Author: Andy Labis

By:

The Dude on the Right
This past week or so something came back up in my life that I would really like
to research, really would like to find out the answers to, and would really like
to figure out a great way to document things, both the good and the bad, but
sadly the time to find these things are slipping away.  It’s my Dude
genealogy. 
I
got into it a bunch of years back, but it started again over the 4th of July
weekend, when I was starting to clean the Dude-Pad, and I found a place to hang
some older paintings of some of my elders that would actually sort of work in
the decorative scheme of my Dude-Pad.  I was pretty sure the one picture
was of my Grandma, but didn’t really know who the other dude was.  So I
e-mailed my mother, and for the photo to the right I was able to confirm that
the painting of the girl was my Grandma, at age 16, and that the painting of the
dude is my Great Uncle Edward.  From my Mom’s memory, he died in World War
I, was declared missing, then my Great-Great Grandma went to France to see what
is his grave.  I have never known the man, but we are related, and thanks
to my Mom, I have a story to tell about him, the man in the painting.  And
that’s the thing we seem to miss about our ancestors, accurate stories to tell.

The sort of bummer side of this is that my Grandma always had stories to tell,
and I was a lot younger at the time, so most of them are in fragments.  I
remember her stories about her coming over on a boat, and the boat had trouble
getting here, and still remember that she made the best toast, with the pat of
butter that didn’t melt so when you got to the middle of the toast you got
squished bread with a big pat of butter.  My Grandma aside, in the grand
scheme of things, my mother had a plan to record our history, especially since
this was the donning of the age of cassette tapes:  Visit Grandma and let
her record her stories.  But my Grandma was not really one for technology,
didn’t want to "tell her stories to a tape recorder," and for most of the times,
unless those memories pop up for whatever reason, most of her stories are lost. 
As I’m writing this blog, two of her stories pop back into my head, and they are
two of my favorites, never to be forgotten, but my dilemma in this blog is how
to start to record these things I find, or remember, and try to find the best
way to document them.  And now my self-diagnosed OCD kicks in because as
much as we don’t want to admit it, all of our families are fascinating, from the
good to the bad, and in this day and age, when we can easily record our history,
we still forget to.

71ish
years ago a woman named Miss Burrell put a simple quote in an autograph book of
my Aunt’s.  Back then, girls kept autograph books, and my Aunt had a book,
which I now have.  The quote was this:  Happiness is an excellent
remedy and keeps people in better health than any other medicine.  I don’t
know where Miss Burrell got this quote, or whether she made it up on her own,
but it’s a quote that still fits with life today.  The autograph book I
have isn’t that big, but it is filled with lots of other quotes, sayings,
things, that shouldn’t be lost.  And as I hold it, it is at least 71ish
years old.

And as my OCD continues to kick in, the oldest thing that I know I
have is a silver dollar coin from 1878.  It’s not worth much money because
most of all of it is worn, but the date is there, a mere 13 years after Abraham
Lincoln was assassinated.  My Grandma on my Mom’s side was born a mere 20
years after that coin.  And I’m not even going to get into my Dad’s side
right now because otherwise this blog will get really too long.

I guess I got sort of melancholy over the last weekend, but realized again
that all of our lives are fascinating, and should be shared, to at least our
families, and it shouldn’t just be the good, but it should also be the bad, so
that we can, and our siblings can, know where we come from, and learn.  I
guess I’m such a dork sometimes.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

For this podcast, The Dude on the Right wonders about team mascots, is still looking for a PG-13 movie with 2 “F” Bombs, hopes he doesn’t get old like a dude at the Post Office, and prays his sister doesn’t find a treasure chest of information that would ruin his life forever.

By:

The Dude on the Right
I hope you are having a nice 4th of July weekend here in the United States, or
at least just having a nice time if you aren’t from the United States.  I
give some breaking news about a mascot gone wild, and I wonder if there is
video.  I also saw that "Be
Cool" was on cable recently, and it gave me a line I have become obsessed
about, namely that if you utter the F-bomb more than once in a movie you get an
"R" rating.  I have yet to find an instance where this in not true, yet. 
I also find it sort of funny that those folks who can promote censorship can’t
take it when they think religion is involved, and blame getting a PG rating on
religious censorship (even though it’s not), at least when it comes to the movie
"Facing the
Giants."  I also had an incident at the Post Office which makes me hope
I don’t get like this when I get older.

But as I was cleaning the dude-pad I
found something that my sister, and probably my niece, would find as a treasure
chest (although not of a monetary value) of things to make fun of me for the
rest of my life.  I have to decide if burning this treasure or buying a
super-duper safe to protect it is more appropriate.  All I know right now
is that I need to find a better hiding place, and as I’m writing this, I know I
found it.  My new hiding place is not talked about in this podcast, but now
I’m almost tempted to invite my sister and niece to Chicago for a weekend just
to see if they can find this treasure.  My guess, they won’t, because,
well, it’s not gross (like waterproofed in a toilet), actually very clever, and that’s all I’ll write.

This
podcast summary has gotten too long, so I’ll just leave it like this…

Thanks for listening.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
Sometimes I wonder how some people still have their jobs.  No, wait, I
suppose that’s really not it.  I suppose I wonder how, after years at being
on a job, they still seem like they are new on the job, and they also still have
their job yet their hygiene leaves a lot to be desired.  My case in point
is a dude who works at a local grocery store, manning the register in the liquor
department.

Every now and then I am want to purchase some liquor, and there
have been two, regular, check-out folks who have been working the register for
years.  One is this nice, older lady.  She doesn’t remember your name,
but she does remember your face, and is always there with a "Hello" and a "How
are your today?"  She is also able to run people through the line like
nobody’s business.  Scan, bag, scan, bag, scan, bag, scan, sticker, scan
frequent shopper card, punch the right buttons, and you’re out the door.

The
other is this middle-aged dude where if the line is just two people deep you
might as well hoof it to the normal check-out lines because your trip will
probably be quicker.

And somehow, after working for years in the checkout lane
and stocking shelves in the same liquor department, he still has a job, still
hasn’t seemed to figure out how it works, and well, taking pride in one’s
appearance doesn’t seem to apply.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

First off
the dude is way fat.  Don’t get me wrong, I need to lose some weight as
well, and even some of the most obese people can at least be one with their
obese selves and make it work for them.  Not this dude, he is pretty much,
for no better term, a fat slob.  He is also sort of surly, never greets you
with a smile, and doesn’t seem to know how to wash his clothes, or at least to
know when it’s finally been too many days wearing the same shirt.  He also
doesn’t seem to remember anyone who comes through the line, because as much as
I’ve seen him over the years, he still doesn’t seem to recognize me.  But I
can get past the initial gross-ness issue of the dude, what really blows my mind
is after all of these years the dude still doesn’t seem to be able to put
together how all of this technology works, even though he also helps stocks the
shelves in the liquor department.  In front of me is a wine person, with a
dozen bottles of wine.  For every bottle, even if they are multiples of the
same bottles of wine, check-out dude looks to find the bar-code before running
it over the scanner.  Yes, that’s right, after all of these years he still
hasn’t seemed to figure out the bar-code is on the back label of the bottle of
wine and you don’t really need to look for it.  And both you know and I
know that on those cases of beer, the bar-code is on the bottom.  Not him. 
He has to look on all four sides, then do the "head tilt" to look at the bottom
and realize that "Aha!  There it is, that pesky bar-code!"  Lighting
quick.  And still, after all of these years, you would have thought he
would have some technique to actually put the items in those plastic bags, but
no, not this check-out dude, because somehow he labors at still trying to figure
out how those bags actually work.

And then comes the actual payment procedure.

So your items have all been scanned, he has scanned your frequent shopper card,
and it’s time to pay.  I would say 95% of the folks coming through this
line know how to scan their credit card through the scanner and punch the
buttons, or if they are paying with cash even better, but it’s not the
purchasers having the problem, it’s check-out dude.  From what I can tell
there are a couple of buttons to push depending on your method of purchase. 
To me it sort of seems like it would be redundant – If they pay with cash, hit
these buttons;  If it’s a debit card, these buttons;  Credit, it’s
these.  – and after years with the same cash register system (I know it’s
the same because when the grocery folks switched the cash register system a
bunch of years ago, the nice, older lady, took a little more time, explaining
they switched the system), you would actually get used to what buttons to push,
but not this check-out dude.  Nope, from day one, until day, well, it’s
have to have been over 500 on the job, check-out dude still works those buttons
like it was day one.

And so I just wanted to vent about this dude who still
has a job I think he should be much more familiar with because, thanks to my
fault, I didn’t listen to my normal rule today, and that is to head for the main
check-outs if two people are ahead of me when this dude is running the liquor
check-out.  There I stood, for about 15 minutes, waiting to pay for my
twelve pack of Heineken Light (my diet starts tomorrow), and not really
wondering how this dude still had a job, but how this lazy, fat, slob, still had
a job that after all of these years he still hasn’t figured out how to do it at
least somewhat efficiently.  Thank you for letting me vent.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

For this podcast, The Dude on the Right congratulates his sister, has some movie viewing dilemmas for “Superman Returns” and “The Devil Wears Prada,” and is psyched about “Spider-Man 3” even though it won’t be released for 11 months. He also isn’t worried about the asteroid coming near Earth over the 4th of July weekend, unless, well, those tracking it forgot to convert Metric to English, or vice versa. And then he just babbles for no apparent reason because he can never really figure out how to close out these podcasts sometimes.