Bent Corner

WTMJ-TV Channel 4 in Milwaukee is reporting that the Green Bay Packers offered Brett Favre $20 million paid out over the next 10 years to stay retired. Could they know something that the rest of us don’t? I think most people believed that the reason Brett Favre wanted to un-retire and come back and play quarterback in the NFL was because he still had the burning desire to compete.

What if he just needs the money?

It seems to me that if a guy just wants to play, offering him money to sit at home and watch Judge Judy would be a complete waste of time. With that said, the Green Bay Packers thought it was worth making the offer.

I would think with all of the commercial endorsements Brett Favre does, money wouldn’t be a problem. Unless of course being the pitchman for heartburn medication and blue jeans sold at Wal-Mart doesn’t pay a lot.

Report: Packers offer Favre $20 million to stay home (Milwaukee Journal Sentinal)

I pulled the trigger yesterday and bought a new computer. My old one has been acting up lately. It would lockup and force me to do reboot it by removing the electrical power. I tried re-imaging the hard drive with the restore disc. I even stripped it down to it’s most basic components. I took out the video card, each stick of RAM — one at a time of course — the sound card, and the extra hard drive. I even tried re-imaging the other hard drive with the restore disc. Nothing worked. It would still lock up. The CPU time would routinely show close to 100%.

I decided to go with HP. My notebook computer is an HP and I’ve never had a problem with it. I also wanted one that didn’t come with a monitor. I recently bought a 22 inch wide screen monitor and I want to go on using it. Out of all the retailers that sold HP desktops without the monitor, Wal-Mart was the best choice. It’s a HP Pavilion a6313w. I think it’s a model made specifically for Wal-Mart. It has a “w” at the end of the model number and there was a shortcut on the desktop to have my digital images printed at Wal-Mart.

• Processor Type: Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core
• Hard Drive Size: 640 GB
• System RAM: 2048 MB
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium

I would have purchased a new computer with Windows XP instead of Vista if that option was available to me. Vista is different then XP. I’m not sure if I like it or not. I guess I just have to get used to it. Maybe I’ll buy a book.

Fujicolor Processing has announced that they will be closing their Williamsport, Maryland plant on March 12. The Williamsport facility processes film for Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, and other retail stores that operate in the Northeast. The facility currently has around 125 employees who will now be out a job.

I used to work at the Williamsport facility. In fact, it’s the reason I am living here in Maryland. I was hired as a repair technician shortly after leaving the Air Force. I didn’t know anything about photofinishing equipment. They were looking for ex-military people with an electronics background. When operators had a problem with their photofinishing equipment, they would call for a service tech. One of us would show up with our tools and try to get the problem fixed as soon as possible.

It could get very hectic at times. It was very much a high-production environment. It wasn’t the greatest job I ever had, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. The photofinishing equipment broke down constantly. Most of the problems were mechanical in nature. Very rarely did a piece of photofinishing equipment have something wrong with it that had to do with it’s electronics.

It wasn’t all bad. That’s were I met my wife Sheri. She operated a machine called a splicer that constantly broke down. I found myself looking forward to when her splicer acting up. She would sit and talk to me while I worked on it. Once I got it working again, I would hang around just to make sure it was working. That of course was just an excuse to talk to her.

You would not believe how perverted people can be. Seeing many of the pictures developed from the film people turned into their local Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club for 2-day processing gave me a clear understanding of just how nasty some people can be. Take it from me, if a guy is going to take photos of himself with a long stemmed rose inserted in this rectum, chances are he’s not going to go for the one-hour film processing. He’s going to drop his order in the box and come back in two days.

I guess I’m not surprised the facility is being shut down. Who uses film cameras?

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I was reading The Consumerist when I noticed a post about Wal-Mart still selling t-shirts in their Men’s department with a Nazi SS Totnekopf or “Death’s Head” image on it.

Whoops.

I’ve lost track how many different times Wal-Mart claimed it was taking prompt action to removed these shirts. The U.S. Congress even got involved.

I was the one to discover this little bit of Wal-Mart goodness. It was back in November 2006 that I noticed it at my local Wal-Mart store here in Hagerstown. I took a picture of it with my cell phone and then compared it to reference images online. It was an exact match. I decided to blog about it and it kind of took off from there. I was interviewed on the telephone by someone from the AP which resulted in the story appearing in just about every newspaper in the country. I was interviewed on my local NBC TV news about the story. That interview then was carried on CNN and MSNBC.

I learned a lot about the whole news business. The reporter from the AP was extremely professional. When the article first ran on the AP newswire, it incorrectly said that I was a veteran of the U.S. Navy. I am a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. To me it wasn’t a big deal. The reporter must have realized his mistake, contacted me, confirmed that I was in the Air Force, and resubmitted a corrected article. The incorrect article stayed online only for about an hour. I was impressed.

I wasn’t impressed with my local hack newspaper, The Herald-Mail. Even though I only live a few miles from the newspaper, they didn’t even bother to ask me any questions before writing an article about me finding the shirt. Sometimes I forget they don’t bother to research their articles. My guess is they are too busy writing fake Mail Call comments. I think they just took information from my blog post and then added details from the AP story.

Speaking of hacks, Christina Hoag from the Miami-Herald wrote that I was a “World War Two buff”. If she had bothered to speak to before writing her article, I could have told her that I was not a World War Two buff and that I had no interest in becoming one. I even sent her a tongue-in-cheek email telling her that I wasn’t a buff of any sort and that I wanted her paper to publish a retraction. I was afraid that the World War Two buff community would become angry that I claiming to be one of them. I didn’t want to get on their bad side. She actually replied as though I was serious. She even attempted to argue the point that I was a World War Two buff.

I think I would know if I was a buff.

The funniest part about these t-shirts still being sold at Wal-Mart is the specific Wal-Mart where they were found. They were found in a Wal-Mart in Palmdale, California. Though I now live in Maryland, I am originally from the Palmdale area. It is the Land of My People. It’s where I grew up and lived until I was 19. I find it to be so ironic that these shirts are still hanging on the rack in Palmdale, or as I like to call it, Palmtucky. In Palmdale, the mullet isn’t just a hairstyle, it’s a way of life.

Through some loophole in the rules that govern the holiday known as Christmas, agreeing with your spouse that you will not exchange gifts this year does not include one person giving the other an XBox 360. Sheri surprised me this year by giving my an XBox 360 system. It includes the the game console, a 20 gig hard drive, two (2) wireless controllers, a headset, and a cool looking messenger bag. It also came with some games - Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Forza 2 Motorsport, and Halo 3.

She told me she bought it a month ago from Wal-Mart Online. She said it doesn’t break our no-gift agreement because she plans on using it as much as me. She has a point. It also technically isn’t a Christmas gift because she gave it to me two days ago. Who am I to question it?

I bought a wireless network adapter for it. I wanted to be able to use it online so I could enjoy the pleasure of 14 year old nerd-boys fragging me at Halo 3. Plus, I wanted to be able to stream media files from my PC to my TV. The XBox 360 allows me to do just that. I created a shared video folder on my PC and placed all of my avi videos in it. I then added them to my library in Microsoft Media 11. Now I can watch all of my videos on my 42 inch HD TV in the living room. What surprised me was the picture quality. It’s really quite good. Excellent in fact. Just to have the ability to stream digital media from my PC makes the XBox a worthwhile investment.

We had been talking about getting a Wii. I asked Sheri why she bought an XBox 360 if she wanted a Wii. She told me that she wanted both. That sounds good to me.

The Consumerist posted about a new Nazi SS skull t-shirt sighting at an Ohio area Wal-Mart. It’s been 22 weeks now since I first found them at my local Wal-Mart and posted something about it. Since then, Wal-Mart has issued apology after apology along with promises to remove the offending shirts as quickly as they can.

They then proceed to continue selling the shirts as though nothing ever happened.

This is just too ridiculous. Even for Wal-Mart. Either they want to sell Nazi SS skull t-shirts to kids or they don’t. They need to make up their mind. I realize that Wal-Mart likes to say one thing and do another when it comes to how they treat their employees, but this is about selling a t-shirt with an image worn by Nazi SS concentration camp guards at Auschwitz. Claiming that they offer affordable health insurance to their employees even though they don’t is not the same thing as claiming that they don’t want to sell Nazi SS merchandise even though they seemingly do.

I realize they are used to lying about stuff. They shouldn’t lie about this.

I noticed that this story made it’s way to digg again. A lot of people are commenting on this issue as though it’s something new. Some people are making the same lame retarded arguments that this is not a Nazi SS skull image even though it is an exact copy. They claim it’s just a skull. I used to get emails every day from people saying all sorts of things. Right now their are digg users arguing about Wal-Mart selling these t-shirts as though it wasn’t already argued to death last year on digg. Are these people all new digg users? Why didn’t any of these digg users making these comments last year? Not to say other digg users didn’t try to make similar flawed arguments.

• Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied. I’m so shocked. Last week he said he was not closely involved in the firing of U.S. attorneys. Email messages released last night show that he approved the firings.
• There is going to be a third TV series. I’ll be honest. I didn’t even know there was a second.
• A Wal-Mart in nearby West Virginia had a health scare. Evidently someone plugged up a toilet at Wal-Mart causing an “an overflow of sewage”. That’s not what caused the health scare. This was West Virgina after all. It’s going to take more than the scent of raw sewage to rile people up. The problem was that the Wal-Mart associates (employees) tried to clean up the mess with some kind of bleach and chlorine mixture that resulted in noxious fumes. The store had to be evacuated and 7 people taken to the hospital.
• State lawmakers from the hillbilly western part of Maryland are angry over the fact that delegates from other parts of the state are constantly trying to ban bear hunting. They have come up with a stupid way of dealing with it. They call it the Maryland Share the Bear Law. They want to capture bears in western Maryland and release them in other parts of the state. More populated parts of the state.
• Speaking of bears, if saving a baby polar bear that has been abandoned by it’s mother is wrong, I don’t want to be right. Animal activists want to kill the bear. Have they seen the cute pictures of it chewing on a soccer ball?

Sometimes somebody posts a comment that makes me re-think my position on a subject that I blogged about. This is not one of those comments.

ilike_kidrock@hotmail.com wrote:

thank all this is bull shit i am not a nazi but i like the nazi stuff every mother f***er need to get over the Sh** it is a part of history we shouldn’t forgit it yea and go ahead and call me what you want but we do have a fredom of speach and yea it may offend people but it is something we don’t need to forgit everyone wants to forgit it but we shouldn’t

Normally I try to cut people slack that are even worse spellers then me, but this fella that loves to profess his admiration for Kid Rock doesn’t even know how to use a period.

I hate to do this, but I feel the need to once again weigh in on the whole Wal-Mart Nazi t-shirt controversy. I promised myself I wasn’t going to blog about it any longer. I don’t want to be known as the Wal-Mart Nazi t-shirt guy. It might already be too late for that. Also, there are other bloggers doing a much better job with it then I ever could. Even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. Look to the The Consumerist. It is the number one place on the Internets to find out the latest on the whole Wal-Mart Nazi t-shirt controversy.

This morning I received an email Google Alert telling me that “BentCorner.com” had appeared in a news story. I set up a Google Alert so I would know when my blog appeared in a newspaper article. Most of the time I know ahead of time when my blog or myself is mentioned in a newspaper article. The reporter doing the article usually contacts me to ask questions. I believe it’s something people in the news business refer to as professionalism. Sometimes like in the case with The Miami Herald, the reporter didn’t even try to contact me to get facts. Instead they just made stuff up.

This morning’s Google Alert pointed me to something called the American Thinker. I’ve never heard of it. That seems like a shame too since I am an American and I think about things. It sounds like the American Thinker would be right up my alley.

When I went there, I realized two things. It’s not really a newspaper. It appears to be a blog. A rather nice looking blog, but it’s still a blog. Also, it appears to have a right-wing slant to it. That would account for me not knowing anything about it.

This from the article about the Nazi t-shirt:

Back in November the blog BentCorner.com revealed that Wal-Mart was selling a T-shirt that displayed the Nazi Totenkopf–the “death head” emblem, which was worn by Adolf Hitler’s personal guards. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) sent a letter, signed by a bipartisan group of 21 representatives, to Wal-Mart Chief Executive H. Lee Scott Jr. asking the retail giant to remove the shirts immediately from store shelves.

So far so good. I would have pointed out that Rep. Barny Frank (D, gay) also signed the letter. Nothing gets Right-Wingers more worked up then a good Barny Frank story. It’s right up with a hatchet job on Hillary Clinton or something that attempts to disprove Global Warming by quoting the Bible.

The only issue I had with the piece over at the American Thinker was this:

Even though Wal-Mart did take immediate action, directing all stores to remove the shirts and deleting the item barcode from their computer system, about three dozen of their 3300 stores have not successfully removed all shirts.

This just is not true. Though Wal-Mart said they were taking immediate action, they never did. They allowed these shirts to remain on their sales floor and be sold to anyone with an extra $7.88 in their pocket. People continued to find these shirts at their local Wal-Mart weeks and even months after this story originally broke. The Consumerist did an excellent job chronicling the on going status of these shirts.

Though Wal-Mart did delete the barcode from their computer system, it took them almost a whole month to do so. Even then, people were reporting that they could still buy the shirt. They would simply take another similarly priced shirt to the register and ask the person (Wal-Mart prefers to call them “associates”) to scan the other shirt.

Make no mistake. Wal-Mart continued to sell these shirts. If your local Wal-Mart no longer sells them, it’s because someone bought them all up. It’s not because Wal-Mart actually removed them.

I got a call yesterday afternoon from a reporter from the Chicago Tribune. It was concerning my not-so-recent discovery of Nazi t-shirts being sold at my local Wal-Mart. I blogged about it at the time. Feel free to go back and read my posts if you want to.

I haven’t blogged about the ‘controversy” since November 21. I did write about some idiot that emailed me about it, but that doesn’t really count. I wasn’t blogging about how bad Wal-Mart was for selling Nazi paraphernalia to kids. I was blogging about how much of a tard some guy was. Others have been blogging about it though. Some have been quite active on the subject. Just not me.
It seems that congressperson Jan Schakowsky from Illinois has learned about Wal-Mart selling Nazi swag. She is pissed off about it. She wrote a letter to Wal-Mart and even got other members of Congress to sign the letter. In fact, she even got Representative Barny Franks to sign it.

Nothing demonstrates just how angry you are then than getting Representative Barney Frank to sign your letter.

The reporter from the Chicago Tribune wrote an article about it that was published in today’s issue. She mentioned in her article that I was the one who first wrote about Wal-Mart selling the shirts.

I hope this does not get me in trouble. There is a chance (albeit a small chance) that I am a wanted man in Chicago. The last time I was in the Windy City I drove through a toll without paying. I wanted to pay the toll. I had the money to pay the toll. Sort of. Illinois has these unmanned toll booths where the driver has to throw change into a big orange plastic basket. It’s really quite easy. If you have any change that is. I had just flown in and I didn’t have any change. I only had paper money. Not knowing what to do, I just drove through without paying.

I haven’t been back to Chicago since. I haven’t dared.