10 August 2005

Corporate Evil.

I just thought that I'd share this: http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/news/20050810-wsj.html.

Personally? I don't care if WalMart workers unionize. The point could be argued that people choose to get jobs at WalMart and that there are other options. Sometimes this is true. But I pay for WalMart. I pay taxes which cover health care for the poverty-wage employees who can't afford the expensive but poor coverage offered by Sam Walton's empire. I pay medical care for the women who find themselves pregnant (and then the children) because WalMart insurance pays for Viagra but not birth control (okay, I know there are other ways to prevent pregnancy, my point is mostly that this is an idiotic practice). I pay for the tax breaks my idiot city is giving WalMart to build two superstores in a town of 60,000 people. I will pay when I lose options of places to shop.

The problem is this:

The real bottom line is NOT the bottom line.

08 August 2005

I'm bored of talking to myself online. I don't feel all that smart today -- nor witty. Frankly, am kind of cranky about the cloudiness thing going on. I was actually planning to willingly venture out onto a boat on a river tonight. Had been invited and everything. Not so much fun with the rain and thunder and lightening.

Bah.

05 August 2005

When you're dissatisfied with life, do you ever wonder what it is that you're looking for? And missing?

Experience of life shows that the greatest disappointments I encounter lie in the space between expectation and reality. Dude. It's the freaking Grand Canyon and such.

I hate to admit out loud that I'm not as in tune with the Tao as I'd like to think and project. But.
I. HAVE. EXPECTATIONS.
and they are rarely met in the way that I expect them to be.
and I? am disappointed.

Stupidly, it often takes me a LONG time to figure out how/why I'm upset each time it happens -- that it is not a factor of external, but rather of internal pressures. How damned American of me to not learn from my past!

01 August 2005

Do you ever feel as though you are missing small moments of clarity and beauty because you're waiting to be slammed over the head by nature/fate/gods/creation?

It seems to me that, as imperfect and frankly fucked up as life can be, that there have to be moments of perfection hidden in there. If we're aware, we might see them. But most of the time, our perceptions are dulled by the very "adult" way of seeing the big picture.

What dumb '90s band had the song with the chorus about the "little things that kill?" They were on to something. Small victories are the building blocks, like atoms. Small defeats gnaw deeply into our bones.

Moose are not small. Nor are they beautiful. And yet they fit the larger pattern of things just right.