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Posted on 12.24.11 by Danny Glover @ 6:27 pm
I decided long ago never to buy a home on property controlled by an association of nib-noses who love to impose elitist rules on others. As an enlightened being, I don’t decorate our property with tire planters or cars jacked up on blocks, but the redneck in me cherishes the freedom to do so. That’s why I like to see people who do choose to live within developments managed by homeowners associations stick it to the HOA man when he goes on a ridiculous and unjustifiable power trip. Overbearing rules usually have loopholes that are ripe for exploitation. A Facebook friend found just such a loophole during the holidays when her HOA decided to play Grinch. Her understated Christmas decorations — two red bows on the porch pillars and lanterns in the lawn — apparently violated the letter of the association’s lame laws about “seasonal decorations.” The HOA ordered her to remove them. She didn’t face any fines for the alleged breach, so she decided to keep the decorations in place. But the warning letter from the HOA irritated her and her husband so much that they decided to protest by also decorating their car in Christmas lights. “There is NOTHING in the rules prohibiting decorating your car with Christmas lights,” she said. Take that, HOA!  
Filed under: An Enlightened Redneck ... and Business and Culture and Family and Features and Holidays and Parenting and Photoshop Stop Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.23.11 by Danny Glover @ 3:14 pm
But first a bit about Pinterest: As the name implies, the site is a place where you “pin” pictures of the people, places and things that “interest” you. But this virtual pinboard also has a social aspect to it. After you pin photos to your topical boards, other people can “like” them, “repin” them to their own Pinterest boards or comment on the photos. The network is especially popular with women, who use it to create collections of recipes, clothes and other items. But as I poked around the site today, I realized that it’s a great forum for creating photo essays and themed albums on topics that interest me, too — sports, politics, West Virginia and, of course, rednecks. I decided to make my trial run on Pinterest a fun one by pinning photos from past “Redneck Humor” entries on this blog. (One potential benefit is new readers.) I also scoured the Internet for other photographic displays of redneck humor and pinned several of them to my board. This photo album is a win-win for both you and for me. It makes it easier for rednecks who love to laugh at and with their kinfolk (in spirit, if not reality) to find “snapshots of happily uncultured American life” in one place. And It’s much easier and quicker for me to pin multiple photos to Pinterest than to blog about each photo individually. When it comes to redneck humor, pictures tell the story far better than my words anyway. So if you have not done so yet, click on over to my new Pinterest board and get your fill of redneck laughs. And if you’re so inclined, request your own invite to Pinterest and repin or like the photos that make you laugh the most. Filed under: Blogging and Human Interest and Just For Laughs and Photography and Redneck Humor and Social Media Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.21.11 by Danny Glover @ 2:37 pm
I hate the holiday comedy song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” because my children and nephew like to torture me with it. But I don’t hate it so much that I can’t appreciate a good parody song about bureaucrats and elected officials who trample the rights of Americans at our airports in the name of homeland security: Filed under: Government and Just For Laughs and News & Politics and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.21.11 by Danny Glover @ 8:01 am
A few weeks ago at my company’s blog, I sang the praises of social media as the best communications tool for getting satisfaction after bad consumer experiences. Lodging complaints via Facebook and Twitter is far more effective than using the telephone, I said. “Why endure that grief, which often yields no satisfaction, when I can spur a major corporation into action by tweeting 140 characters or by posting an embarrassing photo to Facebook?” Days later, I unintentionally proved my own point during an infuriating phone encounter with Ned Stevens Gutter Cleaning. Both my wife and I had to endure an obnoxious lecture from an employee more determined to “educate” us about the realities of gutter cleaning than to abide by the guarantee that our gutters actually were clean. We’ve been customers of Ned Stevens Gutter Cleaning for several years, ever since we moved into a three-story home whose gutters are beyond my limited ladder reach. We’ve been pleased with the company’s service most of the time, but we have had occasional problems, including our neighbor once witnessing Ned Stevens Gutter employees failing to clean all of the gutters on our house. When we reported that incident, the company sent a crew back to the house to finish the job. Ned Stevens Gutter often sends workers to our home when we are not here to witness the cleaning, so it takes a certain measure of trust to believe its teams do the work effectively. We hadn’t had any major problems except for the one episode, though, so Ned Stevens Gutter Cleaning had earned our trust. The company lost that trust in a big way two weeks ago. Filed under: Advertising and Business and Family and Social Media Comments: 1 Comment |
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Posted on 12.20.11 by Danny Glover @ 11:43 pm
I’m talking about the Original RedNek Wine Glass, the kind of novelty item that would have been a perfect gimmick for a blog written by an enlightened redneck. A best seller on Amazon.com this holiday season, the Bell Mason jar glued to a Libby candlestick holder has generated $5 million in sales in just 10 months. Okie Morris of Newport News, Va., got the idea after seeing the two separate items in a thrift store. She thought it would be neat to forge them together and later sold the rights to a family-owned business in Pennsylvania. The rest is online marketing history. The uppity folks at Village Voice mocked the RedNek Wine Glass as “tackiness” and said it is “for country bumpkins with class,” but like me, they’re just jealous they didn’t have a multimillion-dollar stroke of redneck genius. Filed under: Business and Culture and Holidays and Rednecks Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.17.11 by Danny Glover @ 11:21 pm
Our scaredy dog Daisy discovered fire tonight when we started the first one of the winter in our fireplace. Clearly we won’t be able to leave her alone in the living room with a fire burning. She may catch herself, and then our whole house, on fire. Smart dogs respect fire and keep their distance. Daisy, not so much. Filed under: Family and Human Interest and Pets and The Redneck Report and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.15.11 by Danny Glover @ 5:31 pm
Finally, some enlightened entertainment for rednecks! MeatEater, a new series that premieres Jan. 1 on the Sportsman Channel, will unabashedly celebrate the carnivorous lifestyle combined with the sheer joy of hunting and bagging your own game.
The bad news: We have Comcast, and a colleague of mine just noted on Facebook that Comcast doesn’t offer the Sportsman Channel. How unenlightened! Filed under: Entertainment and Hunting & Guns and Rednecks Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.10.11 by Danny Glover @ 10:30 pm
The next time you go to the restroom, try seeing life from the perspective of the toilet paper. This image should help:
Filed under: Just For Laughs and Redneck Humor Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.10.11 by Danny Glover @ 2:57 pm
I didn’t know until moments ago, when a colleague forwarded a video, that the West Virginia University band, known to all Mountaineers as “The Pride of West Virginia,” is a viral hit on YouTube. The video, viewed more than 1.1 million times so far is from the band’s performance at a game played this year just before Sept. 11 memorials. The show, a tribute to the U.S. armed forces, features a medley of songs from all U.S. military branches and amazing choreography that matches each song. At one point, band members form into airplane to recognize the U.S. Air Force, and as they march forward, smoke billows from the area where engines would be on the plane. I have family connections to the band. My brother marched with “The Pride” as a trombone player during college and still returns regularly to march as part of the alumni band on homecoming weekends in the fall. Even better, we’re related to WVU band director Jay Drury. His grandmother (my grandmother’s oldest sister) was my favorite great aunt during my childhood. I looked forward to visits with Aunt Kate during her weeks-long stays at my grandmother’s house. If you appreciate WVU’s tribute to the military, donate a few bucks toward the band’s travel fund to reward the directors and performers who created the show. UPDATE, Dec. 10: Fans of WVU and of the band’s tribute to the military are trying to get the National Football League to invite the band to perform the show again at the Super Bowl. Join the Facebook group if you like the idea. Correction: An earlier version of this article said the show was performed before Memorial Day. Filed under: Family and Human Interest and Music and Video and West Virginia Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.09.11 by Danny Glover @ 9:31 pm
If it were physically possible to install and decorate a Christmas tree this quickly, I wouldn’t be so reluctant to join the annual family ritual: Filed under: Family and Holidays and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.05.11 by Danny Glover @ 7:42 am
Twitter has released its picks for the top 10 tweets of 2011. Some of them will make it into my new Tumblr-blog-in-progress, the Twitter Hall of Fame. I’m covering the flip side of Twitter on a second Tumblr, the Twitter Hall of Shame. The “fame” blog recognizes previously unknown people who found their proverbial 15 minutes of fame through Twitter, and the “shame” blog is a memorial to famous folks — celebrities, politicians, athletes and more — who tweet before they think. Feel free to recommend stories past, present and future for both blogs. Email your nominations to danny@enlightenedredneck.com. Filed under: Blogging and Business and Social Media and Video Comments: None |
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Posted on 12.01.11 by Danny Glover @ 8:26 pm
I don’t know much about monetary policy, but as a coin collector, I do know this much about “money” policy: America could save a bundle of money by killing off the penny: The same goes for dollar bills, which is why I’m a fan of the Dollar Coin Alliance. But a government that has overspent by trillions of dollars can’t be expected to care about the mere $5.6 billion it could save over 30 years by eliminating currency that has no relative value any more. Filed under: Coin Collecting and Government and News & Politics and Video Comments: None |
