Wal-Mart is not just the world’s largest retailer. It’s the
world’s largest company—bigger than ExxonMobil,
General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be
hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of
goods last year. It sells in three months what
number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its
own category of general merchandise and groceries,
Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more
business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway,
and Kroger combined.
A pickle jar example in the article is particularly intriguing — the gallon pickle jar “cannibalized” Vlasic’s sales at other retail locations because Wal-Mart sold it at such a ridiculously low price.
Originally, I thought that if I was making any product with any sort of brand, I would never ever sell at Wal-Mart. But Wal-Mart sells iPods… at the same price you see them everywhere else. And that’s because Apple has it’s own (quite healthy, thank you very much) supply chain.
So while the meeting between Wal-Mart and just about any supplier goes like this…
Wal-Mart: You’ll supply to us at $X per unit. Supplier: That reduces our profits to essentially nothing. Wal-Mart: Then we’ll find a supplier with comparable brand recognition at our price. Supplier: Fine, we’ll do it.
…a meeting between Wal-Mart and Apple goes like this:
Wal-Mart: We want to take $20 off the price of an iPod. Apple: Categorically: “no.” Wal-Mart: Then we’ll find a supplier with comparable brand recognition at that price. Apple: No you won’t.
While Wal-Mart frequently says “put up or shut up,” suppliers can occasionally do the same to them. Regardless of scenarios like this, I think the problem that the article points out — that Americans can’t consume if we don’t have a healthy base of employed workers — is undeniably correct.
The Guardian comes to us with a little article called “From hell,” which explores the worst movies ever made. It was written in part to discuss a recent movie made by a certain socialite who will remain nameless — it contains an absolutely fabulous sentence:
But to make a movie that destroys a studio, wrecks
careers, bankrupts investors, and turns everyone
connected with it into a laughing stock requires a
level of moxie, self-involvement, lack of taste,
obliviousness to reality and general contempt for
mankind that the average director, producer and movie
star can only dream of attaining.
The best part is when you get to read about what the author considers the worst movie of all time:
This is a movie that stars Isabelle Huppert as a
shotgun-toting cowgirl. This is a movie in which Jeff
Bridges pukes while mounted on roller skates. This is
a movie that has five minutes of uninterrupted
fiddle-playing by a fiddler who is also mounted on
roller skates. This is a movie that defies belief.
A statue called The Motherland Calls, (Родина-мать зовёт) stands atop a large hill overlooking Volgograd, Russia. Thing is, at 279 feet (that’s over 20 stories), it’s absolutely enormous.
Look at the person next to it in the picture! Of all the really tall statues in the world, this looks to be the only one endowed with such a sense of sweeping motion befitting its grand scale. (The YouTube video is pretty interesting).
University of Virginia figures show that 25 percent of this
year’s freshman class are toting an Apple laptop. This is up
from about 20 percent last year. In 2003, only 4 percent of
the freshman class admitted to owning a Mac.
So, in 4 years, Apple has grown to over five times the sales in subsets of the collegiate demographic. Guess when you form your strongest opinions about brands, (music, philosophy, etc.) — that would be college! Let me tell you this much: after I get rid of this current Windows machine (in about 4 years)… that will be the last Windows box I ever buy ever ever ever ever. Never ever again. No thank you. No more Windows. Blech.
M.I.A. rhymes with the swaggering bravado of a
street rapper, only she favors bandoliers over bling.
Parse the songwriting though, and the sensibility
awkwardly falls somewhere between party girl and
guerrilla fighter. The message lacks cogency, but
her hooks do pack potency, even when they sound
nursery rhyme-inspired.
“Hands up (a nee nee nee nee) represent the world town!” And yes, “World Town,” a track from her newest release Kala is recommended listening.
And, of course, what you discover is that other than
the speeches Obama has written for himself, the last
time a major speech was written without the aid of
a speechwriter by a president or presidential candidate
was Nixon’s “Great Silent Majority” speech delivered
on October 13, 1969.
Now that was a good speech. Evil, no doubt, to its very
core, and designed to proliferate the feelings that
allowed the great Southern Strategy success, but a
good speech nevertheless.
In other words, not in my lifetime. And I am oldish.
I have kids and wear dark socks with slippers and
complain about the quality of my lawn and get
hungover way too easily. But in the last 37 years
there hasn’t been a speech like this written by the
man himself. Not like this.
Here is a chair. Regardless of who you support, or
what you think of Obama, I want you to sit here, right
here on this chair and consider something wonderful.
We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every
channel, every day and talk about them from now until
the election, and make the only question in this
campaign whether or not the American people think
that I somehow believe or sympathize with his
most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe
by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing
the race card, or we can speculate on whether white
men will all flock to John McCain in the general
election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election,
we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And
then another one. And then another one. And nothing
will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this
election, we can come together and say,
“Not this time.”
