Today is the birthday of Science Fiction Grandmaster: Ray Bradbury. He picked the greatest story title ever: Something Wicked This Way Comes. From Writer’s Almanac: …when he was 12, a traveling carnival came to town, and he met a magician named Mr. Electrico who talked to him about reincarnation and immortality. Bradbury said…
Via Pike Speak comes this, I think, BBC news report from Fallujah. The reporter, traveling with the Alpha company of a Marine battalion covers the first two days of fighting. There is no doubt that these Marines are bravely doing what we ask of them and that they represent the best of what our country has. Is their faith in us justified?
OK, I stole the headline, but it’s a good one. The cool part is that it’s a headline from yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle where I got a whole paragraph (the penultimate one, but still a whole graph) about my post on the Garrison Keillor/WUKY dust-up. I found the story only when I noticed a lot of referrals coming to HCWW from sfgate.com.
Via Superbarista, the secret is out, Espresso Porn is hot. Forget Paris Hilton or Pamela Anderson (OK, I’ll hold out for Ally Sheedy or Minnie Driver); a website has been created to cater to the truly prurient interests of those who think coffee is a gift of the gods. Now if I could just let it drip directly… Stop! Don’t go there! This is a PG-13 website!
Synthesiser pioneer Dr Robert Moog has died at his North Carolina home aged 71, four months after being diagnosed with brain cancer. Born in the New York district of Queens, his instruments were used by The Beatles and The Doors among others. Dr Moog built his first electronic instrument — a theramin — aged 14 and made the MiniMoog … in 1964.
[Update No. 5 — 1151, 1 September 05 — See The Little Wal Mart Toothpaste Buycott for the latest information on who is spreading my Modest Proposal meme.]
[Update No. 4 — 1315, 31 August 05 — The latest endoresement for the modest little proposal comes from Bill Callahan at Callahan’s Cleveland Diary.]
[Update No. 3 — 0846, 31 August 05 — in the past three days, the following blogs have posted on the little meme that could:
Jim Gilliam’s Retail Blogroll (a BraveNew blog)
Grass Roots Miami
Brave New Films
Jennie’s Journal]
[Update No. 2 — 2142, 27 August 05 — JR at Buy Blue, and, by association, Daily KOS and My Left Wing, has added his voice to the buycott.]
[Update No. 1 — 1040, 27 Augst 05 — The website for Robert Greenwald’s movie — Wal Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price — has given the toothpaste idea some legs.]
This is my 100th post for No Cleveland Walmart. I’m going to be shifting grears a bit — watch on Wednesday to see just how — but I wanted to share an idea I have with you. It’s a modest proposal, really. But it’s a way that will allow everyone, regardless of there socio-economic status to let the Bentonville Behemoth know that we’re mad as hell as we’re not going to take it anymore.
Here’s my plan…
All along I have been uncomfortable with those who would ask families on the poverty edge to not shop at Wal Mart and further stress their meager financial resources. A few weeks ago, while reading John Dicker’s United States Of Wal Mart, I came across this little nugget:
Wal Mart is the largets retailer in the world, hawking more DVDs, magazines, books, CDs, dog food, diapers, bicycles, toys and toothpaste than any other company.
It was the toothpaste that caught my eye. I did some more checking and found that it controls approximatley 25 percent of the world’s toothpaste sales. That means the company is raking in some $375 million from the approximately $1.5 billion in annual toothpaste sales in the U.S.
Now, if you’re Wal Mart, and your annual sales are $288.189 billion, $375 million — or only a miniscule 0.13 percent — is less than a drop in the bucket, but it’s still noticable. So here’s what I propose.
If your family finances are such that you can avoid shopping at Wal Mart all together, that’s wondeful. But, as a minimum, buy your toothpaste somwhere else. Doing so won’t hurt your dental health. It won’t damage the toothpaste industry. It won’t hurt the workers who manufacture and distribute toothpaste. And, it won’t hurt Wal Mart associates.
Your financial burden will rise a tiny bit, but you’ll be helping to send a message that Wal Mart can track and measure.
I’m sending this out into the blogosphere as an Internet meme: buy your toothpaste anywhere but Wal Mart. If the idea makes sense to you, please post something about it. Tell your family, tell you friends, tell your readers.
My Soundtrack: Flugufrelsarinn by Sigur Ros on WOXY.
A thawing peat bog isn’t good. The huge expanse of western Siberia is thawing for the first time since its formation, 11,000 years ago. The area, which is the size of France and Germany combined, could release billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This could potentially act as a tipping point, causing global warming to snowball, scientists fear.
While on a sailing adventure in the South Seas, a pair of Americans happened upon an uncharted island. The inhabitants were friendly, inviting the couple to join them for dinner and a party in their honor. The party was accompanied by pounding drum rhythms and dancing. Exhausted from the celebration, the pair retired to a hut…Keep reading…
From Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.): We should start figuring out how we get out of there. But …we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur. By any standard… we’re not winning.
Electrons – bached, mooged
and carlosed – through transistors
swoop, frolic; ah simcha
Two from the folks at Post Secret. I wish I could see their rejects.
Several years ago in my home town of Marietta, Ohio, it was decided that Washington County needed a community college and Washington State Community College was built. Like most community colleges, it’s a commuter school and needed a large parking lot to handle the traffic.
The school is located up what was a wooded hollow on the north side of town. It’s a beautiful campus. The county residents and students were justifiably proud. Then it rained.
The engineers, as engineers are wont to do at times, had forgotten to factor in all the rain water that the previously wooded slopes had absorbed. With no place else to go, the water rushed across the campus and parking lots and swamped the city’s storm sewers. A minor flood was the result.
Residents in St. Albans Town, Vermont, are dealing with something similar, but on a Wal-Mart scale. The Bentonville Behemoth wants to pave and put under roof 40 acres of farmland adjacent to Stevens Brook.
Wal Mart has hired engineers (see above) to design a state-of-the-art system to ensure that the water that flows into the creek will not only contain less dirt than it does at present, but that it would also be cleaner.
For an example of how another state-of-the-art system worked, read about the fuel transfer station near Spokane, Washington, in It Can’t Happen Here….
Kafka, via Chandler, on SonicWall: Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. … And why am I under arrest? he then asked. That”s something we”re not allowed to tell you. Go into your room…. Proceedings are underway and you”ll learn about everything all in good time.
Bad press is taking its toll on Wal Mart. To counter the millions of words coming from opposition groups and the general press, the Bentonville Behemoth intends to hold a conference on Friday, 4 November to examine its effect on jobs, inflation and economic growth.
Says Nate Hurst, the company’s public and government relations spokesperson:
I think the idea driving this is that you’ve seen a great deal written out there about the impact of the company. Much of that information has been provided by activist organizations, and not a lot of folks out there are questioning the rigor of those studies.
Mmmm, rigor. Such a manly word.
I think the bloggers should be there. Wal Mart has not yet announced where the conference will be held, but unless it’s on some remote Antarctic ice flow, I think I smell a road trip in the making.
My Soundtrack: Always Love by Nada Surf on WOXY.
There are two tunes that I associate with horror: Michael Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and Arthur Smith’s Feuding Banjos (best known for the Eric Weissberg Dueling Banjos version from the 1972 movie, Deliverance). This bit of Internet fun from my dad does soften the edges a bit on the latter. Was that really Tom Hanks miming the banjo part in the movie?
In the groove joy runs
Down like sweet oil oer my brow;
Ruach’s passion annoits
The sentiment: No one on their deathbed ever regretted not spending more time at the office, is attributed to Rabbi Harold Kushner. People nod knowingly when they hear it, yet we are a nation obsessed with our work. Our national hereos are those with single-minded passions. The great cyclist Lance Armstrong comes immediately to mind.
Armstrong might very well be the greatest athelete of two centuries. But, as revealed in his biographies, he achieved his greatness at a terrible cost to the members of his family.
From Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac today comes some perspective.
It wasn’t a labor leader who helped bring the eight-hour work day into the mainstream. It was Henry Ford. When most other factory owners had their employees working more than fifty hours a week, Henry Ford mandated that his employees work only five eight-hour days a week, because he believed that employees with a little time on their hands would be better consumers, and therefore better for business.
[snip]
…most sociologists predicted that Americans would work steadily fewer and fewer hours. But in fact, the opposite has happened. Today, more than 25 million Americans work more than 49 hours each week. And 11 million spend 60 hours or more at work each week. Americans also take fewer vacation days than employees in any other industrialized nation.
How many hours did you work this week?
My Soundtrack: This Scene Is Dead by We Are Scientists on WOXY.
The United States declared themselves independent from England in 1776. We then fought a bloody war of attrition that did not conclude until 1783. It was not until the fighting ceased that we could begin the process of writing a constitution and it was not until 1790 that it was finally ratified. So why do we think Iraq can do it so much faster?
Via John Pike: God gave man dominion over all the earth. God put enough oil in the ground when he created the earth to fulfill our needs. Now the sinful muslims have gained control of the oil and are restricting its flow from the earth. This is a sin against Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior. Liberals and homosexuals whine about our trucks, but I can tell you…
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