Cleaning Out The Inbox

Uncle Bubba has filters on his email to avoid the avalanche, congestion, and deluge of that insidious spam. On a fluke he clicked on his trash folder and saw an unread email from a friend and later realized that within the body of his friend's email was a word that was in his spam filter. "How maddeningly inconvenient," he thought. But the entire affair provoked him to clean out his trash folder by double checking that he hadn't unknowingly missed others. Then he emptied his over stuffed spam folder; always a satisfying feeling. It was at that time that he noticed that he had about 3500 messages in his inbox. He click over to the oldest and they dated back to 2007. "Wow," he thought, "Really?" So he started cleaning out the inbox. He quickly scanned the sender and the subject line before deleting, but found it remarkable how he could quickly remember so many messages. Of course he didn't remember every detail, but he did recall the conversations. Unexpectedly, it was an uncomfortably nostalgic task. In the empathetic reminiscence of the conversations, he could bring to mind the hopes, the dreams and desires expressed and then just as quickly see the frequently disappointing aftermath in retrospect. He saw senders that he could not remember and others that have long since disappeared from the inbox and his thoughts. He knocked a few years off of the history books and whittled down maudlin messages by nearly two thousand. In Bubbie's view, this task is best completed efficiently without a lot of thought. Now if he could just do the same with his garage.

Outsmarted - The American Pickers Syndrome

Every so often certain mundane things in life that we all know exist but choose to ignore or avoid, becomes an obnoxious annoyance because of its obvious stupidity. In Bubbie's view, this is the American Pickers syndrome. In this TV show, two men scour the country's junkyards, barns and basements for junk that they can resell. Hey, isn't that how Sanford & Son made a living? Anyway, when Uncle Bubba first heard the title of the show on a History Channel commercial, he was thinking that it might be about the history of American musicians... not garbage pickers. So we all know that there are many people like this exist in our culture, their business survives on buying things at pennies on the dollar and reselling at its most inflated cost. Hey, that's capitalism baby! But as seen in feedback about the show, it is not always seen as an ethical business because often the deal is routinely predicated on a person needing to sell something, or talked into selling something that they don't necessarily want to. This is very similar to the connotation of the pawn business. And this is the manifestation of the stupidity in the premise of the show. The pickers, in their quest for fame and fortune via the reality TV train, though they would have you believe that they can make a ton of money selling their junk, have shown their hand. They've outsmarted themselves by showing us how much they pay for items and then how much their markup is. They show us how they negotiate with no conscience. The show Pawn Stars, and other like shows have done the same thing. This used to be a shameful practice called selling out to the man, it's greed for greed's sake but now no one cares; in fact they are rewarded for it by being given a reality show. What's next? American Slumlords? (Of course the title would be shortened to American Lords.) Remember that funny metaphor of something going over like a turd in the punchbowl? This is like seeing the turd and taking a drink anyway! The only reality of reality TV (which should rightfully titled artificial reality TV) is that the participants have outsmarted themselves by pretentiously revealing their seedy underbelly. And how stupid are the lemmings that line up to sell something to the bottom feeders that they interview out in a parking lot and they say, "I'd like to get $1,000 for this thing." Then walk in and start the negotiation at... $1,000! Idiots! They're usually lucky if they can walk out with a couple hundred bucks. Bubbie reckons we're just as stupid for being lemmings and watching these shows.

Uncle Bubba went through a period of watching these shows, primarily out of boredom, but the stupidity got too hard to take so he exercised his prerogative and changed the channel. It's one of the few things we have left that gives us control of our lives; that is, until they make a law limiting channel surfing. We can choose not to participate in stupidity by choosing better programming or, dare he say, turning off the TV. Lest you think you are not participating by watching, look at the number of trite spinoffs that follow each highly rated show. Would you invite any of the plethora of gross, morally inept, disgusting Repo "stars" over to your home to hangout? Essentially you are when you watch their shows; you're inviting them in through your television. Uncle Bubba's mama always told him that if you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.

Thoughtful Kindness

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines thoughtful as "characterized by careful reasoned thinking" and "given to or chosen or made with heedful anticipation of the needs and wants of others". Kindness is defined as "the quality or state of being kind". So in Bubbie's view, thoughtfulness is kind, but not every kindness is thoughtful. Big deal? It is if you're interested in being a better person and a contributor to the betterment of humanity. To be thoughtful is to think outside of one's self. In the definition above, the key words are reasoned, heedful, and anticipation. There is effort to thoughtfulness. There does not have to be effort to kindness. Using learned habits such as using your manners are a kindness. You don't have to think about it, it's a habit. Any self centered person can practice kindness. Thoughtfulness takes consideration, planning. Now, some people are naturally thoughtful. It's no effort for them to be thoughtful, but their actions are no less carefully reasoned and heedful and should not be taken for granted. If anything they should be treated as an example for the kind, yet mostly thoughtless people.

Rednecks Rule

Uncle Bubba likes Hank Williams Jr's music. It's fun, it's entertaining. He wouldn't ask Hank Jr. for advice on anything short of making music and even then, he would probably understand and agree with half of it. Uncle Bubba likes Willie Nelson's music too, but Bubbie isn't interested in smoking pot. Uncle Bubba is smart enough not to poke a bear with a sharp stick and expect not to get bit, apparently FOX News is not. Admit it though, FOX News and ESPN got what they wanted from Hank. In today's sleazy climate, the only bad publicity is no publicity. In Bubbie's view, it's getting tiresome at how quickly everyone has to jump into the fray with their thoughtless opinions. People are people, you know... human. We're all flawed, just turn on a light and look in the mirror and work on that for a while and give the rest of us a break.

Uncle Bubba travels America and works extensively with good, wholesome, hardworking folks and ya know what? Most of them think and talk like Hank Williams Jr. Not specifically, but generally. Most people are trying to smile while barely getting by living paycheck to paycheck. That's often a colloquialism saved for the poor to lower middle class, but in Bubbie's view it's expanding at a rapid rate to the middle and upper middle class. Corporate America doesn't get it anymore than our inept politicians, folks making 30,000 to 40,000 a year can't truly afford extra cable channels, extra bandwidth, health insurance, home owners insurance, car insurance; not when the cost of consumables like groceries and gas rise and rise. Yessir, kick 'em when they're down and keep dangling those carrots in front of them. So good ol' redneck America gets worn out and pops off at the mouth about it and the best that we can do is criticize them for it.

Uncle Bubba offers a few ideas to get things going. Offer a couple electric cars at a price point of $8,000 to $10,000 and watch how fast charging stations pop up. Come on, wire in an outlet on a post, duh. Open the cable grid to competing companies. We should have a choice of cable providers not cable versus dish only. Isn't that a monopoly? Aren't they illegal? Insurance and for that matter, banking... how about some prosecutions? That'd be a good place to start. State Government, get a backbone, stop taking money from the Fed and represent us each as an individual state. And as for the Federal Government, please stop meddling in our personal lives and balance the doggone budget. Oh yeah, and if you don't like Hank Williams, you can kiss our ass!