Employing mystery shoppers is counterproductive and bad for business for restaurants.
If you are one of the millions of people who dine at a corporately owned restaurant each year, you may be surprised to find that servers will soon be replaced by robots. In an effort to appease shareholders, top floor suits — who have likely never worked a day on the floor of a dining establishment — are meticulously crafting monotonous scripts for servers to recite at their tables to help ensure the upsell of every last piece of bacon and avocado. …
When you want something, you will take action.
If you want something and do not have it, then one of the following statements is true:
(1) It is physically or psychologically impossible to achieve the thing you want. For instance, you might want to grow wings or become omniscient. Or, you might want to not be imprisoned, when confined to an unbreakable cell.
(2) You are doing everything in your power to achieve the thing you want, and you have not yet achieved it.
(3) You already, unknowingly, have the thing that you want.
(4) You do not want the thing that you think you want.
The word…
Senator Ted Cruz abandoned Texans when they needed him most.
Ted “Royal Caribbean” Cruz flew south to Cancun, Mexico for the Winter cold snap that has killed 21 and left millions in Texas without power. Pictures of Cruz in the airport and aboard a flight destined for the Mexican paradise cropped up on Twitter Wednesday when fellow passenger Juan Gomez tweeted photos of the Senator and his family caravan bound to cross our southern border.
What started as a rumor gained traction when politico Keith Edwards retweeted Gomez’s revelation after he noticed that the man in the photos was in fact wearing Cruz’s favorite mask with the embroidered “Come and…
A Minneapolis artist finds himself in abstract art.
It was during a conversation with a friend that I decided that I wanted to interview local artists. My friend convinced me that it would be mutually advantageous to do so: artists would get to share their work and I would get to share mine. Beyond any material advantages that these relationships might offer, such as expanding our respective audiences, there is also a positive sense of community that is created in that effort. It seemed like a win-win. After making the decision to follow through on this suggestion, Mark Jackson was the first artist that came to my mind.
…
Trump attorney Michael van der Veen entertained senators with a stand up comedy routine during closing arguments.
If you are a fan of comedy or a person who laughs to keep from crying, consider watching a rerun of Donald Trump’s defense attorney making the closing argument in his latest impeachment trial. Michael van der Veen, an ambulance chaser from Philadelphia, was a last-minute choice for Trump, whose cold, splintery bench has been laid bare beyond the ass of Rudy Giuliani.
The absence of willing counsel to sell their souls for a dollar was an even more stunning development than the trial itself. The Guinness Book of World Records, on hand to record Trump’s impeachment record, instead focused…
AOC is the real deal.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz faced off last Thursday, Jan. 28th on Twitter, the popular digital/political boxing arena, for what was a quick TKO by Cortez. Cruz, simultaneously playing the roles of Wile E. Coyote and Eddie Haskell, sauntered into the fight with a sly grin, hands down at his sides. He appeared to offer a makeshift draw as he seconded a motion by Cortez to investigate Robinhood, the online trading platform that suspiciously suspended trading on GameStop, the failing retail store whose inflated stock was responsible for a short squeeze on Wallstreet.
Stepping cautiously…
The GOP is now the party of crazy.
Axios published a poll on Wednesday night which shows that Marjorie Taylor Greene — the freshman House Republican that has come under heavy fire for her statements praising the conspiracy theory movement QAnon — is more popular than even Mitch McConnell amongst Republican voters (Talev). It appears GOP leadership has taken full notice of this trend as 199 House Republicans voted on Thursday to keep Greene on her committee assignments, including the Education Committee, a group dedicated to child safety, even after she stated that the 2018 Parkland school shooting was a hoax and harassed student survivors.
This poll and…
The first step is acceptance.
— You have returned to sleeping well at night after four years of insomnia.
— You find yourself wondering where the vast majority of Trump supporters have gone when nobody on Facebook argues with your political posts.
— You are waiting anxiously for Joe Biden to make one of his famous gaffes.
— You cannot watch CNN 24 hours a day any longer.
— You have started gambling excessively because you do not feel as though the world is teetering on the brink of extinction, and you are therefore bored.
— You watched an episode of The Apprentice for the…
Writers and political junkies struggle to cope.
Say what you want about Donald J. Trump, but the man is a showman. The Apprentice, produced and hosted by Trump, ranked 7th among all network programs in its first season, with over 20 million viewers per episode. Like most reality programming, viewership fell season to season. Still, Trump’s lifelong goal and greatest success was realized: He created the illusion that his TV character was his real-life self, and he became a household ‘brand’ name in the process.
Sure, he was always a real estate developer off-screen, but the image of great success and power that his Apprentice character projected…
Hypocrisy and artistic license
Can you smell that? It is the smell of marijuana pouring out of a house party. Go on in! Underage drinking is okay. People are openly doing bumps of cocaine. Go upstairs into a bunk and people are doing lines. Oxycontin is available if you know who to talk to, and ecstasy. Give a heads-up and anything is available: Ketamine, LSD, Methamphetamine and so on. Gucci Mane is bumping on the stereo.
No, you have not arrived at a trap house. You are going to a fraternity party at a college campus near you. The best…
Joshua Gane
Josh has a BA in philosophy from UNC and a MA in English from NC State.
