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Rocky Ridge Collectibles announces it will reopen today [Updated]

May 01, 2020 by Rick Rottman Leave a Comment

Rocky Ridge Collectibles is a flea market located on the Maryland side of the Masson-Dixon Line. They announced on Facebook yesterday that they are reopening today. The act is in defiance of the stay-at-home shutdown order directed by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan on March 23. This was because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state of Maryland published a list of business types that were exempt from the directive. The type of business Rocky Ridge Collectibles engages in is not the type of business exempted from the directive. They had to close. The flea market seemed to recognize this fact at the end of March. They closed their doors on March 20.

This is what they said back then on Facebook:

Why does Rocky Ridge Collectibles think they are above the law?

I have no idea why the flea market believes it can open its doors in defiance of the law, but I have my suspicions. This is what they said on Facebook when someone correctly pointed out they’re not essential:

I thought about that answer. The only vendor that sells essential items is a booth that sells boxes of cereal and tubes of toothpaste. I think it belongs to one of these extreme couponers you sometimes hear about. I don’t ever remember seeing toilet paper or paper towels there or anywhere else in the flea market. My guess is if you go to Rocky Ridge Collectibles today looking for toilet paper or paper towels, you will not find any. They’ll probably just tell you they’re sold out of that, but there ware some nice Funko Pops on row four.

When I pointed out on Facebook that the health department will shut them down, they responded they’re opening with the health department’s blessing. At least that’s how I took it.

From Facebook:

The way things work in Washington County, Maryland

Too many times the way the law is handled in Washington County depends greatly on who you know or who you’re related to. I wouldn’t be surprised if the owner of Rocky Ridge Collectibles goes to the same church as someone who works at the Washington County Health Department.

As an example of how things work here, I once watched a Hagerstown Police officer stop and write up a pickup truck. The driver parked in a handicap designated parking spot. The truck didn’t have special tags or a rear mirror placard indicating the driver was handicapped. I enjoyed seeing someone who broke the law being held accountable. That was until another officer pulled up and stopped the original officer from writing the ticket. Why did the second officer do that? The owner of the truck was in clear violation of the law. I assumed the second officer was related to the owner of the pickup truck. That’s just the way things work here.

The owner of Rocky Ridge Collectibles is a COVID-19 sympathizer

We’ve been told we’re at war with COVID-19. Rocky Ridge Collectibles is not helping in the fight against COVID-19. By brazenly breaking the shutdown directive, they’re working on behalf of the coronavirus. If we’re at war with COVID-19, they are a COVID-19 sympathizer.

This makes me feel sorry for the other area small businesses that are abiding by the directive. For example, Beyond Comics in nearby Frederick, Maryland. They closed when they were told to. Before that, they limited business to curb-side pick up only. They were doing things right. Beyond Comics didn’t want to make things unsafe for their customers. They were doing everything they could to fight the war against COVID-19.

Rocky Ridge Collectibles clearly doesn’t care about the health and safety of our community. To reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic is irresponsible and dangerous. I’ll never set foot in Rocky Ridge Collectibles again. It was my go-to place for buying sportscard collecting supplies. I’ve been ordering those on Amazon since the pandemic started. I’ll just continue to buy those things on Amazon.

In conclusion

I look forward to when Rocky Ridge Collectibles goes out of business. I hope the owner has to declare bankruptcy.

An update

I found out how Rocky Ridge Collectibles was able to reopen when they did. The owner obtained a permit to operate as a food service facility from the Washington County Health Department. This allowed them to be classified as a grocery store, not a flea market. This move made them exempt from state shutdown orders. In my opinion, it was a deceitful and fraudulent thing to do.

Hagerstown Mayor Bob Bruchey is an idiot

July 14, 2018 by Rick Rottman 2 Comments

Hagerstown Mayor Bob Bruchey posted a comment on Facebook that implied the mayor of London was a terrorist.

Hagerstown Mayor Bob Bruchey is an idiot - Bent Corner — Photo: Brittany Wedd

The mayor of London is Sadiq Khan, born to Pakistani emigrants in Tooting, South London. He is also a Sunni Muslim.

Mayor Bruchey is suggesting that since Mayor Khan is a Muslim, he’s a terrorist. What an idiotic thing to believe, let alone post publicly on social media. Only a microscopic fraction of Muslims are terrorists. Considering there are over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. If Mayor Bruchey was correct and every one of those Muslims was also a terrorist, by now the planet would be a smoking hunk of rock.

To imply every Muslim is a terrorist is like implying every Christian goes to funerals of U.S. service members and holds signs that say, “GOD HATES FAGS.” It would be an absurd thing to suggest. Absurd and stupid.

The position of mayor in Hagerstown is honorary

Hagerstown’s City Council wields all the power in city government. The Hagerstown mayor is more of an honorary position. What happens then when the mayor is someone without honor? To post a comment on social media implying Muslims are terrorists is a very stupid and dishonorable thing to do.

Bob Bruchey lacks good customer service skills

Those of us who live in Hagerstown are Mayor Bruchey’s constituents. Another way of looking at it is we are his customers. I know for a fact some Hagerstown residents practice Islam. To post such an insulting and inflammatory comment on social media suggests at the very least, our major has no customer service skills.

Speaking of customer service, when Mayor Bruchey isn’t representing the people of Hagerstown or posting stupid comments on Facebook, he works at Hagerstown Ford as the Director of Sales. We’ve purchased three cars at Hagerstown Ford.

After Bruchey’s stupid remark about Muslims, we won’t be buying a fourth vehicle at Hagerstown Ford. When it comes time to buy another vehicle and if we decide to buy another Ford, we’ll go to Frederick to buy it before we spend another dime at Hagerstown Ford.

The official hat to wear after a mass shooting

April 23, 2018 by Rick Rottman Leave a Comment

With the number of mass shootings on the rise here in the United States, I’m always looking for ways to better express myself after the bodies hit the floor. I think I’ve found the perfect hat to wear during the aftermath of a mass shooting. I call it the “Thoughts and Prayers” hat.

It’s made by New Era, the official hat maker of Major League Baseball and the National Football League, so you know it’s high class. I need to find one in 7 7/8. If I had this hat already, I’d be wearing it this week in response to the recent mass shooting that took place at a Waffle House near Nashville, Tennessee yesterday. Travis Reinking, 29, originally from Morton, Illinois, walked into a Waffle House in Antioch, Tennessee wearing nothing but a green jacket and an AR-15 and killed four people.

Waffle House mass shooter Travis Reinking.

After Mr. Reinking’s rifle jammed, he was confronted by James Shaw Jr., 29, a customer at the Waffle House. Mr. Shaw was able to wrestle the rifle away from Mr. Reinking, temporarily denying him of his Second Amendment rights. Mr. Reinking then took off his green jacket and left the restaurant completely naked and on foot. Authorities later found two loaded AR-15 magazines in Mr. Reinking’s green jacket.

Normally I’d go on Facebook and express my sadness over this recent mass shooting, but considering how Facebook is a tool of Russian computer hackers for overthrowing our elections, I’d like another way of announcing that the victims of this latest mass shooting were in my thoughts and prayers. This hat would make the perfect alternative. I must get one before the next mass shooting.

If you see one of these hats in a 7 7/8, you’d be doing me a solid by letting me know. My goal is to get one before the next mass shooting. Considering how often they happen now, that could be any day.

I’m not interested in an adjustable hat. It’s important to me that the hat is fitted. An adjustable “Thoughts and Prayers” hat just wouldn’t be classy enough.

It’s important to me that I’m classy.

Facebook shuts down largest Black Lives Matter group

April 11, 2018 by Rick Rottman Leave a Comment

Facebook has closed the largest Black Lives Matter group because the group was run by a white man in Australia. Even though the group had over 700,000 followers, Facebook deemed it inauthentic.

The group reportedly raised over $100,000 in support of racial-justice causes in the United States.

The group’s founder has been identified as Ian Mackay, an employee of the National Union of Workers in Australia.

Founder of the largest Facebook Black Lives Matter group, Ian Mackay, a white guy.

Why would Facebook even allow a user from Austrailia to create a Black Lives Matter group dedicated to racial-justice causes in the United States? One of the benefits of Facebook is users are usually who they say they are. It’s hard to be a troll on Facebook because of the fact each account is tied to a cell phone number. Did Ian Mackay have a cell phone based in the United States?

I would think that to create a Facebook group dedicated to Black Lives Matter, you would have to live in either Detroit, New York, Baltimore, or Wakanda.

Facebook is stupid. The fact that it’s been able to keep going as long as it has is really a miracle. There’s obviously a market for whatever Facebook is offering. Why a more competent company, run by competent people, hasn’t entered the marketplace and offered consumers an alternative, is a mystery.

The same applies to Twitter.

This isn’t how the marketplace is supposed to work. Companies that fail to satisfy what the market wants are supposed to be replaced by companies that do satisfy consumer demand. It’s 2018 and neither Facebook nor Twitter has any competitors. I find that weird.

And what’s it say about the real Black Lives Matter group when they get outperformed by some random white guy in Austrailia? Nothing good, that’s what.

Chicago thugs kidnap then torture special-needs teen

January 05, 2017 by Rick Rottman Leave a Comment

From CNN:

Four suspects have been charged in connection with the attack on a special-needs teen that was streamed on Facebook Live.
Jordan Hill, 18; Tesfaye Cooper; 18; Brittany Covington, 18; and Tanishia Covington, 24, have each been charged with a hate crime, felony aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
Hill, Cooper and Brittany Covington also face charges of residential burglary. Hill also faces charges of possession of a stolen motor vehicle.
Video of the torture has stunned the country, not just but because of the graphic abuse, but because of the comments made by some of the assailants.
“F*ck Donald Trump!” one attacker shouted in the video. “F*ck white people!”

It’s now 2017. If an attacker can be heard on the video using the word “fuck” then report that. It’s as though someone is going to read about how this special-needs teen was held against his will and subjected to torture, but get outraged over the fact the word “fuck” was correctly spelled out.

It’s 2017. Stop protecting people from dirty words. Stop coddling people.

It should surprise no one that this brutal incident took place in Chicago. The four suspects sound like they are both vicious and stupid, a really bad combination. They’re vicious for what they did to the victim. They are stupid for posting the whole thing on Facebook.

I don’t understand why they’re charged with a hate crime. I understand the victim is white and the suspects are black, but this crime would have been just as heinous if everyone involved was black, white, or Asian.

I don’t agree with hate crimes. Not really. Since when is it against the law to hate someone or something? As far as I’m concerned, these four animals should be allowed to hate Donald Trump or even to hate white people if they want to. What they’re not allowed to do is to kidnap, restrain, and then torture someone. Hate can be a motive, but it cannot or should not be the crime itself. The kidnapping, restraint, and battery are far worse than any supposed hate crime.

Hate is an emotion. I care about the act of violence. I could not care less about the emotional state of a criminal when they commit an act of violence.

18-year-old girl kills herself over cyberbullying

December 02, 2016 by Rick Rottman 1 Comment

Brandy Vela, an 18-year-old high school student from Texas City, Texas, shot and killed herself this week. Her family believes it was in response to the online bullying she had been receiving from her classmates. From CNN:

Brandy’s sister, Jackie, says the teen had always been bullied for her weight, but the cyberbullying ramped up in April.
“People would make up fake Facebook accounts and they would message her and she wouldn’t respond and they would still come at her,” Jackie said.
“They would say really, really mean things like, ‘Why are you still here?’ They would call her fat and ugly. She was beautiful, absolutely beautiful; the only thing people could find to pick on her was her weight.”
Jackie says her sister changed her phone number and reported the bullying to police, but was told they couldn’t help her.
“They couldn’t do anything because [the suspects] used an app and it wasn’t traceable and they couldn’t do something until something happened, like they fight,” Jackie said.

A non-traceable app? Even if they were using a VPN is mask their actual IP address, you have to use a working cell phone number or email address to sign up for Facebook. If the police didn’t care enough to work the case when the family first reported the bullying, perhaps that will change now that the girl is dead.

Is cyberbullying even a crime? Last time I checked, you can be mean to someone else on the Internet. You can say that someone is fat and ugly, just like you can say someone is thin and attractive. I found her Facebook account and looked for examples of people being rude to her. I didn’t see any. All that means is that she probably deleted the mean comments.

Almost all of her Facebook posts are her posting a photo of herself and then her friends telling her how gorgeous she is.

None of her posts are restricted to only her Facebook friends. They are all open to the public. Then again, considering that she had 1,969 Facebook friends, I’m not sure private or public would make a difference. It seems to me that she could have stopped the cyberbullies in their tracks if she had made her account more private and restricted her friend list to her actual friends.

She was also a member of a public Snap Chat Facebook group. I imagine if there was cyberbullying, it probably started there. There are currently over 100,000 members of this Facebook group. The object of the group seems to focus on posting selfies for the enjoyment of strangers. If I were a parent, I wouldn’t want my child contributing to or spending time with a group like that.

Speaking of being a parent, where were this girl’s parents? It didn’t seem like they were monitoring her Facebook activity. Here is a post she wrote two years ago:

If you take what Brandy Vela said at face value, if the girl she’s talking about is her cousin, she is referring to her own aunt as a slut. That’s not very nice. Some would even argue that it was cyberbullying. If I was the child’s parent, I would have insisted she remove that post when it was first posted, two years ago.

I find it hard to believe that it was cyberbullying that caused Brandy Vela to kill herself. Could it have been a contributing factor? Sure. I’m just not a big believer in single-reason suicide. I think it’s more of an accumulation of things that leads a person to take their own life. I have to wonder what would cause someone to post so many puckered-lip selfies online. Why would someone want complete strangers to tell them how attractive they are? That doesn’t seem very healthy to me.

According to CNN, Brandy Vela killed herself with a handgun. Where did she get that? I think people need to be held responsible for their guns. I’m not against gun ownership, but I am against irresponsibility. If you own a gun and that gun falls into the hands of someone who uses it to harm themselves or others, you should be held responsible.

The gun had more to do with Brandy Vela’s suicide than trolls on Facebook.