it was essentially guaranteeing $500 billion in mortgage backed securities. The hope, of course, was that investors would then regard those securities as safer investors and buy them. Because the yields would drop, interest rates would fall and people would be motivated to purchase homes.

Additionally, buying up and guaranteeing those loans would give more capital to banks which would, in turn, lend money to people seeking mortgages.

That plan worked. Sort of. Mortgage rates dropped and capital started flowing a bit more freely. Ultimately, however, people started refinancing like crazy at low interest rates, thus flooding the market with more debt.

So, we’ve got far more mortgage backed securities out there than investors are willing to buy. Naturally, then, the yields on them have increased and that has caused interest rates to rise a bit.

Bear in mind, too, that the current mortgage rates are terribly artificial. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association of Arkansas, the Fed is buying $20 to $40 billion worth of mortgage backed securities per month.

A lot of that money has been borrowed from our good friends in China, of course. That causes a whole set of problems I won’t bother examining now. However, it should be said that being heavily in debt to your ideological enemy is a terrible idea.

The question, of course, is what happens when the Fed starts buying up those securities? Interest rates will likely go through the roof, of course, thus causing all kinds of problems.

What’s fascinating about all of this is that an alternative plan that makes a whole lot of sense (and may have cost less) has been watered down horribly. A couple of years ago, the National Association of Realtors suggested that the housing market would be helped considerably if the government gave a $15,000, non-refundable tax credit to everyone who purchased a home.

What we got was a $7,500, refundable tax credit to first time homebuyers last year. This year, of course, that credit was extended through Nov. 30, was raised to $8,000 and is non-refundable. The hope of a $15,000 credit for everyone is back before Congress, but who knows how that will do?

In other words, we’ve opted for a very expensive plan that artificially decreases interest rates and, obviously, can’t last forever. Had the government opted for a $15,000 tax credit to every homebuyer, it goes without saying that sales would have gone through the roof and the desired economic boost would have been in the works.

Further, people receiving $15,000 from the government after filing their 2009 tax returns would have provided an additional economic boost by purchasing things. Expensive things like cars (which would have certainly helped the struggling U.S. auto industry).

I can’t help but wonder why on earth that plan didn’t gain more traction. It couldn’t have cost more than we’ve already spent in an attempt to help the housing market. Furthermore, it may have actually been more effective.

So, what’s the deal? Are the feds afraid to turn that much money over to individuals? Are they afraid we’d just be “foolish” and save it?

The whole thing is confusing. Meanwhile, we’re spending billions trying to keep interest rates low. What kind of hell will be unleashed when the government stops spending that money?

What’s all the fuss over snus?

This week a friend of mine at work bought some Camel Snus to the office.

Naturally, I had to try some as I’d heard a bit about it and had listened to the questionable claims that it is safer than my beloved Red Seal Long Wintergreen (yeah, you bastards just go right ahead and judge me – I’m an Arkansan, dammit). I tried some of the stuff and figured it wasn’t too bad.

Camel is pushing this stuff hard, folks. A couple of friends of mine went to Rocklahoma last weekend (lucky bastards – I missed it again) and brought back a ton of smokeless tobacco samples for me. I ought to have a tee shirt -- “My friends went to Rocklahoma and all I got was a bunch of tobacco.”

Anyway, there were six tins of Camel Snus in the bag of loot my buddies scored for me. After doing some research, I’ve noticed that a lot of people have opinions about Camel Snus. I, of course, want to add yet another opinion to the rest of them out there. Because – well – why not?

What is ‘snus,’ anyway?

Snus is a big deal in Norway and Sweden and it is a snuff that’s different from American chewing tobacco in that there’s no need to spit when using it. It’s different from American chewing tobacco in that it’s not fermented, sugar generally isn’t added and it is steam cured rather than fire cured.

Apparently, fire curing tobacco builds up a heck of a lot of carcinogens, whereas a lot of that is avoided in steam curing. So, there are some people out there arguing that snus is a “safe tobacco” as it’s less dangerous than cigarettes, American chewing tobacco, etc.

I’m not buying it, folks. Anyone who thinks this stuff can’t cause cancer or rot your jaw out is living in a fool’s paradise. You can’t tell me that swallowing a bunch of snus juice rather than spitting it out doesn’t do some harm, either.

There’s a debate raging over the health impacts of snus, of course. As with most debates these days, the side with the most money to buy scientists who are willing to advance a certain point of view will win.

Is that Camel Snus any good?

Actually, it’s not bad at all. It comes in pouches and there are 15 of those per tin. The pouches are to be placed in the upper lip and stay flavorful for around 30 minutes (a conservative estimate, to be sure).

The two Camel flavors – frost and mellow – are both very sweet. The frost one tastes rather like a perverted mint variety of Life Savers while the mellow snus tastes like a sissified form of Levi Garrett or Red Man leaf tobacco.

The advantage here is that you don’t have to spit this stuff, so you can (in theory) enjoy it anywhere. Bring some snus along to the movies, the office, on a date, while you’re the best man in a wedding or during a job interview. Camel has no doubt noticed that there are smoking bans anywhere and folks who show up spitting Skoal all over the place are generally shunned.

Here in Arkansas, however, spit tobacco isn’t uncommon (there are  three men in my office and everyone of us is a tobacco chewer). Seeing a spit bottle on someone’s desk isn’t exactly uncommon in this state, so the notion that snus can be “hidden” doesn’t go over as well here as it might in other parts of the country.

Besides, the little packets just plain bug me. They remind me of that rotten pouch tobacco that has never been overly popular around here.

Unlike those nasty pouch tobacco things, snus is actually quite flavorful and delivers a healthy (pun intended) dose of nicotine.

It’s worth mentioning that I’ve read quite a bit about snus in the past couple of days and have noticed there seems to be a bias against the Camel brand. Some folks don’t like the small quantity of snus delivered by Camel as compared to the “real” brands from Sweden. Others say the quality of the tobacco used by Camel is inferior and I’ve read that it doesn’t have much “bang for the buck” compared to other brands (15 packets per tin does seem a bit slight).

Those are all valid arguments, of course, but there is one bunch out there that should just shut up – the “snus snobs.” Yes, some folks talk about this Camel stuff like it’s a Chevrolet in a world full of Jaguars. We’re talking about tobacco, folks. Shoving snus is your head is never going to be sophisticated, folks. Quit acting like it is.

The final verdict

When all is said and done I rather like Camel Snus. It doesn’t deliver the same nicotine hit as my beloved Red Seal Long Cut Wintergreen, but it’s not bad at all.

Here’s the thing – it just doesn’t deliver that buzz-happy, slap to the face that comes with loose tobacco. And, I just can’t get over the whole spitless notion and the fact that this reminds me a lot of that limp-wristed pouch tobacco stuff. The pouches always seemed a bit sissified, you know?

“Be a man. Be a Klugman,” Zorak once said on Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Some of that logic applies here. Who wouldn’t want to be manly like that gruff-but-loveable Jack Klugman?

Still, I figure I’ll buy some from time to time. It’s a change of pace, at least. and tastes pretty good. I’m curious to see whether Camel’s marketing attempts will be enough to make this product popular.

Rot in hell, MasterCard!

I was watching television the other night when it happened -- a MasterCard commercial came on that had the Ramones in it.

That's right -- the Ramones. The detergent-voiced jerk narrating the commercial was saying something about jeans and referring to rebellion or some such rot when a short clip of the Ramones appeared (I didn’t show that hear, obviously – I opted for a great performance from the band instead of repeating MasterCard’s faux pas).

That kind of thing just drives me up the wall. How in God’s name can a soulless, evil bunch like the schemers at MasterCard get away with smearing a punk legend in order to get a few more people addicted to easy credit and high interest rates?

Companies like MasterCard are very responsible for the rotten economy we’ve got now. They’ve spent the past few decades trying to convince people that patience is not a virtue – buying junk we don’t have money for with credit is a lot more fun than saving up for things, apparently.

MasterCard and their ilk have played games with interest rates in hopes of squeezing some more cash out their overburdened customers, giving out credit cards to high school kids and setting up on college campuses and handing out cards to people with no verifiable income. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, MasterCard had to run out and use the Ramones to hawk their crap.

There’s just something inherently wrong with people intent on stealing our money using a bunch of rebels like the Ramones to further their insidious ends.

It’s probably just as well that three of the original four Ramones are dead and they didn’t have to watch the band’s legacy get tarnished in such a crass manner.

Now I remember one of the reasons why I don’t carry credit cards – I hate MasterCard, Visa and virtually any company that issues the things. If I could do without that debit card I’d be rid of it, too.

My new HDTV and what I’ve lost

A tragedy happened last month – our trusted 29” RCA tube television dropped dead.

My wife and I have had that thing for about a decade and we hated to see it go. Still, we saw the death of that television as an excuse to go out and buy a 1080p, 42” LCD television so that we could take advantage of the wacky, wonderful world of HDTV.

The television is a thing of beauty. The picture looks great on it and the TV fits very well in our living e.

There is a major, major, major damned problem with HDTV sets, however. My NES, Super NES and Sega Genesis look pretty rough on that set. I figured I’d mod those systems to S-video one of these days so as to improve the picture.

Ah, but the SNES is connected with S-video and the picture still isn’t great. Drat. It seems that the native, 240p signal those old consoles put out doesn’t play well on a 1080p set.

That, folks, is a major drag. Sure, I could plug my old systems into the television in the bedroom (it’s a tube TV), but that wouldn’t solve my problem of playing games late at night in the living room.

I can get buy on my Sony Playstation, Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo Wii on the new television, but those systems will never touch the appeal of the classic systems as far as I’m concerned.

By the way. That Nintendo Wii. Don’t buy one. Once the novelty wears off, you’ll realize you’ve got a system with the graphical capability of a Nintendo Gamecube but with a worse controller. Yeah, I know that Wii remote is innovative, but so was the Atari 5200 joystick. A suck controller is a suck controller whether it’s innovative or not. The Wi-Fi support is terrible, too, as the main purpose of it seems to be using it to buy Wiiware – terrible, nasty little games that hog up the system’s pitiful amount of internal storage. The only system I’ve owned that was more of a personal disappointment than the Wii was an Atari Jaguar. That’s saying something.

I suppose that’s to be expected. I mean, come on –  my dog likes to wee on bushes in the backyard. Whenever I hear the word “Wii,” I think of my dog hiking his leg up on a fence post. Somehow that seems very fitting.

Here’s a tip for those of you with Wiis, by the way. The crap games that go to that system sell much better on eBay when they are unopened. Keep that in mind the next time a well-meaning relative gives you a Wii game – it’s not a total loss because some sucker out there will be willing to purchase it on eBay and will pay a premium if the stinky game is in its original, factory shrink rap.

At any rate, I’m kind of mad someone out there could have designed an HDTV television set that could reproduce signals from old video games, VCRs and DVD players. The HDTV we bought is great, but I had no idea I’d be stuck playing a damned Wii unless I wanted to plug in, say, my Genesis and hope for the best.

The Bandit Run? Sign me up!

I ran across something the other day that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun – the Bandit Run.

What is the Bandit Run? Back in 2007, some fans of Smokey and the Bandit got together in their Pontiac Trans-Ams and retraced Burt Reynolds’ legendary trip from Texarkana to Atlanta. The Bandit Run has become an annual event and the participants spent a week in May running all over the South and having all sorts of fun. If you aren’t familiar with the fine movie that is Smokey and the Bandit, you either weren’t alive in the 1970s or you’re completely ignorant of pop culture.

At any rate, I – your old friend The Hawg – would love to take part in that fine event. I’d need a Trans-Am, of course, but I’ve always wanted one of those. I found one yesterday for sale near here that is available for the low, low price of $6,500 – a bargain when you consider that sum can get you a 1999 Trans-Am with one of those Corvette LS1 engines in it and an exhaust system specially tuned to frighten your neighbors.

Ah, yes. I could see it now. I’d be motoring down that open highway in my Trans-Am with my Arkansas “THEHAWG” vanity plate and absolutely killing off about a week. What could be better than that?

I’ve always wanted a Trans-Am or at least a Firebird. In fact, I was about to get a piss yellow Firebird before I went to college (I’d dubbed it “The Male Machine” and everything). My parents told me they’d either buy that car for me or they’d give me a 1981 Cutlass they were about to trade in and buy me a computer.

I chose the Cutlass and the computer because I’m a damned moron. Gearing up for the Bandit Run, however, would allow me to correct that error. Of course, I’ll never be able to convince my wife that I need to buy a Trans-Am so I can disappear for a week and drive it all over the South with a lot of other Smokey and the Bandit fans.

Still, I can dream. Besides, I’ve been working solid since 1994. That’s right – The Hawg hasn’t had a real vacation in over 15 years. I’ve wasted my youth on college and working, so I ought to be able to do something utterly ridiculous and totally fun now that I’ve hit middle age, right?

By the way, if the Bandit and the Snowman started their run in Texarkana and were bound for Atlanta, how the heck did they wind up in Fayetteville? That’s all the way up in northwest Arkansas! That discrepancy in the film has driven me nuts for years.

‘Where have you been, The Hawg?’

For some reason, it occurred to me that I’ve been slacking in visiting and reading blogs as of late.

Why? Ironically, I’ve been wrapped up in a project at work that is partially the result of what I’ve learned by running this blog full o’ nonsense.

Yes, I started The Arkansas Realtor a few weeks ago with the help of the fine folks at Positive Real Estate Professionals – a great little site that is home to a growing real estate community.

Here’s the thing – I’m a public relations guy by trade and it’s in my best interest to use every outlet available to get my employer’s message to the public. A blog that is on a network that gets a lot of traffic is an ideal avenue, right?

Of course, the debate has been raging over the past few years about whether traditional media will be rendered obsolete by blogs and the Internet. I’m in a great position when it comes to that – a lot of people still read newspapers and we public relations cats want to reach them. A lot of people wander around blogs and we want to reach them, too.

So, I have the luxury of not having a dog in that fight. That’s a good thing, really. I’m a former newspaper man and, as such, my sympathies lie with the papers in that regard. I’ve seen a lot of friends and acquaintances laid off from newspapers over the past couple of years and that’s a damned shame.

I was visiting with another PR guy who is a former newspaper man about the state of print media in Arkansas. He pointed out that the old model which sustained newspapers for years is broken. We can’t go back to how things were. Something will have to change.

I hope the boys in the press figure out how to adapt and do it soon. An objective, independent press is vital. Why? Without professional journalists around, we’ll get the bulk of our news straight from the government, corporations and other groups with a vested interested in what is reported and what is not.

That’s not a pleasant prospect, is it?

At any rate, I’ll be a frequent visitor to my favorite blogs again soon. I’ve got to get the aforementioned blog off the ground first and I’ve got another project I’m working on that’s taking up a lot of time (more on that later).