Check the huge red glasses and the white shoes...such a geek...My grandma, who is now deceased, and my aunt in the background...

Hello World,

I know that according to Wal-Mart and other chain super retailers, we are now officially in the Christmas season…but for me, the Christian season doesn’t actually begin until Dec. 1.

So what’s to do in those days that follow Thanksgiving leading up til the big day? Well, I decided to clean my refrigerator…I’m ashamed to say I found various sauces, condiments, salt fish, chicken etc. that probably have been there since 2008…As I type, I know my ability-to-be-a-wife quotient is probably lessening with each word…And let me add for emphasis, the reason that I finally decided to clean out my fridge is that I started to smell the fumes of something that even the nearly air tight doors could no longer keep in…(If my mom, who is super neat, read this post, she would not be happy…oh well)

So back to my gross fridge, as I was emptying the contents of my fridge into several trash bags, I decided to watch a movie…I happened upon the movie “Little Miss Sunshine.” I’ve seen it before, but it’s worth watching again…Of all of the funny yet poignant things that happened in the movie, this quote stands out…indulge me and read it…I swear I’m going somewhere…

Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it.
Frank: Do you know who Marcel Proust is?
Dwayne: He’s the guy you teach.
Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he’s also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh… he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, ’cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn’t learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you’re 18… Ah, think of the suffering you’re gonna miss. I mean high school? High school-those are your prime suffering years. You don’t get better suffering than that.

This is a conversation between the angst-ridden high schooler who discovers he’s color blind thereby obliterating his dream to go to flight school and his gay uncle who survived a suicide attempt. By the way, Steve Carrell plays the uncle…he is perhaps the funniest white guy ever…next to Jim Carrey…

So my question for this post is: What has suffering taught you? What are some things that pain taught you that may have not learned otherwise?  I know, I know, somewhat of a morose post after eating yummy food, reconnecting with the fam and thanking God from whom all blessings flow and what not…

Since high school suffering was mentioned in the movie, I gotta say most of the people that were hella popular in high school probably should have suffered just a little bit…it would have given them something to aim for…as it stands now, a majority of the people that seemed to be on top then don’t seem to be too interesting now…and some of them look practically ancient…guess if you start clubbin’, boozin’ and wilin’ out at 15, you’re bound to look old in your mid ’30s. 

High school Jackie went through some suffering…She couldn’t go to parties…She wore big red classes that covered more than half of her face…She could date when she was 16, but wasn’t asked out until she was 17…She was not asked to be in any of the cliques…She frequently spent time an inch away from the mirror analyzing her eyebrows…She was accused of smelling like fish because she had a penchant for eating salmon croquettes before football games…and on and on…

(Yes, I was referring to myself in the third person…) Truthfully, I was in the low B maybe High C crowd…definitely not an A lister. Well, what did it all teach me? Well for one, I wasn’t drinkin’ and clubbin’.  I’m sure that my youthful glow is due, in part, to my delayed entry into the club scene…Also, I was forced to develop friendships with people based on personality rather than popularity…And as result, some of those people are still my friends today…And it made me yearn for something better…i.e. college…I was convinced I was going to be The Truth just beyond the “insipidia” (made up word) commonly referred to as high school… Sidebar: I must say though many of the rappers that hail from the A or their wives graced the halls of Benjamin E. Banneker High School, and many of them were kinda popular even back then…oh well…but I do believe they are the exception rather than the rule…

Since I decided to become a Christian, I have suffered through trials due to my stance on certain issues…It has not been pretty. As people say, Jesus won’t bear the cross by Himself. If you believe in Him, at some point, you have to suffer…no I have not been persecuted like what is described in the Bible, but I have been ridiculed by people for my beliefs…I wrote an article on “The Prayer of Jabez” frenzy…remember that…So I met the author of the book, Bruce Wilkinson, at a rally, and I wrote about him and the rally…So my editor had to read the article before it was published…Below is a snippet of the conversation that took place during the editing process…

Ogre boss reclines in her easy chair. Her office door is ajar so she can conveniently bark orders at random to cringing staff in the newsroom.

Ogre boss: Hey Jackie!

Jackie: (Holding her arms around herself to somehow visibly shield herself from the verbal assault sure to ignite…) Yes…

Ogre boss: When you pray “The Prayer of Jabez,” do you pray for a new boss?

She cackles and snorts similar to the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz.”

I say nothing…what was there to say…I know what I felt like saying…I won’t say because some of y’all think it’s not appropriate for Christians to curse…(Good thing, you’re not with me 24/7.)

A year and a half later, she fired me…Good riddance I say….And I moved on to a better situation in every way…suffering taught me that God can protect me – even from people who don’t like me because I’m a Christian, cuter, younger and even more talented – bitter, you say?…naw…really though, it’s all good…

And the truth is, the best writers have suffered through some thing…. How else can you write something that moves people? I could go on, but eh, I don’t feel like it…

So what has suffering taught you? Marinate on that…AND post comments on that..please…

I will add this…my absolute fave verse in the Bible…

All things (GOOD & BAD things that happen) work together for GOOD for THOSE who love Him and are called according to HIS purpose. Romans 8:28

God can bring good out of suffering…

P.S. I’m sure that Nelson Mandela suffered terribly while he was in jail for 27 years, but I’m sure that the same internal fortitude he developed in jail as a result led him to being the first elected president of South Africa…Yes, I plan to see the new movie “Invictus.”

ever since windows 95, microsoft has tried to dominate the world!. they are trying to buy there internet competition ‘Yahoo”, they successfully made allies with tv dominace NBC and made MSNBC. they are also trying to make a retail store chain like “Wal-mart”. many goverments have sued microsoft for this abusive monopoly. oh and i forgot to mention that there dominating the gaming systems by creating microsoft. there main enemies like “apple” haven’t even come close to expanding to TV, Internet, Home, Office and Retail Stores. maybe the’ll call the retail stores ‘Micro-Mart”…

Black Friday is a holiday to some people. And with fair reason. It’s the one day a year where you can go out and fight some old lady in an overpriced mall for a $5 tank top that will only be $5 for the next five hours if you act fast. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good stores out there, stores that actually live up to the hype and do what they say. But for the most part you are not getting a deal.

I did a little experiment. I went onto several sites, Old Navy, Target, Wal Mart. I went on a week before Black Friday, the day of, and the day after. Truth be told I wasn’t just going on the site to do this experiment, I was looking for a cute dress, but during the process I found out some things. For one, the price of the items I wanted and many others didn’t change. The companies did ADD a few low priced items that were only available for the Black Friday weekend, but not change on the products that were already there.

In fact, you couldn’t even get a deal unless you spent $50 or $100 in certain stores. THAT’S when the 10% or 20% off started to come into effect. Yes, there are those people who will spend $100 in a store on Black Friday. Because it’s almost Christmas and this is one of the last chances they have to get their loved one a really good gift. But what about those of use who just want one item? Or who don’t have $50 to spare in one overpriced store this year? What if we don’t want that $5 tank top that’s made out of rice paper that you just added on the website to PRETEND like you’re having a Black Friday deal? 

Jesus, maybe you haven’t noticed but we’re in the middle of a recession and ten out of every one hundred people that walk up to the cash register know good and well that they might regret the item that they are now purchasing because they just lost their job.Stores, take note, your employees don’t even have enough money to shop in your store. Did it ever occur to you guys to lower the prices  like you said you were going to? At all? Maybe? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

My good friend, Brian Cuban, recently penned an article for his blog regarding the “death of small town America.” In the piece, Cuban opens with details of his recent trip to celebrate Thanksgiving in East Texas and laments the condition of one specific town, Atlanta, Texas, but extends the content of his post to small towns all over our country, where the downtown area is full of vacant buildings and the economy is dead.

Cuban contends that Wal-Mart is to blame for the demise of Atlanta and other small towns all across the land. While Wal-Mart definitely played in a role in the death of small town America, other factors contributed and deserve a full and open discussion.

In full disclosure, my family’s roots in the Atlanta area go back through at least the mid point of the nineteenth century.  Though I don’t live there now, this area will always be “home.”  I know the land and the people and understand all too well the political and economic forces that make the community, and others like it, tick.

What’s happened in Atlanta in has been going on for centuries.

Consider the fact that immediately following the Civil War, as most of the state lay barren and uninhabited, the bustling river port of Jefferson (@ 30 miles south of Atlanta) had a population of around 30,000. This might not sound like a lot by today’s standards, but in the 1860’s and 1870’s only Houston and Austin had a larger population in the state. Legend has it that railroad tycoon, Jay Gould, cursed the city for their refusal to allow him to put his railroad through the town. Historians will tell you it was the Corps of Engineers ability to finally remove the Great Raft from the Red River, resulting in dropping water levels in Big Cypress Bayou making it no longer navigable, that brought around the eventual demise of Jefferson. Whatever the case may be, Jefferson now has a population of around 2,000 and an economy that’s not much better than Atlanta’s. It’s worth noting, there is no Wal-Mart in Jefferson.

Brian and I had Thanksgiving in Kilgore, Texas, an East Texas city with a similar history to Jefferson. In the 1930’s, oil was discovered in Kilgore and other East Texas communities like New London and Joinerville. Soon boom towns sprung up all over the area. The population and economy in the area soared. At one time, over 1,200 oil wells pumped inside the city limits of Kilgore alone.  While oil still means a lot to the economy in Kilgore, the boom long subsided and downtown Kilgore continues to struggle. I lived in Kilgore for a couple of years and residents continually refused to build a Super Wal-Mart for fear of what it would do to the local economy. Finally, after I moved in 2002, Kilgore gave in and they now have a Super Wal-Mart. The economy seems to be as stagnant as it was  before, but no worse than the pre-Supe Wal-Mart days.

The reason that these East Texas communities continue to struggle is not because a large corporation chose to build a discount super store, but rather the absence of real capital.  In the 1860’s and 1870’s, Jeffersonians made the most of their capital–their bustling river port. Once it dried up, many of the investors that contributed to the growth of the city left, leaving those who could not afford to leave to rot in the economic decay. Similarly, the discovery of oil led to an influx of capital from every major oil company in the world into the East Texas region. Once the oil became harder to find, the investors began to pull out, leaving behind a work force largely unqualified to do anything else except work in the oil fields.

The problem becomes worse when people in my generation leave to get an education, establish themselves professionally and then don’t return to the area. It’s similar to the cause of urban decay, where the “have’s” escape to the suburbs, leaving the “have not’s” in the urban core.

In spite of all this, the people of East Texas are persistent as the native pine trees, roots planted firmly in the ground, capable of withstanding all that life may throw their way. Neither the Corps of Engineers, nor “big oil”, nor Wal-Mart will destroy these towns. It would help if the Federal government got off the backs of these good people and loosen regulations on the two industries that this region depends on more than any others–timber and oil–but it’s not in the East Texan’s nature to complain, but rather to deal with life deals them. Just like they have in the past, East Texans will survive this current economic storm and come out better for the most part than their urban counterparts.

—————-
Now playing: Graham Nash/David Crosby – Immigration Man
via FoxyTunes

Black Friday was indeed black. A mob of deal-hungry shoppers crashed through the doors at a Wal-Mart in Long Island yesterday at 5 a.m., trampling to death a store employee.

Read the full article here:
WAL-MART WORKER DIES WHEN SHOPPERS BREAK DOWN THE DOORS

My heart breaks to think of the pathetic fate of the victim (he was only 34!). What an ignoble way to be killed. Where are the public demonstrations calling for justice? Where are the conscientious cries for reflection and repentance from our excessively materialistic ways?

Silenced by the heartless system that depends on greed and prodigality in order to thrive.

This is why terrorists hate us.

When you look at the top global businesses, Wal-Mart always ends up in the list somewhere, and normally near the top. Most people know that it uses a fairly advanced business model to maintain its reign over the consumer markets, but only a few know how “advanced” their model is.

 You see, Sam Walden had an interesting background and some equally interesting friends. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant and then captain in U.S. Army Intelligence. His duty was supervising security for aircraft plants and Prisoner of War camps in California, and other locations—an intelligence background far above what you would expect for the normal soldier of the time – and an excellent enhancement to his degree in economics.

 When Sam needed more managers for his new locations, he recruited from his peers that had retired from Army Intelligence, thus increasing the scale of intelligence operatives within his organization and accommodating a wider net of coverage nationally. Their training allowed them all to communicate critical market intelligence among the executive management team and apply it toward the corporate goal.

 Compare this to your company’s executive team. Most companies have a collection of people with diverse professional training and no training on how to communicate valuable “intelligence” among them. They have no awareness of what competitors know about them individually or as a group and focus on “just keeping their jobs” instead of being focused on an “organizational goal” as the unifying daily motivation. The result is poor performance and vulnerability to hostile competitors. The proof is clearly shown in the results of Wal-Mart where workers are scheduled for 28 hours or less and receive minimal or no benefits while Wal-Mart’s competitors are destroyed systematically. Intelligence works when it is applied to business objectives.

 What could you do if you had the ultimate corporate intelligence operative working under you? Army Intelligence graduates are trained thoroughly enough. In fact, all of our military intelligence schools produce fine graduates, as does our letter organizations training colleges (CIA/FBI/NSA …)

 The biggest problem that those schools face is funding. They produce high volumes of trained personnel, each focused on its national operational objectives. But there is another kind of “school” that exists – one that gets its funds from the world’s wealthiest families and their corporations. This “other” school has access to uncommon research, technologies and training. Leading edge training and sciences that national agencies will not even hear about for decades. Where our letter organizations’ schools focus on process and method, the “other school” focuses on mind and human sciences. Sure, we also learn the intelligence process and same things that our government trained counterparts learn, only we learn the process from a advanced psychological perspective.

 So, what could you do with one of these graduates from that “other school” working for you? You would be joining a society of the most powerful men and women on the planet. When you turn this power loose inside your company, you can develop one of the most successful teams of executives in the world. When you expand your “unfair advantage” even further, your company becomes a treasure chest for its investors – one you control. Competitors fall before you because of your secret weapons.

 These “other school” graduates are called “Dark Lords”. They work for you but normally are more of a “shadow employee” – are on your company payroll, has executive access and is known by your executives as a “consultant”. They are sometimes known by their “cryponyms” (spy names) and report directly to you.

 They run your “Mind Slayers” (inside employee spies) and intelligence operations. You receive Intelligence reports (IR) and can direct them to support company goals. They are your secret tools and they exist solely to increase the prosperity of your organization. Dark Lords and Mind Slayers are trained off-site and as part of their training, they receive instruction on how to create an invisible and cohesive intelligence function.

 With the advances of Internet technology, your Dark Lord can interact with your staff and yourself without even coming into the company – preserving his cover and reducing employee curiosity. Video teleconferences, instant messaging and cryptography have all come a long way in the last few decades. Now, a lap-top computer can provide a complete intelligence platform. Skype and Microsoft Messenger provide a comprehensive computer-to-computer communications platform over the Internet (thus completely mobile).

 Advancements in digital camera technology and software enable field intelligence reporting well beyond the dreams of our CIA during the cold war. Our ability to build presentations and interactive documents have advanced technology reporting (Tech briefs [TB] and Technology Transfer Packages [TTP]) to a point where both technical and non-technical employee resources  are able to utilize the information immediately upon receipt.

 If your company makes more than $300,000 in revenue a year, you can bet that one of your competitors are using corporate intelligence to monitor you. You are considered “low hanging fruit”. If you make less than $300,000 in revenue, you are called “pigs – they squeal all the way to the slaughter “, in corporate intelligence terms.  If that makes you nervous, then you are a very smart executive. If it doesn’t make you nervous, then your days are numbered.

 To learn more about Dark Lords and Mind Slayers, http://www.padmagonpoinc.com/darklord.html

Started out, in the pouring rain, to the dump yesterday morning, with a number of old window screens that came with the house, but which long ago ceased to go over any of the house’s windows. I don’t know why the former owners were keeping them, but then again, I don’t know why they did a lot of things they did. We now have a little wooden…stall? room? in our basement almost cleared out (old storm windows are next) in which we are going to install shelving units, and possibly shelves. For storage!

Since the dump trip took so little time, J and I decided we’d hit up the Black Friday deals at Wal-Mart and then Target in the pouring rain. At Wal-Mart, we were fine until I got stuck in electronics and couldn’t get out and had a mini-Black-Friday attack. Fought through it – didn’t hit a single person with my cart, and didn’t cry. Did I mention I’m terrible at crowds? In addition to the household stuff on my list (laundry detergent, plastic wrap, a baguette…the usual), we also picked up a Black & Decker jigsaw for $15, bringing my plans for world domination one step closer to inadequately scroll-worked fruition. It remains to be seen exactly how much jigsaw $15 will buy you, but it’s a start. We were unable to locate the tiny, cheap food processors – probably just as well.

At Target, we got season 3 of Weeds and season 1 of Flight of the Conchords for cheapish. Nothing else really grabbed our fancies, so after a quick, forgettable trip to Wendy’s, we headed home.

Last night, as we plowed through our leftover Turkey Day sans Turkey dinners (a Thankxgiving Sammich for me and a plateful of everything for J), we watched our copy of Bad Education, the Almodóvar film. It turns out our copy is ‘R’ rated; we probably wouldn’t have noticed this except that early on, one scene goes ‘pixelated’ because there was no other way to edit out the penis, maybe? You can still tell it’s a man giving another man a blow job from the way the little squares bob up and down. Surreal. IMDB thinks there’s an NC-17 version of the DVD out there, but we didn’t end up with it. Anyway. A good movie for all that. Made me want to learn Spanish. And paint everything I own a primary color. As do most Almodóvar movies.

It’s been a hard week for sleep – no trouble getting there, but I’ve been stirring at around 3:00 am, and unable to return to even the semblance of sleep after that. So I’ve been getting up a little before 4:00 AM every day; fortunately, there’s time this weekend for napping. Still. I’m very off, and I need to get a solid 7 or 8 soon, or I don’t know what will happen. My eyes can’t sink into my head much further without coming out the back.

Installed and am playing Diablo II again – this time, hopefully, for the win. I’ve decided to play through most of the games that are now waiting on my shelves, and this will be the first – I’ll keep you abreast of my paladin Les_Toil’s progress. You’ll be wowed, I’m positive.

Currently reading Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay; I wish I could say I were reading it quickly, but I’m only managing about 20 pages a go. It’s good, I’m enjoying it – I just probably shouldn’t be reading it before bed.

Listening through my back catalog of NPR podcasts this morning, so hopefully I’ll be done and up to date by tomorrow. It saves room on the old laptop.

There – you are now current. Enjoy your day.

The CIA wanted to know how magicians pulled rabbits out of hats.

Nobody really knows what is going to happen at Dubai World.

Habitat for Humanity is now helping the foreclosed.

The UK is supporting a fund to confront the ‘climate emergency‘.

There were some black eyes on Black Monday.

Difficile à croire.  La Cour suprême du Canada, comme toutes les instances judiciaires avant elle, a cautionné les manœuvres antisyndicalistes de la multinationale Wal-Mart.

Pourtant, il semble évident que la cause de la fermeture de la succursale de Jonquière était basée sur la tentative de syndicalisation des employés. Selon plusieurs, celle-ci était très achalandée et le bassin de clients au rendez-vous car le défunt magasin de Jonquière desservait une population à peu près égale à celui de Chicoutimi qui lui est très rentable.

Il est questionnable que la justice approuve cette fermeture aux motifs douteux, lorsque celle-ci s’est faite en parfaite synchronicité avec la démarche de syndicalisation, tout en connaissant le caractère antisyndical bien connu de Wal-Mart.

Les dirigeants de Wal-Mart doivent bien rire dans leurs barbes parce que, encore une fois, ils ont empêché à leurs « associés » de jouir de leur liberté d’association et d’améliorer leur triste sort.

L’avenir du monde du travail s’annonce-t-il ainsi?  Des conditions ainsi que des rémunérations de travail ramenées aux limites de la décence en superposition au chantage des employeurs en collaboration avec la justice?  

Et quel message cela lance-t-il aux compagnies?  Si un syndicat tente de rentrer dans vos murs, vous n’avez qu’à fermer boutique et personne ne vous embêtera!

Ajout: selon certains “experts”, cela constitue une victoire pour le mouvement syndical, car désormais les syndicats auront le fardeau de la preuve pour accuser une compagnie de fermeture antisyndicale!  Très logique!  Comment prouver une fermeture de la sorte avec le concours implicite de la compagnie fautive? Bonjour la pensée magique! C’est n’importe quoi!

I thought I made an entry about this over the Summer, but I guess not.

I remember my mom dropped me off at my half sisters that day while she went to a doctors appointment at Langley Air Force Base. She was supposed to pick me up that afternoon. Well, that didn’t happen. A tornado hit Langley, and mom and dad couldn’t get me from my half sisters until the next day. I remember my niece and I watching this torn up Wal Mart on TV the next day with dad.

I don’t know if Wal Mart built here again or not? Petersburg/Colonial Heights people, help?

Oh, and those twins! [/Coors ad]

You can see more damage from Colonial Heights/Petersburg from that tornado from these two videos:

I read that SouthPark mall was damaged too? Although I’ve never seen any photos of it.

 Ten years ago the management mantra of the day was all about Doing More With Less. In response talented young bankers were busy building successful careers surfing the concurrent waves of eBusiness and online banking.  

At the same time the industry’s leaders were openly posing the Million Dollar question: Who would we rather have as a customer? The Millionaire driving the BMW or 1o,000 Pensioners?

This was the start of the decade long trend in Retail Banking away from competing on product to competing for relationships.

What followed was a global rush in mergers and acquisitions as each of the industry leaders tried to build the comprehensive Bancassurance model that was needed to service this emerging High Net Wealth Market.

The strategic objective was to profit through stronger relationships.

Different models appeared as each of the industry players either merged or pursued Joint Ventures and Partnerships to achieve their strategic goals of increasing their share of the customer’s wallet and profiting from stronger relationships.

Having successfully acquired or merged with Investment Banks, Funds Managers, Insurance and Advisory Services, Retail Banking now found itself in the Wealth Management Business. Seeking high touch, high value relationships at the expense of the daily grind of managing low value, high maintainance retail transaction accounts.

However, in taking its eyes of its core business, the industry accidentally opened the door to a new type of retail bank experience. Today it is the heavy weights of the retail sector who are providing millions of retail customers with full service, “face to face” Retail Banking.

The idea of Bankers and Retailers coming together to offer customers financial services is not a new concept. Assisting customers with their personal credit has been an integral part of modern retailing since the second world war. What is new is the idea of retailers becoming banks.

The old model was loosely based on a partnership or joint venture model. The retailers provided the outlets and the customers and the financial services industry provided the products and expertise.

In 2007 Wal-Mart put America’s Retail Banks on notice by making an application for a Banking Licence. (See Wal-Mart: Your New Banker?) In response, an industry that had grown complacent on a high fee:low service model, objected strongly to the prospect of an innovate new entrant introducing a new service rigour and pricing accountability to their lucrative market.

Wal-Mart later withdrew the application but as the New York Times reported at the time  it already had the strategies and partnerships in place to provide its customers the  financial products they were seeking without holding a Banking Licence(See At Wal-Mart, a Back Door Into Banking).

Two years later and those same Banks are facing a crisis of confidence of their own making. The Global Financial Meltdown has left a lot of the Retail Banks across the US and the UK seriously exposed.

Today commentators are actively questioning if providing Wal-Mart with a Banking Licence would help to improve the overall performance of the Financial Services Industry in the USA (see National Bank of Wal-Mart?, For Wal-Mart, No Bank Charter Is No Problem and Wal-Mart Can Do Us Good Taking on Bank of America).

Meanwhile, in the UK, Tesco is out to prove that Banking and Mobile Phones are the perfect value add for retail services. It has bought out Royal Bank of Scotland’s share of their Tesco Personal Finance joint venture and has applied for a full banking licence. 

“There is a real gap in the market for a bank which looks after customers in a simple, straightforward way and rewards their loyalty” 
Benny Higgins – Tesco Bank

Take the time to evaluate the presentations available from Tesco’s Investment Center (see Putting Tesco into banking, Banking proposition for Tesco customers, Delivering the customer experience) and you’ll see that Banking now delivers 7.5% of Tesco’s group profits.

Tesco Bank has 6 Million Customer Accounts. About 40% of these accounts are Credit Card Holders which equals just under 8% share of the total UK credit card market. Ironically 65% of Tesco Banking is done online.

Only 10% of Tesco ClubCard members are also credit card holders and so you can see where Tesco believes it needs to focus to achieve its growth targets.

Package Tesco’s Banking, Mobile, Insurance and Online offering together and you’ll discover that these fledgling services now account for 15% of Tesco’s Group Profits.

A brave new world of banking is on the horizon with the biggest industry shake-up for a generation.

The core business of Retail Banking was, and still is, a volume game. Most retail customers have high transaction accounts with small account balances.  The only way to profit from this sector is to increase your fees and/or reduce your costs of doing business. Online banking was, and still is, helping retail banks achieve this. Just as today mobile banking has the potential to deliver even greater savings.

However not all retail banking can be conducted online and there is still the customer satisfaction issues that can only be addressed “face to face”. Retail Banking made a fundamental mistake when it closed branches and tried to outsource the problem of Customer Relationship Management to offshore call centres.

Ten years ago the Global Banking System embarked on a program of mergers and acquisitions while at the same time attempting to do More with Less. In its quest for the high touch, high value relationship with the high net wealth individuals of the world the industry failed to maintain its ongoing relationship with the low touch, low margin, high volume customers who are the “cash cow” of retail banking.

Today the industry faces massive restructuring if it is to emerge from the wreckage of the Global Financial Crisis. It also has to address the growing belief among its retail and business customers that Banks just don’t “get it” anymore.

All this at a time when new market entrants, like Tesco and Wal-Mart, and new mobile payment providers, like Nokia Money and PayPal, are seeking to revolutionise the Retail Financial Services marketplace.

Other posts in this series:

• Mastercard shows its hand in the high stakes game of Mobile Payments
• A Telco you can Bank on?
• How the Commonwealth Bank made it happen

I just saw some news coverage of Black Friday shoppers.  Since last night, I have been hearing about the lengths people have gone to get those doorbuster deals.  Generations of one family were shown huddled around the dining table poring over store ads last night.  They were strategizing about the order to visit each store.  Wal-Mart offered  store maps online, showing where each doorbuster deal was positioned in the store, as well as the various departments.  Rabid consumers would know exactly where to find their quarry of $59 GPS receivers.  I saw a scene of a mall food court where somebody brought their Acer Aspire netbook to do some shopping or research in the field.

Of course, how could I neglect to mention the people lined up in the freezing temperatures outside of a Sears in Chicago?  Or the miles of backed-up traffic on I-88  trying to reach the Chicago Premium Outlets mall in Aurora?

If only people would exert such effort for good things, instead of quests to spend money on electronics and toys.  Imagine how much gas we would save if people planned their Saturday errands as well as their Black Friday shopping itinerary.  Imagine if people had the same patience at the DMV as they did standing outside Best Buy.

Before telling me to get off my high horse, you should know I spent a little time looking at the deals online, and actually bought some DVDs I had been wanting for about 60% off.

Of course, not everyone is a dutiful planner or has the patience of Job on Black Friday.  Once again, police had to respond to emergencies at Wal-Mart.  Some nuts fought over GPS receivers in Wisconsin, and a fight broke out in a California.  At least nobody died this year in a stampede.

This year’s Black Friday was much more peaceful than last year’s. No tramplings were reported. There was a fight at a Wal-Mart in the wee hours, unfortunately. The store was temporarily closed, which led to this lovely scene:

[P]eople began “yelling and screaming,” pounding on the glass doors and trying to sneak into the store through the lawn and garden section. Store managers had to be sent outside to try to calm the crowd, workers said.

Which brings us to Black Friday’s most important economics lesson: not all costs are measured in money. Yes, the discounts to be had can be great. But you pay a price for them. The price can be waiting outside in the cold. It could be the crowds, the parking, or the long checkout lines. In rare cases like today’s Wal-Mart near-riot, safety becomes an issue.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Suppose the people who camp out all night end up saving $40 on their purchases. If they spend eight hours suffering in the cold, that’s a savings of only $5 per hour. Less than minimum wage. Some people don’t place much value on their time, it seems.

Or, for some people, Black Friday’s pomp, circumstance, and sales are a cultural experience. They’re worth all the trouble. For other people, they’re not. Wherever you stand, non-price costs should be factored into your shopping habits. Otherwise you just might be getting ripped off.

Dossier sur-le-moment;

La cour suprême du Canada a dit que Wal-Mart était correct dans sa décision de fermer le magasin de Jonquière qui s’était syndiqué en 2005. En autant que la fermeture soit définitive.

Un coup dur contre les syndicats, car maintenant, ça a créer un précédent. D’autres pourraient suivre l’exemple.

It had to happen some time haha…

I swear there’s nothing like getting up at 4:15 in the morning, headin’ down to a packed Wal-Mart to stand in line for deals with a mix of people that looked like they just got out of bed and drove here (aka Jake) or those who actually tried to get dressed and look acceptable (I promise you people who actually tried, no one really cared what you looked like).

It was quite interesting to watch because the Wal-Mart is open 24 hours so people could come in before 5AM to stand by their ‘deal of choice’ (sucks to be you Best Buy customers that had their knees shaking for hours outside).  You couldn’t touch the items, but you could stand by them haha.  I usually never go because I’m like “none of this crap I really want or need that much to get up and deal with people“, but this year they had a iPod Touch 8GB for $145 and I had been holding out for so long that I figured this would be my cheapest shot at one.

I was able to grab that and picked up some other things and got into cash register line.  Lets just say I wasn’t the greatest chooser of which line to get into because I was in line for like 15-20 minutes…  The bright spot is I was able to talk to the guy in front of me.  He sounded Russian or Ukrainian or something and we were talking about his purchases and how he had gotten there at 1AM for some of the items (not necessary man…)  We also discussed his side job as a bouncer at a night club.  That’s right everyone, Maquoketa has bouncers that live in it.  We’re not that lame.  And I’ve got connections now so if you want to get in to the club, I got cho back.

Reflections: LOVED. IT.  It’s Maquoketa, so it’s not like there are people freaking out every where (so if this was St. Louis, probably not so awesome).  I really got a lot done as well.  I finished up my sister, my bro, and some of my mom so I don’t have to have that on my mind anymore.  Got some solid deals.  I just need to come in with a little more of a plan next year now that I’m more experienced… 

Hope your Thanksgivings were a great time of lovin’ and eatin’!

There are some worrying ads from Target this year: a woman, usually in red and white (Target’s corporate color guard), does various activities to “psych herself up” for the two-day sale staring at 5 am on the day after Thanksgiving, traditionally known as “Black Friday.” In one or more of the ads (I have to admit, they all blend into one after a while), she laughs sheepishly and says some variant of, “It’s not like it’s a competition,” then continues her manic preparations for Black Friday, where the crowds are legendary in the common pursuit of a good deal for their pent-up cash. The end purpose is to give loved ones, co-workers, and others in our lives “all the things money can buy,” the promise of satisfaction and well-being delivered materially, preferably with something new and/or shiny. To not do so is to commit a serious faux pas, to demonstrate a lack of status on your part, to fall out of the clique you’re in or not enter the clique you want to (or are made to feel you want to) enter. No one wants to be accused of stinginess, even when falling wages and higher prices for household expenses demand thrift. Shop or be scorned seems to be the yearly message, even this year, deep in a “recession” that is actually closer to a global financial meltdown, pumping itself with credit and delayed solutions like an unscrupulous athlete pumps himself full of steroids. And there is, more and more, something athletic and primal to shopping, in finding the perfect item in a rainforest full of goods (suspend for the moment the fact that product diversity has exceeded biodiversity long ago). “Survival of the fittest” is no longer a social metaphor or an evolutionary/genetic reality, but a credo for the mall as well—getting what you want has morphed into an existential problem of getting what you want in an infinite universe of manufacturers and products, and “getting what you want” materially has become a rallying cry, subtly but permanently linked with “survival of the fittest,” and fixed as a modus operandi for Americans hungry for meaning, security, and reassurance in volatile times.

It’s not a competition, except when it is. A year ago in Valley Stream, Long Island (NY), a stampede of people crushed to death a security guard at a Wal-Mart in the first Black Friday death of its kind, and a devastating demonstration of how desperate people will get to save a few dollars, that they will literally run over a fellow human to obtain some object that will likely be obsolete in a few years, because its manufacturers designed it that way, to maximize their profits. They were eager for “doorbusters”—and so the violence of commerce took on a new meaning: mall morphs into maul, every bargain has a measure of brutality about it—the only difference is that in this instance it was out in the open. Superficial news reports remark that Wal-Mart has “spent millions” to prevent another such tragedy this year, as though this is supposed to reassure us into spending, quell our fears that something as ostensibly harmless as buying and selling in the twenty-first century isn’t done in deathtraps, completely ignoring the fact that they were, this time last year, so willing to pinch pennies that the loss of a human life was nothing to them. Had they been willing to fulfill their obligation as storekeeper in the first place—had they been willing to run their business in anything remotely resembling a moral, or even logical, business model—they would have put such “costly” precautions in place long ago, thus preventing a horrific episode, something that could be termed domestic terrorism if we were brave enough to admit how beastly we are capable of being—the problem with using the word “tragedy” is that it can make people forget that something criminal happened in this case, with the people who took the last breaths out of that poor man still unfound, blending into the crowd, hiding in mass shopper anonymity.

In our marketplace, though, that puts so much pressure on businesses to obtain profits, the executives at Wal-Mart probably performed an elaborate series of calculations that showed that any “millions” spent in paying for a lawsuit or settlement for an employee being killed in such a scenario would be less than the “millions” spent to prevent that, and certainly less than the value of one man’s life itself, who becomes a sacrificial symbol we can’t, in the media on this anniversary, think about too much because it might make us sad. It should worry us when corporations literally are putting a dollar-sign on our lives, but we have become so hypnotised by television and advertising and social pressure that we shrug it off as a consequence of a consumer nation or live in denial about such calculations, such premeditated pawning of our souls by the powerful—you know, until it happens to us personally. Then and only then are we frightened beyond belief, because only then do we see how enveloped in this system we are, even those who try to consciously extricate themselves out of it. We can all be marketed—not just marketed to, but bought and sold—and consent borne out of a lack of other options can hardly be called consent at all. Those shoppers on that fateful day were so exhausted, so spread thin throughout their working lives, finding themselves working so hard for so little money, and finding themselves in need to shop at the lowest-price retailer even when that retailer uses slave labor, trashes the environment, treats its own employees horribly, and destroys communities by crushing small businesses, that such a death probably seemed like collateral damage—not to excuse their greed (as it is, make no mistake, deplorable and crass to whip oneself up into a frenzy to procure a thing when doing so puts a person at stake), but their actions were probably in line with a long-term exploitation they have suffered for years, the exploitation of long-term poverty and lower-middle-class and mid-middle-class living, the people who have seen the tax burden of the nation (despite progressive rhetoric) shift from the rich (the people who could afford more taxes) to the poor (the people who never really receive in social services what they put into the system through their incredible productivity). As we increasingly find ourselves becoming disempowered laborers, threatened always with losing benefits or our jobs, the idea of “getting what you want” at least on a basic material level is appealing because it brings a promise—even if only an illusory one—of control into our lives, and a way of distinguishing ourselves from others facing similarly discouraging and dehumanizing economic pressures. We are unique if we can outfit ourselves with the stuff that can mark us visibly as unique. To not be able to do so—or to choose not to do so—marks us as poor. Class warfare as sartorial semiotics. There is so much pressure to hide any indication that one might be a “loser” that many accept debt (the risk that comes with not living within one’s means, a seemingly ancient concept in America) rather than risk “looking poor.”

It is not possible to say that Wal-Mart could not have foreseen such a tragic incident happening at some point, at some location. They have been in business to long and have made too much money to claim naiveté. Any such claim insults our intelligence as consumers and our ethics as humans. By the way, Wal-Mart makes billions, billions with a “B,” every year, so to even imply, as the mainstream media does in its way, that it’s doing the virtuous thing in taking the precautions it willfully neglected to take a year ago with its late “millions” (we could call it negligent homicide, but, for fear of being sued for libel, we leave that to the corporate-friendly courts to decide) is hogwash. Millions is nothing compared to the billions Wal-Mart pulls in, so it’s in no way virtuous for them to be spending millions on doing the right thing—fulfilling their obligations to provide a safe workplace and shopping environment—nor should they be applauded or receive free publicity for doing so. Target’s not blameless either—it’s as horrible as any Big-Box retailer contributing to the sprawlification of the American landscape, and it’s ads this year saying or implying or even joking about the idea that “it’s [Black Friday/holiday shopping] not a competition,” given the memory of the Valley Stream death, are truly, truly insensitive and in really poor taste, even if they were meant to be tongue-in-cheek. All the more surprising since a “study” I heard about some months ago said that Target shoppers were more likely to lean Democrat, while Wal-Mart shoppers were more likely to be Republicans. Apparently, just as there’s no crying in baseball, there’s also no compassion in retail. By the way, the name of the man who died was Mr. Jdimytai Damour, and if it were up to me there would be a national holiday to honor him, with banks closed, offices closed, and sales forbidden. But it is rare to see a holiday in America where there isn’t a sale. If the stores could figure out a way to have a sale on every November 22, the date of JFK’s assassination, or maybe every December 7th, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, they would: anything to pull people through the doors, do business, and make money.

So, yes, we should be ashamed of Wal-Mart (for they are evil in so many more ways than can be touched on here), but we should also be more ashamed of ourselves—for keeping Wal-Marts in business and for demanding that other businesses look at Wal-Mart as an example, or beacon, of “success.” Is it “success” to undersell every competitor in a monoculture of retail, positioning oneself to actually weaken the power of choice among consumers? Is it “success” to pay your workers so little that they have to go on State-funded health insurance and work a second or third job to pay the rent? If this be success, don’t show me failure. It’s time to stop asking ourselves where we have gone wrong—we missed that exit a few states back. It’s time to own up to the fact that we are long wrong, and ask openly and loudly what we are going to do about it. What is worrying about each and every Black Friday is the toll it takes on the earth. The energy consumed in getting consumers to and from their temples of purchasing, not to mention the energy spent in producing those goods and transporting them by road, sea, or air; the waste from the (often non-biodegradable) packaging; and the time wasted from waiting in line, waiting for stores to open, waiting for staff to help you, and so on. Shopping has just always seemed to me like a losing transaction—life is precious, so I am going to expend some of its preciousness to procure something that takes up space in my life and drains money. Unless the item is absolutely wanted or needed, it just becomes cluttered, and becomes part of a social sickness: we are expected to express ourselves through our material things, because we are brought up to be so insecure that we cannot possibly express ourselves through…ourselves. We really are made to feel that if we don’t experience the world through stuff, we haven’t experienced the world at all. (And as much as the Internet is motivating us to digitize our modes of experiencing the world, to create a “second life” that does not take up so much physical space [and is therefore less shamefully occupied and busy], we still have a very human impulse to relate to the tangible as well as the visible—we are multi-sensory creatures. The texture of things is under-rated until total deprivation—or even the possibility of loss—reminds us how necessary it is to have something to call your own, some token or totem to speak for you and accompany you through life, no matter how minimal it is: so is everyone a connoisseur even as they deny it, for few, especially in our culture, are willing to rescind the material luxuries that make our ever-more complex worlds easier to bear.) “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” says nothing overt about property but our culture would be very different without a notion of private property that is, for the most part, unquestioned. It is our love of property in this country that stymies so much social change—people want to tax the rich but they don’t want to be prevented from becoming rich, and certainly when they are rich they don’t want to be taxed, no matter how much of that wealth came from exploiting subordinates, employees, or customers. This holiday season, with more unemployed Americans than probably the Great Depression, and more under-employed Americans as well—working but not getting by despite their work— maybe we can find a way to break the cargo cult we love to hate but still secretly love. Even the smallest store in this country runneth over with merchandise while underinvested communities in this country and in developing nations do without the basics—clothes, food, toiletries—the things that make life livable. We would never accept misery as a mode of living, but are completely blind to the misery deprivation causes for others: the lack of furniture, blankets, a winter coat, clean water to drink, soap, toothpaste. The things we take for granted until we become the victim of a natural or economic disaster. Remedying this—and it is shocking that in 2009, this state of some having enough or hyper-abundance while many have nothing at all continues—is not so much “socialism” or any other “ism” (we could get more done saving labels for retrospect) so much as being a decent human being, trying to right some wrongs and seeing that helping another person get up doesn’t require us to fall down.

We don’t love people in this country as much as we love property: we value innovation in things, devices, gadgets more than advances in education and compassion. It will take a tremendous shift in personal thinking, political will, public opinion, and legislation before we get social services systems and legal and commerce systems that are more focused and protective of people than things. That it is easier and less expensive to obtain flood insurance or car insurance than health insurance in this country is absurd, but totally in line with what can only be called Americanism: no new irony under the sun.

A start would be doing something about reversing the tide of shipping all our manufacturing overseas. In addition to being more costly in terms of earth resources spent in importing and exporting this stuff, it disempowers us to being a consumer-debtor nation, making our economy disproportionately reliant on consumer spending and putting us in trade deficits relative to other nations. On a consumer level, we need to support companies who manufacture things here, employ people here, and distribute and sell here. When we’re at a point where over a third of retail yearly profits is dependent on what people buy from November 27- December 31, and the health of our economy is determined by what is bought during this binge-period, we have some major problems as a nation.

It’s not a competition, except when it is.

–topicalwithcontext

So, the Supreme Court says that Wal Mart was alright to have shut down one of their Quebec locations in 2005 right as the store was trying to unionize.

A Wal-Mart, in case you didn't know what one looked like...

Good on ‘em. I would have been all for the power of unions…..100 years ago.

Now I’ve never worked for Wal-Mart, so I couldn’t say,  but as to my knowledge the corporate philosophy is to treat the employees well above par. So why would they want to unionize?

The bigger question is, why should Wal-Mart stand for it? Call me crazy, but hey, the Supreme Court agrees with me.

And for the record, if anyone’s wondering where my hostility towards unions comes from, I happen to be a York strike survivor. Let’s just say I’m not joining anything CUPE as long as I can avoid it.

It was really heartwarming when winter set in and they were still outside

First,  it’s only appropriate that I do this:

This is what I’ve been up to; among other things:

I also do baby showers, bar mitzvahs, and Wal-Marts.  I have a ton of things to write about, but I can’t get a moments rest these days.  Be on the lookout for the next episode of The Incontinent Orson Welles.

-Crusher

From Reuters, a comment from China Labor Watch:

“The case of Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, shows that corporate codes of conduct and factory auditing are not enough by themselves to strengthen workers’ rights if corporations are unwilling to pay the real price it costs to produce a product according to the standards in their codes.”

Acting ethically costs real money. It limits the return on investment. It complicates dealings with suppliers, competitors and often the government.

Doing the right thing is never cheap. The wrong thing can make you enormous sums of money in a world where this kind of behavior has no down side.

jp

My hunt for a cheap, 32″ LCD TV via one of Black Friday’s so-called “door-busting” sales is over. And it ended in frustration, anger and tears. OK, just anger and frustration.

Like many others this holiday season, I found myself in want of a new HDTV, and (foolishly) decided to try my hand at purchasing the heavily discounted Emerson 32″ LCD TV that was being used by Target (s TGT) and Wal-mart (s WMT) to get consumers into their stores. Both priced the TV below $250 (Target at $246, Wal-mart at $248), and both had “limited supplies.”

I should note that this was my first time pursuing “unbeatable prices” at a big-box store while so many other people were still sound asleep. Even though I knew the chances of acquiring one of these underpriced TVs was actually pretty low, I still woke up in the middle of the night and ventured out shopping.

I went to Wal-mart first, arriving around 4:00 a.m. EST, only to be find that there was no actual “door busting” going on. In order to make things more orderly by keeping Thanksgiving hours in most of its stores, queuing customers up and selling off heavily discounted items one by one. All of which meant that I arrived to find the store’s doors wide open, the aisles of the electronics section packed, and the cache of TVs sold off a full hour before the sale officially began.

Next I headed to the local Target, where the doors had not yet opened. So I got in line with what felt like 1,000 other shoppers and slowly made my way inside, only to find the aisles gridlocked with the store’s signature red carts. No one seemed to know where the discounted TVs were, and by the time I found them — in some random aisle in the middle of the store — the stash had been picked clean, with only a piece of signage lying around to signal that there had once been an “unbelievable deal” in that spot.

So what have I learned? First, that my time is better spent shopping online, where one can actually make a sound, reasoned purchase decision while still finding discounts. Within an hour of arriving home, I found decent deals on other TVs from brand-name CE manufacturers, including a 32″ Vizio LCD TV at Sam’s Club for $338 with free shipping (club membership required) and a 32″ Toshiba LCD TV at Amazon.com for $319.99 ($344.68 with shipping and handling). While neither approaches the $250 price point offered in-store at the big-box retailers, both are a significant value over other comparable products on sale.

I also learned that door-buster deals are for suckers. Considering the slim chance of obtaining one of a limited supply of a certain product, the amount of time, frustration and energy spent jostling with other shoppers is just not worth it — which is why next year I’ll be sleeping in.

The caption sucked you in didn’t it?  “Drive By Shooting”…it’s a sad commentary on society and the state of art when this kind of story get’s attention but that is the way our MTV, FOX, iPod, Twitter, Facebook, etc. media generated minds work now.  Back to the ‘Drive By’…

The drive south down 99 from Whistler to Vancouver was brilliant.  The sun finally pushed through the five-week canopy of cloud and the curtain opened to five meters of fallen snow in the past 24 days.  Meanwhile, I realised almost immediately that I had fallen into the three most regrettable pitfalls of renting a car. 

Number one: never get into a rental car without you sunglasses.  Granted it is November on the wet coast so a sunny drive on a day forecast for heavy rain wasn’t expected but I own a store that sells three of the coolest brands of sunglasses out there, have shades stashed in back packs, in my glove box (my wife had my truck) and otherwise scatter them in any number of places around my home and office on ledges and window sills where I meant not to forget them…but step into a shiny new Hyundai from Avis…you get the picture.  Note to self, when you get home put a pair of sunglasses in every bag.

Number two: no tunes.  No hook up for my HTC Mp3 phone (no iPod dock…not that I have an iPod), no Bluetooth, no CD’s (although the player is marked clearly ‘MP3′…even Hyundai gets that we burn them)…just the radio.  Mountain FM? God no.  I mean, yes it works, but no.  Enter XM Radio (XM2 actually…do they need 2?).  Leave it to Hyundai to add XM but no jack for auxiliary hook ups…and to add insult to injury they call it a ‘full size’?  They must be made in, well, somewhere with very small people.  XM and I develop an inevitable love hate relationship within minutes.  Every specialty commercial free station you can imagine categorized by music genre, decade, nationality, a million talk stations from comedy to sports to news, even religion (do they still have that?), every station that is except one that is playing a song I want to listen to.  Seek, scan, stop, XM Elvis, 60’s Pop, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s…end of a good song, damn! OFF!!

Finally, the third and hardest to swallow of all rental car pitfalls – especially for hardened Whistler locals like myself who drive full size 4×4, 4 door, Chevy Silverado pick-ups with one of the coolest line ups of stickers ever assembled on a vehicle and, by the way, gets better gas mileage than the Hyundai – the rest stop photo op.  It doesn’t matter how core I am or what hoody I have on or what time my meeting with Patagonia at Granville Island to see the 2010/11 winter line up is (yes, already) when I sit down in a rental car I know I will drop my camera ready to shoot in the passenger seat beside me and be resigned to stop at the first rest stop with a view and take a few shots like every other tourist and be humiliatingly recognized and at the same time welcomed as one of them.  I can’t fight it, or bother to explain to the guys in the big truck – like mine at home – loaded with sleds who are obviously local and only stopped for the call of nature that happens whenever there are more empty cans of Monster than passengers.  I give in to the urge and like a bar star who says she only smokes when she drinks, I pull over and suffer the loss of inner discipline that self righteously drives locals everywhere from interrupting their commute by selfishly enjoying magnificent surroundings like ours…dummies!

The tragic irony of the rental car is that, for me anyways, it is the ultimate excuse and licence to not be cool (except of course for the dorks in Hawaii who insist on renting the Mustang convertibles thinking they are cool).  So my pride intact, I pull up on the Tantalus view-point, grab my camera from the seat beside me, fold myself out of the Hyundai (still squinting from the drive south into the sun…no shades), dressed in my city clothes – black shirt, black jacket, black Vans – and lose myself in the grandeur of this place I am so blessed to call home.  Go ahead, I think to myself, “Screw the cool guy standard…Claim it!” (MSP, In Deep 2009)

The rolling summit due north is a scene straight out of Alaska…’click’…every rock and tree and shadow line a canvas of white beneath the pale blue sky of morning, and down the valley the snow line on the pines is churning in the smokey mist and warmth of the sunlight seen so rarely this time of year…’click, click, click’.  I love the pure imagination of it all…even the digital sound of a shutter release embedded on a chip programmed to echo from the little speaker on my camera to add to the nostalgia of my experience every time I snap a shot like I am Ansel Adams in 1930’something 3 months into a cold winter in Yosemite…brilliant.  Another car drives up and snapped back to reality I wonder for a moment what time it is, put the lens cap back in place and fold myself back into the Hyundai and stop.  I look again through the windshield at the smokey trees…and get back out for a few more…one more for the road.  I laugh to myself and think, ‘I love being a tourist’, and head on down the highway listening to Mountain FM.

It’s awakening to find inspiration in my own time…in my own back yard.  What have you passed by lately? or daily? Is there some place you know you’ve always wanted to stop but never have the time?  (ie. When your on your way to wait 10 minutes in the line at Starbucks or Wal-Mart or London Drugs? – sorry, no line ups there.)  It’s right there outside your window, just a step outside the comfort of your shiny metal box, yes, it’s right there.  Stop.  Just stop. 

(Aside: I would love to hear the stories of the people who just sopped after reading this…) 

Back to the ‘Drive By’…need to hit Vancouver, Granville Island by noon.  Bathroom break in Squamish, resist the ridiculously priced CD’s at Chevron even though they have a copy of ACDC’s Dirty Deeds…where will I ever find that on CD again? Answer; right there, forever…and don’t even think about the shades on the shiny spinny chrome rack thingy on the counter.  Three words, ‘Made In China’, and while I’m at it, why not add one word to that oh so familiar phrase stamped across some ridiculously growing double-digit percentage of our economy that might just sway the buying and manufacturing habits of the western world, ‘communist’.  If every second item you purchased was labelled, ‘Made in Communist China’, would you think twice?  Just a thought.  Two Mocha Monsters for $5.00, an old school chocolate puffed wheat square and I am back on the road.

The drive by shooting begins somewhere on the descent to Stanley Park on the Lion’s Gate Bridge.  I look in the rear view and see the perfect reflection of the suspension towers behind me, the city scape in front just above the mirror, wrap the neck cord of my camera around my wrist – just in case – open the window and fire off a round of black and white’s (I pre-programmed a B+W high res mode on my digi) at arms length out the window from the driver’s seat.  The first shot amazingly catches an oncoming car completely obscuring the city view above the mirror but captures a perfect mirror image of the bridge and the traffic behind.  The next two or three catch the view of downtown Vancouver between the cars, through the suspension cabling, above the tree line of Stanley Park.  Here we go.

I rattle off a few more down West Georgia; homeless guy in the soft focus silhouette of the moving trees (moving @30km/h past Burrard), big sign on the Vancouver Art Gallery, cool soft cover on the back of a Silverado like mine, the underside of the Granville Street Bridge at False Creek, a painting through a wood framed window where I parked, and think to myself, “Drive By Shooting…Drive By”.  Don’t call the MOT (BC Ministry of Transport) for an opinion on this one, don’t even take mine or think what you think I am suggesting (I accept no liability, blah, blah, blah…).  Just think of the possibilities.  We have all done it (haven’t we?).  Eaten a grape at the grocery store, pocketed some cool meaningless trinket, ridden to the store without our helmet, gone into the back country alone…snapped shots from airplane windows, on the bus or train, taken pics of funny road signs, people, other cars, vistas…this is just the natural progression of the art of every day.  It gives new meaning to ‘Street To Peak’ (ha, ha…just thought of that now!).  What better place to get it started (not that I am starting anything) than Street To Peak. 

Imagine you are a tourist today.  Yes, at home or sitting where ever you might be reading this.  How many photos did you take on your last week or two escape to somewhere else?  How many letters and/or post cards  did you write? (Better question – how many did you send?) Did you get out your journal or a pile of napkins and write? and fill more pages than you have in the past six months of the every day?  Imagine you are a geeky tourist in a rental Hyundai with no iTunes, squinting into the sun, drinking Monster Mocha, eating Fish and Chips from Tony’s (the best on Granville Island)  from a box on the passenger seat, searching for a good song on the local radio, snapping photos of the sky on a dark rainy bridge after a day of stopping at view points and rest stops just because life is good and you don’t know for sure when you will ever be here, right here, right now, again.   Imagine if that today was every day.

Where to start?  Wait a minute…before you dust off your SLR, load it in the car and hit the road, don’t miss the point.  (I can see the type A’s and OCD’s packing their sunglasses and CD’s already.)  In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.”

Bleak Friday
By Colin S. Liddle

Two fifty inch plasma HD TVs.
Zenith surround sound system.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Assassin’s Creed 2

This is not a Christmas list. This is a list of items that I will be getting killer deals on at Target at 5:00 am on Friday, November 27. My cousin made me watch a really lame movie once; it was called There Will Be Blood, but I liked something a character said in it: “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed.” Now, I know that he goes crazy and beats the preacher kid’s head in with a bowling pin at the end of the movie, but these words ring true to me. And I can live with other people succeeding, just so long as it doesn’t affect my success. I will get every last one of these items and I will get them all for killer deals.

But not for another twelve hours. Ugh.

I’ve come up from playing WoW to join my family for Thanksgiving dinner. I’m not a gaming nerd, actually, I played football in high school and lettered as a right tackle. I have a really hot girlfriend; my parents said it was only family that could come over for dinner, though. Shame, really, I wanted my cousion to really see how much hotter my girl is than his. Facebook just doesn’t do her justice. Oh well, he should know it anyway, his girlfriend’s a cow.

Sitting at the table while everybody feigns an answer of what they’re thankful for is quite a chore. God. Family. America. How about somebody says something different for once? We all know nobody really means that when they say it. My cousin says he’s thankful for all three things and then mentions his girlfriend. I think that Family, God and America would be pretty upset to hear their name thrown in with the hideous girl that he dates. The funny thing is that my friend Casey thinks she’s hot. But he’s never really been able to get girls, so his taste is pretty desperate at this point. He only had one girlfriend all three years of high school. She wasn’t too hot either, I don’t know why he dated her so long.

The thankful parade reaches me and I stand up to give an actual honest answer to what I’m thankful for:

Two fifty inch plasma HD TVs.
Zenith surround sound system.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Assassin’s Creed 2

All for killer deals.

“I guess that means you’re going to Target at 5 in the morning?” My aunt says, bemused.

I nod my head slyly and sit down. My mother glares at me. I’m thankful for her and everything, but I figured whatever is on my mind most at that time is probably what I’m really thankful for. Even when people are asked about it, they don’t actually think about what they’re thankful for, they only think about what response they can give to avoid looking like a jerk.

Dinner gets over and my cousin and I play the first Modern Warfare game for a while to pass the time. The rest of the family is in the other room watching some stupid Pixar movie. Shrek or something. My cousin is horrible at the game; I only face a real challenge when I play online. It’s a good thing I’m getting the new game in the morning; I’ve completely mastered all of the levels.

I finish owning my cousin in the desert stage and we decide to watch a movie before going to sleep. We pop in Transformers 2. I don’t even think the movie’s that cool, but Megan Fox runs around a lot in it, so I can’t complain. My girlfriend gets mad when I tell her she would look better with her hair dyed like Megan Fox. I don’t really know why it pisses her off; if you can change yourself to look better, do it. I look better with bleached tips, so I bleach them.

My alarm goes off. 4:05 AM. I wake my cousin up and he moans. I tell him to hurry up or I’m leaving him. He reminds me that he’s the one driving, so I just tell him to hurry up. We get ready pretty quickly. I check my wallet to make sure all my cards are present and we head out the door.

I arrive at Target and there are already something like forty people queued up out front. These losers. Did they have Thanksgiving dinner in line or something? Oh well, I’m still pretty big from football and the people in front of me are mostly overweight moms and pencil-necked Pokemon nerds. It will be pretty easy to overpower them.

We wait a little bit longer and my cousin starts talking about some book he’s reading. I like books, but mostly memoir books. Well, mostly memoir books by Peyton Manning. He babbles on, but I stop listening once I see a figure with a red vest walk to the doors and begin unlocking them. The crowd begins to rouse and I get my game face on.

Two fifty inch plasma HD TVs.
Zenith surround sound system.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Assassin’s Creed 2

All for killer deals.

That’s my focus. Nothing else. The doors open and everybody begins to rush inside. I successfully push through about fifteen people to make it inside the store before them and my hunt begins. Top priority – The plasma TVs, $300 each. Insane deals. Absolute musts. I put my running skills to the test and pass up a few string bean kids and a short plump woman that looks like George Costanza.

I reach the electronic section with the plasma screens. There’s already a guy who has the first two in his shopping cart and is reaching for another one. There are four left. I’m still OK. I tap my foot impatiently as he reaches for the next one. He’s slowly budging it off the shelf and my hand starts shaking. I don’t have time for this. I need to get moving. I ask him if he needs any help, but he says he’s fine. There are more people that are accumulating in the store and my chances of getting the rest of my items are going down. The TVs are my top priority, but I need to get out of here with one hundred percent of what I came in for. He slowly inches the TV screen off the shelf. I offer my services one more time and he responds in an annoyed manner that he’s got it. That’s it. I reach into his shopping cart and take out the two TVs that he has in there and speed off. I hear him yell something as I run toward the gaming section, but I just tell him to get the other TVs because I’m in a hurry.

My cousin meets up with me and I tell him to watch over the TVs while I get the games. He agrees and I rush over to the aisle with Call of Duty 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2. Suddenly, my speed skills are rendered moot, as I run into a crowd of about fifty people all rushing toward the games. I find myself caught in the middle of the siege of people and unable to move my legs as much. This doesn’t faze me, I played right tackle in high school; I know how to get through people. I lock my fists together and begin shoving people out my way. Several others are doing this as well, but not to the degree that I am. Nobody’s going to get those two games over me. I’ve prepared way too long for this. As I mow down people in front of me, I reach a point where I have stopped feeling the ground beneath me. There is a squishiness beneath my shoes and I then realize it’s a person’s face on the ground. I can’t stop now. People are still pushing. The games are only thirty dollars each. That’s half off. I’d stop and help that person if it were any other circumstance, but I promised myself that I’d get every last item on my list.

Finally I reach the glass pane display with the shining light on my two games for everybody to see. There are several copies left and the salesperson hands me both of them upon request. My mission is almost complete. I turn to head to the sound system aisle, but I’m trapped with all the other people still trying to get their games. I begin to squeeze out, but nobody is budging. Can’t these idiots see that I need to get out of here? I’m trying to be nice on the way out but everybody keeps pushing against me. I’m right up against the glass and I can’t move because of the current of people opposing me.

I stand there getting more and more aggravated at the fact that I can’t move; I even try some of my right tackle maneuvers, but the number of everyone has grown too large. I try to call up my cousin to see if he can go get the sound system, but he doesn’t answer his phone. Where the hell is he? I can’t believe I brought him, I should have brought Casey. Suddenly this short, fat high schooler with a bowl cut starts pushing against me and literally sends me back a few steps. My lower back hits one of the display controllers for a Wii sticking out from the glass pane. Ok. I’m done. I grab the stupid kid by his head and swing him around and bash his head against the glass. It cracks (the glass, not his head… At least I think so) and he drops to the floor. I see an opening. A light at the end of the tunnel. I power towards it before people can close it up again. I leap out of the crowd of people and I’m free.

With the two games tucked under my armpit, which is getting slippery from all the sweat, I high tail it over to the sound section. I turn around a corner of iPod docs and there it is — A single Zenith DA3520 Home Theater System remains, and it sits solely with the 120 dollar price tag, waiting for me. I advance towards it, but then my peripherals pick up another figure. I look to my left. It’s Casey. I then see that he’s also eyeing the same box of electronic goodness that I am. Casey’s my best friend and he’s a damn good Black Friday shopper, but he will not be the victor this morning. I promised myself I’d get every item on my list, come hell or high water. I don’t know if this situation would be classified under either, but best friend or not, he’s not getting MY Zenith home theater system.
“Hey man,” he says to me, pleasantly.
“Hey Casey,” I say. “You can come over to my house whenever you want to check out the system, once I set it up.”
“Oh, I don’t think so!”
With that we both make a mad dash towards the box. He’s faster than me, but I’m bigger, he reaches the Zenith box right before me but I pounce on him and we both go sliding across the floor of Target with our hands on the system. In an effort to gain leverage, I heave my elbow back at Casey and land a blow square on his nose. He lets go of the sound system and goes into the fetal position to clutchhis nose which has started trickling blood. Well, the blood coming from his nose is more than a trickle, but he’ll be fine. I climb to my feet in a dazed manner and compose myself. I reach down in my pocket to grab my phone and hear Casey rolling around on the ground yelling obscenities at me. Geez, Casey. He may have the mouth of a seller, but he could never take hard hits in football practice.
I call my cousin and again there’s no answer. Dammit, where the hell is he? I need to get in line before they get too long. Whatever, I’m sure he’s already in line. My cousin may not be the coolest of kids, but he’s pretty sharp in these situations. I hustle over to get in the check out line and finally stop to take a breath. My body hasn’t had this much adrenaline pumping through it since the forth quarter of the state championship game. I need to start working out again, this is a rush.
As the line gets closer to the clerk, I reach for my wallet and find, to my horror, nothing but an empty pocket with a large tear in it. Fuck. I holler out loud with fury and several people stare at me with a collective contorted expression on their faces. I turn to head back to the gaming area because I figure that’s where my pocket was torn. Dammit. I should be walking to my cousin’s car by now. I head back towards the gaming department and I see paramedics walking in and taking some random guy out in a stretcher. Geez, these Black Friday things are crazy. All of a sudden I see my cousin. And he doesn’t have the TVs with him! What is his g**damn problem? I start walking over to strangle him when I notice the two men in black uniforms with him. In an instant, all three of them look up at me and my cousin points me out. From out behind them steps the guy I stole the TVs from. Are you kidding me? He really got upset about that? I can’t believe this is going on.
I figure the TVs are a loss. Shit. I’ll still get them somehow; those two TVs are probably going to be put away, but they’ll restock them later today. I’ll come back with a hat and scarf on or something so they won’t recognize me. The two security guards and my cousin and the douche bag I won the TVs over are about twenty feet from the exit of the store and walking toward me. Wallet or not, I’m going to get these items back to my house. I lift my foot up defiantly to the two candy ass security guards and book it towards the doors to make my escape.
They realize I’m doing this as I speed to the doors and turn to go after me, but there’s no way they’re going to beat me. I’ll be at the door of my cousin’s car before they get outside the store. I am five feet from the door; this is it, I’m almost free, fresh air and great gaming awaits me at home. As I stick my hand out to push open the door, a push cart with my two HDTVs for 300 dollars each (killer deal) slides out recklessly in front of me. For a split second I feel like I’ve been blessed and I’ll be able to push these bad boys out to my car as well.
Two fifty inch plasma HD TVs.
Zenith surround sound system.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Assassin’s Creed 2

Awesome.
But before I can stop, I collide with both of them as they domino over and I fly forehead first into the glass doors of Target. I go through the door and land on the other side on my stomach as shards of glass bounce around me. I look up with my head spinning to see the security guards approaching me.
*******
I’m out the door right after Thanksgiving dinner and on my way to Wal Mart. The list has been running through my head ever since I saw the deals listed in the newspaper. This time I’m bringing Casey with me and not my stupid cousin who rats me out when they think he’s the one who stole the TVs from the guy. I figure with Casey, it’s best to join forces, and he forgave me pretty quickly for breaking his nose; he knows how competitive I am. Plus I had already done it once in practice and he his nose is pretty Owen Wilson to begin with. The TVs didn’t turn out to be such a big deal, the kid whose head I cracked against the glass was hurt pretty badly, but I only had to go to jail for three months with a plea and obeyance. The five hundred hours of community service kind of sucks, though, but whatever, I’m used to physical labor.
I’m doing things much smarter this year, I’m going to be first in line and rely on my speed more than my force. There aren’t any laws against speeding.
A forty eight inch Plasma HDTV.
Grand Theft Auto V
Halo 4
Pioneer subwoofers

Oh yeah. Killer deals.