anarchism in spirit

i just saw a wal-mart commercial wherein a couple shops for a television and asks the salesman point blank why the price is so much higher than the same tv at Wal-Mart. The advertisement ends with the couple realizing they are too smart to ever consider buying their television anywhere but Wal-Mart because no other tv seller can beat or match Wal-Mart's price.
anarchy. question everything. everything you know is wrong.
any regular joe who watches this commercial and knows the truth, (wal-mart truly will have the best price,) rests comfortably in the knowledge he or she knows best, recognizes truth when it is seen, can add two plus two.

still, if one is to adjust one's thinking and become an anarchist in spirit, can the question of wal-mart be so simple?

walmart recently introduced a sick day policy wherein an ill employee must call a corporate number to get a sick day referral number which they must pass on to their store in call #2. apparently the corporate office can review attendance data at any store in the country and pronounce the day fit for an employee to be so ill they may use a sick day to abstain from working for the day. or they may pronounce the day unfit and tell the employee to come to work regardless of their infirmity.

can walmart do that? what if an employee happens to be the type who understates things? what if that employee calls the corporate sick line and professes to be, "a bit feverish," suffering from, "something of a headache?" then he gets in his car, despite that feeling worsening as he checked his neck tie and splashed cool water on his face, and rolls out into traffic where he faints and crashes and dies? what then? what if his work ethic was so profoundly strong and american that he had been ignoring the tell-tale signs of circulatory issues? what if the first thing the doctor had written on his chart at the hospital had been "m.i.?"

(sir, you can't be ill today. your store already has the maximum allowable persons off today. plus, you work for walmart so you do not have the insight nor intestinal fortitude to stand up for your right to dictate your every day life even to the point of deciding which days will be your sick days. thank you for not dictating so much of your life as to even own your own business, such as a television store, where you could have dictated your entire investment in the business to include which days you would mind the store, instead of selling tv's for a corporation that thinks of you and treats you as a warm body. thank you for being happy with 48k per year to prepare reports of data covering your area of the business for the people above you, for treating everyone with dignity day in and out, for caring about this menial job that takes way more from you than the substantial amount you give it, including a disproportionate amount of profit considering the time investment of all parties, and for the investment you made in walmart considering the life we afford you is neither financially, spiritually, intellectually nor emotionally rewarding. thank you for being walmart's bitch. please report to work.)

how big is that lawsuit? what's more profane than that is the question of whether walmart even flinches at a settlement of that magnitude. the risk may seem conservative in the face of the increased efficiencies and profits walmart can realize if the employee remains sedate.
walmart is able to offer goods at better prices than its competitors by using its size and purchasing power to leverage the sellers of the goods they buy to rock bottom prices. the number of small businessmen walmart can bankrupt in any community is substantial and so, a measure of wealth is stripped from these would be shopowners. they are reduced to employees of the corporation which pays less money than owning a business that compares to any department within walmart, such as tv's. this happens to would be tv store owners all over america and one family in arkansas grows a more massive wealth than had already been obtained.
every day. more. more. more.
how does one fight against what walmart brings? one does not shop at walmart. one gets stronger about working to convince people they know not to shop at walmart. not all peer pressure is bad. one fights walmart and all mega corporations everywhere, all the time, because one understands these corporations are inherently bad, an illness for a society or a community.

walmart is good for it's owners and stockholders only. walmart is not good for it's stakeholders.

the problem with the couple in the commercial is they do not realize, (nor want to admit,) the insidious nature of the corporation, of walmart, which is content to bind them into a lower quality lifestyle in the name of improving thelifestyles of the few who gain the disproportionate wealth. indeed it is easier to only consider the first option, about how it is less expensive to run and clothe a family by shopping there, even if at the same time they limit themselves and relinquish a measure of control over their own lives.
it's not like you can know everything, but it is noble to push upwards.
they need anarchy of spirit. they need to learn to question even the most basic and seemingly inocuous aspects of their lives and environments, if they want more control which amounts to more balance and happiness and health.

[click on header for link to yahoo walmart attendance policy news story.]

lists

i love lists-always have. top three, top 10, five worst, whatever. lists are great conversation starters and good fun in most any context. i even like the "my favorite," list, which isn't even a list at all, but rather a thinly veiled act of self disclosure, but still f-u-n, fun.

while it has always bothered me when my friends don the garb of a corporation, (e.g. the gap t-shirt or even the izod polo shirt.) i prefer rock band t-shirts because i think they speak for me and what they say aligns better with my personal beliefs or outlook. sure, some people may misinterpret my t-shirts to mean any number of things: "i like to party till i puke," or "i condone wrecking hotel rooms," or even, "peter pan syndrome is my way of life," but i can't be concerned with that. rock band t-shirts tend not to be interpreted as: "i misreport my earnings on purpose," or, "i reject kyoto," or "pensioners can look out for themselves." all this said, here are my top 10 rock and roll bands of all-time:

radiohead
pearl jam
u2
the beatles (or john lennon, he was a band unto himself)
bob dylan
the smiths
jeff buckley
rage against the machine
talking heads
nirvana

(another great thing about lists, and my friends can attest to this, is they can change by the minute.) plenty of good artists were left off that list, and i am resisting the urge to name any of them right here.

the five best movies ever made differs dramatically from my five favorite movies ever. the five best ever made:

apocalypse now
star wars
the wizard of oz
scarface
traffic (or traffik)

my five faves:

central station
dances with wolves
syriana
dancer in the dark
american beauty
(i like justice.) also, breaking the waves could easily have been on either list.

novels have changed me and so, novelists are like giant thumbs to me. they mold and shape their readers, whether intentionally or not. my top 10 novelists ever:

milan kundera
slaman rushdie
francois-marie arouet (voltaire)
gabriel garcia-marquez
louis ferdinand celine
herman hesse
kurt vonnegut
jd salinger
henry miller
robert a heinlein

i have only visited a handful of the great cities and i will proclaim my allegiance to my own; la. but of the rest, i like these three in this order:

san francisco
tokyo
buenos aires

the cities i most want to visit would fall in this order:

dublin
beijing
paris

cities i want my unborn son to visit:

cairo
sao paolo
london

men of letters who write (or wrote,) from the heart:

richard rodriguez
gao xingjian
che guevara
alistair cooke
karl marx

i recently discussed my favorite sources of news in the new information age, (be it a person, a blog, a paper, or any other media.) i would rank them as follows based on unwillingness to parrot the status quo or kowtow to general electric and the ability to cut through the layers of confusion so prevalent in this age:

www.talkingpointsmemo.com
noam chomsky
www.alternet.org
keith olberrman
salon magazine (www.salon.com)

okay, enough lists i suppose. (it is getting a bit ridiculous.) it is fun to lighten it up a bit, (though i'm not sure i did that.)

i do not approve this message

have you noticed how more and more political advertisements end with the candidate declaiming, "i'm richard cranium and i approve this message?" what is that?!

it's you asshole!?! it's your message! you're the freaking candidate-it was your campaign money that paid for the television time, of course you approve the message!

(maybe they could point out some other obvious stuff?
i'm wearing 3 pounds of make-up.
you only see my face in this ad because i'm an obese behemoth who snacks on small farm animals.
i'm focusing on my adversary's negative points because i have no positive points of my own.
i invented the term "washington insider."
i lie for cash.
self-loathing is a lifestyle.
or best of all, "i'm trying to trick you.")

it seems to me this phenomenon started with president bush. he is the first one i remember with that tag on the end of his commercials, "i'm george w bush and i approve this message." at the time, it seemed to be happening for a couple of reasons. first, it was in line with his bumper stickers, which had only a large 'w' on them. i read that the 'w' was a means for republican voters to show their support for the candidate and the party without creating the kind of conversation that might bring out the various inconsistencies in bush's policies, etc. it was akin to a secret handshake. (it was a bit like whispering to your like-minded neighbor, "i don't care about the common man either. let's get ours." wink-wink.)

and, bush ran a negative campaign against john kerry. so the commercial would put forth a pack of lies, (e.g. 'john kerry stole his purple hearts and was actually a killer of babies in vietnam,') then put up a small picture of the president in the corner of the screen and his voice over, "i'm george w bush and i approve this message."

now i am seeing this marketing strategy all over the place. i guess it is now a market-tested strategy for candidates who cannot trumpet their own deeds. Here is an example courtesy of bob corker's website.

http://www.bobcorkerforsenate.com/video.tb1.aspx?video=commercial19

this particular ad is layered in innuendo. harold ford jr is not from tennessee, he's from washington d.c. ford has only worked in politics. while he may be handsome, ford does not bring substance to the table. he was born with a silver spoon.

all those messages are slyly delivered in bob corker's commercial but we the voters have only ourselves to blame because the commercials are market tested. it's been proven we respond to them. now, it may not be you personally, (just as it may not be me personally,) but somewhere along the line we all have to take responsibility for each other. if our relatives in the midwest are voting differently because they don't know any better, we need to straighten them out.

there seems to be this idea that people should not talk about politics, (among other topics,) at family get-togethers or with strangers and this idea is born of insecurity. generally all parties in such discussions have about the same values, but by allowing this idea, that it is okay to be offended, (thereby muting the more informed,) the values are trumped in favor of niceties.

i say let the new value be that we have little tolerance for those who are easily offended. we should push back on these people, so the conversation can move forward, so candidates like tennessee's bob corker can be made to talk about his record, his accomplishments and his shortcomings.

when a candidate can be heard to "approve this message," we the voters should automatically dismiss them as a viable candidate. they are not appealing to our reason. they are trying to circumvent it. they are not representing themselves honestly, they are pandering to the lowest common denominator.

eastwood's flags

most people go to the movies to be entertained. some go to the movies to learn. others go to take in high art. i went to see flags of our fathers today and got all three from clint eastwood.

as far as high art goes, making movies is the art form of our age. art is communication and film has taken virtually every other art form to the next level by communicating to two of our five senses, (when it works,) in complementary concert. (when seats vibrate and subtle odors fill the theater, the evolution of film will have continued.)

movies, (especially those made in hollywood,) are collaborations but the main artist is still the director. the directors are our mozart and bach, our picasso and renoir, our rodin, or even our bukowski. while we still appreciate the art forms of yore that linger but do not touch us on so many levels, movies are omnipotent in our day.

directors include von trier, almodovar, innaritu, spielberg, aronofsky, scorcese, coppola, (coppola,) salles, altman, godard and many others, including clint eastwood.

eastwood is a man's director. he gets out of the way and let's the story go wherever it needs to go. flags of our fathers could easily have been pearl harbor, or saving private ryan if it had wanted to be,but the real story was so much more important and eastwood told it without bias.

he could have made his film into an anti-war diatribe. (god knows it would be appropriate, all things considered.) he could have painted it in black and white, as the story of these soldiers who were actually photographed planting our flag atop the volcanic tip of iwo jima were rendered in real time, as props to shed favorable light on a war that required financing. instead he layered it in revolving shades of gray.

eastwood has made a habit of finding good books and turning them into powerful movies. the story of flags of our fathers was told by a son of a navy corpsman who helped tilt that flag into positon. he wrote the book and eastwood made the movie leaving the researching son in as an integral part of the story.

the son knows the father was one of the group of men who raised that flag and toured the country in support of war bonds as real american heroes but because as the old saying goes, 'war is hell,' the father had no interest in talking much about what he saw as he scaled that volcanic mountain and fought on iwo jima. it is left to the son to research and imagine and discover. the son plays the role of tending to the process of writing history.

eastwood shows an even hand in the movie as he neither vilifies nor glorifies any particular side or ideal. he let's the events speak for themselves and for the thoughtful viewer, there is much to consider and/or weigh in on. in this way the film is educational.

flags of our fathers flies in the face of convention in so much it is not an act of the victors writing history as they would see it. instead it is simply an honest portrayal of life in those times, of war and of men.

perhaps above all eastwood's movie is entertainment. despite the fact it tells a true story, it is good old-fashioned storytelling. the narrative switches perspectives and times often, but is cohesive. the music and cinematography and editing work together for the overall effect. eastwood did not do it on his own, but as the director, the lion's share of the credit for this fine film goes to him.

this morning i read an article that expressed a measure of frustration about the lack of black americans present on screen in the movie. the events portrayed took place 60+ years ago and before civil rights legislation so african-americans want to be sure the people of the united states know they were there fighting on our behalf despite their limited citizenship and in spite of the mountain of war movies made over the years which did nothing to aid their cause but rather propagated the myth intact and in many cases, set the cause of african-americans backwards.

at lunch i told my wife about the article and that i couldn't recall seeing any black soldiers in the movie. she corrected me and said she did see some black soldiers in the background two or three times.

ultimately, i find the complainers annoying. i understand they are struggling forward and mean no harm but as a friend of the artist, i cannot see holding eastwood accountable for the omission. i don't think he is a bigot. i guess because his movies seem to have more social conscious than most, he may be held to a higher standard?