baxter sez

hi. some friends across the continent have requested pictures of the rest of the house. we'll have those up in a couple of days, along with some thoughts on painting walls and some shots of a brick sidewalk i've put in. right now i have something else on my mind...

a proud thing for me--something that i was proud of at the time and continue to be proud of to this day--happened back in like 1990 or something. back then, instead of chat rooms, we had bbs'. maybe they still exist. hell, maybe they had chat rooms back then, i don't know. whatever, man.

anyhow, these bbs' were internet thingies where people talked to each other. the bbs this small anecdote is about was one at me and alison's alma mater. i was pretty bad about getting on there and talking a bunch of trash. i realize now that i was being obnoxious most of the time.

the thing i'm proud of, though, was that i was constantly bashing wal-mart. i hate wal-mart with a purple passion, and 15 years ago i feel that i was beating a lot of folks to the punch by hating it then. anyway, so some people got sick of me trashing wal-mart (and generally being a jerk) and pulled a prank on me. they, being very computer savvy, got into my bbs account and changed my screen name to this:

my name is walter.
i hate wal-mart.
i argue with fenceposts.

i remember all this because i was wounded. the truth hurts, you know? the long and short of it is, though, that wal-mart sucks doesn't it? like john the baptist, i was a locust-eating know-it-all foretelling the devastation this sucky store is raining down on all our heads.

how this has got anything to do with this blog is this: listen, everything in the world is connected. it's all just one long linear thing curled up on top of itself. like a really long snake. or sorta like the elevator cable in the empire state building that saved those two old sisters. in this case, the connection is between the evil that is wal-mart and the incessant advertizing that we're inflicted with on a day to day basis. jeez, can't i just watch a simple newscast on the tee vee without them trying to foist some product on me?

this being how i feel, you can understand my consternation when i went to look at the "comments" section at the end of one of my entries. hey, i'm just like everybody else: i like some attention now and again. well...actually, i'm not like everybody else because i'm a black hole for attention. it's what keeps me alive. but still, i was pleased to see that there were six comments at the end of the entry. that's pretty neat. i excitedly clicked the button to find...yep, a bunch of punk-ass advertisements. blogspam. man, if i could find those people (and that poor african man that keeps writing me about his million dollars) i'd beat 'em senseless with a trout. (the trout would be dead. no living trout abuse here, thank you.)

so please. fuss at your grocery store when they want you to use that silly upc discount thing you've got on your keychain. don't wear clothing with someone else's name on it. don't give stores your zip code, and no, you don't have to fill out all stuff about how much money you make and whether you're a backpacker for your warranty to be valid. don't enter contests--and that includes state lotteries. listen to commercial free radio. i suggest bob parlocha...i mention that because i care, not because he slipped me a few bucks...but, for bob, maybe i'd do it.

anyway, you know what i'm getting at.

here's a picture for your viewing pleasure...

xox