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“I was out shopping with my daughter, Z and her brother yesterday, trying to use those dreaded gift cards, the one of interest was from Best Buy.

While they are looking for music, I see the new Tony Bennett CD, kind of a Duets and I decide to spring for the fifteen bucks.

We get to the car and I pop it in and see “Bad Disk” on my player. I tried unsuccessfully three times to get it to work, but alas, it must have been a bad disk. So I walk back into the store with my three minute old receipt and show it to the door guard who shows me to the return line. Now I have owned this thing for three minutes and I just want to swap it out. It is three days after xmas and I really do not want to go through the entire return process so when I finally get to the front of the line; the customer service trainer is waiting on me. I tell him, forget it, just give me my money back, it is a bad disk.

He tells me there are state and federal laws against them refunding my money at which I literally laugh out loud. I said there are no such laws. He claimed there were and I said, if you believe that you are a fool. Then I asked to see a copy of the law at which point the “manager” showed up. He said that he would show me the law it was right out the front door and If I did not leave, they would have me arrested for trespassing. At this point the manager says I can have another disk or be arrested for trespassing. I asked again to check the CD, it was a bad CD.

I am thinking this is a riot, let’s just see where this goes.

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Sure enough, he calls 911 for a trespasser in his store.

I am literally laughing out loud. I go back to the car where the kids are and explain that I will be a few more minutes. I get my phone and call my wife and tell her what is going on.

Then I call corporate in MN. I explain what is going on and the “senior customer consultant” tell me to please hold after he agrees that it is an out of control situation. The first question that corporate asked me was if they actually checked the CD to see if it was bad. I told him that they did not check it in spite of my requests.

About this time the manager comes to me and says that it looks like the cops ain’t coming so he will give me the money back.

Now the cops show up, (three officers in two cars!) I have the customer service people refunding my money, the three cops looking for me, and me on hold with corporate.

I get my money then approach the cops and explain my side of the story. They just shake their head. I apologize for the store manager wasting their resources. I was kind of hoping that they would arrest me.

I finally get the guy from corporate back on the line and he commits to calling me tomorrow with resolution.

Turns out it wasn’t a call from him I got today, the store manager called. I went over the details with her and after what seems like a thirty minute discussion she admitted there is not a federal or state law against a store refunding a customer for a defective product. She then asked what it would take to make it right, I told her to think about it and call me back. She did call back later today and offered me a twenty five dollar gift card. I asked her to donate it to Salvation Army and guess what, they can’t do that either.”

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Hang on a second.  I’m sure I have the answer to that question around here someplace.

Smaller government!  That’s it.  Republicans have always stood for smaller government that promotes that good American “rugged individualism.”

President Bush’s second-term agenda would expand not only the size of the federal government but also its influence over the lives of millions of Americans by imposing new national restrictions on high schools, court cases and marriages.

Okay, maybe not.  But fiscal responsibility.  That’s always been a Republican issue.

Faced with a potential government shutdown, the Senate votes to raise the nation’s debt limit for the fourth time in five years.

So money’s not their thing.  Thank goodness they know how to manage the military.

The invasion of Iraq was the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history,” a retired Army general said yesterday.

Well, if nothing else, you can always count on Republicans to be tough on crime.  Republicans have run on that agenda since the first goggle-eyed proto-Gingrich crawled out of the primordial ooze.  They’ve pushed for longer sentences, for extending adult punishment to younger and younger offenders, for increasing the number of crimes eligible for the death penalty, and for more and more prisons to house the increasing population of the incarcerated.  Oh, and they’ve reduced funding for public defenders and for rehabilitation programs.  You can’t coddle criminals.  Only by being tough with these people will they know you mean business.

That’s why, after a decade of steep decline, crime statistics are heading… up.

Violent crime rose in cities and towns across the country in the first half of 2006, according to preliminary data from the FBI. The findings signal that a long period of declining crime in the United States is not just at an end, it’s heading in the other direction.

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At least 80 Iraqis died in bombings and other attacks Saturday as they prepared to celebrate Islam’s biggest holiday, their first without Saddam Hussein.

The bombings came hours after Saddam was hanged in Baghdad for ordering the killings of 148 Shiites in the city of Dujail in 1982. Despite concerns about a spike in unrest, Saturday’s violence was not unusually high for Iraq, nor did it appear to be in retaliation for the execution.

So, what exactly does “not unusually high” mean, these days?

The military reported the deaths of six more American troops,

[..]

In Baghdad, 12 bodies bearing signs of torture were also found in various parts of the city, police said.

Two car bombs detonated one after another in a religiously mixed neighborhood of northwest Baghdad, killing 37 civilians and wounding 76, police said.

Another 31 people died and 58 were injured when a bomb planted on a minibus exploded in a fish market in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad, said Issa Mohammed, director of the morgue in the neighboring town of Najaf.

I shudder to think what AP would call “unusually high”…

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When a pipeline bursts around here, which would be a rare occurrence, people stay as far away as possible and the environmental impact is immediately the biggest concern. Not so much in Nigeria, where a petrol pipeline burst is just an opportunity to scoop up as much free fuel as possible in whatever vessel you can find.

No smoking please.

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A gasoline pipeline ruptured by thieves exploded into a blazing inferno Tuesday as scavengers collected the fuel in a poor neighborhood, killing at least 260 people in the latest oil-industry disaster to strike Africa’s biggest petroleum producer.

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France is the land of protest but, these days, most French revolutions are of the conservative variety. The French mostly demonstrate against the new. A shadowy group based in the west of France hopes to push French immobilism to a novel level. The group, called Fonacon, is planning a demonstration against the New Year.

Supporters are being urged to turn out in the streets on Nantes on the evening of 31 December, not to celebrate the coming of 2007 but to protest against it. Financial backing, and lots of food and drink, have been promised by a number of cultural festivals based in the west of France.

“Stop 2007. It must not pass. All in the street against 2007,” are the slogans on the group’s website, Fonacon.net.

“If 2007 happens regardless, which is unlikely, we will hire a fleet of special trains to go to Paris next year and demonstrate on the Champs Elysées against 2008,” said one of the organisers.

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‘They killed him, is that possible?’ Abu Hamza, a muscled Sunni insurgent in his early thirties asked in disbelief. ‘I still can’t believe it,’ he continued, resting his head on his palm. The TV channel repeated the scenes many times, cut before the actual execution moment and followed by television scenes of jubilant Shia men and boys dancing, accompanied by patriotic songs. ‘Those Shia, they killed him on the day of the Eid just to humiliate us,’ said Abu Hamza.

Abu A’isha, a mid-level commander of an insurgency group in west Baghdad, short, stout, in his forties and dressed in a blue tracksuit, was more calm. ‘It’s better for the jihad,’ he explained. ‘Every time the mujahideen do an operation they say it’s the people of Saddam. Where is Saddam now? Let’s see if his death will affect the jihad. Of course it won’t.’ He added: ‘The resistance is led by the Islamists, and we don’t love Saddam. It’s good that he is out of the picture. Now things will be clearer.

‘There will be some hardcore Baathists who might demonstrate in the streets, go do a couple of attacks on the Americans, but it’s over for them,’ said Abu Hamza. This is the final declaration of the civil war, if anyone had any doubts left,’ added Abu A’isha. ‘I am sure there will be demonstrations in Adhamiya [the largely Sunni neighbourhood where Saddam was seen before the fall of Baghdad in 2003].’

But the streets in Sunni neighbourhoods, like most of Baghdad, yesterday remained calm and half deserted. A few cars drove quickly through the Sunni neighbourhoods of Seliekh and Adhamiya in north Baghdad. The city had an air of anxiety and anticipation.

‘People are anxious. Saddam has been dead for a long time now. He is a page that was flipped four years ago. People are more worried about civil war,’ said Hameed, a Sunni former officer. ‘They are more worried about storing food and kerosene in case of a curfew than worrying about Saddam.’

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The clock’s counting down good riddance to 2006, and a crowd of thirsty revelers encircles you, the designated popper of the cork.

But how will you free the bubbly from its bottle to greet the new year? You can always go manual, or geek out with a gadget like the single-squeeze Descorjet.

But perhaps you want to start 2007 feeling a little more jaunty than usual. Maybe you feel like living life on the edge — the edge of a saber.

If so, it might be time to try champagne sabering, the delicate art of decapitating bottles of champagne.

and here is another tutorial…

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Shotaro Shimomura XXI (1883-1944) was Chairman of The Daimaru Inc., a department store chain that traces its roots to a single store opened in Kyoto in 1717. Mr. Shimomura was named President of the company in 1907 and toured Europe and the United States the following year to study the management of department stores. He took these photographs on a subsequent trip around the world in 1934 and 1935, prior to establishing a subsidiary trading company.