You can pretty much bet that the answer to any question involving socially offensive behavior will be "Sinead O'Connor".

Really, when we tune into Saturday Night Live or go to a concert, we are there for your music. So, your opinion of the pope, or what you think of the national anthem, is irrelevant. Shut up and sing.

Shut up and sing. We don't need your politics.

Now there is a handy bit of advice.

Cheryl Crow, are you reading this?

Oakcliff is a neighborhood sort of southwest of downtown Dallas. It is one of those older neighborhoods, full of small, older houses. You know the sort: Post-war single car-garaged two or three bedroom, one bath ranchettes, the type of home your grandmother used to live in.

In the 1930s and '40s, Oakcliff was no doubt a nice place to live, and likely many neighborhoods are still decent places to call home.

Lee Harvey Oswald lived in rooming houses in Oakcliff back in the early 1960s, and it was in Oakcliff where he shot Officer Tippett after the assassination of President Kennedy in nearby Dealy Plaza. End of history lesson.

Now, Oakcliff has a reputation as sort of the Compton of Dallas.

So now comes the above shirt. And people are offended. Well, at least some people in Oakcliff are offended, as the shirt makes fun of the area's high crime rate. That's fine, but if you live in an area with a high crime rate, take it for what it is and change it. Until then, at least take comfort in the fact that people know and acknowledge your plight.

I've lived in some crappo areas before, maybe not as bad as Oakcliff. I've lived in Carson and Long Beach, and worked in Compton. I've been robbed at gunpoint and have heard gunfire directly outside the window of my home.

But no one ever, to my knowledge, made a shirt to commemorate any of my bad neighborhoods.

I have a shirt idea for my own city, even my own street. I wonder if anyone would be interested. If I do a mock-up shirt design, I'll be sure to post pics here, and maybe even offer them up on CafePress.com.

If you've been to Europe, or if you've seen the British version of the show Airline, then you have likely heard of easyJet. Yes, that is an intentional lowercase "e".

easyJet is the European equivalent of Southwest Airlines, only imagine even fewer frills. easyJet plasters the walls of European mass transit modes with the familiar bright orange posters, touting ridiculously low airfares. In fact, you can fly from Paris to London on easyJet for less than $25. Really.

The other day, my internet ramblings took me to a news story about easyCruise. "Aha!", I thought. The easyJet people have made a huge leap beyond airline travel, into the world of cruises.

So I read the story. And I was drawn in to the easyWorld of "Stelios", a multi-gazillionnaire serial entrepreneur, and all things cheap, no-frills, and orange. Stelios is very much about brand recognition. And about no frills.

If you choose to fly easyJet, expect an orange plane, inside and out, no reserved seating, and if you would like a snack during your flight, you can use an orange easyKiosk. No free soda, not even orange soda. In addition, if you miss your flight there are no refunds, no rebookings, no nada. Bummer for you. That'll teach you to get your orange arse to the airport on time next time.

easyCruise isn't much different. It's an orange ship that has tiny no-frills cabins (orange, of course), with big orange headboards adorned with huge easyCruise logos. In case you forgot. At least you won't wake up in the morning forgetting that you are on a no-frills cruise and expecting an included breakfast, or an included anything else.

easyHotel is even better than easyCruise. At approximately 70 square feet, the room isn't much bigger than the bed. No closet, and with rates of only $36 you can expect to pay another $10 or so to use the flat screen television mounted to the wall. To spend more than a single waking hour in such close orange quarters with the big easyHotel logo on the wall would drive me plum batty.

Stelios isn't all about travel though, and has been branching into every imaginable facet of the average Brit's life for some time now. His easy.com companies include:

easyInternetCafe: Cheap public internet access
easyCar.com: Cheap car rental, looks like the cars are not all orange
easyValue.com: Online comparison shopping
easyCinema: No frills movies, bring your own popcorn and sit in orange seats (clean up after yourself, says Stelios)
easy4men: No frills hygiene aimed at the no-nonsense man who does not care about expensive advertising featuring professional footballers or other models, but enjoys orange squeeze bottles. Available at Boots.
easyPizza.com: Cheap delivered pizza. Try the El Stel, the house special from Stelios, with ham, spicy pork, red onions, green peppers & pepperoni.
easyWatch.com: Cheap on line wristwatches.

Oh, and watch out, Hotmail. Here comes free email at easy.com.

Do you have a business idea for Stelios?

I'll bet you won't be the first to propose easyPorn, so don't even try.

Tonight, I decided to venture out of my normal travel zone to visit Wal-Mart's First Experimental Superstore.

This you simply must see. But to do so, you must first drive past the abandoned shell of the 27 year-old non-experimental abandoned cinderblock Wal-Mart and its oil soaked parking lot, complete with its Wal-Mart sign overpainted in blue so that one may not associate this blight with the favor to the world that is Wal-Mart's First Experimental Superstore.

Keep in mind that the old mess is on the main highway, and the bright new store is set back behind a grocery store and a Target. Now, there are murmurs that Wal-Mart will be removing the blight that is the old store, and doing something else creative, like a parking lot or something.

The first thing I noticed at the new, "special" Wal-Mart was the many pedestrian crossing signs, all with their solar-powered flashing lights. Wal-Mart doesn't want you to (a) run over a pedestrian, and (b) not notice that they have put up some solar panels.

I am expecting that (b) is the real reason for the flashing pedestrian lights. Otherwise, if pedestrian lights were so important and useful, we would see them at less-special Wal-Marts, mundane Target locations, and malls nationwide. Besides, when is the last time you saw a pedestrian run down in front of the main doors of a retail behemoth like Wal-Mart, or even Ikea?

Honestly, the "special" Wal-Mart reminded me of a big-ass fourth grade science project: A world of wonder for the simpler folks.

There are solar panels, wind turbines (one looks like a windmill right off Green Acres), rain capture, and special inflatable-looking low hanging ventilation systems.

These things are all well and good, but I still get the impression that the retail evil empire is just trying to win its way into Inglewood, California, and other cities who have said "no" to the huge Supercenters, through being the good guy in Middle-America, Texas.

I have an even better idea for an "experimental" store: What if we could harness the energy of all the stupid people that one encounters in a typical Wal-Mart visit?

What about the people who stop for no apparent reason in a large group in the middle of the entrance? What if we could harness the energy of those "large group shoppers" (a phenomenon which I have never witnessed elsewhere) where a "family" of four adults and ten children under the age of eight go shopping together with one cart? What if we could collect and recycle the used engine oil from the leaking cars in Wal-Mart's parking lots? Now that would be impressive.

I don't like Wal-Mart. I think they are only out for the mighty buck, and I could respect them more if they would stop the good-guy act. They aren't nice to work for and they sell cheap shit. They don't care about my community other than to slap a Supercenter up and when statistics support it, another one. And, anything they do above and beyond in my city is only to impress someone in another city. Stop trying to tell me otherwise.

Be honest with me and I will still go there when I need a cheap plastic bucket or a toaster at 2:30 a.m.

I am still not over the whole Ikea grand opening crapola. I wonder if all those people who got so excited about the grand opening were disappointed to find out that Ikea is just a home furnishing store with a few housewares and a meatball cafe.

We had to drive past the behemoth last Friday night. There were illuminated freeway signs directing "Ikea traffic" how to get to the store. Good grief, it isn't Disneyland.

I did a little reading in order to get some background. Why all the excitement?

What I found was very interesting. Seems that the City of Frisco, where this store is located, gave huge tax breaks to Ikea for them to build in their city. Seems that Frisco feels that the massive tax breaks will be recouped in sales tax revenues within three to ten years.

That might explain the nineteen (count 'em, 19!) city police officers dedicated to directing grand opening traffic. At least that's what was posted on Frisco's message board by a Frisco police official. I think Frisco is more excited by Ikea than even Ikea.

I like Victoria Carson, of Weatherford, Texas. She's a nice stay at home mom. She camped outside the not yet open Frisco Ikea from July 25 until opening on August 3, so that she could be first in line, and winner of the grand prize. Her take after sitting night and day in front of a closed store with only ten-minute bathroom breaks for nine days? $2,500 in Ikea gift cards and a $79 armchair named "Poang". She got about $12 per hour to sit there, plus "Poang", a free tee shirt, and electricity to power her Mickey Mouse TV/DVD player.

Is Victoria Carson nuts? Maybe, maybe not. She only beat out the next contenders for first in line by 20 minutes.

I'd be interested to hear what any first-time Ikea shoppers thought of the experience.

Was it all you hoped for? Did you feel like after all that, you just had to buy something, anything, even if just a wire basket named Antonius?

And most importantly, do you have an insatiable hankering for meatballs and lingonberry jam?

Today, Ikea opened for business in nearby Frisco, Texas.

It has been nearly impossible to ignore the sprouting of the big blue building. It has also been nearly impossible to ignore the surrounding hoopla.

The buzz started early this year - heck, maybe it was last year: Ikea'sComingIkea'sComingIkea'sComing... It's been in the news: TV, print, and of course, links on the local news section of MSNBC.com. Then, early last week or so, we got the nice, fat Ikea catalog in the mail.

Ikea has been around for probably close to two decades in the L.A. area. When I moved to Texas in 1995, I brought with me some Ikea furniture that I had already had for a a good five years.

 There was a predecessor to Ikea back in the 1980s, believe it or not, called Stor, which seemed to go out of business rather quickly, but the same idea. Maybe Stor and Ikea were related and became one?

I look over the Ikea catalog with joy. How I've missed furniture with proper names: A blanket named Inez, a toy box named Brattby, a bed named Robin. How I marvel at what I long ago managed to haul home in Ikea-flat-cardboard-box style, in or on a compact car, secured only with Ikea twine. How I miss the simple joy of assembling furniture with some loud music, a bottle of wine, simple diposable tools (included) and a crude instruction sheet.

When I peruse the Ikea catalog, I appreciate the simple lines and the modest prices. But those Ikea people are clever. Look at the stuff in the catalog, and admire away, but unless you are either starting with an empty house or redoing everything in an entire room, odds are that Ikea's stuff won't mesh with anything you already own. It's Ikea or nothing. That industrial-wheeled bed or coffee table won't go with anything you bought at Ethan Allen or Bombay.

Remember that.