60s lava lamp







T H E__C U S T O M E R__A L W A Y S__
gets screwed


Friday, June 5, 1998

P L U S:
An American Icon:
Barry Goldwater,
the conservative's
conservative, is gone.

the simplicity and pure genius of an appliance which performed nothing in the functional sense, but provided unending hours/days/weeks/months/years (check one) of entertainment, was of immense value to those of us in The Hippie Generation. At 17, I used to sit and watch my first lavalamp for hours on end, in the 60s and through the 70s. I had one for 13 years before it developed a leak. We all had too much time on our hands back then. Today, when I see one, I am reminded of all the wasted hours and brain cells deeded over to quasi-social thought and (in)action, which essentially moved the country to the evil left. I was part of that counterculture for nearly 20 years. Fun and exciting then, but in sum today: worthless. The parallel between liberal democrats and lavalamps is astonishing, when the bottom line is critically weighed for its intrinsic value and lasting positive effect on society. Zero value. All form and no function. Groovy, man.

Bad Catalogs.
When I hear about the shitpy advice and plants that thousands of retail catalogs and consumer gardening magazines put into print to misinform shoppers and readers, I get incensed. Blatant lies just to sell something. Mere common sense and a little research easily proves it all wrong. But which consumer has the time to do the research and learn the truth? Very, very few actually, and that's what they're counting on. With all the misinformation container in each issue, it's no wonder there's so many losses in peoples gardens. That's what the scummy companies are counting on: losses and replacements. When all those bulb and garden catalogs arrive, I pitch them into the garbage, where they belong.
There are dozens if not hundreds of offenders: Wayside Gardens, Breck's, Holland Bulbs, Smith & Hawken, Gardener's Eden, Martha Stewart's shitpy catalog, Gardener's Supply Co. and so many more it's impossible to count them. Almost every plant listed has incorrect cultural information, wrong USDA Hardiness Zones and outrageous prices for substandard plants delivered. The pictures are heavily retouched and airbrushed to make them surreal and exceedingly appealing to a consumer. Fraud and glitz, Madison Avenue style. Been there, seen that.
How do I know this? Simple: before I opened my garden center & nursery, I worked in Midtown Manhattan's Madison Avenue advertising industry and used to purchase plants (shitpy stuff) from those catalog pirates, as did millions of other uninformed gardeners. It was a horrible rip-off: a tiny package of mud with a stick and two sickly leaves for $49.99, which usually died even with the most careful planting. I was dumb back then.
Since discarding that world of lousy catalog plants for the real world of quality, I vigorously counsel others to do the same: stop buying the mail order shit and purchase local quality plant material. Be diligent and search for quality. Don't think that the pretty pictures in a catalog will be what you're getting. You won't. What you're getting is hosed and screwed six ways to Sunday.
Just try to return a mail order purchased plant that dies. They'll laugh at you and put you through the third degree, and most likely never relent by refunding your hard earned money. Sending a replacement is also totally out of the question. They want you to believe it's your fault that the shitty little plant died.
Their premise is that the customer is always wrong. Period. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has cracked down on many of the so-called name operations, and demanded that they now credit a consumer's account for at least one replacement. Anytime the government has to get involved, it's scary.
A quality operation offers a quality warranty on its material. We routinely replace plants for customers each season, unless abuse or neglect is obvious. Buy locally from a good source. Stay away from glitzy catalogs and no-brainer mail order operations; they're junk.

Deadly Weather.
After 15 days of sweltering 90F+ heat and humidity, the weather changed abruptly last Sunday evening. I'd crashed at 10pm after a long, hot day at the Garden Center, but awoke at 1am to horizontal rain and debris everywhere. Trees and limbs were coming down, the power and cable went out and the cats were hiding under the covers.
Somehow, the dialup connection still worked and I logged on to weather.com where the prediction of damage was grim. Tornadoes were sighted south of York, near the Maryland line, where my Garden Center is located. Within a few minutes, the dialup was gone, too.
With all the trees being wrecked and falling and flying debris, it would have been stupid to drive the 14 miles to check on the business. Instead, I can call up a special electronic device called a Sensa-Phone and get a multi-faceted report on the condition of the facility. But it was down, too, since the phone lines were out.
Rather than get whacked or injured, I opted for staying put. I knew Pickles would be okay, and since there was little if anything I could do in a storm of that intensity, I went back to sleep. The storms and severe weather warnings continued all night.
At 4:30am. I was out of the condo and on my way. The sheer number of downed trees and limbs was staggering. Debris everywhere. shitty Bradford Pears splintered and crushed throughout the county; hey, it's always nice to be right.
Damage to my Garden Center was minimal; lots of nursery stock blown over by the winds. No real physical damage, except for one of the large greenhouse cooling fan's louver/ screen assembly had been blown off inside the greenhouse. A 20 minute repair job. We were very lucky, this time.
Tuesday evening was a repeat of Sunday's scenario, with the damage repeated all around of York. Hail, wind and rain roared through and shredded leaves, left 1-2" of slush on the streets of nearby Red Lion, and again laid down most of my nursery stock. One of the real joys of owning a 20acre nursery and garden center is spending countless hours standing container trees and shrubs back up again, and hand watering each plant, which the automatic sprinkler systems missed the night before because they were blown down. A horizontal pot holds no water.
It's clearly a year of extremes here in the east.

Parole - No; Death - Yes!
New York State is leading the way, sort of, by proposing that prisoners serve their sentences instead of getting parole. Gee, what a unique idea. But all that's going to do is require more jails be built to house the subhuman filth. And that's no real answer. The real answer are more and more executions for all murderers, rapists and child molesters.
What's needed is less prisoners, and not more jails. So, execute the f*cking scum and quit wasting taxpayers dollars — $40,000 to $60,000 per year per scumbag — and cleanse the prison system. Save billions of our hard earned tax dollars and retire the deficit, or something else worthy of our labor. Spending my tax money on criminals is not what a free society is all about.
The are several million families who don't even make that $40,000-60,000 income level as honest, hard working people. Yet the liberal penal system awards billions and billions of our tax dollars each year to house, feed and clothe millions of degenerates, scumbags and lowlifes. Housing criminals is insane; execute them and rid society of their bad genes. What's wrong with this picture? Lots.
Violent offenders need to die, plain and simple. Parole, like rehabilitation, is a joke and a waste of time and money. Past history has clearly demonstrated that fact beyond any rational discussion. Even feeble minded, liberal lowlifes have nothing to offer in the way of reassal there. The terrible toll on innocent citizens from felons needs to be stopped dead. And summary execution, liberally applied on a mass scale to those who fit the criteria, would accomplish that.
Anyone running on a execute the criminal filth platform could easily win election. I forsee that happening in '99 and beyond.
One of the nutcases who whacked his parents and several school mates also needs to be executed when he's 18. Since he freely admits to satanism, society should oblige him and send his speedily to meet satan. There should be NO state in which the death penalty is prohibited; all 50 should administer it freely. In fact, all of the school whackers, regardless of age, need termination upon reaching 18 years old, so that we don't have to pay our hard earned tax dollars to fund their filthy lives beyond the legal age of execution. Keeping criminals and nutcases alive is beyond absurd. It's not humane, it's f*cked up.
There should be no damned leniency for this murderer either; he should die with McVeigh for Killing the 168 people at the OKC Federal Building. I did have respect for the judge in the case, but that's now gone. Anything less than death is cheating justice for the dead and the living.
It's real simple: murderers, rapists and child molesters should be executed immediately after conviction. No appeal, no lingering in comfy prisons or on so-called death row. Immediate and final death.

Work 'Til We Drop Dead.
Working. Some new poll say The Boomers — jeeez, I hate that term — are working because we enjoy it and eventually want to start our own businesses. Hell, I've been there for nine years. I certainly don't need the money; I do it because I enjoy it and want to keep my level of involvement in a quality life up to my standards.
Seems many are looking closely as The Baby Boomer Generation ages; some more so than others. We'll all age; some gracefully, others will fight it every step of the way.
Hmmm, let's see: first it was the Baby Boomers — that's my group — , then Gen Xers — a wholly worthless pile of do-nothings —, and now The Viagara Generation — who the hell knows what they'll be into. Jeeez, I wonder what's after that? Scary.


Getting Clearer All The Time.
It's all but signed, sealed and delivered to The House for impeachment consideration: stinking Chi-Comm money found its way into Democratic National Committee (DNC) coffers. Clinton-Gore benefitted and American policy was perverted and compromised.
The stinking democratic liberal Clintonite scumbags just can't seem to abide by the law; they always want to find ways around it and, when caught, blame the accuser and system for being a vast right wing conspiracy. Hey Hitlery: f*ck you, you sleazy bitch. You're barely fit to write books for idiots, not dabble in reality. As known criminals, all the Clintonite filth need to spend some serious time in federal prison — I don't mind footing the yearly $40,000 bill for those lowlife sleazeballs — and watch them quickly become bunkbed darlings for some real hardened criminals. I'd pay to see that. Bend over and smile, Bubba!
The liberal democratic scum at the (In)Justice Dept are now covering for the Clintonite filth. The idiotic, myopic Reno bitch, who is acting more like Bubba's defense attorney, than attorney general for the American Public, doesn't want the US Supreme Court to review the Secret Service provision for confidentiality, because it will set a precedent and require the SS to tell the truth about Clinton's hosemonster bimbo eruptions, which he's lied about since '92. Reno needs to go to prison, too. There's a few butches in there who'd like to have her as a bunkmate. I'd also pay to see that happen.
But at least the incompetent, clownish ambulance chasing Ginsburg is gone from the scene. Jeeez, what a flying moron! He's a two-bit f*ckup who should be washing cars for a living, not practicing law. He's all but helped to get Monica "presidential kneepads" Lewinsky indicted, singlehandedly. Blowjobs aside, she had more damage done to her by the clownish Ginsburg shit-for-brains than if she'd admitted the truth about blowing Bubba in the Oral Orifice.
Lest we forget: this whole sordid affair with Bubba and Blowjob Monica isn't about the lack of morals or sex in the Oral Orifice; it's about perjury and suborning of perjury. The fact that none of the Clintonite filth has any morals, character or ethics is merely secondary to Bubba's conspiracy to subvert justice, as he's done wantonly in the past.

Kick Some More ass, Rudy.
After working in NYC's Midtown Manhattan for 17 years of my life, I'm glad to see the Mayor get the scum and subhuman immigrant filth off of the steets. They are human garbage, f*cking up traffic, selling diseased food and trash for outrageous prices and causing congestion for pedestrians.
Ed Koch, one of the failed, lowlife liberal democratic mayors, was a piece-of-shit, worthless mother-f*cker, always asking, hey, how am I doing? Whenever I'd see Ed The moron, I'd always yell, Hey, Ed, eat shit and die!; he'd smile and lick his lips. Typical liberal response. Speculation was that Koch was and still is, gay. Amazing that with AIDS as rampant as it is in NYC, Ed's still alive. Koch accomplished nothing in 8 years; he was worthless as teats on a bull. If he died, no one would notice.
Most of NYC's cabbies are lowlife immigrants who can't speak English and don't know how to drive a cab. They just borrowed the cash to buy a taxi medallion. Pure garbage. I'd just as soon see them working a job they can actually handle: ditch digging or something that requires no brains, which they don't have.
New York has become an infinitely safer place since Guilianni took over as Mayor. If New Yorkers have any brains at all left, which I suspect they do, they'll return him in another landslide. f*ck the taxi driver scumbags.
We're with ya, Rudy.

Hurry.
Time to order tickets for The Monterey Jazz Festival, the world's longest running festival. I went in '70 and '76 and, next to Woodstock '69, had the most fun I've ever had with my clothes on.


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