There seems to be an increasing number of home invasions in a town just north of me. Now that town is a lot bigger than my town, so of course the crime rate is a lot higher. And there is gang activity up there (moreso than is down here), but it still worries me. I’ve seen some advertisements in the mail about home alarm systems and I’m thinking this is probably a really good idea. Something worth investing in. I have this fear that the gangbangers up north will realize there’s easy pickings just few minutes drive from them and start victimizing us.

There are some things to combat this threat, of course, besides the arm systems. Lock your doors. Get a dog. Things of that nature. Especially lock your doors when you’re in the back yard (that doesn’t prevent the home invasion but can prevent the sneakier types from coming in and stealing your purse, for instance). But, really, if the gangbangers are trying to be initiated into their gang, I don’t think a dead bolt’s necessarily going to stop them. If they can kick in the door, do their damage and prevent you from calling 9-1-1, then what’s the point? An alarm system will do the calling for you. And a nice bright sign in the yard will warn away any potential invaders (hopefully).

My fears aren’t helped with the commercials on television either. I’d like to see them address the growing threat of home invasion without scaring the kids to death when the commercials come on. I’ve already had a talk with Mags and am slightly worried that I’m going to give my child a complex warning her about all of these dangers. I moved to a small town so we wouldn’t have to worry about this stuff, but it still worries me.

I would personally love to see more talk of domestic terrorism when discussing these gangs. Aren’t they terrorizing us when we’re afraid to leave our doors unlocked while we’re home in broad daylight? I think so. I consider that terrorism. I consider not being able to sit on your porch at night because of the gangs to be terrorism. I’m more worried about that activity than some foreign terrorist doing damage. There are gang task forces, of course, but what good are they doing? I was watching “Gangland” on The History Channel and there is a gang in Nashville (!!) that specializes in home invasions. Doesn’t that make them terrorists?

Yes. Yes, it does. I don’t care what anyone says. These gangs target innocent people in an effort to prove their “cred” and that’s terrorism. I shouldn’t have to activate an alarm system while I’m watching the 2pm showing of “Wife Swap” because there might be someone coming to break down my door. But it seems I’m going to have to consider doing just that. No, the home invasions aren’t pervasive in my town yet. But it’s only a matter of time. And what about the people that live in the town where these things are increasing in frequency? Aren’t those people living amongst terrorism?

I try not to watch the news too often because it’s depressing and scares the ever-lovin’ crap out of me. But this is an issue that really concerns me as crime rates go up due to, well, whatever reason the professionals use to justify it. It’s no wonder so many people are shut-ins. They don’t want to deal with the cold reality that they’re not safe in their own homes. I don’t blame them.

I realize that people go on YouTube hoping to someone will offer them tv deals or movie contracts. They want to be taken seriously as "journalists" and so have lots of advice and "research" to offer (of course, a lot of times, like the lady with FM, they’re just hoping we’ll buy their scams), but honestly.

I’ve run into a couple of different videos today that should have made the producers feel ashamed of themselves. One of them was of Maia Campbell supposedly going beserk because of her drug dependency. Another was someone “interviewing” supposed strangers to prove a point about health care reform. Both videos were a little less than stellar and neither of them made the producers look good, though the second video was at least in good faith.

I’d like to see more funny and/or informative people taking control of YouTube—with the less-than-stellar ones shoved to the bottom of the heap. I hate to see someone with a little bit of Twitter influence take making some nonsense that just happened to go viral. Like the lady I spoke of before with her imaginary FMS, these guys should stick to written commentary and let the real videographers have all the fun.

/end rant

We went to Kohl’s to look at clearance items recently. Grump got me a $35 gift certificate for there for Mother’s Day and I’ll only use it during good sales. Anyway, we found some really interesting "As Seen on TV" things and wanted to know how much they cost. Well, there was the list they put on the little card above the shelving, but most of the stuff wasn’t on the list, so we had to search out a lady to help us. She’d bring along one of those handheld POS systems, scan the barcode and tell us what we needed to know. I kept saying to myself "Wouldn’t this be easier if they had a price check point?" I was incredibly frustrated by the entire mess and decided not to use my gift card that day (I’ll wait for their early bird sale).

Guess what? As we were leaving we passed a price check point. I was so mad at both myself and the store policy because, honestly, the lady probably could have saved us all a lot of time and grief if she’d just pointed us to that terminal. I would have been ecstatic to use it instead of keeping her from her work. And I probably would have purchased something instead of leaving frustrated.

Remember when all the major stores had those things? I remember when I first discovered them—I think it was at Wally World—and I was thrilled to play. I found the prices of everything I could get my hands on. Then they became so common place that I expected to be able to use it whenever I wanted, instead of hunting down a price check lady or going to customer service like we used to have to do. It saved so much time and aggravation when something didn’t have a tag. And then the stores had this hare-brained idea that they were going to do away with the normal tagging system and make all pricing a whole new language. Once again those POS systems came in handy. And now they’re doing away with the price checkers, but keeping the crazy “special” tagging systems.

It’s a real headache. I was glad to see that Kohl’s does have one, but was irritated because I didn’t know about it right away. And I wish that every store I went into had one that is visible and apparent and that will save me the time and aggravation of finding someone to translate the pricing system of their respective stores. I long for the price checker to come back into action.