New Piece Offerings #1: State of the Ticketmaster Address
I haven't posted anything new in almost a year and a half, and a lot has happened in that time that stalled me from keeping the Ticketverse current.
Hastings, an awesome home entertainment chain that provided shoppers with coffee, sandwiches, CDs, DVDs for rental and sale, video games, and vinyl records, went out of business last year, staying alive long after Blockbuster Video and its brick-and-mortar rental competitors bit the big one. Hearing the phrase "Blockbuster Video went out of business" still pisses me off. It doesn't keep me from being a Netflix and Hulu subscriber, but it still pisses me off to think about how much I miss going into a video store or record store and rifling through their selection. I almost always walked out the door with less money in my pocket and something new (whether actually new or just new to me) in a bag swinging by my side, something I could hold in my hand, stare at on my shelf, listen to and appreciate--or criticize--as something of substance (in varying degrees) that I paid for with my own money.
Also last year, Safeway retired their movie rental department to make room for a knockoff RedBox machine, a single rack of terrible movies to buy, and two racks of Seahawks junk that is too cheap in one way and too expensive in another for anyone to want to pay for. Basically, in the name of progress, Safeway is voluntarily bringing in less profit for themselves.
So without any physical media to review, my digital enterprise is floundering in the water. I don't make money off of doing this, so I can barely call it an enterprise, but I do see it as a living thing that needs sustenance, a starving child that I have been forced to neglect. And I miss feeding it terribly.
I also miss Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington. Their voices were unique, their music was amazing, and the world will be an emptier place for want of their talents.
I am disappointed in Yelawolf for rage-quitting his own tour, in Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker for thinking that anything they put out these days is anything but boring, derivative pop-country garbage that barely fits into either genre, in the current mainstream music scene for thinking that anything they have produced in the last decade and a half (with the exceptions of Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran, Adele, Metallica, John Legend, and--sort of--Twenty-One Pilots) has been Grammy-worthy, and in myself for not appreciating my job at Safeway more than I did.
I'll not go into details as to how or why, but I quit Safeway two months ago with drama nipping at my heels and almost immediately landed a job at Subway as a Sandwich Artist. I get paid about half as much as I did at Safeway, but it comes with a more chill work environment and one hundred percent less drama, so I am content for the time being. Former co-workers come in to get sandwiches from time to time and ask how my life is going as a gateway to complain about their lives, but I enjoy seeing old customers pop in; they always seem as happy to see me as I am to see them.
Okay, I lied about not sharing details. Some of the drama that lingered with me--and still does--has to do with numerous complaints that customers at Safeway had supposedly made about me, about a tone I used or poor word choices I made--never profanity, only seemingly harmless jokes told on impulse or that I was honest about my mood on a stressful day--while serving them. I was only informed of these mistakes I had made weeks or months after the fact--and again in a heaping pile at the time of my resignation--not so that I could remedy them myself in a timely fashion and make good with those I might have wronged unintentionally, but so that these complaints could be used as ammunition against me in just such a situation as I had found myself in prior to quitting.
So I wonder and worry sometimes, as customers come in to Subway whom I recognize, if any of them are genuinely happy to see me or if they might call my boss after their visit to complain about my sheer presence there.
But worries are for dolls, beads, and warts, drama is for your momma, disappointment is for Jewish grandmothers, profit is for margins, death is for certain, and Safeway is for the birds. Let's move on as next time, I kick off the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective.
Hastings, an awesome home entertainment chain that provided shoppers with coffee, sandwiches, CDs, DVDs for rental and sale, video games, and vinyl records, went out of business last year, staying alive long after Blockbuster Video and its brick-and-mortar rental competitors bit the big one. Hearing the phrase "Blockbuster Video went out of business" still pisses me off. It doesn't keep me from being a Netflix and Hulu subscriber, but it still pisses me off to think about how much I miss going into a video store or record store and rifling through their selection. I almost always walked out the door with less money in my pocket and something new (whether actually new or just new to me) in a bag swinging by my side, something I could hold in my hand, stare at on my shelf, listen to and appreciate--or criticize--as something of substance (in varying degrees) that I paid for with my own money.
Also last year, Safeway retired their movie rental department to make room for a knockoff RedBox machine, a single rack of terrible movies to buy, and two racks of Seahawks junk that is too cheap in one way and too expensive in another for anyone to want to pay for. Basically, in the name of progress, Safeway is voluntarily bringing in less profit for themselves.
So without any physical media to review, my digital enterprise is floundering in the water. I don't make money off of doing this, so I can barely call it an enterprise, but I do see it as a living thing that needs sustenance, a starving child that I have been forced to neglect. And I miss feeding it terribly.
I also miss Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington. Their voices were unique, their music was amazing, and the world will be an emptier place for want of their talents.
I am disappointed in Yelawolf for rage-quitting his own tour, in Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker for thinking that anything they put out these days is anything but boring, derivative pop-country garbage that barely fits into either genre, in the current mainstream music scene for thinking that anything they have produced in the last decade and a half (with the exceptions of Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran, Adele, Metallica, John Legend, and--sort of--Twenty-One Pilots) has been Grammy-worthy, and in myself for not appreciating my job at Safeway more than I did.
I'll not go into details as to how or why, but I quit Safeway two months ago with drama nipping at my heels and almost immediately landed a job at Subway as a Sandwich Artist. I get paid about half as much as I did at Safeway, but it comes with a more chill work environment and one hundred percent less drama, so I am content for the time being. Former co-workers come in to get sandwiches from time to time and ask how my life is going as a gateway to complain about their lives, but I enjoy seeing old customers pop in; they always seem as happy to see me as I am to see them.
Okay, I lied about not sharing details. Some of the drama that lingered with me--and still does--has to do with numerous complaints that customers at Safeway had supposedly made about me, about a tone I used or poor word choices I made--never profanity, only seemingly harmless jokes told on impulse or that I was honest about my mood on a stressful day--while serving them. I was only informed of these mistakes I had made weeks or months after the fact--and again in a heaping pile at the time of my resignation--not so that I could remedy them myself in a timely fashion and make good with those I might have wronged unintentionally, but so that these complaints could be used as ammunition against me in just such a situation as I had found myself in prior to quitting.
So I wonder and worry sometimes, as customers come in to Subway whom I recognize, if any of them are genuinely happy to see me or if they might call my boss after their visit to complain about my sheer presence there.
But worries are for dolls, beads, and warts, drama is for your momma, disappointment is for Jewish grandmothers, profit is for margins, death is for certain, and Safeway is for the birds. Let's move on as next time, I kick off the Grimm Fairy Tales Retrospective.
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